Forward by Bob Barney: I remember Jonestown well. It was the month in 1978 when after years of denying even the existence of God, I came to the understand that God did exist and that the Bible was the Word of God. These were very hard times for me, and I had decided to go back to the area where I went to college in Storrs, Ct. I had some friends there, elderly gentlemen that I used to have breakfast with at the local diner every morning for the last two years of my college career. I had graduated the year before, but went there because I knew I could find peace, quite and be able to read and study the Bible. I especially understood by know what the White Horse of Revelation stood for. FALSE CHRISTIANITY! It was from this false Christian world that I had thought that I had disproved the existence of God, when in fact, the White Horse merely proved God, and Jesus Christ's words. I turned on the news one evening, and listened to this:
November 18th will mark the 37th anniversary of what has become known as “Jonestown,” where 918 members of the Peoples Temple—a religious cult that originally formed in 1950’s Indiana, before moving to California, and ultimately to Guyana, South America—were left dead, most through willfully drinking cyanide-laced, grape-flavored Flavor Aid. It was the final act of notorious leader Jim Jones, who attempted to create his visions of a “socialist paradise” in that small nation.*
Seeing as nearly everyone who belonged to the Peoples Temple died that day, most of what is known about the event is by virtue of Jones’ meticulous archiving. Archive.org is chock-full of Peoples Temple ephemera, including an audio recording of Jones preaching to his followers before and during the mass suicide on that final, fateful day. Yet despite the general feeling that now, decades later, we know all there is to know about the tragic events in Guyana, lingering questions remain.
“How many people were drugged on the final day?” a former meber of Peoples Temple, who didn't travel to Guyana, writes in an email. “This is something I used to dismiss. But with the release several years ago of [Freedom of Information Act] files that address the psychotropic drugs found in Jonestown and my personal interactions with others who were in Jonestown on the final day … I’m no longer willing to dismiss this.”There's a slight sense of concealment, a gray tinge that still colors the events 37 years ago—and researchers have dedicated their professional lives to figuring out exactly what happen …. READ MORE HERE