Obedience or Oppression? Gender Roles in Faith Assembly - 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 co-host, minister and friend, Chino Ross, pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Chino D. Ross, YouTube channel. Chino, it's good to be back and I'm a little hesitant to get too deeply into this subject we're talking about today. We, you know, we don't really plan these things ahead of time. We just get together and I say, hey, Chino, what are

we going to talk about today? And it just kind of happens, you know, casually we we discuss it, but this particular subject we're talking about today. Fortunately, I've not had too many people bring it up and I do these, you know, every Friday I do the interviews with people who have escaped and they tell their stories and it really fortunately for me hasn't really got into this area, but the area we're getting into I, you know, I can't avoid it forever. We do need to discuss it, but when we when we get to talking about the gender roles and

the family relationships, it's a very touchy subject, especially if you were in one of these movements. And so I, you know, it's got to happen. I'm glad it's you that are bringing this up and not me. Well, John, I'm not afraid of very many things. So I'm happy to discuss this issue of what we might entitle broadly, male and female relationships. I don't even know how far we'll get. I have some things in mind to talk about today. And of course, I'm always happy to get your input and how and where this resonates with your background with William

Brannum. But you know, we've been looking at this long list of don'ts that just seemed as though it became longer by the month at the end of Hobart's life. I really am still trying to talk about the fall of 1984. Everything that was leading up to Dr. Freeman's death and just how dark everything had become at faith assembly. So we've looked here recently at him outlawing certain career paths, clubs, organizations, co-ops, board games, cards, dice.

I mean, just pretty much nursery rhymes, abbreviations, I think we talked about abbreviations, abbreviations were not allowed. One of the things I said in that was he had a favorite abbreviation because of a certain charismatic heresy he was always attacking and that was the JDS, the Jesus died spiritually so there is his book with the abbreviation JDS and what's interesting on the first page, the second paragraph, Hobart wrote several years ago when this doctrine first began to be stressed by certain charismatic teachers, I designated this error for sake of brevity as the JDS doctrine, therefore it will be referred to as JDS in this book hereafter. That's the whole purpose of

abbreviations is brevity, we don't want to always say the United States, we just want to say the US. So anyway, he was reaching at faith assembly like a critical mass, they were going to implode something, something was going to happen and that's exactly what did happen, but one of the big areas was this area of male and female relationships and probably next to Dr.

Freeman's views on what I ended up calling his views, his doctrine of divine death because nobody ever really got healed, they are going to think seriously, his doctrine of divine death which meant that people died all the time and they talked about well you just got to wait for the manifestation of your healing but manifestation which is code language for hey you better expect to be sick for a very long time, next to that doctrine this was the biggest mess of all because it affected the family life and that's the basic core unit, it affected husband and wife, it affected the

parents and the children, it affected the children back to their parents, I think there were long-term psychological and relationship effects that came from this, so I guess I could start this area by saying that Hobart had a certain structure in his mind where the father or the husband is ahead of the family so he's way up here at the at the very top rung of the ladder, at the very bottom would be the child or the children and just a step above the child is the wife or the mother, so the gap between the wife and the mother and the child was very small compared

to the gap between the wife and the husband. The husband was high on a pedestal, the wife and children were down very low. And this wasn't peculiar to faith assembly. I think you see this in a lot of fundamentalist church background, some Pentecostal church and holiness church backgrounds. And it is true that Paul did say in Ephesians 5 that the husband is ahead of the home, but he said so much more than that. He did say that, the Apostle Paul, but he just said so much more than that. And it's the so much more than that that was not given the

proper amount of space at faith assembly for sure and probably among these other churches. Dr. Freeman actually had John these two foundational messages, tapes entitled, the restoration of the biblical roles of husband and wife. It was a part one and a part two. Those were foundational for him and for his church.

If you listen to those tapes carefully, they have some very odd things on them. One of the really odd things is when he starts talking about creation. And he did that because Paul and the New Testament does, they do found the male headship on the basis of creation that Adam was created first. Then Eve, the man was not deceived. Paul said, but the woman was deceived and was in the transgression. So there is a creation order and Hobart went back to that. And as he would discuss the actual narrative of Genesis 1 and 2, which most of us

understand to be like this, that God made the heaven and the earth and everything in it in six days and rested on the seventh day. I mean, we all learn that from Sunday's school. If you carefully listen to these two tapes of Hobart, he said that Eve was created two or three days later. He wasn't for sure how much later after creation Eve was created. And his point was Adam had a whole lot of time to be lonely and to be thinking about things before Eve came on the scene.

Well, of course that is completely false. Everything was done in six days and God rested the seventh. So that is actually on those tapes. People probably find that hard to believe, but if they go listen to them, they'll hear that. Those were foundational messages, the restoration. He said God is restoring all of this teaching to the church, which has been lost. And one of these teachings is the man is ahead of the home. And so he's got the father up here. Like I say, he's got the child down here and he's got the mother somewhere near the bottom. And he

just wanted to talk all the time about, do you have divine order or disorder in your home? It became the name of series of tapes. And I'm sure you're all who has a faith assembly background, those of them that have that, they're going to remember all about, oh no, not another message on divine order or disorder.

