SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/13/2021 11:54 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Beware of False Prophets
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 7:15
Message of the
verse: “15
"Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but
inwardly are ravenous wolves.”
This SD will be a bit different in
that I am going to quote from a sermon by John MacArthur as he spoke about the
People’s Temple Christian Church and what happened in 1978. Some who read this may not have been born
then and some will remember what happened to over 900 people. One of the reasons for my quoting this is
because there were true believers involved in this and so we all must be on guard,
and we must all know how to spot a false prophet. As mentioned we have one today in Texas named
Joel Osteen.
“In
a book that was published last year titled Deceived the writer speaks concerning the
phenomena of Jonestown. “It will take years to unravel the mystery of
Jonestown. There are no statistics gathered about the people who were
brainwashed and deceived by the Reverend Jim Jones.
“There
are no records available to us giving names, addresses, and personality
profiles of those who came to The People’s Temple Christian Church and stayed
to die. The puzzle must be assembled piece by piece from the handful of
surviving defectors and relatives of the dead. I asked each of my
subjects to describe his religious background, hoping to prove that the
converts to Jones’ false version of the Christian faith might not have been
deceived if they had been exposed to some version of true Christian faith when
they were children. I found, however, that they were exposed to Christian
truth as children. In fact, in a long interview with Tim Stoen, I got my
first answer to my question.
“Tim
was once the second most powerful man in People’s Temple. Tim has a law
degree from Stanford University and served as an Assistant District Attorney
for San Francisco until he resigned to go to Jonestown in 1977. Tim
defected from the cult last year, and worked tirelessly until that awful
Saturday in November to get his son, John Victor, age 6, away from Jones and
the jungle. According to eyewitness accounts, little John-John was found
dead beside Jones’ body. ‘I was raised in a Christian home,’ he told me.
‘My parents were fundamentalists, members of The General Association of
Regular Baptists, G.A.R.B. I went to Sunday school and college all my
young life. I attended Wheaton College, a leading evangelical Christian
college in Illinois, and was involved in student leadership.
“When
I moved to California, I joined and attended regularly The First Presbyterian
Church in Berkeley. For two years I was the president of their
Corinthians, a business and professional young adult group. I admired and
respected their evangelical yet socially concerned pastoral staff. I was
attending First Presbyterian and The People’s Temple until I joined Jim Jones
staff.’ Gene Mills, another victim, was for seven years a member of The
Temple, one of Jones’ writers, and a member of his planning commission, said,
‘I attended or taught in my church’s Christian education program from my
childhood. When I was 18 years old, I was the leader of the Pathfinders
Club, which had over 50 kids in it; I had 22 adults working under me.
“ I
could give you an answer from the Bible for any question. I knew the
Bible backward and forward. At one point in my life, the minister tried
to send me to college to become his Bible worker, and I was very dedicated to
the church.’ Wayne Patilla, who was Jones’ private bodyguard and driver,
grew up in Nazarene Sunday School. His wife and longtime member of the
cult grew up in a Charismatic church, and attended Sunday School and church
regularly. Bonnie Thielman, for 6 years a member of The Temple, was the
daughter of Assembly of God missionaries to Brazil, and attended Bethany
College, a Lutheran school in Minnesota. Carolyn Moore was president of
her Methodist youth fellowship group, and she and her sister, Annie, were
children of a Methodist minister.
“And
both served as intimate Jones aides, and both died in Guyana.” That’s a
sample out of the first three pages of the book. These people were people
raised in a Christian environment, and yet the subtlety of the man deceived
even them. Such is the deceitfulness of false prophets, and such is the
reason why our Lord says, “Beware.” They’re not something superficially
discovered. The writer of the book Deceived, in trying to give us some insight into why
it was that people followed Jim Jones, drew the following reasons. “He
knew how to inspire hope. He was committed to people in need; he
counseled prisoners and juvenile delinquents.
“He
started a job placement center, he opened rest homes and homes for the
retarded, he had a health clinic, he organized a vocational training center, he
provided free legal aid, he founded a community center, he preached about
God. He even claimed to cast out demons, do miracles, and heal. But
on the other hand, we find all the marks of a false prophet. He promoted
himself through the use of celebrities, a very common vehicle for false
prophets to gain credibility. He manipulated the press, he wanted certain
favorable stories, he was big on playing to the press. He pretended to be
a Christian. He officiated in a Disciples of Christ church, having been
ordained by them in 1964.
“He
used the language and the forms of faith to gain his power. He used
Fundamentalist Pentecostal trappings, and always spoke in Biblical
language. He had his people sing and give testimonies as to how he had
miraculously healed them.” And I might add that they later found out that
he was always supposedly healing cancers, and he would have people cough up
cancers and they would display them before the people, and found out that it
was bloody parts of chickens that they were using with people who were planted
in the congregation. “He created a warm, loving, pseudo Christian
community without Christ. He demanded absolute and total loyalty.
He replaced Jesus as the authority figure, and went so far as to say that he
was Jesus.
“ He
used the Bible, quoting it very often, but perverting it to his own ends.
He gave away anointed gifts, miracle blessings, prayer cloths, and always
demanded money in return.” Another ploy used b many false prophets.
“He was in it for the money. He was utterly, totally consumed with a
preoccupation toward sex, and not only sex in a sinful way, but sex in a
deviant way. He lied, constantly and continually, about
everything.” Such is Jim Jones. And yet in all of that, he was so
deceiving that he deceived everybody from Mrs. Jimmy Carter right on down to a
thousand people who wound up as corpses in a jungle in Guyana. And he
deceived all kinds of people in between, senators, and congressmen, and state
assemblymen, and governors, and everybody else who gave him plaques, and
honors, and awards as a great civic and religious leader.
“If
he hadn’t died, and Jonestown hadn’t happened, the chances are he would have
been hailed as a great hero. But it came to a horrible ending. And
he gives us the picture of a false prophet that we can see and know about,
because of how it ended. Unfortunately, not all false prophets ever
become quite so manifest, and so, as Hebrews 5:14 says, “We need to exercise our senses to
discern between good and evil.” Because it’s not always going to be
patently obvious as it became in the case of Jim Jones. He, in his
approach, went for the down and outers; there are many false prophets who go
for the up and inners, and everybody in between. Now, let me add this
footnote on the comments on Jim Jones.
“The
tragedy of Jonestown is not that nearly a thousand people died. That’s
not the tragedy, everybody dies anyway. The tragedy is not that they
died; the tragedy is that they died and went to hell, thinking they were
serving God and on their way to heaven. That’s the tragedy. The
tragedy is not an untimely death; the tragedy is a timeless eternity. The
tragedy of Jim Jones is that he duped people into thinking that he represented
God and Christ. And they actually believed they were serving the kingdom
of God, only to wake up in hell. Deceit – Satan is a liar and a deceiver,
so are his emissaries, and they transform themselves into those who masquerade
as angels of light.”
Just
read and learn from this dreadful story.
2/13/2021 12:06 PM
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