The Cult of Prosperity: False Promises and the Consequences

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 hopefully you're thawing out. We had this massive snowstorm come through here and I was out like a crazy guy yesterday. We got probably a foot to a foot and a half in our driveway and I got out with a leaf blower and it was so light and dusty. I was

able to blow most of it off with a leaf blower but it took me probably two hours to do that and I put the boys to good work but here I am with my heater going next to me and I see that you're dressed for the occasion and trying to thaw out. Well we actually lost our electricity and it just finally came back on not that long ago so our house is warming up so yeah we don't have as much snow as you have I think we have seven or eight inches but then we have all of

this ice on top of it which has just compounded things so I'm fortunate or we are fortunate to be able to even maybe do this podcast today because I didn't know whether I would be able to or not. So last night I actually heard from someone John that I had not heard from before a woman who was a part of the group in Iowa and Clinton, Iowa that was led by Harry Albright and the thing you say well what's big about that I have a connection way back when because when I first began listening to Dr. Freeman back in the mid to late 1970s June would

send out a newsletter and I have references in the past but different people probably are listening now and here is that newsletter that was actually sent out in March of 1977 I was living in Mississippi Dr. Freeman had at a Leesburg Indiana mailing address but what I remembered is inside this the bottom paragraph reads since our last newsletter a group from Iowa wrote asking for us to send them a teacher because people from all over were saying we can't or don't want to move to Indiana but we want the message more than just tapes can you send us a teacher. Beginning this week,

Harry Albright will be flying there every other week to teach them. He was really blessed by how much the Lord had already been teaching them and their maturity in the Word. We have several pilots in our church who count this as a part of their ministry to fly our ministers to various states to speak. So far the Lord has not led us to establish churches and they never did that. He never led them to do that because Hobart wanted everything under his umbrella. But to teach the people so they can begin to function as his body, the church. And so this was in the spring of 1977.

And you know, as a teenager, I read things like that. I'm living down in Mississippi. I'm still in high school. And I just think, wow, this message up there is just going everywhere. And here's this group, a new group being established out in Iowa. You know, I wish I could have a group down here that we could be a part of. And I think to the people on the outside, to the satellite groups, the mother church, just nothing could go wrong in their mind. In my mind, in our mind, with the mother church, it just appeared to be sitting on the top of a hill like a light and a dark world,

just so clean and pure and white. And I think a lot of that was just due to the beauty of the worship service. And nobody knew what was really going on behind closed doors. And we are beginning to find that out as we go through here. And then those and other satellite groups never knew what was going on in groups away from where they were living. So when this account, this story, this conversation with this woman last night, for all these years, I knew of the group in Iowa. And it was led by Harry Albright. And she said, both of my daughters, Cheno were sexually molested and

assaulted in that group. And she said, in my husband, I mean, this is a brand new story. And I've said before, I think we're just scratching the surface of what is probably really out there.

She said, my husband had been witnessed too by someone within the group, another male getting him into the group. And she said, once we got in and they became buddies, they began sleeping around with the same women. So she ended up divorcing him, ended up having this trauma with her children happening in that church. And let me be clear, I'm not saying that Harry Albright had anything to do with it or approved of it or that Hobart Freeman would have approved if he knew about it. Of course, they wouldn't. My poor in continuing to bring these things up is it was not a normal religious or church setting and that's

what created these opportunities. It was just not normal with Hobart's model of a church and church leadership with the authoritarian role that he played with a separation like a curtain drawn between the ministers and the congregation we are up here you were down there the teaching that put women under man that put children you know on the peripheral outside children were to be just seen but never heard from and with just all the bondages I mean it created this John and I would probably say we have cases of this and I don't know maybe every group maybe every group

that was of any size at all and of course you know those of us on the outside are never going to know about all this and the people say well I think there happens in every church there's probable that's probably true but I don't think it happened to the extent and to the degree just because I think normal churches are set up in such a way that there is some accountability and and and there's just a freedom in the group and there is a more reality in the group because you don't have all this separation of ministers and sheep underneath them so it just

created a ripe environment I told the woman last night I said honey I'm so sorry I don't I mean I don't know what to say except God didn't approve any of that you know and more than anything I think that's what people need to hear any victims of any kind of abuse need to hear wasn't your fault you didn't do it your daughters didn't do it it wasn't your fault no one could or should be able to blame that on you or your kids this and God didn't approve of that and he wasn't behind it and because as soon as you get in one of these little splinter sectarian

groups everybody just thinks that everything here is somehow ordained of God and that's simply not true so so much for and I know also I had a note here that Harry Albright died in October of 2022 he was 75 years old so we don't that's all the information I have about well that's not all I know some other things but that was what was pertinent in that conversation last night how about we return John back to our discussion of financial prosperity and which I think was not told correctly or accurately let me just start with this I've got a clip if you could play

and it's it's a national fact that this county right Here where this faith message is preached has the highest income and rate of employment any place in the world in the United States. Now that's no accident.