You know, so it starts way down here with the children. The children are always at the bottom and there were always a lot of them and that was because of another view that they had that we'll get to hopefully later on in this interview.

But he had a favorite phrase with children that children are to be seen and not hurt. The children are to be seen and not hurt. I don't know that people are as familiar with Hobart Freeman's background himself.

If they knew that because we're always curious, how does a guy end up in this position or with this doctrine later in his life? But Hobart was raised in a very poor Catholic neighborhood in downtown Louisville, Kentucky. He had siblings, he had six or seven of them, they were all sisters.

He didn't have a brother. He had polio as a young boy. He didn't grow up, as I have said before, hunting and fishing and kicking ball and playing sports and shooting hoops and running a trap line. He didn't grow up that way. He had a bunch of women around him. He had all sisters around him. He grew up very poor when he met Ava June Freeman, his wife. He found a woman cut from that mold of the depression era that would fit in perfectly as his wife because a sweet and kind and loving and godly as June was as a Christian woman and other people knew her far, far

better than I did and I would only have all of those good things to say about her. I will say this that by her own testimony, she never objected to anything Hobart said. She never argued. She never disagreed. There is actually a message. It's a little hard to find but it's out there on YouTube because I've heard it. It is June's testimony done on May the 27th of 1977. If people will spend the time, they can find that, track it down and I've heard it several times. The recording quality of that is not the best because it is done at a lady's luncheon so it sounds like it's in a

cafeteria and there's just echoing and there's a lot of background noise. But June gives her testimony, May the 27th, 1977, telling how she met Hobart, it's absolutely fascinating and it's revealing John in this regard because you get to hear the dynamics in the relationship from June's point of view and June actually has these things to say. She says, and the reason I point this out is June was the matriarch of faith assembly. She was a lovely, godly spiritual kind, always smiling, always a helpful word kind of woman. So consequently, all of the other young women and mothers in the church looked up to her and they wanted to emulate

her. And some of that is good. Some of that was terrible because what they learned from June, as if you'll hear on that tape, if you listen to June's testimony, she said, oh, she worshiped the ground Hobart, worked on, walked on. She said, I would never disagree with my husband.

I would never argue with my husband. She even tells the stories of how it's kind of normal in American society for when it's time to run out the door and go somewhere to an appointment.

Who are we men always waiting on? We're waiting on her wise because you're not quite ready yet. So she tells that, but she turns it around and she said, I would never keep my husband waiting.

I am always ready first and I'm just sitting there waiting for him to get ready. And so, you know, there, that is not normal. I don't think in my anybody's standard, but it fit perfectly with Hobart's personality. One time June actually, and June delivered some speeches or messages from the pulpit on a Friday night at the glory barn.

Hobart later came to say, women couldn't speak in front in public in a mixed group, but there actually tapes out there where June did that very thing. And on one of these occasions when it was June's turn to speak that night, this is a very interesting story because when Hobart was going to speak, I mean, she had his clothes laid out everything and she didn't want any obstacle, which is wonderful to do that as a wife. I'm not criticizing that. She didn't want any obstacle in Hobart's way to get ready to deliver the message at night. Well, this time it was her turn to deliver a message. She's still trying to get dinner

on the table for both of them. She says he's trying to finagle his wires to his antenna for his ham radio out in the yard and he calls me out there to help him with that. Of course, she just drops everything and runs out there. Instead of saying, I'm sorry, that'll have to wait for another day. I've got to get dinner done and then I've got to go speak to Faith Assembly at the glory bar tonight. No, as the perfect proverbs 31, virtuous woman, you know, she lays herself down like a doormat, you know, for Hobart to walk on. And I'm not saying that June did it knowingly and I'm not

saying that Hobart walked on her knowingly. I'm just saying that those are the facts in the relationship. You can hear them on the tape and all that does is feed in. into this dominant male abusive role model that Hobart is projecting and setting up. So going back to the child, the child is someone to be seen and not heard. He always was preaching against the child centered home. That would be, you know, if your child is crying, expressing a need, you've got to muffle that somehow because that is not healthy. That is the child centered

home. And if you were to ask, um, how early should that start? That is going to start early. Let me just give you one quotation and I'll take a breath, John, and you can give me your feedback. But he did a series on the book of Colossians. The last message, which actually was long, so it became two messages, was entitled Signs of True Believers and Perentices Overcomers, because that's what a true believer was. This was taught in late 1979. So they're in the new building. They've been in the new building for about a year. As a matter of fact, on this tape,

it's where he mentions, hey, did everyone notice that we have new ceiling panels up for the drop ceiling? Prior to that, they had all the lights and all the wires run, which were all exposed.

