Was Abraham Lincoln a Christian?

Abraham Lincoln's war centralized America.  

He gave us the Dept. of Agriculture, which is ruining Ag. 

He nationalized the railroad which is fascism putting private business and the government together. 

He nationalized the bank.

He gave us our first income tax system in US history. 

Lincoln gave us our first inheritance taxes.

He was the first to have a Marxist in his cabinet, putting Charles A. Dana as his assistant secretary of war, whom A. Lincoln called "The eyes of my administration." 

Lincoln suspended free press by shutting down 300 newspapers and put over 13,000 Northerners in prison. 

Lincoln had a dream of a White America planning to load every black man up and ship them to Liberia. Blacks were not permitted in his home state of Illinois. Any black there more than a month was publicly whipped. 

He wrote scurrilous tracts professing untempered ridicule and unreserved scorn for the faith of our fathers. 

The first time America jumped squarely into public education was in 1863 with the Merrill Act “to teach rebels children respect for national authority and thereby teach them to love their country before their state.”

A. Lincoln arrested legislators from Kentucky and Marilyn to prevent them from voting on succession. He exiled the Congressman Vallandigham for speaking in congress against Lincoln’s war. Lincoln ordered that Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Taney be arrested.

During the civil war, Lincoln closed newspapers across the country and seized telegraph lines to censor communications that he perceived as threats to his war efforts. 

Lincoln censored elections and confiscated guns in the boarder states. Lines of soldiers stopped voters who had the wrong color of ballots assuming they would vote against him. 

They burned hundreds of churches to the ground. 

Lincoln had about 90 officers, called 48ers, who were Communist revolutionaries from Europe. Three of the founders of the Communist Party became generals in Lincoln’s army. Lincoln said he would throw the Constitution overboard to save the union. By the end of the war he had shredded it. 

Was Abraham Lincoln a Christian? – Emancipator or Centralizer

The Story of Jim Jones By Dinah Seppi

“I decided, ‘How can I demonstrate my Marxism?’ The thought was, ‘Infiltrate the church.’ So I consciously made a decision to look into … that prospect.”

~Jim Jones

Early Christmas morning, I walked into Regina’s room. Dad was on the computer reading from lewrockwell.com. There was an article and a documentary on the Jim Jones sect. I wanted to watch it, so we did. Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7IxGGfpSWk&feature=related

Here are some of the things that went on:

Members worked long hours. Some would go to work and say, “I only got 2 hours sleep last night.” “We were made to feel guilty for indulging in sleep,” another ex-member said.

When they went to their various jobs in San Francisco, people would ask about the “church,” but nobody would give out information.

Jim Jones controlled his people through fear. He told them people were out to get them, hated them and were against the work they were doing.

The people were afraid to talk to one another about the possibility of their leader being wrong. If they did, they were confronted in front of the whole gathering and made to feel stupid or unsure of their statement. In the latter days of the group, Jim Jones became more and more paranoid and anxious about his reputation. Children were to report on their parents and parents on children.

Jim Jones was emotionally dependent on what people thought of him. If you knew things were not right but you acted like every thing was fine, he was good with that. When he was exposed, he sent threats and searchers after those who left the group.

The People’s Temple assembly revered their leader. He was a very articulate man. When they arrived at Guyana they had a speaker system that would play continuously recorded messages of Jim Jones. It played everywhere: when they worked in the field, when they went to sleep at night.

Jim Jones advocated an unbiblical marriage relationship. The husband and wife were not to have relations, though he made bedroom appointments with many women and later sodomy with the men.

James “Jim” Warren Jones born May 13, 1931 started out as a young child in a dysfunctional family. Jim spent a lot of time alone. The children who grew up with him said he was a strange boy. “He was infatuated with death and dying.” Once he killed his own cat with a knife and then performed a funeral for it. Jones was a voracious reader as a child and studied Josef Stalin, Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi and Adolf Hitler carefully noting their strengths and weaknesses. In 1951, Jones became a member of the Communist Party USA at the age of 20 yrs. When he was a young man he attended a Pentecostal Church.

Jim Jones was surprised when a Methodist superintendent helped him get started in the church even though he knew Jones to be a communist.^[14] In 1952, Jones became a student pastor in Sommerset Southside Methodist Church.

He learned the ropes and became a pastor. He was appealing to the black community. There would be no difference between black person and white person. They would take care of their poor and “have every thing in common just as the Bible says!”

Jones called everyone to give all they had to the group and the church would provide for them.

Jim Jones did have some good teaching:

It was not good to send old people to rest homes but rather to care for ones own.

Viewing people of different skin color as equally human and to be treated as such.

The “church” grew five fold in five years when Jones bought big buses and traveled around the U.S. calling people to sell all they had and give it to the church and come live with them.

Once Jim Jones held up a Bible during the service, “Do you see this leather book?” This has held people enslaved for generations!” Jones took the bible and threw it in the air toward the back of the “church.” When it hit the cement he said “You see! No bolt of lightning came down and hit me! ....If you want a father I’ll be your father. If you want a savior I’ll be your savior; if you want a god I’ll be your god!”

Jones conducted “healings” that were later proved to be false. He started using drugs. He required that members spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with their Temple "family" rather than with blood relatives,^[7] the beginning of a process to wean members from families and redirect their lives toward a total commitment to the Temple's social and political goals.^[7 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_Temple

Jones held a hypnotic effect over his people. They did what he said. Jim Jones carefully studied how to manipulate people without them knowing it.

One survivor said, “We were working so hard we just let him do our thinking for us.”

