Cult Dynamics: False Sense of Urgency - With Chino Ross

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me, I have my very special guest, Chinno Ross, pastor and Bible teacher. In Chinno, we have been talking all things Hobart Freeman, which is greatly interesting to me because of his proximity to William Branham and what appears to be a significant influence from the Branham cult. And interestingly, since you and I have spoken, we've had escapees from the Hobart Freeman cult contact us. I think maybe either before this one or right after this one, there's

an interview that's coming out with one of the escapees from the Hobart Freeman sect. And also Charles mentioned that Hobart Freeman's his church was the Faith Assembly. Well, the entire sect of churches that Charles came out of, the Branhamite sect, almost all of their churches are named Faith Assembly. So there has to be some sort of collaboration there. And whenever I mentioned, either in one of the YouTube shorts or maybe in the podcast, I mentioned Faith Assembly and it just went sent a shockwave to all the people in that sect because they thought we were talking about the the Branhamite sect, where all

the churches are named this. But anyway, it's good to have you back. And today we are talking all things about cult dynamics. Thanks, John, for having me back. And I was not aware that there were some other churches out there called Faith Assembly. I was only aware of the one that was in Wilmot, Indiana. And I thought we might take a little break. You and I have done a couple of conversations together about Dr. Freeman in particular, starting with, you know, early times in his life and working our way up through the late 70s. And I would like to

talk to you about more of that as things ended up there at Faith Assembly. But in looking at what you have been putting online and what you have come out of yourself personally with the message and my early connection with Hobart Freeman. And just so many other things in this NAR that we see going around the day, it just seems like that there are some some over reach.

gene dynamics, methods of operation that aren't exclusive to one group or the other. It seems like we're seeing the same kind of tendencies, kind of in all of these. And look, I am not a cult expert.

There are cult experts out there. I think there are some good books out there written by cult experts that deal with some of these fundamental similarities that you will find either in a cult or a cult-like group because I hate to call everything a religious cult when maybe I don't know enough about it, but I know if it's not a cult in a full, formal sense, it is a purely cult-like.

But I think the problem, the difficulty that you have with these religious cults, it's difficult to extricate yourself from a cult because you don't know that you're in one. That's probably the main reason you don't leave as you don't know that you're in one.

And I think the big difficulty in trying to communicate with a person in a cult is in their eyes, you are the enemy. So anything you could possibly say by definition that it comes from you has to be wrong.

But I just think that there are certain tendencies and methods of operation that are true. They're just a cross-bored in your full-fledged, religious cults as well as your cult-like groups. And I just had a list of four of these that I thought that you and I could maybe sit around a microphone and discuss.

Yeah, I'm no cult expert either, although I do work with a handful of cult experts. And I experienced it, so I have firsthand knowledge. But one of the interesting things that I found is growing up in a cult, I knew the existence of other cults.

And I would always look at the way that they behaved, the way they acted, the way that the people were manipulated by the central figure. And I would say it's so clearly a cult, don't they realize that they're in a cult?

And then after escaping, I had the opportunity to speak to other people from said cult. And they said, yeah, I watched your group and I could see the central figure, the way he was manipulating the people, it was a cult.

And I was just, you know, I was surprised that you didn't realize that you were in one. But it's different when you are being manipulated because your mind gets in this mental state where you just shut off all critical thought.

And if you really want to understand the real dynamics of a cult, I recommend a book, combating cult mind control by Dr. Stephen Hassan. And he has several criteria by which you can judge.

Exactly. The proximate approximation of how bad the cult, how destructive the cult is. I think that's the better term because anything can be a cult. You could, you could be a follower of Justin Bieber and you could be in the Bieber cult, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you're in a destructive cult that is going to wreak havoc on your life, although I would say the, what it does to my ears, I would say maybe, maybe that's the case. With a religious cult, especially it is not just your physical life, but it's also your spiritual life that you're wreaking havoc upon. And

Dr. Hassan has the bite model, which he gives you the criteria to judge the levels of behavioral control, control of information, thought control, thought manipulation, and emotional control, and emotional manipulation. And if you run the rest of what Chino and I are going to discuss today through that context, you can easily see that definitely there was behavioral control, information control, thought control, and control of emotions.

Well, yeah, I'm not aware of that author of that book, but I knew that they are out there. And that's what we need. We need the experts. I've always said you can't be the man at his own job if that's what he does for a living or that's where he has been his time. And that's who we need to listen to. My training in my background was always in biblical studies and epistemology and logic, but I've been around for long enough that you just see things and hear things. So if you don't mind, John, I would start in these four big characteristics in what I have called,

and I've called it for years this, a cult of personality. And now I hear that's other people are using the same terminology. And I think it is a great term because these organizations, whether it's Christian science, Mary Baker, Eddie, or Brigham Young, or William Brannum, the leaders have a certain personality that's magnetic that brings with it a certain level of charisma. And that is what attracts the people. And most of these cults or cult-like groups seem like they are led by or dominated not by a board or by a group of people, but by a singular

individual. In my background in the mid 1970s, that person was Hobart Freeman. And one of the things that I saw early on was what I call a sense of urgency in his messages. And what I mean by that is there is a stress.

