The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

by Jeff Guinn

Jones also couldn’t prevent occasional tragedies involving members, even if one of the tenets of Peoples Temple was that a benefit of joining was coming under Father’s protection. He regularly announced “danger cycles” during which everyone should be especially cautious. If anything bad happened to a member during one of these, it only fulfilled Jones’s prophecy. If nothing did, then he was responsible due to his timely warning. Sometimes he announced specific acts everyone must undertake to avoid potential problems. Car wrecks would not happen to members who walked around their vehicles two times before getting in and starting the engine. Jones would press a photo of himself into the hand of a follower, and inform him or her that something awful had been going to happen—crippling or even death in an accident of some sort—but by possessing the picture, the follower was saved.