Well, I hear that we're talking about Northern Indiana John. It has the highest income and the highest rate of what about Los Angeles and Miami and Cape Cod and New York City and I mean, come on.

That's a direct quote from your state in Northern Indiana. You know William Brandham said some awfully, awfully crazy things. One of the things he said that scared the people that lived in this area.

He said, did you know that Russia right now is working on an atomic bomb that they're going to obliterate the United States? And you know people right here in Indiana, that's where they're going to target.

They're going to drop that bomb right here in Louisville, Kentucky. And it's going to blow up the blast radius. So take this church and everything in it. He didn't, he didn't say those exact words.

I'm paraphrasing quite a bit, but they say the craziest things, man. And once the people of brainwashed enough, they'll listen to the craziest things. And the weird thing of this is the leadership, you know, in the authoritarian pyramid of hierarchy of authoritarian control, there's the central figure.

And then there's this tear, which is the enforcers, they may be pastors, they may be deacons, whatever they are. William Brandham called the deacons God's policemen, which is kind of funny. If you know what the word deacon actually means.

But in that tier, they know some of these things and they know some of the things aren't true, but they withhold it from the common people because the common people could never handle this information if they were to be given it.

That's what the leadership teaches. And it's kind of funny because what happens is you get the silos of information back to what you're saying before with all of the different satellite groups, etc. Each satellite group is a silo and each silo contains their own withheld information that the leadership keeps.

And they don't want to tell the common people within the common people can't tell the other satellite groups. And so at the very top, you've got the central figure who's controlling all of the information, then each silo withholds all of their information.

So nobody knows what's really going on in the cult. Otherwise, if they knew half of them would leave.

Yeah, I mean, that's what is coming out when people I hear people say, well, I didn't even know that was going on over there. And thanks for telling me about it. I mean, it doesn't even, it just doesn't resemble at all, John, what you see when you read the New Testament, not that the early church was pristine and they had their problems, but they had apostolic authority and oversight, and they had transparency.

And if something got out of whack, it got corrected, and people found out about it. You know, many times, I don't think I've even brought this up, but I've heard it from people because I remember I was not a member of Faith Assembly, but many times Hobart would say, okay, I want all tape player shut off. And then he would just address the group because a lot of people couldn't afford to actually buy the tapes at, you know, $3 a piece, so they would just bring their own tape player with, you know, some giant D batteries, put it on the seat beside them and just, you know,

record best they could the message. And I don't know how many times, I don't even know how many times it happened there. And it happened in the other satellite groups, you know, those ministers who had to be back at Faith Assembly when Hobart taught, that was just requirement. They would have their circuit where they would travel around the country, but they could not be on their circuit when Hobart was teaching because, I mean, that's the Pope and the College of Cardinals has to hear what the Pope has to say. But out in their meetings, you know, now they're feeling their oats and they

would say, I want all tape players turned off, you know, all six of them since that's all the people they had in that congregation. I want all six tape players turned off and I just want to address just the body here. And it would just be a bunch of, you know, nonsense. I know one of the things Hobart got on a tear about was he didn't want any of the ministers publishing books. You know, he had published books and it was okay for him to and some of them had a book or two in their past,

but no more. And the reason was because he couldn't edit them or approve of them. Like, you know, he's like he's the final authority, but that's the point. He was the final authority. He said, anything you say represents this body. In other words, represents me. And I want to make sure you are in agreement with me. I don't want you going saying anything contrary to me. So he didn't want books. He didn't want any music tapes or albums being cut because Steve Hill had a couple of albums that he had cut out there. And I mean, it's just like if all the little underlings I always felt

like they were just goose stepping in front of the pulpit like the Nazi soldiers would as they go by in front of Adolf Hitler just to make sure everybody is literally in step and in line with what Hobart was saying. But I wonder what the people who were sitting in this was done in the glory bar and preparation for restoration. What did they think when they heard this statement? You know, we've got the highest income and rate of employment.

You know, I think what happens is you've just been puffed up with all of this fluff and stuff that's nonsense about faith and we're overcomers and we're better than any other people and you're not told, hey, you are better than anyone else, but that's the end of the message.

That's the conclusion because of the sacrifice and the dedication that all of you people are showing by being here and taking notes and listening and avoiding doctors and driving through snowstorms and, you know, you're here at 4.30 in the morning and the doors don't open till 9 or 10 on a Sunday morning or something.