There is a deep and repetitive stress on the lateness of the hour and where we find ourselves on God's timetable. They will try to show how biblical prophecy is being fulfilled, you know, right before our eyes and the degeneration of society and we are in the end times.

This is the end. We don't have much time left. So there is this urgency and if you are a listener, then, you know, you obviously don't want to be left behind as it were. You don't want to be caught unaware. And the more you hear this, the more they stress. This is an urgent message. You don't have time, Hobart would often say, to lay this on the shelf. You don't have time to think about this. You only have time to do it. And so what that's taking from you is your right to critically, intellectually, personally judge the message. If you're being told the hours too late,

God's doing a short work, going to cut it short in righteousness. The verse he used out of Romans 9 all the time that I think he pulled out of his context. If you hear that all the time, your challenge, you know, you don't even have time to go home and pray about this. It's in the word, quote unquote, your responsibility is to simply do it. And so in the 1970s, I would say especially in the early 70s, what Hobart Freeman himself began doing was he would relate visions and dreams and revelations that other people had had that would show a calendar to the pages 75 and 76 and 77,

just kind of fluttering into by the time you get to the end of the 70s into obscurity. And so of course, the message was an urgent one that the decade of the 70s will probably wrap things up.

And I think people may remember that in 1970, that great book, The Late Great Planet Earth came out by Hal Lindsey. There was a lot of talk about Bible prophecy. There was just, there was a big to-do, a big hype going on. And so you hear these things if it's in 1970 or 1971 or 1972 and you're living at that time and you're sitting under Dr. Freeman's ministry, you know, you're looking at yourself and your spouse and you're saying, you know, we've got eight years maximum and the second advent is going to be here. And so I have talked about these things in-

the past. And then what I found out is that Freemanites, the Freemanites will say, Oh, whole bar never said that. You know, he never said that you missed your misconstruing things. You're putting words in his mouth. But of course, that is not true. And I want to give you a reference or two if I can to this on tape number 530 in his series on the book of Daniel. That tape was entitled Nebuchadnezzar's Dream, which dealt with Daniel's prophecy in the second chapter from the seven minute and 30 second time stamp mark to nine minutes and 30 seconds. I'm

pulling some of these things out of that two minute period. But here's what he said. When will the times of the Gentiles end? They ended two years ago, three years ago. This is 70, isn't it?

Now, a thing can end and yet not be consummated. That's a direct quote at that seven minute and 30 second mark. So you can tell he was forgetting whether he's in 1969 or 1970 when he said it because he said that ended two years ago, three years ago. This is 70, isn't it? And he's talking about the Jews getting the city of Jerusalem back in the six day war in 1967.

And so he said, that's when the times of the Gentiles ended. And then I'm going to read further here, the times of the Gentiles ended in 1967. We talk like we've got 30, 40 more years and all of that. There's reason to believe we don't have any more than the 70s. God has shown to many, has shown too many with a calendar of the 70s and the pages fluttering. And that's all you see.

So this message was given in 1970, three years after the Israeli war to get Jerusalem back, the six day war in 1967. And you know, when something like that, which was a pretty big event, a big political and I think prophetic event happened. A boy, it is so easy to jump in there and start setting dates. And if you notice, he said, we talk like we've got 30, 40 years left and all of that. Well, aren't we more than 40 years removed? And here we are talking about that now. It's a, I mean, the preposterous notion of trying to set dates. People have done it

time after time after time after time and failed miserably. And for some reason, we human thing, but if I said a date, I've got to figure it out and I will not be one of these casualties, you know, but we always are.

You know, I've been studying, I'm working on the manuscript of my next book, which is about the Christian identity leading into the NAR and before Christian identity was British Israelism and they really set the standard for this date thing because they got some hair brain scientist who said that he had been inside and calculated the measurements of the tunnel that leads to the King's Chamber and the great pyramid of Giza and because there were imperfections in that tunnel, they started predicting dates in which great catastrophes would come and then as they stack that timeline against the timeline of events in history,

they would say when you reach the King's Chamber, that's when the world ends. And so there were all these Doomsday scientists that were emerging from these British Israel conferences that began to turn into Christian identity and at the point in which those two merged, it entered into the Pentecostal movement and you can see the clear trail of men who were in either British Israelism or Christian identity using these Doomsday themes in their sermons, you know, starting even before Charles Fox Parham and the birth of Pentecostalism, he was influenced by Frank Sanford and by John Dowey, both of which were Doomsday Prophets,

both of which were British Israelites and then when the World War II really set everything ablaze because Gordon Lindsay, William Brandham's campaign manager, was a Christian identity, one of the leaders in it. He was speaking at multiple conferences of multiple Christian identity groups and you open up the voice of healing that's advertising Brandham and he's got those calculations right there in the magazine leading, you know, mapping the, here the events in world history and could the next year be the end, my friends. And then, you know, Brandham takes off with it. Well, Brandham spread throughout the whole lettering

