ABSTRACT
Attempting to judge Jim Jones as Christ or Anti-Christ would yield only incongruous pieces of seemingly separate puzzles. However they are juxtaposed, the contradictions in Jones do not explain mass suicide. Nor do they reveal the relation of his movement to our culture. An alternative approach is to explore Peoples Temple as an emerging “apocalyptic sect”— a group preoccupied with the final struggle between good and evil and the end of the world in its present form.
