Sodomite Shoes and Prostitute Purses: Church Leadership Gone Terribly Wrong - Chino Ross

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I have my co-host, minister, and friend, Cheno Ross, pastor, and the voice of the Understanding Scripture and Truth by Cheno D. Ross, YouTube channel. Cheno, it's good to be back, and for us this is right after Thanksgiving, I think this goes out a week or two weeks after, but happy Thanksgiving to everybody listening. I hope that you had one. I'm very thankful for today's episode because we're

talking about something that really when somebody leaves this cult and their female, this is the most impactful thing for them. For many of the men, it's also impactful because the women's dress, the way in which the women were required to dress in these movements was so strict, and yet we were misrepresented in what the Bible says about dressing ourselves, to the extent that people actually believe that the way that the Bible has been twisted by these holiness groups is actually what it says without having read and critically thought about what it actually says. So what happens

is the men leave the group, and whenever the women start to wake up and understand this, any change in their wardrobe, the men just go berserk. It's this weird dynamic, right? It's freedom for the women and the men are going, oh, don't do this, you're unholy. And I'll never forget, for me, this, it was really, really difficult. When we left the Brandham cult, we made almost no changes to our appearance. My wife did not, I want to say it was like five years before she even got earrings, and I had showed her the passage from, what is it, Ezekiel 16, where God's talking about

his faithless bride and says, I had torn you with the most beautiful jewelry, and I put earrings in your ear and a nose ring in your nose. Well, that's in the Bible, but yet we were told that the earrings were the devil's stirrups. I don't know if Hobart had a similar thing, but couldn't wear the earrings, and the modesty was so twisted because the way that the Bible talks about modesty.

and the way that the holiness portrays it are two different completely separate things. To be modest, just simply, it doesn't always include flesh. Modesty has a much broader meaning than this. But we were taught that modesty meant not showing skin.

But when you stop and really think about it, the men wore the dresses back in the old days. They wore the long robes, right? And the garment that pertains to the woman or the garment that pertains to the man, you can't really apply that to the holiness religion.

And that's just a broad overview who will dive deeper into it today. But I remember this was one of the most impactful things so much. So that we made very little changes for a long time after leaving.

I can tell you're going to enjoy today's episode, right, John? I mean, you're glad that we are through with all the interpersonal, religious stuff with Dr. Freeman. Just think about it, John. But if you had gone through a little rough patch in your marriage, and you needed to call up Hobart for some marital counseling, we're in the world that have gotten you.

I mean, I would rather literally get advice from a chimpanzee at the zoo than call up any of these guys. They'll have you beating your kids, getting your wife to submit to you, and that meant getting your house in order.

So any man can get his wife to submit to him. I mean, that is the most ridiculous idea even out there. I don't know how you would get him. I've never found a way to get my wife to submit to me.

I mean, either she wants to be in a loving relationship with me or she does it. And that's her choice. That's not my choice. Well, I can say from experience and from having seen it done, you know, the Hobart Freeman called, broke away from the latter rain calls.

And so what I came from was more like the original, if you will, to some extent. The women were very beaten down. I can name off, and in my head, the moment you said that, I started picturing faces of women who did submit fully, but the submit is the wrong word.

The women were broken. And because they were broken, they just didn't stand up for themselves. Yeah, it's just so sad. And it is true that there is a divine order. Paul talks about it.

Peter talks about it. That the husband is the head of the home. And it's not based on some first century custom or some patriarchalism from Judaism. It goes all the way back. Paul said to the creation order.

But Hobart just talked about it non-stop. As most of these ministers, I think, did John, and still do. And they talk about it from the woman's perspective. And they just don't give enough time at all to the other side of the coin.

And that is, husbands love your wife. his Christ loves the church, be willing to lay your life down for them. As Christ is the Savior of the church, the husband and man should be the Savior, the protector, the deliverer.

I mean, he should be able to handle everything for his wife and children. And that part of it was sadly, sadly, missing in the faith assembly story. So what we have been looking at, John, for a long time is this long list of what I call don'ts. It's just a list of don'ts. It's like a litmus test for you to be in faith assembly and in good standing. And rather than find, you know, love joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, maintenance, temperance, the fruit of the spirit, you find, you can't borrow money. A woman can't wear pants. If you've waited six

months to discipline your child, you've waited too long. You can't borrow money. You can't join a club. It's just this long, long list of don'ts. And I was thinking before he went on the air this morning, if I could just read this one passage that Paul wrote in Colossians chapter 2 and verse 20, he said, wherefore if he be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why as a living in the world are you subject to ordinances, touch not, taste not, handle not, which are all to perish with the using after the commandments and doctrines of men. And that was so typical of faith assembly,

things that you could not do. See, look at touch, taste, participate in. It was just don't, don't, don't, don't. So it was like the faith assembly survival list. This is how you survive as a believer.

And this is how you can prove to yourself and prove to others that you are a Christian. And so the final thing is maybe the least damaging in some sense and more humorous one on the whole list and that concerns Christian dress. When I say it's less damaging, it's just less damaging than one than the one that we just discussed and that that concerned interpersonal relationships.

And so here in this area, we're going to get to these famous phrases like Sodomite shoes and prostitute purses because I for sure would not want to wear a Sodomite shoe. I would not want to be a Sodomite. So I for sure would want to find out what they were to make sure that I didn't wear it because if I did knowingly or unknowingly that it traced back to them, then maybe somehow that would make me a Sodomite. I don't know. That's how that's how Hobart's he mind would work. And there's just a long list of things. As you said earlier, mostly women,

but sometimes men would not be allowed to wear. And so I have had questions over the years as to the origin of this. Why in the world would a Christian minister be spending as much time as he does dealing with things like this? And I think I have the answer to that, but we have to have a little background knowledge of Dr. Freeman. If you remember months ago, I gave his account of his conversion story. He and June were operating a small business down in St. Pete, Florida, low grocery store, retail business. And Hobart was also a freelance photographer. And he was in his early 30s and

believe it or not, he was going to all the nightclubs in Tampa, cross the bridge in Tampa, taking pictures of all the starlets and of all the singers and all of the women, not the men.