movement multiple Doomsday years and interesting. Some of them have been cut from the recordings, but they didn't get all of the statements. So you can go back and you can see where he's saying, this year is it, my friends, this is 1956. And finally, all these dates will the big one was 1977. And after he influenced the entire world of Charismatics and Pentecostals that 77 was the end, you had all of these guys leading in the years leading up to the 70s that they were starting to see that, oh, Brandham said that, but I think it's going to happen

a little bit before that because he says not specifically that it would be on 77, but it would be before 77. So you get Hobart Freeman, Jim Jones, Jim Jones started talking. in this way. I don't think he actually gave a date, but they all did it. And it is a result of British Israelism, but think of what that does to the person in it. So I grew up in a Doomsday cult until I escaped. I had zero dollars in my retirement, not a single, why would I need a retirement if the world's going to end? And you don't plan ahead, you plan ahead

minimally. I'll say it like that. There were things that I would do, like, I'll never forget. I actually had the conversation with Dr. Stephen Hassan after we escaped the cult and I had been out for like five years. I suddenly recognized my house was falling apart and it's been a whole, like a whole year just going through and fixing all the things that I should have, but I kept putting it off because why would I fix it? The world's going to end. So your frame of mind is just so far off that you become, you know, you're not even really living for the world. You're just

living for somebody else's fantasy. Yeah. And it's just shocking, John, in light of all the verses that everybody knows, even the day-setters know, Jesus said, you won't know the day or the hour. But Hobart was always pretty slick with that. He would say, well, you won't know the day or the hour, but you can know the time or the season. And so the time or the season couldn't mean like the end of the 1970s. And I just, it's just, um, just staggers the imagination that in light of the biblical warnings against setting a date, in light of the biblical statements

that I will come as a thief in the night, in light of the countless attempts that people have made to set a date and it failed. In light of all of this, someone's going to set a date later this year for some time in the not-too-distant future. And I guess that's just the way things are.

Well, here's another quote, John, from tape number 533, also in the book of Daniel, and titled The Nature of the Resurrection, the 35-minute 51-second mark, and I quote, this century he's coming back.

And you don't know scripture if you think that setting dates. I'm just quoting Jesus' own words in Luke 21, 24. And so I'm going to read Luke 21, 24. This is in the all of it discourse, it's repeated by Matthew and his gospel chapter 24 and by Mark and his gospel in chapter 13.

But in Luke 21, 24, they shall fall by the edge of the sword and shall be led away captive into all nations, and Jerusalem shall be troughted down of the Gentiles until the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And most people realize that's a reference to Nebuchadnezzar's dream to Daniel's vision in Daniel 7 that their world Gentile powers, Israel would no longer be the leading nation of the world in biblical prophecy that the Babylonians took over, than the mage and the Persians and the Greeks and the Romans. But this verse, Hobart and other people interpreted to mean that whenever the Jews got their city back in the 6th day war in 1967,

that the time to the Gentiles have come to an end. But according to Daniel's prophecy, when the time to the Gentiles come to an end, we're already at the second advent then. We're already getting ready to have a millennial kingdom ushered in when ethnic Israel will be the pride of the earth again. But there is a verse over in Revelation chapter 11, you know how much future that is from what we're reading here in Luke where this area in Jerusalem is going to continue to be trodden down in Revelation 112, the court which is without the temple, leave out,

measure it not, for it's given unto the Gentiles. And the holy city shall they tread underfoot 40 and two months. So in other words, in my opinion, Luke 21, 24 has not been fulfilled yet, you know, if that was, if it were fulfilled in 1967, it would be a huge deal. But Hobart definitely took that to be the fulfillment of that passage. And then he can make these statements this century, he's coming back. We're 24 years into the next century and we have not seen the second advent.

He said on his first sermon on the Mount tape, the 70s are going to pretty well wind things up. Some of the great prophets of God have seen this in dream in Revelation. And you know, who are those people? William, Brannum, other people, you know, I don't know, but I can't, I can't base my life on dreams and visions and revelations that somebody that I don't even know has given. And especially if I don't think it squares with the Scripture. So it's a sense of urgency and it was big in Hobart's ministry early in the 70s. By the time we got to the early 80s, of course, he wasn't saying that

anymore. But also, I might add, he didn't go back and apologize. You know, anytime we public speakers or ministers have erred, we owe our congregation an apology. I was wrong. When I said that, that was obviously false because it didn't come to pass. Of course, nobody- he wants to do that because they think no one will believe him anymore. I'm much more likely to believe someone who's admitted they're wrong than to believe someone who's never been wrong.

