Bruce Kinsey: Faith Assembly Cult History

Music 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 co-host, minister and friend, Chino Ross, pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Chino D Ross YouTube channel.

And Chino, we're getting back into all things Hobart Freeman and we're getting into to some of the things that happen leading up to the, you know, the final days of faith assembly. So this, for me, this is a little bit, it's more interesting than it is anything for me, because it's a look inside of the cult as it was beginning to show signs of, I don't know what you call it, getting ready to implode or what, you know, it was the downfall of the Hobart Freeman cult, but we're getting into an inside view of this, which is going to be incredibly

interesting, I think, for everyone listening. And some people, I don't know why, John, but they still get mad at me if I try to give an inside view as an outsider. You're always giving an inside view as an insider, but I was an outsider with a lot of inside contacts and associations. But Chino, we spent a couple of interviews talking about the recent update in the minister's meeting a couple of weeks ago. And by the way, I don't know if I told you, but one of the ministers there, by the way, they only know about this through your podcast.

So had you not been doing this, they would never have, have found out what you and I are doing. They've been following you with your material on William Brandham. And then when I came into the picture earlier this year, then they took notice, sat up straight in tall in their seats and really began listening to this. But as we started the meeting, one of them said, I love John Collins. I watch everything that he says. And then another one of them said, I don't like that guy at all. I do not trust him. So you probably get, you know, you can't win them all, can you?

No, I can honestly say that the guy that watches everything I do, he's got to be a little bit crazy because it would make you crazy for that. You know, I get the same thing. My family was at the top the brand I'm called. My grandfather was the pastor at Brandham's Tabernacle for 50 years. And so I got to see and hear things that nobody else got to see in here. But my family moved around a lot. And so I was never really considered an insider in any of the brand of churches. We went from church to church to church. But I like you, I

was connected to people that I got to see everything from a different perspective. And that's where this gets really odd because many of the things that I say about the Brandham cult, I got to see it firsthand. And where I got to speak with people who were leading the whole thing. You know what I mean? So my perspective was it's accurate. I was there. I got to see things that most of the church didn't see. But because they didn't consider me a quote unquote insider, I get the same flag from the Brandham cult, even though my family was at the top. I think

that's something that's benefited me actually John that I was a minister and early on I did follow a whole part, but I wasn't a part of faith assembly. So I knew a lot of stuff going on. But like you just said, you know, I had a different perspective. And that was part of my criticism. And our last interview of the ministers that were there. If they recognize the deficiencies that I recognize, why didn't they point them out? It's probably easier as an outside insider, which I was rather than being an inside insider, like they were, to see the

deficiencies in the problems. But what we had talked about earlier, those last couple of years, you know, Hobart died in December of 84. And we'll get to that. There's a lot of interesting details that people are going to find fascinating with the events surrounding and following his death. But the last couple of years leading up to that, the psyche of faith assembly was definitely under attack, attendance was under attack. They were really hurting at faith assembly. And rather than that causing the leadership to step back and reevaluate, which is something they simply, they he, there's only one in

leadership, he was never going to do. Rather than do that, you know, he just buckle down and just talked about everybody leaving. And he often said, if everyone left, he'd preach to the four walls. And he probably would have, it would have made him feel pretty good if everybody left. And you know, he's Elijah, Lord, they've all left. And I'm the only one still here, he probably would have. But one thing we had looked at earlier, John was in the in 1983, for the first time we had these big newspapers, the Fort Wayne and then the Warsaw paper doing articles on faith assembly. It

exposed a number of deaths, really brought a lot of attention to the church and the best series of articles that I'm sure people can still find was the series done in the Warsaw Times Union in late September of 1983 by Dr. John Davis, who had been a student of Hobart's back in Grace Theological Seminary Days.

He actually worked on the same degrees, he had a degree in Hebrew and Old Testament, which is exactly what Hobart had from Grace Seminary. So Dr. Davis interviewed Hobart and in this little clip I'm going to read from one of the articles that he did just to kind of bring us back up to date and to remind everyone that those last couple of years were difficult because the screws were being tightened on the people.

There were just a whole lot of completely unnecessary threats that had come from the pulpit. And if you go back to the early 70s, I could give people documentation for Hobart would say things like he'd be talking about body ministry, which is the ministry of the whole church that you're not supposed to be out there paying us as your clergy.

You come and sit while we perform, this is body ministry, we all have our role. And that was, you know, elevating the people's status in the church. But even in those early messages, it's very interesting and disturbing to hear early on when he would, after saying that saying, you know, all of you have a role in the body, you need to prophesy, someone needs to bring a revelation, someone needs to bring a tongues and interpretation, everyone needs to be a part.

And he'd say, my role is just functional. And then what was at that point though, he would say, but just because it's functional doesn't mean I don't have authority from the Lord. And you don't ever want to test that authority.

That is on early tapes. Now at the end of his ministry, he didn't have to preface the warning with anything. He just threw the warning out there. He was just going to slap you in the face with it.

