Satan’s Entirely Predictable?—Rick Warren, Jim Jones, & the Peoples Temple

By Warren B. Smith
From his book, The Titanic and Today’s Church

At his popular Institute for Successful Church Leadership, the late Robert Schuller taught many of today’s pastors and church leaders his seemingly positive but wayward approach to modern Christianity. His “possibility thinking” teachings, emphasizing church growth at the cost of spiritual discernment, influenced thousands of pastors as they studied at his Institute. In his book Discover Your Possibilities, Schuller wrote:

Concentrate on the positive. If you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and take Him in your life, you’ll never have to worry about the devil.¹

Twenty-five years later, exuding Schuller’s same false confidence, complacency, and denial regarding the wiles of the Devil, Robert H. Schuller Institute “graduate” Rick Warren² offers similar counsel to his millions of Purpose Driven Life readers when he writes:

It helps to know that Satan is entirely predictable.³

Declaring this is like a shepherd telling his sheep—“It helps to know that wolves are entirely predictable.” For church leaders like Schuller and Warren to make these statements is as falsely confident and empty as Titanic Captain Edward J. Smith telling Long Island friends that the Titanic was unsinkable.⁴ Robert Schuller and Rick Warren played right into the spiritual deception by ignoring the subject of spiritual deception. And by doing so, they were completely discounting the Bible’s explicit warnings to be “sober” and “vigilant,” and not to be “ignorant” of Satan’s “devices”:

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices. (2 Corinthians 2:11)

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. . . . that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. (Ephesians 6:11, 13)

The Bible warns that Satan is anything but predictable and often comes as a deceptive “angel of light” and his ministers as “ministers of righteousness” (2 Corinthians 11:14-15). To teach that Satan is “entirely predictable” is a far cry from putting on the “whole armor of God” and standing fast against “the wiles of the devil” so we “may be able to withstand in the evil day.”

The Devil Next Door

Having grown up in Redwood Valley, California, it would seem that Rick Warren would be one of the first people to warn about the spiritual deception and false teachers in our midst. Why? Because not everyone has grown up with the infamous Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple based in their own hometown.

In 1965, one of history’s chief cult leaders and antichrist-type figures—the “Reverend” Jim Jones—moved his Peoples Temple from its urban Indianapolis, Indiana headquarters to the small Northern California town of Redwood Valley—Saddleback pastor Rick Warren’s hometown. Somewhere Jones had read that Redwood Valley would be the safest physical place to be during a possible nuclear fallout. But Redwood Valley definitely wasn’t the safest spiritual place to be for the local townspeople once Jones moved there. Many locals ended up being seduced into Jones’ abusive church.

While Rick Warren was growing up in Redwood Valley, Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple were less than two miles from Rick Warren’s family home. The Peoples Temple was one of the few churches in town. In a September 3, 2006 article, the Orange County Register reported that the “Reverend” Jones had taught at Rick Warren’s high school and that some of Warren’s classmates had died in the jungles of Guyana. The article stated:

Jim Jones, the suicidal Pied Piper of Jonestown, housed his Peoples Temple less than two miles from Warren’s house, and taught at Warren’s high school. In 1978, dozens of Redwood Valley’s residents—including some of Warren’s classmates—were among the 914 cult members who followed Jones to Guyana and to a metal bucket full of purple, cyanide-spiked Flavor Aid.⁵

Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple were an extreme example of how a seemingly Christian church can be so spiritually dangerous and go so terribly wrong. Throughout the years that Peoples Temple was based in Redwood Valley (1965-1974), and then later in San Francisco and Guyana, “Reverend” Jones was an ordained Christian minister in the nationally accredited Disciples of Christ denomination.

To highlight how completely Jim Jones pulled the wool over people’s eyes, he had the support and confidence of a number of California politicians, including Senator Willie Brown, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, and Supervisor Harvey Milk. One year before ordering the mass murder/suicides of over 900 people in Guyana, Jones was presented with the prestigious Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award by one of San Francisco’s most celebrated ministers, the Reverend Cecil Williams, at his popular Glide Memorial Church.⁶ “Reverend” Jim Jones, the man who seemed to fool everyone wherever he went, had been anything but “predictable.”

Believers who have come out of cult backgrounds or lived in the midst of communities where cult organizations were based, are often the first to warn about them. It would seem that as Rick Warren looks back at what happened in his own “backyard,” he would want to warn the church from his own experience about deceptive false Christ figures like Jones who come in the name of Christ but actually oppose Christ.

Endnotes:

1. Robert H. Schuller, Discover Your Possibilities (New York, NY: Ballentine Books, 1978, 1990), p. 61.
2. Promo for 2004 Robert H. Schuller Institute, Powerlines: Monthly news for Hour of Power Spiritual Shareholders and Friends (https://web.archive.org/web/20041111123029/http://www.hourofpower.org/powerlines/powerline_pdf/September2004.pdf); cited in Warren B. Smith, Deceived on Purpose (Magalia, CA: Mountain Stream Press, 2004), p. 80.
3. Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), p. 203.
4. Eric Caren and Steve Goldman, Extra Titanic: The Story of the Disaster in the Newspapers of the Day, (Edison, NJ: CastleBooks, 1998), p. 51, citing the newspaper article, “Titanic Can’t Sink, Smith Told Friend,” Denver Post, April 18, 1912, p. 3.
5. “A Call to Faith” (Orange County Register, September 3, 2006, https://www.ocregister.com/2006/09/03/a-call-to-faith).
6. “Jim Jones Receives the Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian Award” (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jim_Jones_receives_the_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._Humanitarian_Award_-_January_1977_(2).jpg).