You know, I'm just much more likely to do that. Yeah, if you go back on my blog and just type in how did I phrase it? I think if you type public apology or something like this, see there were all of these pieces to the puzzle that all of these cults and I'm not talking just a random cult. I'm talking Pentecostalism. I'm even talking non-cults. There are pieces that the assemblies of God has tried to hide. So you've got all these random pieces and they don't really fit together because everybody is covering up their history and when I would find enough

pieces of the puzzle it would begin to look like, you know, the puzzle would look like something entirely different. I might publish something to that effect and I ended up having to go back and apologize several times. What these guys are doing, man, it almost becomes like alphabet soup because what they do, like you probably don't realize this, you were triggering me by some of those phrases that you were quoting off because they're drilled in our heads as loaded language of the cult. And so you're talking about Daniel 70 weeks and all this thing. Well, these guys,

especially in the early days of Pentecostalism and the early days of Laterane, they were taking just like alphabet soup. They take a little letter here and a little letter there, letters, I mean Bible verses. And they would put them together in ways that really didn't go together. And this was due to dispensationalism. And I found where Brannum was, one of Brannum sources was Clarence Larkin. He had this book with these big pages, you know, dispensational truth.

And what these guys did, they made a lot of money off of pretending that there was a religious Doomsday clock. And they would map it out through history and always without fail. We're at the very end of the Doomsday clock, my friend. And then whatever Doomsday was that was, then that failed, they go to the next one. And I mean, we're in 2024. The world should have ended by my calculations at least 500 times because of all of these guys. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I guess it's it's just preposterous to think what they predicted and to see us 50, 60 years later sitting here

today making commentary on it. I mean, it's it's just preposterous. But it reminds me of these high-pressure dangerous salesmen who want to make, you know, the most dangerous salesman is the one who wants to make a sale right at that moment. Where look, if these things are true, you have enough time to go home, think about it, study your Bible about it.

it come to your own conclusions. I mean, that's what I feel. I don't feel like it's gonna happen between now and tomorrow morning. Now, could it happen, of course? I mean, I don't have a problem with saying next year could be the last year, it sure could be.

And the next one and the next one and the next one. As long as you don't say this decade, it's gonna wrap everything up and he's coming back this century. You know, and it's easy to say if you're living in 1970, you got 30 years.

You know, Hobart died in 84, so he didn't have to deal with the fact that he didn't come back. You know, it's easy to say it early on, but what you said earlier, John, I also kind of wanted to wrap up this our segment on urgency with.

And that's the long term effects that this urgency brings in people's lives. And that is a lack of preparation. People don't get good paying jobs. They don't acquire job skills, you know, who needs a college degree?

You know, that's just a worldly degree and all that's gonna do is just take your mind off the Lord and what are you planning on doing working for the next 40 years? There's no long-term financial gains, plans in mind, there's no retirement.

I mean, it just leaves people stunted in their normal growth and development. And but by the grace of God that I had parents who when I was 17 and first heard Hobart, well, if I had my way, I probably would have just packed up, got in a VW bug and driven the Northern Indiana and, you know, joined the church.

And God's good wisdom and kindness and grace. I had two parents who said, not so fast. You can do what you wanna do after you go to Ole Miss and get your undergraduate degree, which is what exactly what I did and which I'm eternally and forever grateful for.

I still held on to all of my Christian convictions, but what higher education does, it just broadens your mind. And it doesn't necessarily broaden it away from Christianity. It may, it may not. It depends on how firm and solid you are and what you do with it.

Of course, that's the warning of those people, don't go to college, they'll talk you out of your faith. Well, I went through all years of my undergraduate, I wasn't talked out of my faith, one I owed it.

I was even stronger in my faith by the time I left. But one thing it did give me was the ability to critically think, you know, two and two and half to equal four, whether you're in the church or out of the church.

You know, there are certain laws of logic and God can't make square circles and you can't have a valley without two mountains. There are certain things that are inevitable, unchangeable because they are according to the laws of logic.

So yeah, but. The problem is, or the problem that I saw with so many of the people in faith assembly, guess what, no college degree, no job skills for the vast majority of them.

They are day labors and there is nothing wrong with being a day labor. I'm not saying that at all. There's nothing wrong with that at all. Paul clearly teaches whatever vocation you find yourself in.

Do it all to the glory of God. But I think that the bulk of these ministries are supported by my painters and lawn care people and drywallers. And again, that is an admirable vocation in life.

I don't mean to say anything against that. It's just my point is they steered them away from learning a higher paying job skill. They steered them away from going to college, earning a degree.

They steered them away with this sense of urgency. Why do it? Because the end is going to happen any day now. They steered them away from making plans for their financial future. As you just said in your own testimony there.

And so that retavic in people's lives and who gives you the right and authority, Mr. cult leader, to do that to these innocent people that are listening to you. They're making it well because they have a large following with a big offering.

But there is no trickle down effect in these cults. That money stays at the top. That's not dispersed throughout the following. That money stays in the hands of the leaders. And I just think it is a terrible crime that has been committed, a crime morally, a crime biblically, to have done that, to vulnerable, innocent people who were just there trying to serve the Lord and trying to learn his word.

I just think that's a terrible position to be in. And I'm glad I'm not one of those ministers. I don't feel like I have ever done that with my people. And I just think it's a crime to have done that.