But I can show early messages where, you know, somehow that was still lurking in the back of his mind, this touch-not-mind anointed and do my prophets know harm that I am, because I am the minister, I'm somehow in a special position, even though he had just said he's not in a special position.

I'm in a special position where if you challenge my authority, then I have some type of power over you, and God will do something to you. I mean, it just blows my mind. Yeah, it's really for me, it's crazy.

arresting because I'm fascinated as as I've mentioned to you, I'm fascinated with psychology and understanding that most of the cult leaders and in fact the reason why they become cult leaders, they have narcissistic personality disorder or attributes of that and it's textbook. They have to have an authoritarian control over people. They view other people as their subordinates and early on they try to make it such that everybody else is empowering them because that gives them this feeling of, you know, it excites their emotions because they can feel empowered. But as they start to lose that control, they become very vicious towards the people under them and they

will single out people or even divide entire groups of people and turn one group or the other into an enemy and make them feel like they, the cult leaders being persecuted by this group of people or an individual and turn the entire congregation against that that group or people because then the focus is on them as the enemy and it makes the authoritarian figure feel like a hero. It happens time and time and time again. You can see evidence of this in randomism but you can literally study every single cult leader and it's the same across the board.

Well, if that's true, you know more about psychology than I do, then Faith assemblies a textbook example of it and you even see it from beginning to end how it progresses and I always was amazed that I mean I heard those early comments in the early 70s, you know, I'm listening to them, you know, 1976 and they didn't really make me afraid but I just kind of thought, oh wow, that's pretty cool. That's pretty powerful. Wow, you know, but it didn't really, it didn't really strike me as wrong or odd but again, I'm 17 years old and I'm listening to

something that had probably been said three or four years before I'm hearing it but it never made me afraid to obviously didn't make me afraid to challenge anything because that's the path my life took. I went on to challenge things so I don't know but you know, just the way he always talked down to the people and talking down would be like telling the same story for the 50th time.

He would say well in 1952 on the road home from a nightclub when I got saved and God called me into the ministry and I lived by Matthew 633, take no thought for the mar, I thought we've heard that a hundred times and it's okay to tell it once or twice. There's nothing wrong with that but if I always thought John, if you tell that a hundred times then what you're saying to me is I'm such an idiot, I can't even remember. I can't even remember that I've heard this before.

I mean, to me, that's dumbing down your audience, talking, and I remember early in the 70s when I first started listening to Kenneth Hagen, and he would say in 1937, such in my grandma and such and such, and he'd tell the same stupid story from 1937, I think, man, that was, that was like back in the dark ages, and I've already heard you tell that.

And number one, I don't care about what happened in 1937, and number two, I don't care about what happened to you. I care about me, and number three, I've already heard that so many times.

And I just couldn't, I hope I would tell, and he did that, John, to the very end. Just tell the same story, and I'm sitting out there thinking, what is that communicating to your audience that you think about them?

It's saying you think a whole lot about yourself. We already know that to repeat this that often, but it's also communicating, maybe I do know something about psychology, and I don't know it, because I always was processing this, but it's telling me, hey, channel, you're pretty dumb.

You don't have a very good memory, because in case you forgot, let me tell you what happened in 1952 on the road home from a nightclub, you know what I'm saying? It happens so often, and that's another textbook trade of narcissism.

I've been studying recently, I've been studying the research about, and I'm not going to give the guy's name or the church's name, but I'll just say that there was a lawsuit between them and the International House of Pancakes, because apparently there were some problems with the naming of their church, but the leader of that church that I'm not going to name, he kept going back to, well, in the 80s this happened, and in the 80s this happened, and over and over, I've got many of his transcripts and up and going through them, and as I understand

what's happening, it's kind of really sad when you think about the problems of the personality disorder that they have, because what has happened is they've put themselves up on this pedestal that they themselves built with their words, and they recognize internally.

They know how they got up there, because I told these people that back in the 80s I did this, and everybody believed me, well, what happens is whenever there starts to be any questions about the authority or the, when they feel like they're losing power, they have to remind people how they got back on that pedestal.

And so every single time that there's any sort of conflict in the church, you're going to hear a reminder, this is how I got here, remember I told you this, and I grew up in Brannemism, it was always back to the 1933 prophecies, it wasn't until after I left, I continually heard those, and I'm like, well, why does he keep telling us, we know what they are.

I never even caught that each time that... he told his alleged seven prophecies of 1933 that it was a different seven because you're so caught up in it. You as a cult member are, you're not even thinking to critically examine what the guy says. You're just thinking, oh, well, that's how he got up on this pedestal.

He has reminded me, and I'm thankful he's reminding me that he's on the pedestal. Well, I'll give Hobart credit for consistency. He told the story the same way all the time, but I don't know. As teachers, I was talking with some people the other day, and I'm a teacher.

They were their teachers in a different field. I said, don't all of us teachers want our students to end up smarter than us? I mean, don't all of us teachers. Would it be terrible if you're teaching a class? It doesn't matter what the topic is, and all your students keep coming up afterwards asking you the same question. You know, there's something wrong. You're not doing your job, but I guess it's like you're saying these types of leaders want people to always need them and be in submission to them. But I don't think that's the real goal of teaching.