But this was the time when they finally got some ceiling panels up. And he's talking on this because he's in Colossians. He's talking about family dynamics and family roles. And he's talking about parents being responsible for training and teaching their kids. At the 51 minute, 42nd mark, he said, and I quote, begin early. Train them early. Is six months too early?

No, it's too late. You wait six months. You're going to have a lot of house breaking today.

So you tell me what kind of child rearing is going to start at the age of six months. You know, the whole family dynamics and Hobart Freeman's movement, Branemism, everything that sprung from it is entirely flipped upside down. And what you've described ironically, it was Branemism 101. Children should be seen and not heard. I think I clearly remember being in somebody's house and that was in one of those little things, those cross stitching plaques that you put up by the door. I think somebody put that up.

But that was a common phrase. And the man is the head of the house and the women are subordinate. All of that is Branemism 101. And the irony is, if we were to have probably a freedom of night, probably a Branemite, anybody on the show, and we were to try to talk how wrong that is, they would defend it and say that's biblical. That's the irony of this.

But if we were to have a Christian who was raised in a Christian home, who's never heard any of this, who has at least read their Bible, they would say that even historically speaking, the early Christians and even to a large extent, the Jews before Christianity were very far advanced in the equality towards women as compared to the rest of the world.

And that's right. And read documents on this, it's a quite interesting study. Then you get into the New Testament and you read some of the passages in the New Testament when you compare it to the two-to-days world, you think it's not, but if you understand the cultures back then and understand that most women, if they did not have a man to help support them in that era, many of them would have just suffered and died, struggled to live because they could not provide for themselves in that culture.

So some of the passages that sound like the women are subordinate are actually just, you know, to help women help support the women. And we've had the conversation a few times now, and I've had it with a few people now, when we read the letters that Paul wrote to the churches, we're reading someone else's male, and you have to understand the context of how it's written, who it's written to, the time it's written, the passage talking about the hierarchy that Hobart was mentioning straight out of Brannemism obviously came from 1 Corinthians 11, talking about, you

know, Christ is the head, the man is the head of the household, et cetera. But if you understand the full context of that passage, he's writing it to a group of people in Corinthians who came out of the cults of Dionysus, and in the cults of Dionysus, they had women that were these prophetesses that would have their hair, their hair was up in a bobby pin, and they'd pull the pin out, and they would go prophesy and rip the flesh off of animals.

I think you and I talked about this once before. There must have been a situation, we don't know all the details, but there must have been a situation where this was problematic, and Paul was addressing the church and the problems in the church, and then if you read down to, I think it's verse 16, he says, but we have no such custom, neither do the churches of God.

So he just disqualified that entire section of tax from probably part of the chapter before to here, saying, I'm writing this to this church in Corinthians where there is a problem, and there's a situation happening, but we, as Christians, don't have the custom that this entire thing revolves around, and the Pentecostals use that specific passage for the long hair doctrines, et cetera, ignoring the rest of the Bible, there are passages in the Bible where women...

instructed to shave their heads for mourning, for example. So, unless you understand the context, it turns into a different bloke. It's not the same Bible. Further amplify that. By in Latter-Rain, Branum is from early on. I want to say, and I want to say it was early as about the fifties. Branum introduced the notion that he had had a series of seven prophecies way back in 1933. There's no evidence to support this before 1950s. And he says, women will destroy the United States. The women are going to vote. They're going to elect a female president. The female will cause the destruction of the United States and eventually

the world. And so he's tainted the whole movement against women, right? Now further that, you're being raised in a doomsday cult. And the way that the doctrine was presented, we're going to leave this earth very quickly. We're going to receive our new bodies. And how will this work, brother, Branum? Well, what's going to happen is you're going to receive a new body that's 20 years old. Does everybody receive a body that's 20 years old? What about my children who are just born? Of course, everybody gets a body that's 20 years old. So the parents are literally being

taught that any day could be tomorrow. You're going to step onto the other side and these kids that you know right now are not even going to be anything like you know them. Suddenly they're going to go from age six months to 20 years old. And what happens psychologically, the parents are disconnecting from the kids because this isn't somebody I'm going to know even tomorrow. And so the whole family dynamic in these groups just gets totally unraveled. And the hierarchy that's created, it ignores passage. Paul says there's, I can't remember exactly how he says it. You probably know

he says there's neither male nor female, June or Gentile. We're all one. We're all equal. 1838. Exactly. Exactly. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition 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, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

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On behalf of William Bratton Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. I think I might have even mentioned in our last interview. I talked to so many people, John, I can't remember, but I think it was you and I talking because it's normally, you know, it's about Hobart Freeman stuff where Hobart said that, and he said it repeatedly, that most of the problems he ever had as a pastor of a church came from women. Almost all the problems came from women. And that's just not true at all. The problems came from his underlings, the ministers

under him. They're the ones who caused all the problems. So it just shows a very low view of women. And that's what I was trying to document earlier with even June statements herself, you know, Hobart expected everything to be laid out in order for him. And that's just not that regardless of your view of 1 Corinthians 11 or Ephesians 5 or Colossians 4 to say the husband is the head of the home, which the Bible does say, regardless of your view on that, and it is a difficult area to discuss, but regardless of your view, there is so much more that is said in the