So yeah, I think urgency, the sense of urgency, the long term effect is no education, no job skills, no financial planning, no retirement. So you will see people in these groups and maybe got in these groups in their 20s.

Now they're in their 60s. And they're just not very well off. And they could have been, they could have kept their Christian life during that whole period of time. But also got some good job skills or a college degree and had a nice paying job where you can live an easier life.

Poverty's a curse in anybody's book. Poverty is... a life of difficulty for a Christian as it is for a non-Christian, and it didn't have to be that way, but that's the way that it's been.

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On behalf of William-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. I was a boy scout back before it was the political issues around Boy Scouts, I actually enjoyed my time as a boy scout, and they thought you'd be prepared, and you know, it was things really good common sense, be prepared if you go out, it may rain on you, so make sure you bring your tent, that kind of thing, right? Well, in these cults, man, they give you that be prepared mentality when you're a doomsday cult, but instead of saying it may happen, it's like you

will get rained on, and it will happen on this very second. And so you're like, oh my gosh, in your fearing, they're fearing the thing that's impending upon you, and it changes not only, you know, it's every aspect of your life, because it changes your personality when you're thinking gloom and doom, your personality even changes. And you're talking about the college, I'm going to clarify one thing that you said, because I have a strong opinion on this. If you are in a Christian church, you're exactly right, when you could go to, you could be in a Christian church and you can

go to college, and it may secure you in your faith. But I can assure you that if you're in one of these cults that has taken the alphabet soup approach to reading Bible verses, and they've concocted the strategy that isn't really in the Bible, and that is your frame of reference to the Bible. The moment you apply critical thought to it, the whole religion unravels. So in the Brandham cult, it wasn't just college, they tried to keep you out of the possibility of being educated to the extent there were people that were not permitted to go even to grade school.

So we're talking zero education, and then towards the end of the time when we left, see, I disagreed with all of that, well, even while I was in it. wife has a master's degree in as a schoolteacher and she works in special education and so she knew, you know, education, the education system, well they tried to establish a quote-unquote school for the, for the quote, believers and you get in there and they're not teaching them anything, man. They do not want them to understand critical thought. So the point I'm trying to emphasize is if you have been taught a version of Jesus or the version of God that exists in

these cults, if you go to college you're going to, that's one of the first things you're going to abandon because it just doesn't make any sense. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree, John. And I've just seen a big problem of low, low, low levels of education and what's interesting is Dr. Freeman had a doctoral degree in theology, but you know, he always made exception for himself. Well, God knew that I needed this so that I can help you. And you know, just, I don't know, it's just, it's just a crying shame. If I could, John, the second point I would say is characteristic of these

is what I call superiority. So what I heard in faith assembly was the constant repetitive putting down of any other church and any other denomination. I could almost say, I could probably almost say this that of Hobart Freeman's thousand tapes or however many has within the first 10 minutes, I'm trying to be conservative here within the first 10 minutes of probably maybe 70% of those messages. You will hear him say something against all the other denominations. So it's weird superior. It's a put down of Baptist Catholics, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Charismatic non-Charismatic denominational independent makes no difference. You just can't have the people thinking that someone

else besides our minister might know something that's actually right. Because then what happens is that person now is not only going to listen to you, Hobart Freeman behind the pulpit, but they're going to listen to somebody else. And then what if they learn something from that other person? Well, that creates intimidation for these faith ministers behind the pulpit. And more and more importantly, what if they learn from another person that what you're saying is not right? So it's a big heir of superiority, Hobart, although, and of course the Freemanites will say, no, Hobart always told everyone he was a high school dropout. I said, yes, that's true. He was a high school

dropout. But he never uses that sentence apart from what he goes on to say of all of the degrees he earned after that. And of course, the way that he baptizes it is by saying that the Lord did it.

But still, it's a constant reference. And I went to Georgetown College, never made less than an A. I went to Southern Baptist seminary, got a master's degree in theology and lawful, never made less than an A. Got my THD at Grace Theological Seminary and Wanoana Lake, Indiana, never made less than an A. He often said, I've got enough degrees to paper a wall.

And one person who interviewed him said, you know, I really wanted to see his wallpaper because I wanted to see how many degrees he had. But he was constantly talking about all of the education that he had.

So and this is not necessarily true of all these other leaders because they might not have a postgraduate degree or two or three. But for the ones who did, like Hobart, you know, what does this do to your congregation?

It pretty much shuts them up because I mean, you're, how are you going to challenge someone with a doctor's degree? He obviously is smarter than you by virtue of the degrees that he has.

He has to be. He has a degree. He's smarter than you. And that's, I think, what they're trying to tell everybody. I am smarter than you. So you really need to pay attention to what I'm saying.

And you know, they prefer not to be challenged as well. So it's a, it's a, and they just talk about themselves and tell tall tales constantly. And I think a minister's place, if you're a true minister for the most part, is to teach the Bible, teach the word.

Some personal stories will come out here and there. But I can tell a minister that I don't like when he'll read a verse or two. But then he wants to tell me all these tall tales about himself and how he applied it or how it worked for him.