The goal of teaching is to lift people from a lower level of lack of knowledge to where they need to be with appropriate knowledge. Then they can handle things on their own, and they don't need.

I mean, it just seems like ministers for some reason are different kind of teacher, because no college professor operates this way. They want to bring you up to the level, you pass the task, you go on, and then you go to the next grade, the next level, where religious ministers, they just want to keep everybody underneath them, and it just doesn't make any sense. It seems like it's counterproductive if your goal is the benefit of the people. I guess if your goal is to keep a dumb flock with dumb sheep putting dumb money in the dumb offering, then maybe you're

pretty smart as a leader, because you've got them right where you want them to be. But anyway,

so Dr. Davis had interviewed, he had gone to faith assembly, he had sat in on a few services, he read all the Hobart's books, listened to a lot of his messages, did a 45-minute interview of Hobart after one of the services there at the new building in Willment, and then went over to his house and interviewed him. He had this to say after this one and only home interview, he said, this ministry is frequently supported by fear. Members are often reminded of the curses and punishments that follow a falling away from the faith as taught at the assembly.

Illustrations of this fact are regularly paraded before the congregation, not only by Freeman, but by other ministers in the assembly. And I gave you one a few weeks ago where they had said, oh yeah, the reason that this newspaper editor and his wife and family were slaughtered, someone broke in their house and murdered them, which because they had published an article and they didn't even have their dates right, this guy wasn't even hired, didn't even work for the paper until after the fact. The use and here's the point I want to get to with Dr. Davis and Dr.

Freeman. The use of this technique came home with full force when I was leaving his house and he called my attention to the fact that virtually all the reporters who recently spoke critically of his ministry have sent suffered illness, injury or death. I assumed that bit of information was for my benefit. And what I like to say, and it just puts a big smile on my face within a year and two months of that being written, Hobart's dead, we are 41 years later.

And Dr. Davis, he's old, but he's still alive. So, you know, we use these, at least I use these interviews with you, John, not just to give the facts, but I have a burden to help people out.

And for people that hear this now in their moment of life, you hear some minister threaten you, you need to give that guy a one-way bus ticket to Antarctica. You need to get rid of that guy, because there is no true minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ who's ever going to threaten anybody that goes contrary to everything that he stands for. And so, we need to let people know, if anyone threatens you or tries to browbeat you, get rid of him, and you can do it in all confidence, you don't have anything to worry about. Yeah. You know, for me, it was just, once I recognized that

it was such a different God that they were proclaiming. This was a God of wrath of punishment. It was no different than ancient gods of Rome and Greece, the very authoritarian gods that you really don't want to serve anyway, because they're not the good guys. And we received the same threats, even before my website became what it is now. It literally just started as me asking a few questions, and I wanted to answer those questions. Ironically, I still thought that Brandon was a prophet when I started all of this, and I was just asking some questions of things that I had concerns about. And

I started receiving the same kind of threats. You're going to die a horrific death, John. Well, you can't die a more horrific death than the cult leader himself. It was one of the worst, you can go see the pictures of the accident, and if that's the threat, well, number one, the cult leader died like that.

But the bigger problem for me was if the Christian God that we serve is powerless to protect us, then what God is this anyway? If he will cut you off that easily because that you ask a question, it's no different than the false gods of ancient Greece and ancient Rome.

So I too have a passion for helping people just wake up and critically think, if you're scared to think, then they can wreak havoc in your minds. And I know, for me, this is easy to talk about, but it wasn't 40 years ago, and I'm well aware of the fact that I hear things differently now than I would have heard them 40 years ago.

So someone who's on the verge of leaving, I mean, that's just with fear and trembling that they're even going through life. And I make a statement that sounds like, oh, channel, that sounds easy to you, just up and leave.

It actually is really easy to do, but I do understand there's a lot of trauma involved, but I wish I had had someone 40 years ago. Say, just get rid of that Freeman guy if he's threatening you because nobody was saying that.

He was having to come up with that in my own mind. And I think it would have been a big help for me. If someone had said, you know, hey, I know that Miriam got leprosy because she criticized Moses, and that's in Numbers 12, and Hobart loves to use passages like that.

But don't worry, that was Moses. This is Hobart. Those are two different people. There's no comparison at all. That's what I needed to hear because as we are well aware, these cult leaders, they know the Bible well enough to cherry pick it, and they've got their passages all lined up.

And you know, as you're listening to them, you go, oh, well, yeah, I guess that is true that if you criticize God's minister, maybe you'll end up with leprosy. Well, if you criticize Moses, maybe you'll end up with leprosy, but not William Branham or Hobart Freeman or Chenot Rawls or John Collins, you can criticize them all you want.

You're not going to get any leprosy. You know, nothing bad is going to happen to you, right? The cults may give you a medal, in fact, if you criticize me, yeah. So, but you know, something we also had said earlier that I just found, you know, these were the things that I was just continuing to find trouble with that Hobart had done a whole message on not talking to the media.