Bible that was definitely not given equal time. And I've seen in the comments on some of our podcasts so far, John, just the women crying out that, you know, we were the silent majority, you know, we were definitely the beaten down part of faith assembly. And it's outreach both the women and the children. And speaking of beaten down, we brings us to another topic. And that is Proverbs 13, 24, if you spare the rod, you spoil the child. And this just became a huge issue at faith assembly. And again, I know, and I think I've said this before, these cults and these

people like Dr. Freeman, who ended up with some false views and in other airs, false infacies, balance that was out of balance, out of harmony, they're all basing it on a scripture somewhere. And so Proverbs 13, 24 is in the Bible. But for Dr. Freeman to spend the time that he did on it, I always felt that he was just way out of his element. We need to remind ourselves he was trained in Old Testament and Hebrew, the biblical language of Hebrew. That was his professional training. He was not trained in child and adolescent development. He was not trained in child and

adolescent psychology. He was not trained as a sex counselor. He was not a marriage therapist. He was not a family therapist. Those are difficult areas and topics that require professional training and education in. And he simply did...

I have that. I think his life, if you want to study it carefully, would show more. I hate to say it, but I think it's true, would show more of an absentee father. Cathy, his middle girl, got involved with Bruce Kenzie, probably with Hobart, not even knowing it. I know whenever Cathy married Bruce, June found out from a friend at the grocery store. They didn't even know they were married. I will say this as a little tease and will save this for the future, but I do have a deathbed confession that Hobart Freeman made that is very interesting. We will

save that for whenever we get to his sickness, his death, the autopsy, Dr. Patricia Newhouse, who was a pathologist who did the autopsy. We will save that for that time period. But the deathbed confession, when I heard it, because there were a large number of people that had been called over to the house to pray for him before he died, and maybe pray for him to come back to life after he died. That was just a fiasco in itself. But when I heard, because I wasn't there, obviously, when I heard the deathbed confession, and all it did to me, John, is that I knew it. I didn't have

to hear that. I know if Hobart's got 1157 tapes on his tape lists, I've heard them all more than once. I'm pretty familiar with the way the man fought back then. And being familiar with that, I could anticipate. I just know what it's like that Hobart, he was not a pastor. He did not have a shepherd's heart. A shepherd's heart is kind and patient and loving. And you're actually going in seeking out the law sheep. He was running people out the door if they disagreed with him.

I mentioned before, and I even have an update on this, whenever brother Gary Hall, the first one who was tried convicted, sentenced, and spent time in jail in prison, Gary Hall for the death of his child. I said, when you and I did this without any way to prove my point, I said, I would bet that Hobart Freeman, as a pastor, never visited that man. And I said, if anybody has a way to prove otherwise, then I will retract that. I actually have people who said we and our family visited Gary regularly in prison, and no Hobart never visited him, not to their knowledge. Gary

never said, and he never said Hobart, visit me. I was this close a couple of weeks ago, that close to getting to talk to Gary. We have a mutual friend and Gary wanted to talk to me.

I actually traded texts with him because he spent time. I mean, this is where the rubber meets the road. to jail for Dr. Freeman's view. And Gary said, yeah, I'll be willing to talk to you, Cheno, and then last minute, he bailed on me.

Didn't want to talk to me. And I said, I totally understand, brother, no pressure from my end. If you ever change your mind, I'm always available. But, and I hope Gary listens to these podcasts.

I think maybe he is, and his statement was that he didn't see himself a victim. And I appreciate what I think Gary's trying to say by that, but what I would say to Gary and to everyone, everyone is a victim of Dr. Freeman.

Everybody was a victim of his teaching. I think what Gary was trying to say, and I could be wrong, I could have misinterpreted, but I think he's just trying to be an adult, like some people, and said, hey, nobody forced me with a gun to the side of my head to follow Hobart Freeman.

I was an adult. I made the decision myself. I suffered the consequences of that. And I would respond to that. There is an element of truth to that. We were all adults. We all chose to do what we did.

However, even though it wasn't a gun to the side of our head, it was psychological, verbal manipulation, and you most definitely were a victim. So I understand someone not wanting to appear to be a baby like, oh, poor me.

I didn't want to follow the guy, but somebody made me fall. I understand that point of view of saying, I was an adult, and I had to make this as a decision I made, and whatever the consequences are, I have to live with that.

But I would say that we were all a victim. Anyway, back to Proverbs 13, 24. This corporal punishment just came by the boatload. And it was all out of perspective and out of balance.

And it became the only acceptable form of child discipline. And it's not that Proverbs 13, 24 presents a problem. What presents a problem is the lack of any normal, reasonable approach to childrary. Hobart was a man of laws and legalisms.

And if he could find a verse that would say something, husband's head of the family, spare the rod's bowl, the child, I've got two verses, so we're just going to roll with it like that.