It was so you just wonder what's in Hobart's background prior to his conversion experience. But as he tells the story, he always said, I got saved on the road home from a nightclub. But you have to really dig. You have to go to listen to June's testimony tape in May of 1977 at a lady's luncheon. And you have to just dig a little further to understand what did he mean?

Who gets saved on the way home from a nightclub? Well, it went down like this. Hobart was experiencing some severe economic hardship. There was just a downturn in the economy in North Western Florida at that time. And so his retail business was suffering.

He had taken a lot of pictures of these starlets and nightclub singers and these risky women in Tampa. And he had gone to Tampa to try to sell some of these photographs. That's how he made money. He was a good photographer. He'd take pictures of them, go offer the pictures for sale.

Nobody wanted to purchase anything. So on the way home, he said he was just crying out to God saying, you know, what should I do? You know, we're going to go bankrupt. And in his moment of misery, you know, he had his conversion experience. And within, he was a part of a little, he joined a little Baptist church there in the St. Peter area. And the minister of that Baptist church actually had some flyers around about a private Baptist college up in Kentucky.

Hobart thought, I want to get into the ministry. I feel called to the ministry, but he didn't know where to go. He investigated some places down south, but he was born in Ewing, Kentucky, and raised in Louisville, so to get back.

to Kentucky would be to get back home. So he investigated this little private Baptist college called Georgetown College, which is not far from where I'm sitting right here in Georgetown, Kentucky, in a traveling up there, he had two of the three girls at the time, two Georgetown College, got his undergraduate bachelor's degree, went on to the Southern Baptist seminary.

This is where the story kind of gets interesting and I'm definitely gonna tie this into the clothing issue as you'll see where all this came from. He went to Southern Baptist seminary in Louisville to get his THM, his master's in theology.

The Baptist's denomination is like the Protestant denomination in the United States, as we know. And the Southern Baptist convention is the big part of that, and their flagship university where they train all their ministers is in Louisville, Kentucky.

It's right off I-64 in Cannon's Lane. It's been there for over 100 years and still there to this day. So Hobart went to Southern Baptist to get his master's degree. In the early 1900 Southern Baptist seminary had been a very conservative seminary.

But the higher criticism from Europe, especially from Germany had made its way over, had turned the seminary in the mid-50s to a very liberal institution where they denied some of the fundamentals of the faith, the inerrancy of scripture, things related to Christ, his virgin birth, his deity, his atonement, his bodily resurrection and so forth.

And so Hobart decided he did not want to get his further doctorate another degree there. He needed to go to a place where he felt more comfortable. While he was teaching and studying at the Southern Baptist the Southern Baptist seminary, he also was pastoring a little church in Southern Indiana.

And this gave him some exposure to what was going on up in Northern Indiana at the time. In the early 1900s, the brethren movement in Northern Indiana had gone through its own division. They were going liberal according to some of the people who were leaders in the brethren organization in church.

They didn't like the direction, that it was going just as the Southern Baptist seminary had gone liberal. So a few of the professors, Alva McLean and Herman Hoyt were two of the heavyweights broke off in the 1930s, established a new brethren conservative denomination and established a seminary for higher training in Winona Lake.

And I believe Alva Jay McLean was the first president of Grace Seminary. This was a brethren seminary and this was a conservative seminary. When Hobart heard about this, he said, you know, this is for me, this is where I want to go and work on my next degree.

So I think when people hear the word brethren, they say, well, what does that mean? I mean, we know about Baptist and Catholics and Presbyterians, what is a brethren? So the brethren trace their roots back to the second generation churches and movements after the Reformation of Martin Lutheran John Calvin.

When these men, along with Zwingli and Melanchon and Knox, whenever they broke from the Roman Catholic Church, the main thing on their minds were these big important doctrines like justification by faith, like the priesthood, like the source of authority in the church.

These were things on their mind, what they didn't consider were smaller issues, like baptism and the relationship between the church and the state. And so within a generation of the Reformation happening, we have this new Reformation and it went by the name Anna Baptism.

Because some of these people, see Lutheran Calvin, they thought their Catholic Baptism sprinkling as a child infant baptism was fine. Their minds were preoccupied with more important doctrines. But by the next generation, people were thinking, I don't think that we have reformed enough in the Reformation. I think there is too close of a connection between the church and state, and they also had a big problem with baptism.

And so the Anna Baptism, which simply means another baptism, felt that baptism should not be for infants, it should be for believers, and that it should not be by sprinkling, it should be by immersion.

So at that time, you have this whole movement in Western Europe that involved the old-order German groups, the brethren denomination, the menonites, the amish, all of these old-order groups. And one of the things, John, that they brought with them was not only the issues and questions of Baptism and the relationship of the church to the state, but one thing they also had a problem with was all of this high dress and high garb that they saw in the Roman Catholic church, which was continued to be seen in the Lutheran and in the Presbyterian churches.

And so, here comes the subject of clothing. And so this is where, when Hobart was there, a great seminary, he looked... At the Southern Baxes Convention, he converted to his church membership to the Brethren Church.

He was re-baptized, Hobart's famous for talking about five different times he had to be watered baptised before he ever got it right. Because the brethren view on baptism is triple immersion in the name of the Father, you come back up in the name of the Son, you come back up in the name of the Holy Spirit, you come back up and you can't go backwards, you have to go forwards.