He had basically forbidden the people, no talking to the media, that only coming and is no comment. And when they say, what's a comment after that, it's no comment on top of no comment.

He did a message called raising the dead and natural childbirth, because they had had someone die in childbirth. This is the mid-90s. He did a tape raising the dead and natural childbirth in which he said no comment and taught them no comment.

And the passages that he used, John, you might not remember this because I've shared a lot in these interviews, but the passion narratives of Christ, where Jesus is before Herod and Pontius Pilate, and they're asking him questions.

And it said that Jesus didn't give them an answer. Now, he answered some questions, but on some, he didn't. And so there's an example where a cult leader, they always have a proof text.

A proof text, I say, without a context, is a pretext for nonsense. Don't pay any attention to a proof text. It has to fit the whole scheme of Scripture, or it doesn't have any meaning at all.

And just to cherry pick it, which is what they do, lift it out. So he had found some verses where Jesus said no comment. But I'm thinking, wow, that is almost blasphemous in my mind.

This is our Lord and Savior who, for his own reasons, decided not to answer certain questions. And you're using that as a parallel for you, just letting a child die of a preventable illness.

The media is asking why, since we value life, more than you Christians do, why did you let this child die? And you're saying no comment. And you're going to use something from the passion of Christ, from his prior to his death, his trial before Herod and Pontius Pilate, as a support for that.

Man, that just flies all in my face. That is not how we're to use the Bible. We should not pull passages out of context like that. And Hobart just did it glibly. And everybody, I'm sure John was amazed at, wow, he actually has a text for no comment if we're talking to secular authorities.

But surely everybody who's listening this can see there's no comparison between what Jesus is experiencing and what was going on at faith assembly. Just no comparison at all. But my point in bringing this back up again is Hobart had said no comment to the media.

And he gives an hour and a half interview, come on. I mean, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, is it not? You know, you are contradicting the very, so somehow you have the right to give an hour and a half comment.

to the media. And don't anybody say, well, he didn't know. John clearly said, I am a reporter for the Warsaw Times Union. This is going in the newspaper. This is an interview. But you know, what I think, John, and I'll see what you think on this, I think that Hobart was so self-deceived that he thought he could mesmerize this guy. You know, why would you give an interview to the media?

You know, they're going to go right negative articles unless you think that with your golden tongue and your ability to hypnotize and mesmerize, that somehow you're going to be able to say the right words and convince this guy, or he's going to go out and maybe next week come back and join faith assembly. You know, after he's heard all of your beautiful words, I don't know any other way to explain why Hobart would go against his own rules of no comment unless he thought he could get over on this guy. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the

progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, William-Branham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. In my opinion is Nosticism. Whenever I was leaving the cult of William Branham, there was a trial that happened, I think it was this very year we left,

I can't remember the exact year, but there was a trial of Jody Areas who was influenced by fundamentalist Mormonism, I believe. And her entire strategy of defense was she had read this book called The Secret, which is basically telling you that if you think it hard enough, you can make people believe it. And I was fascinated as I'm watching this because that was our religion, man.

We employed that from day to day in every single thing that we did. We employed The Secret. We had no idea where it came from. And as I'm watching it, and I'm, I hear the news media talking about this. I'm fascinated because this is my religion. So I started, I began studying, well, what is this? Where did this come from? And you find it from Eastern mysticism and it developed through the years, you know, the Nostics embedded it in the Christianity. And I started to realize that that's not the good religion. That's not Christianity, what she was doing.

And in the end, she, her, her trial was very highly unsuccessful. It did not work. But the cult leaders think, I believe that they are convinced that they can do this, that they have such power over your head that they can control your head because they have seen the power of their words as far as manipulating and brainwashing you. So they believe they have this power over time. And in the end, it's like Jody Areas, they, they really don't have that much power. They have just indoctrinated you. And that's as far as it goes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're probably right. So we've got the, the heat of the newspaper articles and the second thing that's happening now in the year 1984, the legal troubles began. We're not going to review that. But new state laws have passed. We've actually got a couple of the members who have been tried and convicted the Hall family and David and Kathleen Bergman have gone to court because of the death of, of a dependent. And prior to that time, there's not much the state could do, but you know, the state legislature got involved. Now law enforcement and local courts do have some authority and do have some

things they can do. So with these newspaper articles exposing the deaths with new legal troubles, implementing new laws, there was a lot of pressure and heat being put on faith assembly. And so consequently, the membership was dwindling. I actually had a conversation last summer, summer of 2023 with Jeff Barnett that everybody who followed faith assembly will know he was a tier one, a top tier minister back then. But I had a conversation with Jeff last summer about the end of faith assembly because he was there. He was one of the top ministers, ended up leaving and starting a big church down in Indianapolis area, which

folded after Jeff decided to follow Paul Cain and Mike Bickle than that whole church folded. So we can talk about them in the future. But I talked to him last summer and you know, faith assembly had been at 2,200 people membership or 2,300 or I mean, it was above 2,000. And Jeff said by the fall of 1984, they were down to about 1,500 people. So I think the handwriting was on the wall to borrow the story from the prophet Daniel. The handwriting was on the wall that, you know.