But there is so much more that needed to be said. And you've got to remember, this is also the same man who had taken everything away from children. You can't play games, you can't go to school, no toys, no holidays, no social activities, no neighborhood friends, no bonfires, no nursery rhymes as you go to sleep at night.

I mean, he had already... taken all of these things away from kids. And now you've got the parents, normally the father, wailing away on their butts. No wonder we have this Facebook group called the Children of F.A.

With a lot of people who are pretty upset, pretty burned and pretty bitter about the whole situation. And you throw into this mix, John, of all of this corporal punishment instead of these children.

And let me just say this, I'm not talking about every family because I've had women reach out to me and say, I did not, we did not. My husband, I wail away on our children.

We had good times with our kids. We raised him in a loving environment. And I definitely believe that's true of many families. I'm just saying that there were too many of the other variety.

And it's probably, you know, it's traceable back to Dr. Freeman. It's some of the things he was dealing with in his own life. I know he did not have a close relationship with his father.

He mentions him one time, one time on 1157 messages, one time that I can remember on 1157 messages. He's only mentioned to his mother a couple of times. And that is when he claimed John 14, 14 and claimed his mother's salvation.

So that's really just a tale of story about how he exercise faith and saw his mom save. The only story I remember about his dad is when he got, when Hobart got saved down in St. Pete on the road home from that nightclub in Tampa, got back to his place where they lived, opened up his store on Sunday morning.

The man came in looking for donation to the church. And Hobart said, you know, times are bad. I don't have anything I can give you. And the man said, you need to go home and read Malachi 3, will a man rob God?

Well, Hobart tells a story. He said, I went home and I had to dig around and look for the Bible that my father gave me. That's the only time I ever even heard him mention his dad is in connection to his father having given him a Bible whenever he was a young child.

So we had these children and we had them, John, in the context, something else that I need to tie into this, of very young fathers. The following of the glory barn in the early years was primarily late teens and early 20s with a few older people sprinkled in the mix.

So you've got a young, young population. They are easily manipulated and persuaded by Dr. Freeman. They're very age and they get married. The very age tells us like, I was at that age. You have no experience in child rearing.

And so what you're witnessing as a model is male abuse by the pastor. I mean, that is the leader that your attention is focused on. This man knows. everything and can do no wrong. And so you as a young, I'm trying to think back and put myself in the position of these young fathers at the time, this is a, this is a type of leadership, this guy who's always boasting and bragging about himself and, um, and threatening everybody else, you see, well, this is the way you control the situation. This is a way you control people around

you. You do it by arrogance and you do it by intimidation and, um, Hobart did it by ex-communications, so these guys could do it by, you know, some extreme corporal punishment. And we also had to figure into the dynamic that because of the path that Faith Assembly was taking, there was a lot of alien nation that happened between these young couples and their parents and their in-laws. So where you would normally have parents and in-laws, when you had questions like, mom, I've got a, I've got a 11th month old crying. What am I supposed to do about it? Rather than having that in good positive

influence from your elders, you've already been isolated from them. You know, that's what cults do. They divide and conquer. They make sure all abuse situations, they isolate you from your support network, from your support group around you. So these young fathers and mothers were cut off from parents. They were cut off from in-laws. They were cut off from the good advice that those people could give. And because of the teaching that the women were hearing that the man's ahead of the home, they're afraid to go against their husbands. You know, that's going to, it was just a

terrible scenario set up. The way Hobart had done all this and this overemphasis on male leadership and male headship. Now, if the women are seeing something happen with the husbands spanking the children too much, I mean, remember the quote I gave from Colossians, if you wait until there's six months old, it's too late. So how soon should you start training them? Six months? Is that too early?

Hobart said no. That's too late. And if you wait until six months, what in the world are you going to train a child at the age of six months? I think what we have on our hands is that soon as a little infant cry, an infant's cry because they're hungry or because they're busy or they're wet or they're uncomfortable or they're tired. They have a reason. They're not crying because they're mean, hateful, disobedient, human being. They're crying because they have a need and that's the only way they know how to express it. And so what's going to happen to them? They're going to get taken

out in the back and they're going to get the day like is wailed out of them and that's exactly what happened. You know, one of the real problems with all of this, if you go to a normal healthy church where they're talking about normal, healthy Christian things, they're not in your business, they're not in the things that really have no business being said behind the pulpit anyway.

But when you're in these cults, they want to be up in your business and they want to control every aspect of your life. Like you said, they've had you cut off people who aren't in the cult.

So you're all of the people who should be in your business, the people who you should connect with and learn how to survive in this world that we live in in things that aren't church related, they've been cut off.

And all you get is somebody who, it sounds like Hobart Freeman was very much like Brannum in the later years, they're just bitter and angry at the world. And so you see all these rants and these insults and Brannum would talk about often if his daughters were to dress what he considered to be inappropriately, he'd be so angry, he'd take a barrel slat, which you've seen these, right?

