Read decades later, such declarations seem nothing more than obvious, grandiose self-delusion. But many among Jones’s followers didn’t regard them that way. There were few brand-new members now. Jones already had sufficient numbers to impress politicians and plenty of people to send out on buses to march in support of freedom of the press or in protest of some bureaucratic act. Additional recruits, at least in San Francisco and Los Angeles, weren’t worth the trouble of weeding through to find potential true believers. Among those who were already part of the Temple fellowship, only a handful
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