So it was a new form of baptism for Hobart and it was opening his eyes to this whole new realm of Christian dress. And what he saw in the Brethren Church is the same thing that you see in the Old Order German groups, in the Anabaptist, in the Menonites, and in the Amish.

And it's what they call plain dress. It had to be plain by somebody's definition. We don't ever know whose definition would be the valid one, but it had to be plain dress. So it had to be gray, or brown, or black.

The true believers would not use a zipper because that's a modern invention. It can only be some kind of button or latch. And basically, sack cloth, you know, just the planer, the uglier, the draper would be more appropriate for a Christian to wear.

So this is the very beginning of Hobart's introduction to what he is going to later figure out is proper Christian dress. There's also some very interesting historical connections to all of this that you just said.

And some of it, I'm still digging because the organizations haven't been quite honest in their histories. For example, you know my study with William Brannum, I discovered that it was directly tied to the Ku Klux Klan, and the names I've mentioned a few times, Roy Davis and Congressman William D. Upshaw, who is deeply involved with the Brannum movement.

Well, I discovered that Upshaw was also the vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention. And he used that to his advantage out West as they were rebuilding the third wave of the Klan from out in California.

Yet, you won't find his name anywhere mentioned in the Southern Baptist histories. You can go look, and it's just simply not there, but I can show you articles where he's bringing in men from the, I think it was the Dallas Southern Baptist seminary using his vice president title to do so.

And I think I even found some articles in Louisville, but all that aside, the Brannum religion was deeply tied. to the Southern Baptist Convention through Roy Davis through Upshaw. Well then around 19, I want to say it was early 1940s, William Brannum rebranded himself with a new stage persona and he connected with a very political figure in Indianapolis named E. Howard Cadyl and the famous Cadyl tabernacle is where Brannum helped launch Jim Jones' ministry.

It was also where when Congressman Upshaw ran for president under the prohibition ticket, they campaigned using that as one of their campaign headquarters. Well it was also the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan for Indiana and so there were significant connections there.

Brannum was very close to E. Howard Cadyl. E. Howard Cadyl was known as the tabernacle man because he was a brethren minister and he was planting brethren churches all throughout Indiana, Northern Kentucky, in this area.

He was a well-known brethren minister and his church was the headquarters of the Ku Klux Klan. So there's some weird synergies that are happening there and a lot of people don't know this but Brannum's, I think it was his second wife was they were married with a brethren minister from Kentucky performing the ceremony.

So Brannum was also deeply tied to the brethren ministries. Now by the time that he would have come in contact with all of this, the brethren would have been history but in today's version of Brannumism they've erased all of this and none of that existed.

What I don't know is if that history still remained intact whenever Hobart Freeman started seeing how all this was working. It could have been that they were advertising that this was a transition from somewhat connected to the brethren.

It's amazing how many people in Faith Assembly's congregation to this day have brethren, men and I, or Amish backgrounds. I mean there's a large, large number of them and part of that is the mutual attraction to plain dress.

We've talked before John, it's just amazing that American evangelicalism of the 20th century just has a terrible, terrible track record when it comes to legalism. If they had spent half as much time talking about the Christian virtues as they did legalism would be so much further ahead in American Christianity today.

We just wouldn't be having these problems but for some reason people just get all bogged down on, you know, I can't drink smoke or chew or go with women who do and that just was what it was all about.

And it's not that smoking is good for you and it's not that alcoholism is right, we're not saying that, but they just spent too much time, you know, what always said, measuring on the miners and the majored on the miners and minored on the majors.

And as a result, we're in the mess that we're in today having to try to untangle some of this stuff. So Hobart was very much influenced by his experience at Gracieological Seminary. He was there as a student, you know, he spent several years there as a professor.

And what's interesting, there are just so many stories that I know that other people are aware of from Hobart's grace seminary days in Winona Lake, Hobart in his teachings never gave credit where credit was due, it's like verbal plagiarism non-stop, like 100% of the time.

He gave everything in his teachings as though it was a revelation to him privately. Now, on the very, very early tapes, he'll mention Hagen and Copeland and Kenyan and Coolman and Brannum and Jack Coe on the very, very early tapes.

I mean, on the very early ones, he will mention them. He will mention, you know, a professor like J. Barton Payne or Murrell C. Tenney or something like that, on some very early tapes.

But by the later years, no names are being brought up at all. The way he was couching his teaching was as though this came from him. But when you know who the professors were, Herman Hoyn, an Alamaclaine and John C. Whitcombe, these are some heavyweight people.

Some of the best theologian conservative writers in the mid-20th century in America, those were Hobart's professors there. All of Hobart's understanding, all of his teaching about Genesis, the flood, the creation versus evolution, every bit of that came from John C. Whitcombe.

Dr. Whitcombe was a professor of here. Dr. Whitcombe, along with his colleague at Virginia Tech, Henry Morris, wrote the Seminole work, the Genesis flood, that book was actually the dissertation of Dr. Whitcombe when he was working on a doctoral degree in Grace Theological Seminary.