It's just me, me, me, I, I, I. And then later, eventually, he'll get back to the Bible verse. And there are a lot of ministers. They just talk and talk and talk about themselves.

So I just don't think that follows again, just a basic New Testament example of the early apostles who are willing to lay down their lives, who suffered and sacrificed on behalf of the Christian church that I don't see these ministers willing to do.

No. I'm going hand in hand with that as another cult attribute. These guys, because they have the majority of them have narcissistic personality disorder. That's how they became the cult leader. And because of this, that part of that personality disorder, they like to dehumanize others.

So there's always the, in these cults, there's always the rules by the don'ts. In other words, don't be like this person. Don't be like this group of people. I grew up with don't be like the theologians.

And, you know, the way it is, man, they dehumanize such large groups of demographics of people that you, in the cult mentality, you just begin to isolate yourself in your mind to try not to be like everyone.

Instead, you want to be like our supreme cult leader. And whenever I first began researching and I was just trying to understand, is it a cult or not, I would do these searches where in the brand of cult, we've got all the transcripts so I'd search for things like Andrew ministers or Andrew seminary, your doctors in the seminary.

The big one was, and you women, because he would just blast the women left and right. Another attribute of the cult leaders who are narcissistic is they like to take the people who are for them and then divide them and put those against each other.

Because if they're fighting amongst themselves, they can't really determine if the leader is leading them astray or not, because their focus is on each other. So you would see, and you men, and you women, and he's putting them against each other, right?

So all of this goes hand in hand with the education. The way they set it up, they tried to demonize or vilify or dehumanize anybody who has an education, especially if that education is in religion, because why would you want to study your Bible?

I don't know if I told you, John, I mean, you're stealing all my points. You obviously know this area very well. I don't know if I told you in our earlier interview, but when I was pastoring a church in Vermont, Faith Assembly sent, Hobart was already dead by this time.

This is the late 1980s. Faith Assembly sent a couple of ministers, Jerry Reader and Jim Mansfield to my study to meet with me, and I had a really nice study, and I had the walls lined with books because I was a Christian pastor and teacher, and that requires a lot of study.

That's, it's supposed to anyway. That's the way I always took my calling. And they looked at all, I mean, literally, it was a long rectangular room and floor to ceiling down, both of the walls of that study, floor to ceiling, the full length of both walls were books upon books upon books.

And they took a look at all that we had some small talk, and they got back to Faith Assembly, and so their criticism of me, they said, oh, we don't trust Cheno, he's just a logical intellectual.

And I thought, well, in the logical intellectual, the best kind of... to be instead of an illogical intellectual. But you know, Hobart, he had a doctor's degree in theology. They didn't have anything wrong with him studying theology, but nobody else better study any theology because you might outstudia, so you might find out something that we're saying is wrong. Yeah. Point number three, you're just taking all of them, but that's okay. Is the exclusivity of the group. So Hobart in the early 1970s talked about his television set that he had, but he didn't watch it much. Well, boy, by the end of

the 70s, TV, which they call trashy vision, that's out the window, man. There is no way and I've got direct quotes, which I could pull up, where Hobart would say that we at faith assembly, we, that's us, that's members, we do not own a television. Now, we don't have any rules here, but if faith assembly, we do not own a television. He had to always say we don't have rules, but here is a rule. In other words, here is a non-written verbal rule, no televisions, no newspapers, no magazines, television was trashy vision. Newspapers were filthy rags. It's said, none of that stuff. You can't read books of other people. It's

exclusive. So you have no framework. You don't have any way to balance anything, any thoughts, all of any other thoughts, except what's coming from the pulpit. If you're not given some kind of ability to look outside of your group, just to verify or check things out or even to prove them wrong, you know, whatever your goal, whatever your purpose is, I'm telling you, it's you're in your own little echo chamber and it's just the words of the ministers like in a washing machine cycle going round and around and around and around. And, you know, that's terrible, again, to do to the people. I don't know how these people could

not see that it is occult. And, you know, after we did have done our podcast, I've had people from Faith Assembly in the past, one in particular called me, he was there. He was actually there the final years. He said, I was there, moved from Ohio to Indiana because that proves you're a total disciple. If you relocate and live there from 1980 to 1984 when Hobart died. And I think they left shortly thereafter with all of the fallout that resulted from Hobart's death. But he said, even though we moved there, I was there. And then I saw

Hobart died. And now, this December, John will be 40 years since Hobart's passing. And what about 50 years since William Brandham's passing? He said, Chino, it was only two years ago that I could spring.