It's a great big old board and he'd tan or hide and he says some of those old mothers in Kentucky used to beat the naked flesh of their children until they were so mutilated, they couldn't get the clothes back on.

That's what we need to do today. That's an actual quote from Brannum. So they're training people to be not just physically abusive, but assault their children. And I went back whenever I found that quote, I was doing a study on the corporal punishment and I found that quote and I just shocked, man, because that's awful.

I go back and I listen to it. The people who hear that quote are so under the mind control that you can hear brothers standing up and saying, Amen, brother. And all of this, like everybody is unanimously agreeing that we should mutilate the flesh of our children.

That's how bad this is. And it's because he's angry, he's lost his mind, he's off the rails. Everybody in it's under this weird mind control who they think that this is God speaking directly to them to tell them to physically assault their children.

And none of it should be even remotely connected to the church. If you want to learn how to instruct your children, it's not something that you're gonna hear from a pastor you need to get, like you said, with your parents or your friends, people who outside of a church can help you to grow in ways that aren't church-related.

Yeah, I totally agree, John. And like I said earlier, Hobart, just, he didn't have the professional training in this whole area of child and adolescent psychology. My undergraduate degree happens to be in secondary education.

So I'm no expert in the area of child or adolescent psychology, but I remember that was a part of our core curriculum because as a teacher, you're gonna be around children. And those are, they're accomplished.

like theories and there's a lot of data, there's a lot of information that you study in child development, child rearing, and child and adolescent psychology. And that's not something that was Hobart's field of expertise.

For some reason though, anything Hobart talked about, he thought it was an expert on it. And this is all to subject, but I've had other people even tell me that when Hobart would get into the area of maybe talking about farming or feed for cattle because he thought he could throw something out there, the people that do for that for living would just laugh like, he didn't even use a terminology the way you're supposed to use it.

You know, I always say you can never be a man at his own job. If that's what he does for a living, I don't care if it's feeding cattle or hanging drywall, he knows exactly what he's doing.

He's got all the tools, he's got all the experience, and he knows all the terminology. Hobart did like to dabble in electronics and amateur radio, but I had someone one time tell me who is a professional electrician.

He said, Hobart didn't know what he was talking about. He just threw some stuff out there to make himself sound impressive because he did like to tinker and build little transistor things. This guy said, that's stuff's easy to do.

You know, we work on these million vote power lines that go over the city, you know. You want to talk about electricity, that's electricity right there. And when I heard him say that, then, you know, my mind is always thinking, I'm a curious person, then I could go back and reflect and think of some other areas where Hobart had thrown out some comments and I thought, yeah, I think it's kind of like name dropping.

You know, name dropping, as you mentioned, the names of a couple of famous people to make it appear like your friends with them and you're in their circles. That's what name dropping is. I think he did the same thing with all kinds of topics.

He would drop a phrase or two and you go, oh, wow, you know, he knows a lot about that subject. He didn't know Gidley Squad about that. I think that was just his way to make him feel himself feel better, bigger, smarter, more important, more in control.

And it was his way to control, you know, because the people out there go, my word, this guy talks about everything from Greek to Hebrew to electronics, to child rearing. You know, he is a doctor filled behind the pulpit.

He knows, you know, everything out there. And I'll give you a good example that I have often thought of when it comes to this area of name dropping, something like that, because I taught a series of over 200 messages on biblical and extra biblical literature, I came to know a whole lot about the manuscripts and the whole subject of textual criticism.

And so what was so funny with Dr. Freeman is he used the King James Bible, which I use, which is fine. It's based on a certain textual tradition, and it's a Byzantine text, and that's of complicated stuff.

You have to know what's going on there, you don't know. Hope art would come to, here's what he would do. He would come to a verse or two in the King James, which the King James was following the so-called TR, the textus receptus, which is the Byzantine family of the textual transmission, and he would say, now this verse was not in the original manuscripts, we need to correct it, and then he would correct it, and what he would do was follow what we call the West Cut and Horde, a textual transmission, and this is the Greek text that you will see

in Nestle Olin and the United Bible Society's 26th edition. And so he would correct it, but then on another tape, he would wail against that liberal West Cut and Horde theory. So he didn't even realize the mistake he was making, he was correcting the King James as he should have done, he was following West Cut and Horde textual view, and then later he would criticize them because he didn't even know that when he made the correction in the KJV, he was following West Cut and Horde.

That's neither here nor there, that may be over everybody's head, but because I knew the background of textual transmission, I knew you just, you don't have a clue what you're talking about. You've read something in a blur on the back of a book, and you're throwing that out there to act important, but you can't connect the dots and you can't put everything together.

Somebody told me here recently, who used to be a part of Jeff Barnett's church down in act and Jeff Barnett had a well-known song leader, I won't use his name, but I have spoken with several of his children, and several of his other children have written on the faith assembly, children of faith assembly, Facebook group, not very happy with their upbringing.