They were being told, you're elite, I mean, you are the man's child, you're the overcomers. So I guess whenever you're told that, you think, well, yeah, we probably do have the lowest unemployment and the highest employment here in this county without using any critical thinking, podant, cow country, flat corn, northern Indiana, no way.

What about Bel Air and Hollywood and Martha's Vineyard and, you know, Miami, Dade County? I mean, surely, come on. Somebody needs to do an actual study, which I'm not going to do because I'm not interested and find what was the county that had the highest income and rate of employment when this crazy statement was made and you're allowed to just make such an insane statement.

What I would like people to do, John, I hope you and I both in these podcasts encourage strengthen people. If you're ever part of a church and a nut job gives you a nut case statement like this, just stand right up and object.

Raise your hand and say, could you please provide a current from the federal government statistic on that? Because if you don't hit a bully in his mouth, he just continues to bully you, you know, somebody has to stop the madness and say, come on, you know, this is church.

This is not cartoons. This is church. So whatever you say, you need to tell us the truth. Don't feed us all of this stuff. Oh my goodness. I mean, oh my goodness. The stuff that's been fed by Hobart, by William Brannum, by T.L. Osburn, by Oral Roberts.

I don't know if you saw one of the comments and I had forgotten this, but this person was 100% accurate. Whenever Oral Roberts was out there with his seed faith message in the 1970s wanting to build this city of faith, this new hospital, he did say because I remember hearing him say it that if he didn't get the money, God said, I'm going to kill you, Oral.

I'm just going to have to kill you if you don't get the money. You talk about leveraging people. Fools mind in their pocket book. I mean who wants big elephant ears or Roberts to die and so you know You're definitely gonna send your money in I just can't imagine I mean these are not true in my opinion John They are not true Christian ministers Paul and the apostles would never make statements and threats and claims like that If you don't support my ministry God has told me he's gonna kill me I wish people would not support the ministries, and then we'll see what happens

So here's the funny thing Chino 1972 Alaska had the highest per capita personal income in the United States There's an average income of $5,000 But at the county level it's on the complete other end of the country New York In Manhattan had the highest in 1972 average of 6,614 So he missed the mark on both ends

Well, it's like I've said before these guys like to just talk and they like to talk about themselves or something that's gonna fortify or Substantiate their ministry and I just would encourage people to use critical thinking it just boils down to that Anything that is super weird super questionable super mystical super spiritual There's probably a reason why I say I tell the students and under the sound of my voice and my Bible teaching whenever I'm showing them now there Some people say there is this hidden meaning in this passage. I said The reason that it's a hidden meaning is

Because it probably doesn't exist That's why it's a hidden meaning Absolutely Well, and a lot of times what they like to do see this is all based off of the mystery religions the mystery cults I don't know who came up with the bright idea that Christianity should Revert back to the ancient Nosticism etc and create mystery cults that are called Christianity, but that's what they did And they want to find something that the other Christians don't know so that the cult leader or central figure can say Now see they're just preaching the gospel. They've not moved beyond the gospel

We know this little secret thing that makes us better than them and therefore they're going to not make it when we do That's what they all do Absolutely John. Yeah, I'm just I think the Bible is God gave it to us in human language not the language of the Holy Ghost It's written in Hebrew in Greek for us is translated into English It's got verb. It's got prepositional phrases. It has the normal Words and diction and it's it's different John raised of writing some of its Pro some of its poetic some's narrative some's apocalyptic, some's genealogical,

their parables or allegories, and you interpret it based on where it's found in that part of the Bible. And no, there's not a hidden meaning. I'll always say if it's hidden, it's probably hidden for a good reason because it just simply doesn't exist.

It's not there, and that's why it's so difficult to find and see because it's actually not there. It takes a magician to pull it out of the hat. I don't know if you remember, John, but one of our last interviews that we did together, I was talking about Hobart Freeman's testimony that he loved to give all in the earlier years of his ministry of his lack of having to work.

He said, he just claimed Matthew six versus 19 to 34, where five different times, he said, Jesus said, take no thought. The birds of the air don't take fault. The lilies of the field don't take fault.

Take no fault for your material needs. Just seek first God's kingdom and he will abundantly supply all your needs for you. And he took that to mean that he didn't have to work. That all you have to do is just pray, seek first the kingdom, Matthew six, 34, and God would supply all your needs.

And so I quoted what he said, but actually if people want to hear it for themselves, it's on his testimony tape, the testimony tape of Hobart Freeman, where he said, I never worked a single hour all through college and seminary.