Hobart got all this stuff from him, but would never acknowledge it. He was famous for his teaching about the Sermon on the Mount. And here's what I mean, famous by, he would teach that, like we believe in the Sermon on the Mount, but I had ministerial students that wanted to fight me over this, no one believes this except us, we believe it, we believe it, we believe it, that is and was a prominent doctrine of the bread.

in movement. Dismensationalism, which came from Darby and Dallas Theological Seminary, had put Matthew 5 to 7 in the Sermon on the Mount as into some other age of the Church. That's not relevant for today. The brethren said, this is teaching of Jesus that we need to be obeying today. That's the brethren doctrine, their non-resistance that Hobart, and not taking the oath and court that Hobart just championed all the time as though it was something original with him. Not a single solitary bit of that, not even his examples, not the way he couched it, not the terminology, not the phrases that he used, not a single bit

of that, was his and his alone. It came from his seminary teachers there. I think I've said earlier in our broadcast, in our interviews together, John, that one of the first things that began to bother me in my early and mid-twenties was not a big doctrinal problem that I had with Hobart, because I wasn't smart enough at the time yet to know what all my doctrines were, what I believe versus what he taught. The first clues to me were his inconsistencies. He had speak out of both sides of his mouth, and the second thing was, I would go, wait a minute, I've heard that

somewhere else, you know, thumb through some pages of a book. Oh, that's where he got that. That was taught by the very professors at Gracieological Seminary. And when I saw, when I began to see that, I was obviously very disillusioned. It's the same process that you've been through, that all of us have been through, that we thought our mentor or mentors were honest and genuine and truth-telling and godly men. And then when you find out, this is plagiarism. This wasn't even his stuff, and he's giving it as though it was, then it's a real big disappointment on our part.

You know, he tells the stories while he was there at Gracie Seminary that I, you know, the other ministers, they're out throwing ball on Saturday night before they have to have a message ready on Sunday morning, not I, 14 to 16 hours a day. I'm in my study, studying. We talked about that phrase of his before. That's a famous phrase of his that he said all the time. And when you're young and dumb, that's pretty impressive. And to constantly refer to his habit of spending 14 to 16 hours a day studying, you know what that does to your audience, that tells them two things. Number one,

you don't study as much as I do. And number two, you can't possibly know as much as I know. That's what that's intended to get across to your audience. If you do spend 14 to 16 hours a day studying, okay.

But you don't need to tell anybody that. We know what the purpose of telling people that. But you know, when I'm in my late teens and early 20s, I just hear that and you just, you know, bow down before the altar of Hobart Freeman like, wow, I can't even sit still for six hours, let alone study for 16 hours.

I have always wondered, is that really true? It only leaves eight hours to sleep and eat and shower and brush your teeth and shave and get from point A to point B. If you're spending 16 hours, I don't even know that you have enough time for that to be true.

Enough time in your day for that to be true. And if it is and if you did, I know another thing that I didn't think of back then, but I thought of years later.

Oh, that means you have completely neglected your wife and your daughters. That's the other thing that means you have completely neglected your family. 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 Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.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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I remember having a conversation with the guy who met in a restaurant. We just happened to be there when he was there. And I was going through a very difficult time with my consulting business.

I had more work than I could possibly do. And he was asking me how it was going. And I was obviously tired. You could see it on my face. And I said, man, I've been working 21-hour days.

And the look on my wife's face. She knew that I had worked, you know, maybe one or two or 21-hour days. But it wasn't like I had done that every day for years on end.

Like it came across, I guess. I didn't intend for it, too. But she let him know that no, John doesn't work 21 hours a day. But, you know, your mind gets really tired. I have worked long hours.

I think everybody who's owned a business has, but you become unproductive after about 12. And there are some people that become up unproductive after about eight. Not everybody can even do that. I have had weeks and weeks on end of 12 hour days, but your mind gets tired and you can't think.

If you were trying to retain knowledge at 12 hours, you wouldn't. Your brain just simply gets too tired. So, I would question whether or not 18 hours was accurate. Now, he may have done it once or twice.

Who knows? Doesn't make sense, but you're right. That's the kind of statement that somebody makes when they want to intimidate you and show that they're superior. It's exactly what you would hear with an authoritarian figure.

I'll just say it like that. And, you know, these guys, they want to show themselves to be better, but yet their job, as a minister, is to improve you so that you can become better.

And it would have been more beneficial for him to have said something simply to the effect. You know, I've studied a lot, but I would like for you to study a lot and let's study together and let me show you what I know.

And bring everybody else up to his level because any good teacher, they would want their students to become even better than they are as a teacher. They would feel they've done their job. Any bad teacher would want to show themselves to be superior.

I just think there was a lot, John, of misrepresentation of his private life, a lot of stories about the private life that we shouldn't care about and he shouldn't care about trying to give to us.

But I think those types of ministers, because they're dealing with so much insecurity in their own life, they just want to put that out there because they know it's gonna bring some kind of praise from the audience for them.

Another story he always told about his seminary days is he was always studying and didn't have God had sent him, so God sent me to study and to get ready for the minister. He didn't send me to work.

And while all these other guys are working 40 hours a week, I'm studying 14 to 16 hours a day. And then he would tell stories that other ministerial students, he said, God would move on them.

They were critical of me in my study habits. And then it's like Psalm 23, God would set a table before you in the presence of your enemies and he said sometimes your enemies will come and load it down with food.

And God would move on these other ministerial students to come and bring them clothes or bring them food or something. That was always Hobart's side of the story that I just studied all the time.

I was more devoted than any other student. And then go. God worked on these heathen, worldly, carnal, ministerial students around me and they would bring clothes and food to our house. Do you know what though?

There are people who know some of those ministerial students because they were parents of some of the people then it ended up at Faith Assembly. And that's not the way it went down at all.

Those ministerial students looked at Holbart who was doing nothing but studying rather than taking care of his family as he should have been doing. And they felt sorry for June and for the two and then later the three daughters and out of the kindness and goodness of their Christian hearts.

They weren't the evil ones, Holbart was the evil one. Out of the kindness and goodness of their Christian hearts, they would bring clothes and they would bring food and they would bring supplies over to the Freeman household.

This interesting, the Bible says, if a man doesn't work, he doesn't deserve to eat. He's denied the faith, he is worse than an infidel. That's what Paul says in the New Testament. Holbart was gloating about the fact that I didn't work any, I was just studying and then God was moving on these other people's hearts to help me.