I have a friend who happened to live in the same area as the song leader at Jeff Barnett's church in actin', and he would occasionally, coming to and from church, see the song leader, who had a station wagon with his kids.

He said, I'll never forget, channel. I remember leaving church one day, the song leader was ahead of me, down the highway, and we went the same way, because I had to go home to my home, he was going home to his home, and here I'm coming down the highway, and I see the song leader in his station wagon, pulled over there, and he's got one of those boys out, just wailing him from here to Amarillo, and he said, I just drove right on by, but I knew that's brother, so and so, wailing away on one of his kids.

So, yeah, it was just, it was a very, problematic issue at faith assembly and I just hate to hear the stories and just the negative aftermath that will have probably you know it's it's affected people you know John and not only affected the ones who were disciplined but then they were taught that's the way you discipline so it's like this whole abuse cycle somebody in the family you know has to break the has to break the cycle and I hope a lot of these families have and they realize that I'm not saying you can't spank your child but the way it was taught at faith assembly

was just way out of proportion and way out of balance and was not a loving way at all you know the other problem is when you're in a group like this where the leader of the central figure is in your business and he's angry and he's teaching you how to treat other people in a angry way whenever there are people who are in his congregation that have slight mental health issues or just anger issues in general the problem is it further amplifies it people who ordinarily would not be violent and would not create problems in their families

now they're under this system where they're being told this is a good thing encourage the anger encourage the punishment encourage the the physical violence there is a website I work with several people who would escape branemism and now other cults as well many of the women are severely mistreated under this type of leadership because they may have been in a marriage where a husband had some sort of psychological issue and it was further amplified by this and so there's some awful stories if your listeners want to hear it it's casting pearls project dot com lady has started a place where women can

share their voices and talk about what happened but it's a huge problem for not just the women because while the women suffered in many ways the wrath of the man from a psychological standpoint what it's doing to the men's heads in these movement is the equivalent to what's being manifested physically with their with their wives or verbally with their wives so it's all around it's it's a horrific thing that's happening that's just an excellent point John that I did not mention earlier but yes I think that for some of these young men they probably had a pretty balanced idea and view maybe based on the way they were

raised on how to raise their kids and they probably did a pretty good job but to your point some of the ones that came from a dysfunctional family and from what I have been told that the song leader of the Jeff Church came from his own dysfunctional family and so this is just perpetuated and so for some of these men this type of model Hobart Freeman that they are following Just brought out the the worst of them and they revert back to their crow magnon knee-and-or-fall days and So yeah, it was a bad situation. So let's maybe if we've got time John

Let's talk about one other thing. I'm just gonna mention it I'm gonna see if you even know where in the world. I'm going. Okay, so little boys And little girls were not allowed to play together Why do you think that might be the case John?

I don't know if I want to touch this one, but I know exactly where you're headed with it You know, I'm trying to work my way chronologically from birth We're gonna get to that whole dating realm here, but I'm still with just I'm talking about I'm with five and six and seven and eight year old Children on this point little boys and little girls were not allowed to play together According to one of the ministers. This was this was the phrase and I'm telling you I mean You just don't know what to do with these groups, you know, it's like they were they're out in the twilight zone

But they were not allowed to play together because they might rub up against each other Oh my goodness We're talking about innocent Babies five years old eight years old nine years old. We're not talking about 14 and 15 year old we'll get to them in a minute you have to watch out for them because the hormones are raging by that time And oh did that become a whole disaster in itself. I'm back to pre adolescent times That the the little children were separated based on gender because they might rub up against one another You know and that's just gross. I mean, I don't know any other way to say it

But what is wrong with you? What is what is wrong with you? I mean really what is wrong with you as a minister to ever stand up and say anything like that in a mixed congregation What is wrong with you to make a statement like that and whole barp by the way did not he was not the one who said this it was someone else but One one Growing woman now who was very young back in those days just told me this story She said there was a particular minister. I'm not going to mention any names because I don't want to

Well, I'm just not going to mention any names, but she said this minister Just kept you in his message and I think this girl might have been a preteen or a young teen Just kept using the word lust You know L UST lust is lust is bad and don't lust and if you rub up against somebody you might lust and don't lust And she said you know channel. I decided I pulled out my Okay, and I just started, I wanted to count how many times was he using the word lust in this message?

This is an old minister and a young lady and she said she had a friend beside her that was wanting, was curious and wanted to look over and see, well, what are you jotting down there?

She said, I had to quickly close my book because I didn't want her to see what I was. She was documenting, coming up with a tally of the number of times this old dude was talking about lust.

And I'll tell you, when I heard that story, it reminded me of what it really reminded me of. John is way back in the day. I don't know if you remember you probably do, but Jimmy Swagger, who was a big Pentecostal preacher down in Louisiana, and I remember Jimmy Swagger used to just rail against sexual sin.

It was less immorality and all of you evil people out there and warning his church and a warning his men against lust and warning them against sin and warning them against doing anything outside there.

