WHEN IT COMES TO FAITH---BE SURE YOU GET IT RIGHT!
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him." John 3:36 NIV
INTRODUCTION
It really does make a difference what you believe. Your eternal destiny hangs in the balance. The Jonestown Massacre, also called the Guyana Tragedy, has a lesson that the Christian community needs to learn. That lesson comes through loud and clear: “Always keep your eyes focused on Jesus and never on man…any man!”
James Warren (Jim) Jones was one of the most (if not the most) notorious religious leaders of our time. He was born in Crete, Indiana on May 13, 1931. Jones held degrees from Indiana University and Butler University. He was ordained by the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ. In his early years in Indiana, he gained a reputation as a charismatic preacher with wide appeal to the masses.
Desiring to reach a greater number of followers, Jones moved to Ukiah, California where he established the “People’s Temple”. Envisioning even a greater following, he moved to San Francisco where he organized the “People’s Temple” in that city. In the summer of 1977, Jones and most of the 1,000 members of the Peoples Temple moved to Guyana from San Francisco after an investigation into the church for tax evasion was begun. Jones named the closed settlement “Jonestown” after himself. His intention was to create an agricultural utopia in the jungle based on quasi-communist principles. Jones told his followers to think of him as the incarnation of Christ and God.
In November 1978, U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led a fact-finding mission to the Jonestown settlement in Guyana after allegations by relatives in the U.S. of human rights abuses. Ryan’s delegation arrived in Jonestown on November 14 and spent three days interviewing residents. They left hurriedly on the morning of Saturday, November 18 after an attempt was made on Ryan’s life. They took with them eighteen Peoples Temple members who wished to leave. Delegation members later told police that, as they were boarding planes at the airstrip, a truckload of Jones’ armed guards arrived and began to shoot at them . When the gunmen left five people were dead: Rep. Ryan, a reporter from NBC, a cameraman from NBC, a newspaper photographer and one defector from the Peoples Temple.
Hours later, Jones ordered his followers to drink from a tub of grape-flavored Kool-Aid laced with cyanide and tranquilizers. Nine hundred and eight of them did. Children died first; babies were killed by poison squirted into their mouths with a syringe. Then the adults. Most were poisoned, some forcibly. Some were shot by security guards. As the ritual suicide progressed, it is unclear whether Jim put a bullet through his brain, or someone did it for him.
When the horrific scene was discovered, the lengthy process of returning the badly decomposed bodies home, many could not be identified except by dental records. The delay, the tropical heat and the animals in the jungle had taken a frightening toll. Our government, at first, thought of mass cremation but the Guyana government demanded that every body be removed from their country.
Several U.S. cemeteries refused to take them. Finally the Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland stepped forward in 1979 and accepted 409 bodies. The remaining victims were cremated or buried in family cemeteries.
Jonestown itself has vanished, stripped by villagers and consumed by a fire in the early 1980s. The Peoples Temple organization did not survive the mass suicide/murder in Guyana. Their former headquarters building in San Francisco was demolished by the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. Years later, serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confessed that he personally delivered the cyanide to his "good friend, Jim Jones."
Satan still has his “Jim Jones’” polluting the minds of the religious curious. These false teachers keep the spotlight on themselves as they cater to the covetous nature of their hearers. There are three things that the sincere seeker should always keep in mind when their path is crossed by these preachers of “strange doctrines”. The three are as follows.
I. OUR FAITH MUST BE BUILT ON THE LORD JESUS CHRIST
“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” I Corinthians 3:11 NIV
“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”
Ephesians 2:19-22 NASB
II, WE MUST KEEP OUR FAITH ANCHORED TO THE TRUTH
We must beware of the tendency to drift doctrinally. Dismiss the doctrines of men and stick with the teachings of the Word of God. The writer of Hebrews recognized this danger, writing, “For this reason we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.” Hebrews 2:1 NASB.
We must beware of Satan’s efforts to tempt us to drift doctrinally.
“The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.” 1 Timothy 4:1 NIV
III. WE MUST KEEP IN MIND THE CONSEQUENCES OF REJECTING JESUS.
“Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him." John 3:36 NIV. This verse clearly declares two great truths; one of which evokes great joy and comfort whereas the other sounds a stern warning regarding the deadly consequence that comes by rejecting Jesus. One would do well to consider both of these consequences.
1. “Shall not see life”. The Bible declares that eternal life is found only in the Lord Jesus Christ. Apart from Him, there is no life.
“And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. The one who has the Son has life. The one who doesn’t have the Son of God does not have life.” I John 5:11-12 HCSB
2. “God’s wrath remains (abides, continues, dwells, stands) on him.” This is a frightening statement! God’s wrath remains upon the unbeliever who is spiritually dead in his sins, leaving him under this condemnation.
“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind , and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:1-7)