things were not going well and so people wanted out. I think some people probably just you know figured out this Christianity. People left for different reasons, let's say. They just didn't want to be under the pressure. I think some other people began to deduce. Some things are wrong. So they left. Ministers had a couple of the lower level ministers had left. If anyone wants to listen to a message of Hobart's entitled, laying it on the line, laying it on the line, that is a long diatribe against some ministers who had left prior to 1984. You know they were

feeling the heat and they were feeling the pressure and so Dr. Freeman found need in a whole message called laying it on the line to you know talk about these ministers who have left. And then we get into the 83 and 84 season people were leaving and the ministry there didn't care. It was don't let the door hit you on the way out. It was not at all coming from a true Christian ministers perspective. What have we? What could we do differently? What have we done wrong?

What need in your life is it that we're not meeting? You know it was it's obvious that we're right and you're wrong. I mean that was just a given. So there was never any introspection. And you know I had a really good conversation last week John on Tuesday with Jerry Irvin. Everybody will know Jerry Irvin. Jerry Irvin was a song leader, worship leader for faith assembly. He goes all the way back to Hobart's living room days in their 1966 clay pool house. He actually dated one of the Freeman daughters for a couple of years ended up not marrying her or someone else did. But Jerry

said we had I had an hour and 16 minute conversation with Jerry last Tuesday and I'd already talked to him some before. But he's wanting to listen to these pod. He hadn't heard any of these interviews.

Yeah. I think he's going to maybe start listening to him. But he and I talked and I don't know anybody that doesn't like Jerry Irvin. He was worship leader. He's just the nicest most wonderful person. And I had called him just to tell him I'd called him a while back say Jerry. I just want to tell you what a wonderful blessing your role there way back in glory barn days was to me when I was a teenager and I would listen to you leading the worship there. It's that same guitar it's that same voice it is that same sweet spirit that never changed it just never changed the whole

and he did not know me personally at all and I've never met Jerry in person but he said hey he said man this is a great conversation he said my wife and I we've just got a brand new house nobody here but us we got extra bedrooms once you make a road trip and come and hang out with me and we'll catch up and I just Jerry if you're listening I may just take you up on that because there are so many things we could talk about because Jerry goes back to pre-Glory Barn days before the glory barn they

were in Jerry Irving's three car garage that's where the church met and then before that they were in Hobart's home but one of the points that Jerry made was very interesting Hobart died of multiple illnesses one of them being diabetes and I said Jerry you were there I mean you were the worship leader when Hobart would come out the door from behind and take the pulpit you saw him all the time you know tell me that you saw something you know you had to have seen something and his opinion I'm no medical doctor I doubt Jerry is either his opinion was that the diabetes was really

affecting Dr. Freeman I don't know whether that's true I know that there were problems but he said he wasn't himself he was irritable he was short tempered he didn't have any patience at all he was hurting you know I think physically he was hurting he was in pain and I have read what the symptoms of diabetes pretty bad diabetes untreated and of course it was definitely totally untreated in Dr. Freeman and he had other things that actually caused his death but I you know I think every every cult when it gets to the end has has signs of this cataclysm it's almost

like the end of life someone getting ready to die my wife has been a caregiver after she retired from state government she's been a caregiver for several different elderly women and she says you can see they're just they're certain signs and they're like end of life signs that you can see in a person and some people I think you know or they're more intuitive my wife is very intuitive you know I'm a man I just go by it's either son is shining or it's not shining those are your only two options she sees everything in between like maybe a partially sunny day I see either all

son or no son she has this intuition and a lot of people do and they see these things and I think there there were signs of the death of a religious cult and the death of a leader right then that if you had that intuitive nature that maybe you could see and I asked Jerry did you say anything to Hobart and he said I did I tried to say some things, but I don't know if they just, he didn't hear him or my guess would be because I can totally understand this, Jerry. It's just you're in such a subservient

position to this leader who's taught you everything you know. It's just very difficult to say, hey, Mr. Leader, you're actually an error, er, or you're an error on this point. It's just about impossible to do. So, you know, I don't know, but so we really, so we really have serious troubles, John. We've got people leaving, we've got ministers leaving, but the biggest headline loss of all was Bruce Kinsey. Bruce Kinsey was married to Kathy Freeman, the middle of Hobart and June's three daughters, and he was definitely tier one. I would say he was probably second in command there. So that's what I want to get into with the time we have left

is this really precipitated the fall of Faith Assembly with Bruce Kinsey here at the very end deciding that this was not for him. He was, like I said, he was a son-in-law, all three of Hobart's daughters, married ministers. So the oldest daughter, Pam, Mary Steve Hill, then Kathy, Mary Bruce Kinsey, and then the baby girl Becky, Mary Dave Freeman. That was good for her. She didn't have to change a driver's license or anything because they already had the same last name. But all three of the Freeman girls married someone who either was a minister or in Bruce's case was going

to end up being a minister. So I can give you or you can find a little information if you can locate this book. This is Bruce's testimony book. God will save your loved ones. And on the back is a great family photo taken behind the Freeman's home down on Shoe Lake where you can see the three daughters, the husbands, Hobart and June, and the grandchildren that they had at the time.