I mean, he would rail on it and sump with his Bible. Well, we know who got caught with prostitutes and motel rooms. It was Jimmy Swagger, right? And I think that there's a term a phrase for it is called psychological projection.

I think the person who rails against homosexuality and all of his messages, he might be a closet. I mean, he might be because why do you need to talk about that all the time?

There's no need to. I mean, you mention it, and because you don't have a fascination with it, you just go on. You say homosexuality is wrong, you know, in your message and you just go on because you have no fascination with it.

But if you do have a fascination with it, then maybe you rail on it too much. Maybe that's what you talk about all the time. It's called psychological projection. I think that's what Jimmy Swagger was doing.

I think that's what other ministers have done. And it may have been, and may have been what some of these ministers were doing. They're projecting the problem of lust that they are experiencing. And I don't mean that they're lustful toward little children.

I don't know them. So I don't know what they were lustful toward. But they're projecting, you know, a problem that they're dealing with themselves. It's a very well-known occurrence among speakers to psychologically project.

Wherever it is, you are dealing with most intimately yourself. You project that on your audience as though all of you are the ones doing it. I'm not. I'm clean. But I want to warn you against this sin.

And so, you know, we've got this situation which should never have been brought up in a church. You should not be talking. about little boys and little girls, you just don't do that in church, you know, this is church of all places. Where are people's manners and where are their upbringing to talk about? Now let's keep our boys and girls separated after the service is over when they go outside and play because we don't want any little boys and girls to rub up against each other. It's just pitiful and it's part of the sad legacy of some of the ministers of faith assembly. Yeah, I've studied

that as well. There are a significant number of problems with the ministers who are talking about a specific sin and concentrating it every single Sunday, concentrating on it. And it's confusing to the people for the most part because we said that last Sunday, why is he bringing it up again?

And in many cases, I'm laughing, it's not funny, but I'm laughing about the little small child, children getting together, boys and girls. Well, nobody in the church had to have seen that as a problem except for the guy who's crazy and who must have an issue with it, right? So they're all probably thinking, why is he talking about that? That's just really weird. But anyway, I studied it to some extent because Brannum railed in many different ways about women in ways that just aren't natural, aren't normal. One of the things that came out of the laterane movement is that women

are a byproduct of men. They weren't created in the original creation. They were an afterthought. And the way that they made this weird leap is that because the woman was pulled from the rib in the book of Genesis, she wasn't in the original creation. She was in the rib. But if you turn the page, it says male and female created he, them, right? But the Bible was second place to the doctrine in these movements. They really didn't care what the Bible said as long as they could fit in the agenda. In the agenda, in many cases, was to discriminate against the women.

And the problem, like I've been alluding to all along, is it conditions the people, it conditions the listeners to think it's okay to have this type of discrimination. And further, the men who are doing this usually do it in a joking way or in a vindictive way that makes the people think it's okay to be insulting while you do it as well.

So you've got the insult, the injury, the whole array of problems. I grew up in that environment. And I watched men and women struggle because the man's not treating the woman. directly in the woman can't stand up for herself in the movement and then I've watched people escape and I've watched them just blossom suddenly they go to the church where they realize wait a minute that's unhealthy that's not how it's supposed to be and I watch the whole family is just flourish because of it yeah I don't know your marriage john but I'm I would assume it's similar to mine I'm married to a wonderful what my wife

is a little tiny thing she's five to 120 pounds she's kind and sweet and generous and probably views me as the head of the household but I'll tell you she got another thing in her called independence and if I would to dare treat her you know in a in a way that is condescending or just in an inappropriate way I would hear about that immediately and rightfully so and I have heard about it immediately in the past and that's I mean you can't have a leader in a church or leader in a home who can just get away with being how they

want to be you want to be a slob you want to be an idiot go right ahead no that's part of the check and balance if you have a good wife and my wife has told me before what you said I need to hear an apology forthcoming immediately and I do not tolerate that kind of behavior and the women at faith assembly could never have said anything like that to their husband but that perfectly allowed by scripture and perfectly allowed by God and it is healthy for the man and for the marriage for the woman to be able to put her foot down say that simply is not acceptable in this home

as long as I'm the wife and the mother here that won't be happening in my home that's totally acceptable but could that have been said by those women absolutely not and I'm just sad and sorry to have to say that yes about my wife well when I was in the cult I used to carry a nice big stick and now I just hand it over to her and say here it's yours good decision brother good decision no we're you know like everything else it's everything is new for us we we had to learn how to

live life after leaving and I think that's the case with a lot of people who were in these things because I mean you weren't really trained properly in how to live life and the things that they taught you they had no business teaching you in the first place is the problem and the second problem is the person teaching you is pretty well crazy but I'm glad we're out of it I'm glad we can I'm glad we got through this this wasn't as touchy as I thought I think where you're heading with it is probably going to be the the touchier subject so we'll say that for next time but

this was fun I'm I'm glad we did it if you've enjoyed our show and you Want more information? You can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-Branham.org.

For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon, Audible.

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