And those other people didn't see it that way. They saw Holbart as an irresponsible husband and father and they did the Christian thing. I mean of all things, these people in these overcome or groups think they're superior to everyone around them and actually it's just a reverse John, they're inferior to everyone around them because they don't understand what true Christianity is about.

Anyway, back to the clothing thing. So Holbart's background as we see is in the brethren movement where he was taught this message of plain dress and where he, after he received the Holy Spirit baptism in 1966, really began to struggle with that old order dress.

He has numerous, numerous tapes where that subject is brought up. Any of your tapes, messages from the late 60s through the early 1970s, you will find some references to the real life struggle that Holbart was having, had had and was still having with this subject of Christian dress.

So this is the origin of it all. His brethren background, then his struggle once he became charismatic with how am I to deal with that. So John, if you could play that one clip and this is going to come from a series of teachings done in late 1973.

Hobart was doing a series of studies in the Book of Zechariah that he entitled The End Time Restoration of Israel. And on that very first tape, very first message from the 21-minute, 10-second mark through the 22-minute, 21-second mark, if you could play that.

And the reason I don't have a necktie on is tonight's not because I can't wear one. I don't believe in wearing one. I went through a little stage of that once.

I had some brothers and say, what good's a necktie? Doesn't hold up anything?

You tell me, it was a religious thing with them. And I couldn't find a reason for wearing it. And they said, see, it's pride. And just about the first thing that the Lord spoke to me and I mean as plain as I'm talking to you, friends, when I got the baptism of Holy Spirit, he said, because I was asking about it, he said, it's up to you, whether you are free.

If you want to wear it, wear it. If you don't want to wear it, take it. So the reason I don't have it on is because, well, it's nice to be informed. So as you can tell from listening to that, he's really struggling over neckties.

And he talks about that all the time. He didn't have a necktie on for this message. And but he wanted to explain that I'm not bound by a necktie or not a necktie. But he said, but I did go through a period of my life where I struggle with that.

So most of us see, the reason I find all this fascinating is I didn't come from any old order background. So I don't have any faults or issues or struggles with Christian dress. You know, I just never entered my vocabulary because it wasn't a part of my history.

And I'm trying to show people the reason that this is a part of Hobart's theology, it was a very much a part of his history. And he wrestled with it and struggled with it because the brethren were telling him the brethren church you can't wear a necktie doesn't hold anything up.

Like belts do on a pair of pants. It's just purely ostentatious show. It's just decoration. You're trying to show off by putting this necktie on. And so he went through some serious struggles over that.

Then I have another clip and we can multiply this by a dozen, but there is another one. If we could hear it was when Hobart taught a series on the Book of Acts, this was Acts chapters 14 through 16.

of all things the name of the message was Christian Liberty and from the 31 minute and 18 second mark through the 32 minute and 7 second mark he again goes down this same path. He said and I saw in the vision you didn't have a necktie on he says how do you feel about the old-order dress now you know about old-order dress the Amish week fast that God was beginning to pour out his spirit upon the church he said and I saw in the vision you didn't have a necktie on he says how do you feel about the old-order dress now you know about

old-order dress the Amish old-German Baptist you understand that kind of like a Catholic priest black suit it looks on that order they wear the big hat well I didn't intend that as criticism I'm just describing for those who've never seen any of the Amish are the old-German Baptist with their beard so he's old-order he says how do you feel about the old-order dress because when I saw in the vision and he was putting two and two together you see I could tell what he was trying to arrive at without a tie that meant that maybe you

should put on the uniform I said brother I have prayed about it if there's anything that God wants to show me there of asking he's showing me absolutely nothing in fact he has said to me you are free where a necktie he said it directly to me where are don't where you are free he talks about dealing with a local brethren person who was talking to him and the person wanted to know what's your belief about you know the old-order dress and Hobart tells him I recognize over this you can hear all this in that clip I had prayed about this

and God hasn't shown me anything about it in other words I think I'm free Hobart was really struggling but his most favorite phrase in all of these is to say I've read Galatians and Galatians says I'm free from the law but within a couple of years here's what happened John it's it's almost like he could not help himself Hobart Freeman came from a dark home raising a home with no love with no approval and emotion from his father or from his mother and I feel sorry for him in that regard and he was however basically a little legalist at

heart he had a lot more in common with Mount Sinai than he had with the Apostle Paul he was always in these legalistic forms of thought and he just couldn't seem to get his way out of it and even though he made some progress I would say in the late 60s and early 1970s he was now wearing a neck tie and he was wearing colored sport coat and pants you know something beyond black or gray or brown or navy you know he actually could wear a little color and could wear a little necktie he just constantly relapsed back into legalism and as the 70s

progress oh my word that's when faith assembly became so famous for the wrong things and it's all of their stuff about dress one of the first things he began to talk about was women and pants one of the most important teachings it's not on the 10 things required for fellowship with faith assembly list but it was still referred to counseling he said if you're new in this church you need to hear the two tapes entitled the restoration of the biblical roles of husband and wife and those are two things you do not want to listen to but those were two messages he did in the early

1970s and on part one at the 21 minute mark he says this a direct quote you'll wear pants up here with an uneasy conscience because it's not Bible end of quote talking to the women now I hope I spoke out of both sides of his mouth all the time he was shifty and crafty notice he did not say I forbid you to wear pants these false teachers always they're pretty darn smart unfortunately John unfortunately they're pretty darn smart because they couched things in a way where I didn't say you couldn't wear pants but all of us know that someone can teach you cannot wear

pants without saying you cannot wear pants there are many ways to teach there are many ways to get across what you want there's the explicit way which is what I prefer I prefer whatever I believe I'm just going to say this is what I believe and not and not hide not gut behind a bush or hide behind a rock just say this is what I believe and let the chips fall where they may that's that's what integrity and honesty requires just say it now what what a lack of integrity and dishonesty requires is this you want the people to know your belief but you don't want them to be able to hold

you to what you said and so when people would come up and say no hope arc said you can't wear pants people in the church of faith assembly would defend him and say he never said that he never said that no he didn't say that you fool but what did we just read here you're where pants up here with an uneasy conscience because it's not Bible.