So here's a little background about Bruce Kinsey. Bruce Kinsey was local Warsaw, Indiana, Raisin, Warsaw, Indiana, graduated from high school there. As soon as he got out of the high school, he joined the Marines and we're talking about 1965. So yes, we were talking about the Vietnam era and the Vietnam War. And he flew to San Diego for basic training and then all he went to Okinawa.

And then later he ended up in Vietnam and did four years from... 65 to 69 or early 70 in the Marine Corps was a sergeant in the Marine Corps, and you know was saw a lot of stuff. I guess if he was there during that time, then that means he was there during the Tet Offensive, which was that huge problem in 1968 in Vietnam, so I would assume that Bruce was there during all that. So he's a tough guy, an unsaved guy, a tough unsaved marine sergeant, and when he got out of the Marines, he came back to Indiana just to touch base. He was planning on

heading to the East Coast, but when he got back, he tells a story in his little testimonial book. He was hanging out with friends. They were at a pizza parlor, and he happened to spot a young lady, the friend that Bruce was with spotted a young lady. Bruce's friend and the other young lady became an item, and because that young lady's friend was Kathy Freeman, then that brought Bruce and Kathy together a lot just because their friends were hanging out. And before you know it, Bruce says, we're falling in love, and before you know it, Kathy's deciding she's going to marry

this unsaved boy. Well, that's not going to go over very well in the Freeman home, because they had been raised properly and correctly by their parents. You know, you don't want to be unequally yoked in marriage with an unbeliever. Marriage is hard enough as it is with two Christians together, don't complicate the matters by being married to someone that doesn't share the same values that you do. So Bruce tells a hilarious story in the book where they go over, you know, Kathy said, you know, you got to meet my parents. So they go over to meet Hobart in June that was I think

after a service on a Sunday night. And Bruce said, you know, I was going to condescend to their level and grace them with my presence. At least, you know, let her parents know who I was, since I was going to be marrying their daughter. And it did not go very well. It did not go very well at all. So hilarious story that Bruce tells. And so whenever they laugh, Bruce was furious.

And he was bound in the tournament, you know, I'm going to marry you. And they did get married, by the way. And didn't even, they alope, they didn't tower justice of the peace. It was not an official ceremony. I don't think Kathy could bring herself to do it. I think June found out in the grocery store that her daughter was married when someone said, hey, I'm glad to hear that Bruce and Kathy got married. And June didn't even know they were married. So it was it was it was a difficult time for the Freeman household to be to be sure. But within a couple of years,

Bruce had a pretty remarkable salvation experience. I think he and Kathy married maybe in 70 or 71 and Bruce was converted to Christianity in a pretty remarkable experience in 1973. And again, he tells the story in the book. Kathy had, he had kind of kept Kathy away from church to new marriage and he kind of pulled her down to her level. I think Kathy, Kathy founder, which pretty quickly was back in church again. Bruce was not going to church at all. Bruce worked for RJ Donnelly, the big printing company there in Warsaw. And he was just, you know, living his life.

Kathy wanted to go back to church, started going, wanted to go more, became a problem in the household. But one night when Kathy came home, Bruce had been reading a couple of testimonial books by some charismatic was pretty startled by it and said he needed to find out the truth about all of this Jesus stuff and this salvation stuff. And she said, well, let's go see my dad. And that was the last person because the first meeting didn't go very well. That was the last person Bruce wanted to see. But he did end up back

over at Dr. Freeman's house and Freeman's study. He Hobart prayed with him to receive Jesus, prayed for him to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It was just an incredible experience for Bruce, you know, a night and day difference, a complete turnaround in his life. And, and a real experience because I mean, it just totally changed Bruce's life.

And it brought him and Kathy obviously into very close fellowship with each other. And it was also a calls for great rejoicing at the church. So there is a, there is a message that Hobart did. John, it was called the old number of it was an L-36 and it was called the Prayer of Resignation. So if you could bring up the little quote, I want to share from this. He never saves people against the will. They'd go to hell if we didn't claim.

A lot of people have been saved. We've claimed. There's one sitting there.

But you see, he had to believe. When the wife and I, when he went out the door shaking his head, he didn't believe any of this. And he was all mixed up in all kinds of calls to religions. We just didn't get panicky. We said, it works everywhere else in the work here.

We claim that he saved baptizing the Holy Ghost. My wife said he's going to preach. This was something that was huge for faith assembly at that time. Here had been one of the biggest critics of the church.

Here is a man minister to one of Hobart's daughters. And as we heard in that clip, you know, Hobart's talking about the importance of our prayers for people around us. And as we heard him say, you know, if we didn't pray for our relatives, some of them would go to hell.

And then he says, there's one of them sitting right there. And you hear Bruce saying, hallelujah, that's Bruce sitting there. And then Hobart tells the story, you know, Kathy brought him to the door.

