Just before Thanksgiving during my freshman year in high school, Jim Jones and his People’s Temple cult entered the national consciousness. It was on November 18, 1978 that 909 members of People’s Temple died in Guyana, Africa. Most of them committed suicide. A significant number were murdered. 276 were children.

Last night, Cindy and I watched the new Jonestown documentary on PBS. I was hoping to gain new insight into this mysterious tragedy. What was it that drew people to Jim Jones? What explains the fanatical devotion to this cause, demonstrated by the willingness of so many to relocate to Africa to live in his community? Most of all, why would hundreds of people surrender their own lives at his command, with (apparently) nothing to gain by it?

The documentary begins with the voice of a former Temple member saying that no one intentionally joins a cult that they think will harm them; rather, people join movements they believe in. But it’s hard to see from this film what Jim Jones offered people to believe in. The documentary traces Jones’ life: misfit kid, Pentecostal revival preacher, pioneer in racial integration (from the start he insisted that all races worship together), and founder of a community that moved from Indiana to California to Guyana. Obviously Jones had something beyond charisma. This documentary reports on it, but doesn’t capture it. We hear of Jones the powerful preacher, charlatan, sexual deviant and totalitarian dictator. We get snippets of his beliefs, which seem to have grown out of Biblical Christianity before metastasizing into Jones’ own dogma. We see the evidence of his power to move people (Jones and his group played a huge role in the San Fransisco mayoral election) but not the power itself.

In short, the documentary fails to show us why Jim Jones was so powerful. Maybe the filmmakers missed the mark. Or maybe it’s because nearly all the true believers died on 11.18.78.

Actually, I saw something else at work in Jim Jones. Before Judas betrayed Jesus, it says that Satan entered him. I have always believed (and this is my opinion) that when Satan was finished using Judas, he abandoned him. And when I see the photos of 909 bodies lying around that forsaken compound, I see the same evil force at work. Jim Jones had a power from beyond this world, and the goal of that dark force is always to steal, kill and destroy.