You know, I'm a big fan of the Old Westerns. I like those almost as much as I like cartoons, but not quite. But the Old Western, and I'm going to say this anyway, but I think in today's language it's probably considered racist, but you always hear the Native American saying, white man speak with forkedong. And that's immediately what comes to mind when I hear you talk about Hobart Freeman, because he's talking out of both sides of his mouth, and he learned it pretty well from William Brandham, who also did the same. But these guys, what they would do is if

they got into an audience where they knew they were preaching something that, or they had some idea that everybody in the group was, would be offended by, they would say it like that so that they could exactly what was on their mind without saying what's on their mind. So they're speaking with the forkedong. But you know, as I said earlier, the men back in the Bible days wore the robes.

And I don't think that there's a single man who in today's world would want to dress like the ancients did when the scriptures were written that they're using to uphold their dress code. I just don't think they would do it. You're not going to find a man going around wearing a robe.

They would say, no, that belongs to a woman. But if you just take a step back and cognitively think about it, it's totally different. I saw a documentary, and I've tried for years to find it again, but I saw this documentary on the ancient Bible language as it related to the custom, because there are some very difficult to understand passages, and they had a really good way of explaining it in this documentary I watched. One of them, and not ironically, not many Christians are aware that this law existed in the Old Mosaic Code, but you weren't allowed to mix two different

types of fibers. There's actually an Old Mosaic law that says you're not to mix the materials. And the way you're getting there, well the way that this, the way that this explained it is, back in the ancient days, you know, the groups of people, they would dress according to what they could use to make their clothing. And so if you were wearing a type of clothing that your enemies did not have, and you captured one of their enemies, and they continued to dress differently than you, you could pick them out of a crowd. And so they would, as you would take

enemies, and you would assimilate them into your host of people, you did not want them to dress out of the ordinary, otherwise they would fight for the wrong side whenever the enemy came. So there's things like that in the Bible code, and there's not any representation of that in days world or today's language. Yet the fundamentalist religions, which we're talking about now, they want to go back to those old obscure passages that have no relativity to today whatsoever.

And the closest thing that they can get to today are the passages in the New Testament about modesty, but they always want to say modesty means showing of skin, which is not what it was intended.

Yeah, Hobart just was, he was famous. He started with the No Pants and of course you can go to Faith Assembly and you can see the women and all their long dresses. Yeah, I mean they weren't short skirts or knee skirts or above the knee. I'm going to be just like going to some little paropial school where the principal gets the yardstick out and measures the distance from your knee cap to the hemline of your skirt. As I have said over and over, add nauseam, it's just ridiculous what evangelical American Christianity has allowed into its midst that has taken our focus off

of the gospel, off of the grace of God, off of the Christian virtues that we should be teaching on and talking about and then let the Holy Spirit deal with the individual how this applies to their lives. For some reason ministers just can't seem to keep their little grubby hands off of people's lives and they don't have any faith in the Holy Spirit to do his work. They want to teach on love joy, peace, long suffering, you know, the fruit of the Spirit and then they want to tell you now this is what that means, you can't wear this and you can't go see this move in, you can't

own this and you can't have a refreshing alcoholic beverage that has 4% alcohol in it at the end of mowing the lawn that afternoon or something. They just cannot seem to help themselves in delving back into legalism. So with Hobart it went from women and pants to white duct overalls, painters overalls, bomber jackets, plaid flannel shirts, I'm proudly wearing my plaid flannel shirt today, t-shirts with any riding on them because that might be advertising for some secular company or it might be a boastful self-expression about something about yourself and then it finally ended up with, you know, the big name ones and that would be Sodomite shoes and

prostitute purses. And the Sodomite shoes, it's just a, it's just a disgusting story about that. Hobart had nothing else to do but read Times, Newsweek, and Reader's Digest. He would get his little periodicals, read his little magazine article.

and see that in New Orleans in this time period there was a certain movement where a certain article of clothing or a certain brand of shoe became popular with a certain group of people.

And he would get all excited about that and come to church next time with a new doctrine, no more Nike tennis shoes because the homosexual community identifies that with that. And no more purses with a certain length strap on them because as women move and their body moves and then the purse moves and then they're behind, I hate to be too specific, but this is just the way it is.

They're behind moves and then all of us poor men who are dealing with all of our lust issues, you're gonna cause us to sin. And I just say, why was it more teaching address to all of these lustful crow magnons that inhabited faith assembly?

Why was all of the burden put on the women? Please help us with the way you dress so that I won't cave into my baser human nature.

It was just literally beyond imagination what was going on at faith assembly. The way everything was twisted, the way Hobart taught it, where he found his ammunition to teach these things, it was just beyond admonition, or beyond recognition for what should be some truth that we are actually getting out of scripture.

Their favorite phrase for themselves was that we are overcomers and they get that from Revelation chapters two and three. And the very Greek word that's translated to him that overcometh is N-I-K-E, Nike. It's the Greek word to conquer or to win or to overcome.

And it's the word Nike. And Hobart just couldn't stand any of that. And so let me give you John to tie back in. I like to sometimes close with a personal anecdote because I've had so much experience with this.