And last weekend there was a little pushback by somebody somewhere out there wanting to mount a defense of Hobart Freeman, but what I'm trying to provide are the actual tapes, the actual messages, the actual phrases where he said what he said.

And he did say, I never worked a single hour all through college and seminary end of quote. And he built his whole faith for finance message on that statement, which we saw because of the other things he went on to say was a false testimony.

It was a false testimony. And the way that it's easy to see that it was is that young men went on, took him up on that and said, oh, Hobart didn't have to work, then I don't have to work.

And people quit their jobs, men quit their jobs, and they didn't have money to pay rent at the end of the month. And I'll give you just a great case example of this, somebody that a lot of people would know, a good Christian brother by the name of John A. build, A. B. I. L. D.

I've known John for 45 years. John is probably the first person that I met, quote, unquote, not in the flesh or by in person, but when I began to order tapes from Dr. Freeman.

from faith, ministries, and publications, John A. Bill was the tape guy. And as a teenager, I ordered so much, they had a 24 East Winona Avenue, Warsaw, Indiana, 465, 80. That's how, if you would be like additional copies of this tape, there's the address.

I heard that so many times, you know, I remember it 45 years later. John would write a little note saying, oh, brother Chenot, I can't believe your order and more tapes again. You're more or more than anybody.

So glad that you're hungry for God's word. And, you know, so I got to know John, just with him writing a little PS at the bottom of the invoice when he would send tapes back to me.

Well, John was a long time member of faith assembly after Dr. Freeman died. And faith assembly began going prophetic towards Kansas City. They went west, young man. Then he was looking around for something, you know, more stable.

And so he went down to Tom Hamilton's church in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Shelbyville Christian Assembly. And as far as I know, John is probably still there, even though Tom passed away a few years ago.

But here's my point in bringing in John on this. Here is my point. John gave his testimony. It's online. You can find it through the audio's release by Shelbyville Christian Assembly in Shelbyville, Kentucky.

John gave his testimony. John was a guy with a photography background. He came from Connecticut and ended up in Northern Indiana and ended up meeting someone who was a part of the glory barn and who stayed.

And so on his testimony tape, which is so revealing, he tells the whole story of how Bruce hired him to be the main tape guy. And he began duplicating, packaging, and sending out tapes from Dr. Freeman to all of those people, including to myself.

And he met a woman and he got married and they just went on their honeymoon by faith. They did it just like he was taught. You don't have to plan. You don't have to have any money.

You don't have to save for that. You simply claim the promises of God that my God will supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. He will supply the needs all you have to do is go.

He tells that testimony, John. But then he, and you have to know John A. Bill. John is a, he's not excitable. He's monotone. He's low key. He's not up and down. He gave a very severe warning to all the young people under the sand.

He said, now don't do what I did. It worked because someone gave him some money. Somewhere down the line on the honeymoon. It worked, but he said, don't do. But here's, but here's the situation.

Those people, John, who are still under this sway, the long arm of Dr. Freeman won't help everyone else because I think they're still under that sway. They won't say what I say and say, look, don't do that because I was taught a false faith message by Dr. Hobart Edward Freeman.

I would never have done that had I not learned this from this man. He taught us wrong, he taught me wrong about that and I went out and duplicated it and just by the grace of God, we got back from our honeymoon, we didn't get stranded anywhere.

But that was not faith, that was foolishness. But who did he learn that from? He learned that from the person who said, I never worked a single hour all through college and seminary. I never worked a single hour all through college and seminary.

You know, that's the big problem with the prosperity gospel. I have, I shouldn't tell this, but I'm going to hopefully nobody figures out who this is, but I have a good friend who got caught up in the prosperity gospel and he wanted to start a business and I had a business, so he took me out to launch, we talked through several different strategies of him starting a business and I was explaining to him how you have to slowly grow your business and you don't, you may have big ambitions, but you have to be able to pay for those ambitions.

Well, he was in the prosperity gospel and what I didn't realize is I was explaining my strategy of how I did it. He was tuning out everything and replacing it with prosperity gospel. So he goes out and he gets a very expensive condo suite for his business and all new furniture, furnishes the whole thing, doesn't have a single client, man, and he does go out and get a client, but years later in the aftermath, I figured out what happened, he had rented the space from another guy in his church, the other guy in his church was basically spotting

him for everything while he was going bankrupt for paying for the furniture and it really led to, now that I know all of the facts, I remember him coming in one day and he said, man, this brother from this church is really trying to do me wrong, John, I rented a space for him and he's kicking me out, he's only giving me a few days and I got to find another place and he did, he found another place from another guy that was a friend of the church.

