e became dangerously clear to him. Ross Case, a coworker of Jones for several years, as well as a Disciple of Christ minister, remarks, “I’ve never seen anyone relate to people the way he could. He would build them up, convince them that anyone as intelligent and sensitive as they were ought to do whatever it was he wanted them to do”( Axthelm 55). Father Divine, a famous black cult leader in Philadelphia at the time intrigued Jones. Jones took a group of young people to meet Father Divine. When they returned Jones had brought back not only Divine’s songs, but his vision as well. Jones began to implemented Divines “insistence on fierce personal loyalty” into his sermons(Axthelm 55). Jones ‘s meeting with Divine influenced him to the degree in which he “instituted an interrogation committee in the church to question anyone who dared to speak against him”( Axthelm 55) Those who dared to defy Jones would suffer. Jones’s threats as Thomas Dickson remembers where such that “he’d get awfully violent--not physical, but verbally”(Axthelm 55). In 1961 Jones began going public with his doubts and confessed that he no longer believed in the Virgin Birth. Jones then demanded a show of hands by his congregation signifying who agreed with his view. Only one hand was raised. The owner of this hand became an immediate trusted ally as well as aide to Jones. During a sermon soon after Jones’s first confession, Jones “threw a Bible to the floor and complained , ‘Too many people are looking at this instead of me’ ”(Axthelm 55). Jones a man who had once stood proud and strong against the evils of the world, was now condemning the Bible.In 1963 Jones visited Guyana eventually to be the site of his ultimate vision of a remote utopian settlement. In 1974, Jim Jones, along with a handful of followers, moved to build his dream a “Christian...