Too much, I hate to even think of all the experience I've had with stuff like this. That is just, I mean, just throw it in the garbage. It's just worthless. It does not advance you in your Christian life at all.

But this whole subject of pants. So when we moved to Kentucky, there was a satellite church in Shelbyville, Kentucky. One of the bigger, better known, longest-lasting satellite groups from faith assembly of all the ones all over the country and all over the world.

And that was Shelby. Christian assembly and their pastor was Tom Hamilton. They are still alive today, although once Tom died, one of his sons became a pastor of a splinter group, and anyway the church is split up.

We were living in Shelbyville. I was not pastoring a church at that time, and that's a whole nother story. Tom Hamilton, who was the pastor, came to my residence and asked me to come and be the teacher in his church, I will tell you that story at a later time when it fits in.

But what I wanted to say here is because I wasn't pastoring my kids, at least four, I had five, at least four or five of them, maybe all of them. I don't remember, one of them was still pretty young, but the older ones anyway wanted to go to church somewhere, and they obviously knew of Tom Hamilton's church in Shelbyville, and so I wanted to go there.

I was never a member, I never attended Tom's church, I didn't go to Tom's church, I liked Tom as a person, but I obviously knew that I'm gonna have problems and issues and things are probably not gonna go well if I show up there, so I didn't.

But you know, I wasn't ever gonna try to keep my children from doing what they want to do. They want to go to church, go to church. They said we want to go to Tom Hamilton's church.

I knew exactly who Tom was. Tom had ordered tapes of mine when I was still a minister up in New England, but I never, I wasn't gonna badmouth him to them. I mean, that doesn't do any good, it just sets the setting for a real bad experience.

I just said if you wanna go, go, so they started to go. And so my friend, my kids became friends with some of Tom's children as well as the other young people. You know, there were a lot of young people in their mid teens to early 20s there.

And so they had a good source of other teenagers and young adults to fellowship with. And then my girls began to notice something. They said, you know, it's interesting. Tom's always saying, and Tom did, because Tom had followed Hobart Freeman's teaching.

Tom's always saying women can't wear pants. They'd come home and tell me this. They'd say, dad, Tom's always teaching women can't wear pants. And I'd say, yeah, I know. You know, I wasn't gonna preach a sermon to them.

You just, yeah, I know. And they say, but the thing is, when we go hang out with Tom's girls, they're wearing dresses all the time out in public. And when they come and get in the car to, you know, go to a youth event, but they got a plastic bag and they got their blue jeans in the bag.

And so they're wearing a dress out in public when the adults can see them. But when we youth go hang out, they change into blue jeans like everybody else. And I... I said, yeah, I'm not surprised.

We would call that back in the old day, hypocrisy, but I'm not surprised. And I said, you always will find hypocrisy. Anytime you find legalism, you will find hypocrisy. You'll find it when you don't find legalism.

But where legalism is present, you will always find hypocrisy. So they said, well, what are we gonna do about this? I said, I don't know, I don't go to church there. He's not my pastor.

So that's up to you. And they said, well, can we talk to Tom about that? And they said, you certainly may, as long as you do it in a respectful manner. Because he is their elder, and he was the pastor of that church.

So I don't know if it was all three of my daughters, or just two of them, I don't know. But my daughters had a conversation with Tom after a message about this whole business up.

Why is it you're teaching one thing, but your family lives another. That is presenting a problem in our mind. And I thought it was a valid objection for them to raise. Well, one of Tom's sons found out that my daughters had raised an objection.

And he calls me up and begins to lecture me like, your daughters are a part of this church. So they need to obey what my father's teaching them, not what you teach them. I said, hold on a little boy.

I said, I'm the girl's dad. You know, I'm the authority figure in their life. They're all teenagers. I'm their parent. It's not your father. Ended up having Tom Hamilton call me on the phone himself,

and said, look, we have a situation. And I don't remember every detail of this conversation, by the way, it's been 25 years ago. But I remember the highlights because I knew what I wanted to say if Tom was ever going to raise an objection to me.

And I said, so Tom, what's the problem? And he said, well, look, you know, your daughters have come up and asked me a question. Now they're telling other people their views and it's causing a little bit of a problem, a little bit of a division in the church with what your daughters are saying.

And I said, well, what's it over, Tom? And he said, well, it's over, you know, the biblical requirements that women are not allowed to wear pants. And I said, oh, so that's a biblical requirement, not just a church, not just your church, that's a bit, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, brother Cheno, that's a biblical requirement.

And of course, I'm just playing dumb through this all. I knew where he was headed and I knew where I was headed. And I said, well, I am not aware of that being a biblical requirement.

So could you help me out here, brother Tom, could you educate me? Oh, yeah, he said it says right in the Bible, a woman shall not wear that which pertains to a man. And I said, Oh, really, where is that in the Bible?

And I can't remember if he knew. I knew it's in Deuteronomy 22.5. I knew where it was. So we end up whether he knew that it was there or I had to help him out.

I don't recall. So oh, yes, that's in Deuteronomy 22 and verse 5, a woman shall not put on that which pertains to a man and vice versa. And I said, Well, that's interesting, Tom.

That's an interesting verse and it's interesting that we would go there. I said, But I have a question for you. Do you have in your closet any suits, any slacks, any shirts, any undergarments, any ties that have a mixture of materials in them?

Well, what do you mean? I said, you know, polyester, wool, linen, anything with a mixture? Well, yeah. And I said, Well, do you know what the exact same chapter forbids that? I said, So Tom, come on, we have serious problems.

Have you ever had anybody in your church who has committed adultery? Unfortunately, we all have had people in our church who have committed adultery? The same chapter says you must take them out behind the church and stone them to death.