on my mouth with my lips the word cult and make a connection to faith assembly. He had been gone for 38 years. And he said, I just, you know, I just saw, yeah, it wasn't right or there were some things wrong or there it was extreme or they lacked love or there was an imbalance. You know, they're willing to say all of those things but to go that full final step and say, you know, that was a religious cult and I was kept in bondage. He said, I couldn't do it until just two years ago. And he was very happy to hear the podcast because he said, you're just telling all kinds

of details and he said, you weren't even there. How do you know all these details and how do you know all these people and how do you have all these pictures of everybody? And I said, I just had my ways. They some years they liked me and some years they didn't. And whenever they liked me, I was on the end and whenever they did and I was on the out and it just was just an undulating path for me back then. Yeah, you're talking about the television. The brand of cult was the same way. Tell

a lot of people didn't know you weren't supposed to read newspapers or listen to the radio, but that was also one of the rules. But television was the big thing because that was most blasted. And see my grandfather and my father, aunts and uncles grew up in the brand of family home. So it was kind of awkward for us because I knew that William Brandham had a television while he's making that same statement. Now we would never own a television. He had one in his living room or Dan, I think it was in the kids. Think of this back in the 50s and 60s man, the kids had them in their rooms too.

And only the rich people had the man the children's rooms back then. And yeah, and I think I don't know if it was the first movie, but I know he took my grandparents to the actual theaters.

To see a couple of different movies, one of them was with Marilyn Monroe, which he would blast. You know, Marilyn Monroe, because of the sexual end in you windows and what not. But it was just, you know, that's the other thing about the cults. The rules are for them, not for the common people, not for the cult leader in the family. And it just, it reeks havoc with your mind when you come in contact with information that they're not really who they say they are. And I grew up knowing that it was not who he said he was, but I was able to mentally block it, which is fascinating.

Yeah, that is fascinating. You know, I can't quite understand how you did that, even though I've just witnessed it a million times over in the people that I have known from faith assembly. It is, it is, it is totally fascinating. And then John, my fourth and final point that I see in these cult-like groups is authoritarianism. And I don't know that there's anything more harm to those people at that time, then having that minister stand up there, exercise authoritarianism over them, normally by quoting a favored verse of theirs, Psalm 105 and verse 15, which says,

touch not mine anointed and do my prophets no harm. And Hobart would relish in telling stories of someone who had been critical of him and then they were put out of the body and then bad things happened to him.

They died. They were in a terrible car accident. They have contracted cancer. You talk about lacking in love. That's exactly what I thought was the basic hallmark of Christian believers. They'll know your my disciples because of the love that you have for one another.

As soon as you get on the outside of one of these groups, they close ranks. They circle the wagons. Your ex communicated. Others are forbidden to fellowship with you. You're a cancer. You're worse than naming with leprosy.

They have nothing to do with you. And those people were suffering terribly who got put out of the church, regardless of what the reason was. But you know what I, even way back in the very beginning, when I heard this verse being used, Psalm 105 and verse 15, touch not mine andointed and do my prophets no harm.

These type of groups are what I call proof texting groups. They love to, I think this is your alphabet soup and your vocabulary, but they love to bring things out of context and with scissors and paste, put it all back together like a patchwork quilt.

But if you look at Psalm 105, which I would really hope your audience would do, it is shocking the people to whom that verse applies. It actually came from David in 1 Chronicles chapter 16, verses 7 through 22, that Psalm, which is not called in the book of Psalms, a Psalm of David, but it is a Psalm of David because David is the one who said this in 1 Chronicles 16.

And if you read the context and I've told everybody a proof text without a context is a pretext for nonsense. A text has verses before it and behind it, it has the meaning of the whole book, it has the authorship of the book and we have to have our interpretation of a passage controlled, not by our own fancy, but by the text in which it's found.

And lo and behold, when you read, Psalm 105, or when you read 1 Chronicles 16, that anointed person, those prophets, they do not refer to the leadership. They refer to the nation of Israel. So in other words, we could say the laity quote unquote. So they had lifted that verse out of context because it says what they want it to say, they want to be considered as God's anointed in God's prophets. And they want to warn everyone, there are safer things to do than to judge one of God's ministers or to complain against or to criticize one of God's ministers. And as soon as one of those people

would do that, I mean, that's ground number one grounds for excommunication. You cannot speak against God's ministers. But who do we ministers think we are? To think that if we are going to put our message out there in a public forum, then guess what? It deserves to be judged by a public forum.

If you can't handle that, then stay out of the pulpit. If you can't handle that, don't preach. If you're afraid someone might actually study out what you said and found out you're wrong, then you shouldn't be a public speaker. You just need to sit at home and think your own thoughts privately. As soon as we think that we have the right to be a public speaker, then along with that, comes the discernment of the people, comes the critique of the people.

And again, we go back to what you and I talked about earlier that you need to be able to think critically yourself. And your leadership should not only not control that, but welcome that.

Maybe I said in an earlier podcast with you, John, but I've quoted Calvin often, often where Calvin said, even the best theologians are only right, 70% of the time. It's just, we don't know where that 70% is. If we knew, we'd eliminate the 30%.

But yes, if we're public speakers, we're only right 70% of the time. And to have feedback from people, maybe you have spoken into an area beyond theology, maybe biology or botany or something that's out of your expertise. Maybe there's a professor there in your audience and they know a little more about that than you do. You should welcome their input. You know, I've always said you can't be a man at his own job. You should welcome the input, but it's going to take a certain level of humility, which I guess these men didn't and don't have.