We met, Bruce went out angry, but my wife and I, and one of our daughters, we just claimed his salvation, claimed his baptism in the Holy Spirit, and my wife even added in. And Lord, we want him to be a preacher.

He's going to preach. So this is 1973. They've been at the glory barn for a year. It was just wave after wave, a positive emotion now, because this is validation. This is some good validation for the ministry and for everything that Hobart's been teaching.

Now this unsaved boy, young man married to my daughter. I mean, they had prayed for his salvation. And here he is, saved, sitting there in the glory barn, witnessing to people at his own place of employment.

He's the one, I believe, who had shared the gospel with Jerry Birkett, because Birkett worked there. Birkett became one of the ministers at Faith Assembly. And we shared his tragic story in, the story of his wife Sally in the past.

But I mean, Bruce just is skyrocketing here. A year later, in 1974, Bruce has been saved for one year.

A year later, Bruce has given the Friday night glory barn meeting. Now that's a pretty big deal. That meeting had been held by another son-in-law, Steve Hill. Steve Hill was one of the ministers who early on had worked with Mel Greider, the owner of the barn, to help establish this little halfway house, coffee house kind of place.

We got to also remember the backdrop to all this, John. This is right in the middle of and right after the Jesus movement. I mean, whenever Bruce is in Vietnam, this is, these are the days of going to the moon, the assassination of Martin Luther King and Senator Kennedy.

It's Woodstock. I mean, it's a Vietnam war. It's the National Guard killing of the students at Kent State. I mean, this was a revolutionary period in American history, the late 60s and early 70s.

That's when all of this is going on. And everything is groovy this and cool that and man this back in those days. And so Steve and Jerry Irvin, Jerry, by the way, let me back up.

Jerry Irvin, the song leader, had dated Kathy Freeman for a year and a half back in the 60s. Jerry said, here's the way I met Kathy. He said, we had a little band. He's played in this little band, Jerry and his buddies in Claypool of all places.

Claypool, Indiana, back in the 60s. And he said, one time here comes these three sisters walking along. It was a Freeman sisters. It was Pam and Kathy and back. He said, I didn't know them.

But he said, you know, they listen to a sing and struck up a conversation. And I got to know the middle daughter Kathy. And then she said, yeah, my dad is a minister. And we meet in our living room.

Like, what? You got a church in your home in your living room. So Jerry started going to the meetings at the Freeman home, started dating Kathy. Kathy was the one who prayed for Jerry to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

So Jerry said, I've got all this connection to the Freeman family from way back here in the very beginning. There was another guy named, who was the worship, Larry Delaney was the worship leader in the home prior to Jerry taking over.

And Hobart mentions Larry Delaney on a lot of different early, early tapes. You'll hear the name Larry Delaney. Well, Larry Delaney had been a student of Hobart's at Gray Seminary. So this again was one of those people who followed Hobart from non-charismatic Gray Seminary days into the church and then in 1966 in March, that whole church in Freeman's home had become charismatic.

And so Larry Delaney was the song leader. Jerry said, he filled in a time or two for Larry. And I think it just became obvious that Jerry should probably be the leader. Some things just become obvious.

People just haven't a gift. They have, you can call it an anointing, which I do believe in. They have an anointing. They have a gift. They have the ability. They have the personality to do it.

And so by 1968, Jerry Irvin had become the song leader. And then he stayed the song leader to the very end, even after Hobart's death. Jerry stayed until he got kicked out of faith assembly, by the way.

We can talk about that later, but that's post-faith assembly days. When you got the Freemanites and the non-Freemanites and never the Twain are going to mix, it wasn't a good setting. Hobart held everything together.

You have to have the personality before you can have the cult of personality. And Hobart was that personality that held everything together. But no, Gary goes way back, so he knew Bruce, he dated Kathy for, you know, 18 months, and then Bruce is the one who actually ended up marrying her.

And then Steve had started this Friday night meeting at the glory barn. And of course, back in those days, I didn't recognize the timing of it. When you're 17, if someone is 24, they're no different than being 54 or 84, they're just a lot older than you. So these men were older than me, and I didn't realize that we were almost the same age. They're just a little bit older, but you just look up to them like, wow, Jerry Irvin and Steve Hill and Bruce Kinsey. Wow, heck, I was in my teens and they're in their 20s, you know,

but that's a pretty big gap at that point of your life. But now, and I've talked to other people, and I talked, we talked about this in the ministers meeting up in Indiana last month.

Bruce has been saved for one year, and he's given his other, the other, his brother-in-law, Steve's Friday night meeting. And I said, that just rings bells to me. Doesn't that, isn't there a verse? It says in 1 Timothy 3, 6, you don't want to put a novice in the position of a teaching elder for all of the obvious reasons. And I even asked them, I said, well, you guys looking back on that, you know, what do you say? Yes or no? No, you can't do that. I said, well, it was done.

And it was done by Hobart. It was done with Hobart's approval. And I asked them because I didn't know the background. I said, well, Steve upset over that. And I asked Jerry. And Jerry said, it wasn't a big deal really to Steve because Jerry and Steve at that time who were working together were, oh, I got to add in one other part to this story. So Steve is married to the oldest Freeman daughter, Pam. Jerry is married to Steve Hill's sister, or was married, Kathy Hill.