Have you done that in your church? Have you planted a garden with a variety of seeds in it? Have you planted a vineyard with different strains of grapes in it? The same chapter forbids all of that.

So I mean, Tom knew exactly what I was saying by this. It looked Tom. This is an Old Testament law, legalism, legislation. What the New Testament tells us in Galatians 3 is if you put yourself under one part of the law, you're bound to keep it all.

So I said, I don't think that my daughters have done anything wrong. Number one, they've objected to some hypocrisy they have seen. And number two, they have objected to simply a false doctrine that you have been teaching in your church.

And I'm sorry that you believe that way. And I know exactly where you got it from. You got it from Hobart. And Hobart may have gotten it from someone else. But I said, look, we ministers need to do a better job when it comes to exegeting and expositing scripture.

And we just need to do a better job teaching our people. So that's my own little story about this whole business of pants. And it is happening to this Hey, in Northern Indiana, where you won't see Pam Hill or Kathy Kinsey in a pair of pants, you'll see them in these all-long granny dresses, dating this belief all the way back to Deuteronomy chapter 22 and verse 5. Well, your stories are a lot better than mine. I wish I'd have compared notes and saved that for later. You know, one of the other problems with legalism is that legalism

is like Pinocchio's nose. The more you entertain it, the more it's going to grow. And Pinocchio, you know, having lied and legalism, having given you rules. I remember the first time I saw the outfits that were on the women during the latarine revivals. They were just slightly below the knee, some of them slightly above the knee, even. And I was shocked because, man, those were scandals close. You weren't allowed to show the flesh of your ankle. And what happened over time is they kept this doctrine up that if you're showing even the slightest little bit of skin,

that God gave you, you're sending, or more specifically, as you said, you're causing the men to send. And so what happened is over time, the dress has grew and grew until they, you know, they came down further. Well, in the Brannum Tabernacle, they didn't make it all the way to the floor yet. They actually did after I left. I found some articles where they were saying, this is an inappropriate dress if it doesn't cover the knobs of your ankles. But slightly above the ankles, it was about where it was when I left. And I'll never forget this woman. Yeah, I knew her well.

She came up to sing a special in the church. And she was wearing a denim gene skirt that she apparently made herself. And the denim skirt was formed. It went down further than the other dresses that the other ladies were wearing, which would have caused her to trip because you can't walk with it like this. So she put this little slit in the back of the skirt just high enough where it actually matched the rest of the ladies in the crowd, but it had a slit.

When she got up, she sang her special. And then as she walked, well, ended up walked out the door, but she was walking to her seat. My grandfather used her as an example of how women were luring men into sacks. He didn't use that word, but that's what he was saying. This woman that you see right here who just got up and sang this special is wearing a scandalous skirt.

This is what causes men to lust and fall into sin. I can't remember his entire rant, but it was bad enough that I was seated at the aisle. And by the time she made it about halfway down, she had started crying. And she walked completely out the door. I don't think she even stayed in the service. And to my knowledge, she never, ever came back to church. She may have after left, I don't know, but I don't remember seeing her back in the church.

Literally he ran her out of the church because she was dressing with a little slit and if you had a really stopped and just critically thought well it's no different than the other women who have their dresses just slightly higher than this woman who would have tripped if she didn't have the slit and so the legalism just grows and grows like Pinocchio's nose and in the end if you really just go back and read the Bible for yourself and understand it like you did with this other gentleman I don't think people have really stopped and thought about things like that they would never adhere to the old mosaic laws all of them in fact some women on her period is not allowed into the temple I don't know if people know this or not but that's actually one of the rules you can go online and you can find lists of these rules of what they are and you're like oh my gosh man why did they do that but that's that's in there and like you said the New Testament says if you try to uphold any part

of the law you must uphold it all because you're trying to live under the law when nobody's going to do this in today's world man they say no this this is not for me why then are they trying to pick and choose little verses and put them I don't know the whole thing is just I could go on and rant and I won't but the whole thing is just so absurd so thank you for bringing this up well it's a lack of critical thinking John because you know I believed everything Hobart said as I told on earlier on podcast when I was in my

late teens in early 20s so I don't have a blemish free record my daughter when they were really young you're going to see them and dresses even in cold weather and then a pair of pants underneath the dress you know like tights or leggings because you know we want to we want to make sure that we're not being too unbiblical so we got to keep the dress on but their little legs are cold so we're going to slip something under there you'll see that in pictures with my kids when they were young because you know this was pre my working my way through everything but when you become you know a critical

thinker and critical doesn't mean hateful or mean or negative it just means using your brain and not just being an empty head cut in the top of it open and telling some cult leader pour in all of your foolishness and I'll close my head back up when I would read Deuteronomy 22 myself you know I knew where they were getting the passage and the teaching I knew that all along it's coming from Deuteronomy 22 5 by the way it's the only verse that says that but I knew that at least they had a verse but I also was learning early in my life that that proof texting method

just because you have a verse that says what you want it to say does it mean that you're writing your interpretation it's got to fit with the whole of the revelation of scripture and as I was studying Deuteronomy 22 I would have to be critical of myself and say hmm channel how is it you want to believe verse five but you don't want to believe any of the rest of the chapter how is that well that's not consistent so one of two things has to give either you got to give up your your false view of verse five or you

got to start stoning all the adulterers around you you got to obey the rest of it you know consistency thou art a jewel and you will not find consistency in any religious call no you will not like I said I could go off into a thousand different rants and I won't just end it and everybody can think through what's in my head because all you have to do is read the Bible and understand it and you can see just how different it is from the religions that I escaped and that you know Hobart Freeman had helped create 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-branam.org for more about the dark side of the NAR you can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR available on Amazon can do in soon horrible

you