And it's just going to take a love of life and living and people and, you know, nobody has a monopoly on anything. We're all in this together. We're here to help each other and to be helped by each other. And it's just not that of the religious cults.

Well, I'm still trying to hit the 70% mark, and that's why I have people like you on the show to make me look better. You know. Well, some of us are only 7% though, so I have a long way to go.

You know, with the authoritarian central figure, the way these cults work, the other point that I'd like to make is by extension, they create an authoritarian god, because if they're narcissistic and they're authoritarian, then they have to present God to the people in the same way, or otherwise they're stepping out of the boundaries of what they would consider to be a Christian leader.

And I go back to the alphabet, super version of the Bible. They do this a lot, and this that I'm about to say, this spread all throughout the lettering movements, and this is kind of, it's not funny, but when you think about it, it's so absurd that it makes one laugh.

Like I did when I hit me, but William Brannon would take these statements from different passages of the Bible, like I said, and snip them together. And we would actually believe that they were actual Bible verses.

I grew up, I can remember arguing with people with these Bible verses that are in my head that weren't Bible verses, and because it's spreading all throughout the lettering, one of them was he would say, now the Bible tells us that as it was in the days of Noah, wherein only eight souls were saved, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man.

And I thought that was a Bible verse, man, but he took one from Matthew 24, I think it was, and maybe first Peter, three, maybe, but one of them is talking about God was so faithful that even during the flood, even eight souls, he went down to protect when all of the rest of the world is being purge or whatever.

So one verse was about God being so loving that he cares for an individual, and the other one is talking about the end of days or whatever, but he combined it to make it seem like it was a Bible verse that meant there's no hope outside of this cult, because I'm the authoritarian figure, and he would preach these sermons with titles like one in a million.

You gotta be that one, and a million my brother, because everybody's gonna die. Everybody, even the Christians who believe in Jesus Christ are going to die. And that's the mindset that we had, and the other one, the funny one, which is unrelated, but it is related in that it was alphabet soup is another Bible verse that grew up in my head.

And he would say that, now the Bible says, we're all born in an equity, born in sin, shaped in an equity, and come to the world speaking lies. I thought that was a Bible verse, man, but he combined two of the Psalms, one of them talking about the wicked people who are telling you lies, and one of them talking about the...

You know, the righteous, how are you born and sin and shaped iniquity? We combined it to say that the righteous people are going to tell you lies, which is so ironic when you think about all of this cult and all of what it did, all the way up leading to the NAR.

These guys reference this latering movement that is spreading false Bible verses. And yeah, the born and sin came to the world speaking lies, but is it the good guys or the bad guys? Yeah, so you just heard, you heard verse, you heard sentences with verses strung together and you heard them often enough that it became Bible to you.

You know, in my teaching last Friday night that I'm doing down in Bowling Green, we are looking at Revelation chapter four and verse one, where the dispensational view is that is a picture of the rapture of the church.

And what I was sharing with the people down there, that's not what that is saying at all, but the Scofield reference Bible in the early 1900s has that in its footnote. And I said, I don't have a problem with reference Bibles, they're just like a commentary, but they need to sit on your shelf at home and you reference them when you need to.

But when you carry the reference Bible to church with you, John McArthur even says, the pastor of the big church out in Southern California, he said, I grew up with a Scofield reference Bible in my right hand, I didn't go anywhere without it.

The problem I said with that is that when you open it and read it, you're reading the Bible, which is great, and you're reading someone's commentary, which I have no problem with, but as time goes on, that is your Bible and in your mind, you can't really remember.

Now, did I read that in the Bible part of my Bible or did I read that in the Scofield reference part of my Bible? And it's a very dangerous thing that people have fallen into, and so they go around quoting things, like you said, that aren't in the text of scripture, but they might be down there in the reference into the bottom of the page, so.

It's so problematic. We did a whole series of studies on Scofield and the reference Bible that he wrote from prison while being, after being arrested for abandoning his wife and children and sleeping with a mistress. And it's, the story is just so unbelievable when you go through that. And you find out that huge parts of, I mean, we even took it so far as to study the weaponization of his notes towards politics. He was bringing in some political themes in those notes. And it's like you say, I would not own one of those. I like to have, I think I use the

strongest concordance the most. And I like to look up what was the actual phrase and what did it mean in the ancient language? And sometimes a single sentence might be three paragraphs to understand what it actually meant and I take that approach whenever I study but and not everybody has the time to do it or the willingness that you know that I put myself through but well thanks for doing this this has been great I know our listeners are going to love it and hoping you'll come back again and we'll talk more about not only subtopics of this but

maybe some some more about Hobart Freeman. That sounds good John I look forward to to it my friend. Awesome well if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information you can check us out on the web you can find us at William-Brandom.org for an overview of the historical research of William Brandham in the Healing Revivals you can read preacher behind the white hoods a critical examination of William Brandham in his message available on Amazon Kindle and Audible.