Jones became more worried about a nuclear attack in the United States and wanted to relocate in Guyana. His son, Stephan Jones worked on preparing the new place for the 900+ people to go. It would be called Jonestown. Stephan said he “loved the work” with the guys. They worked hard, played hard and “we ate well.” But, as soon as his dad arrived, the whole atmosphere changed. Everybody was uptight. “He was very controlling.”

“He was constantly seeking adulation,” Jones needed new people [in the group] because he had to have people who did not really know him, as his son said Stephan Jones revealed in an interview.

After verbal abuse, tremendous pressure and humiliation the people would decide that they did not want to REALLY go back home to see their family in the states.

“At the top was the Temple's Staff, a select group of eight to ten unquestionably obedient college-educated women that undertook the most sensitive missions for the Temple.^[26] They necessarily acclimated themselves to an, "ends justify the means" philosophy.^[26] ”

The group started in Indiana, moved to Ukiah, California, to San Francisco and on to Jonestown, Guyana. Some left the group while in San Francisco and were known as “the gang of eight” who fled to the Montana Mountains. Jones sent searchers after them and death threats. They wrote of the abuse that went on and his treatment of the Bible. Just before a newspaper article went into print, it was sent to Jones. Jones read it and ordered an immediate move to Guyana.

Sometime later, family members began contacting a congressman, Leo Ryan, saying they thought their family members were being held against their will.

Congressman Ryan flew to Guyana with some of the former members and an entire news crew. One woman set the congressman’s will in her desk drawer, “just in case” with instructions that “If I never come back collect all recordings, pictures and writing and tell the story.

When the congressman and the former members arrived in Guyana some were a little scared. The congressman was confident. Nobody would do anything to a congressman, right?

But when they arrived, it was awe inspiring. Amazing! They had actually carved out a living in the jungle. They had beautiful stone trails, flowers, home grown food, daycare etc.

After the congressman had been there for a few days he was sure that the many worries and concerns in America about Jonestown were misunderstandings and this was a great place where people were very happy.

The Congressman spoke in one of their meetings:

“You guys really like it here!”

People enthusiastically started clapping. The clapping went on and on.

A man there wrote a note to the congressman saying, “Get me out of here!”

He put it into the congressman’s arm. But it fell when the congressman moved his arm.

“You dropped something!” he said handing it to the congressman.

A young boy shouted, “He passed a note! He passed a note!” [All were taught to tattle on each other.]

The congressman read it and told the camera crew to question everyone. Meanwhile he went and showed the note to Jim Jones. Many privately said they wanted to go back to the United States. As they were boarding a plane in the Guianese Port Kaituma Airstrip, a tractor pulling a trailer drove between them and the runway. Men with machine guns from the Jonestown temple police jumped out killing Congressman Ryan, three journalists, and one of the Temple defectors.

The bell rang, and an assembly meeting was called. Everybody was pretty shook up. Jim Jones said certain groups of people are out to kill us, take out children brainwash them and make them fascist. We should all die together. He had a punch made with cyanide-laced grape flavor along with a sedative. Suddenly the men with machine guns surrounded the building. Jones said that those who did not drink it would be shot. Children were taken from their mothers arms others just died in their mothers laps as poison was injected into their mouths. Mothers drank; fathers drank.

“Die with dignity, don’t die this way!” he said, “This is not the way for Socialists and Communists to die.” A hand full slipped through the guards and escaped into the jungle. They were very afraid the gunmen would pursue them. They ran and ran. One lady heard about five shots and that was it. But they were lost and had no pure water or food. They got fever and chills but finally got to safety.

In all, 918 people died, including over 270 children.

Jones wife’s body was found outside the pavilion with a will deeding all that was in the banks to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

One of the guys, Michael Prokes, who knew Jones was instructed to take a suitcase of money to the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. Afterward, he made an appointment in a hotel room with some journalists. He walked in the bathroom and shot himself.

The sad story of the Jim Jones sect is history. We study the past because history is His-story, God’s story. We study it that we may put our trust in God and not forget the works of God but would remember His commandments to do them. Psalm 78:5-7

The people who followed Jones in the beginning were charismatic, Antinomian [anti-God’s law] sensational, feeling driven, “Christians.” Worship services were not centered on the whole council and word of God [Scripture]. But, rather on music which got them all psyched up. He had an attractive rhetoric of all races accepting each other and living together.

But, when people are not as those in Berea in Acts 17:10-11 who searched the scriptures daily, to see whether what was being told them was consistent with scripture they stop following God and follow the man.

No matter who someone is they must follow God first, not their husband, nor wife, nor parent, nor boss, nor civil government official. All authority is under Christ and subject to his word. A man or woman’s authority is only that which God allows it to have. An unbiblical command is no command at all. The King is not law. The law of God is king.

Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peoples_Temple

Jim’s son, Stephan Jones:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJURAVi6wpA&feature=related

Stephan identified with his father stating that, like his father, he knows how to get people to like him. He said the apple does not fall far from the tree.

Stephan still believes in what his father was trying to do, but says that it got out of hand and went too far. Stephan was shocked that his father would actually conduct this suicide considering the fact that his father was full of fear. Jim had ordered his son home to meet the congressman, but Stephan was in town playing basketball and just said, "No."

Although I have not read the book, many of the things I used in this article are referenced in the book Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People published in 1982

People lost in the jungle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ze8hcbGXXkU&feature=related

Gary DeMar's Podcast

On his August 9th show, Economics and Education,

Gary reviews the "curious" book

Lance gave him at WCWC.

http://www.americanvision.org/radio/tgds/default.asp

Red Republicans

Marxism in the Civil War

Walter D. Kennedy & Al Benson, Jr.