Okay, so you got to know how all of this works. So Jerry dated Kathy, stopped dating, she married Bruce, Steve married the oldest Freeman daughter, Pam and Jerry was married to Kathy Hill, Steve's sister. I even have to think about it to make sure I get it right. And they actually had a double wedding. So Jerry and Steve, Jerry, Steve married a Freeman daughter, Jerry married Steve Hill's sister on the same day. He's Yeah, we had this great double wedding.

Are you sure this church wasn't in Kentucky? No, it was, it was Northern Indiana, but, you know, close. So they had a close connection, you know, there, it's the brother-in-law of mine. They had a, they had a close, very close connection there.

So they were in the process of starting steves, what would become a pretty big meeting up in Rockford, Illinois. That was a satellite group. And Steve was the leader of that group. And it grew to be a pretty good size.

And they were in the process of starting that. So with them starting that meeting, and Steve giving up the Friday night meeting at the barn wasn't that big of a deal in steves mine.

But I think in hindsight, you know, more thought should have been gone into, should have been put into that. More thought should have gone into that because Bruce was a brand new Christian. So, you know, he's given the Friday night meeting, and then two years after that, he starts his second big meeting up there on the campus of Purdue University in West Lafayette.

It was a group of college students that had gotten together. You know, that's how all these little groups got started with just a handful of people then contacting faith ministries saying, can you send us a teacher?

So, you know, there were some college students there. It became known as the lighthouse and became a pretty big satellite group. So Steve Hill had the Rockford, Illinois one. Bruce Kinsey had the West Lafayette Indiana one at Purdue University and it was called the lighthouse.

And it grew to be a fairly big meeting as well. And then Bruce just continued to rise. So you got to picture this in these days at Faith Assembly. Here is a reprobate unsaved heathen boy who's married into the leadership family against the authority and wishes of the family.

And now he's converted. So these are times of tremendous excitement at Faith Assembly. The message is validated.

The church is just growing by leaps and bounds. And I don't question Bruce's conversion at all. I grew to no Bruce and light Bruce a lot. I listened to his tapes. He's one of the ministers that I liked.

I would say more than most of the other ones. He had some things to say. I had to qualify that later, but he did have some things to say. And I think a lot of people liked Bruce.

And the thing about Bruce that was different is, you know, Bruce had some worldly experience. He was a sergeant in the Marine Corps. So he wasn't some little weakling that had, you know, squeezed in under Hobart's coat tails or something.

He's someone that came on the scene already having done his drinking and his, and his smoke and pod and his cigarettes and all the worldly stuff you do when you're in Vietnam. And he had already investigated transcendental meditation and Zen Buddhism.

He had already gone down the philosophy path. So he came with some street scents to him. And you know, the reason we're discussing Bruce now is that he was the first big time minister to exit.

And psychologically, maybe this explains why. You know, Bruceworldly cement all of this. And he was one of the ones who was going to be, if anybody was, who was going to be willing to challenge, you know, what Hobart was saying and the direction that that Dr. Freeman and that the church was going in.

So when last comment and maybe we can pick up next time, John, another thing that gave Bruce a lot of power is that he was the one who ended up scheduling the Sunday morning ministers whenever Hobart wasn't there.

So he was Hobart had what he called to associate pastors. He had Stan Hill, which was Steve Hill's father. He had Stan Hill and he had Jack Farrell. And I think the reason it was pretty smart on Hobart's part to have these two men as the associate ministers is because they were older men.

All the other ministers were young. Hobart was old, Stan Hill and Jack Farrell were two older men, a lot older than the younger ministers. And that was a wise decision, in my opinion, on Hobart's part to have them as associate ministers.

But the second in command that Faith Assembly was Bruce Kinsey. And that was because of his personality, because he had the big, big, big Friday night meeting and because he had control of the pulpit schedule.

So if you could kind of become buddies with Bruce and Hobart was gone on vacation and Bruce liked you, then guess who got to preach at the big mother church on Sunday morning. So that also kind of sets the scene for some potential conflicts of interest here down the road.

Yeah, that's powerful. The way that the cults recruit is very deceptive because what you're describing here, the man had a Christian experience. And in normal Christian churches, they say, well, praise God, he had a Christian experience.

But in a cult church, they tried to bind that experience to the cult. And so forever, it's difficult to escape because they have made the two one the same. If you leave the church, you're leaving.

Christian experience. That's how the cult spins it. So the fact that he was able to leave is significant and I'm excited to get in the next episode to see how all that went down because it's very unusual in these cult churches for somebody to be able to break away, especially somebody at that level. It is not only unusual, but it gives you a look inside of how the conflicts can lead to a cult implosion, which sounds like it was about to happen. So we'll split it here. We've got way more than we can cover in today's episode. So 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-Branum.org. For an overview of the historical research of William Branum and the Healing Revivals, you can read preacher behind the white hoods a critical examination of William Branum and his message. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.