And so these guys were just basically giving him the money, but in his head because he had been sold this false bill of goods, a prosperity gospel, he thought God was supplying that need rather than a guy who's leasing him the property and he can't pay the rent.

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Remember, I told the store I went and ordered a new car, I didn't have any money. I mean, that was the most irresponsible, foolish thing for a person to do, but I did exactly as I was taught.

You have a need, I need a car, you make a claim, I'm claiming it by faith, then you act your faith, you go over to the car, and then the money's gonna arrive. But that's not the way it works.

It's not the way it works for us, it's not the way it worked for Hobart. So my question on this business of him working is did he not work or did he work? If he did not work, which he said, I did not work, a single hour, all through college and seminary, if he did not work, then I would like to read second Thessalonians three in verse 10, for even when we were with you, Paul said, this we commanded you, that if Annie would not work, neither should he eat, for we hear that there are some

which walk among you disorderly working not at all. Now then that are such, we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ that with quietness, they work and eat their own bread. Okay, so did you not work?

Well then you just violated the Bible, or did you work because we found out later when he told us the real truth, he actually did have jobs, so you did work, so you lied.

I mean either way you go, you didn't work, you disobey the Bible, you did work, then you lied by saying that you didn't work. I mean it's just mass confusion, but I'm telling you this led to me going and ordering a car in John A. Bill going on a honeymoon with no money, and a thousand other examples of the same thing.

When I told my story about the car, I've heard from a bunch of people, yeah, you ordered a Lincoln and here's what I ordered, or here's what I claimed, everybody did it because Hobart was always talking about driving around in his big old 98 or his caddies or his Lincoln's.

And, you know, something else, John, that I thought of as I've listened to these messages. And by the way, talking about things being hidden pretty much anything that we are talking about, it's public knowledge.

On the last tape list, they released right after the month after Hobart died. There were 1157 messages. And most of those are online on a YouTube channel out there now. This is public knowledge.

I don't have any hidden sources unless someone privately is telling me something. If you want to hear whether he said these things, you've got 1157 tapes. I guarantee you that he said them and I guarantee you that he said them multiple times.

But the one of the things that has stood out to me, I'm going to go down a different path for just a moment. Because I never heard a single time, not in 1157 tapes.

I owned them all and I've heard them all. I never, on a single message, heard a single reference to his wife, June, and her needs or wants or financial blessings. Not a single time.

Now, if someone wants to dispute that, I would love to hear the evidence because it's possible I overlooked that one time on 1157 tapes. But what did we always hear? I never worked a single hour.

I, I, I, me, me, me, I claimed a Cadillac, I claimed a Lincoln, I claimed an Oles, I claimed a big Chrysler, I claimed a house, I, I, I, I, I, I, I never heard John.

This is really tragic. And why didn't people hear this through everything they were hearing? Never heard a single thing that June ever got or asked for or wanted or received or he bought for her or she was blessed with.

I mean, the women were truly just subsumed underneath the identity of the male. And especially someone in June's case where I think she kind of came from that mindset of submissive women back in the 1940s and 50s anyway.

Do you remember the story I told you earlier, told everyone earlier about his trip to Israel? Yeah. Just got to talk about it one more time. 1966, the summer he claimed a trip to Israel, $1,400.

He said $700, arrived when he was still at home in Claypool and he needed 700 more to make the trip. He said, well, I didn't let the lack of the final money hinder me.

I went on to New York City and 45 minutes before the plane left, someone walked up to him and said an anonymous donor wants to pay the... balance of your trip. This is one of these just many stories that have been that Hobart has told about himself and I know that this is patterned after William Branham and other people who told similar stories and it just became part of the cult legend and they were just like barnacles on a on a ballast of a boat.

They just began to add and add and add and it just became part of it. Hobart man he went by faith all the way to Israel and God provided the money. He claimed the money and he God provided the money but as we keep trying to say I think people are they're misinterpreting calls in effect. The effect is he got the money and he went to Israel and no one slows down to ask himself the question but what was the cause of that effect. I'll give you a good example of a friend of mine who I won't call a deer hunter. I'll just say he likes to go deer hunting.

Some of us are hunters. We actually hunt. It's like we talked to before John about mechanics. Someone said I changed oil on my car. I'm a car mechanic. No that does not make you a car mechanic. That makes you someone capable of changing the oil. So this friend of mine, friend of this day likes to go hunting but he's not a deer hunter and we were with this person one time who owned a farm and he was going to describe to her how intelligent mature bucks are and I just thought knowing him. Oh no I don't know what he's going to say. I know it's

not going to be right but it's none of my business. So he said man do you have you noticed this woman owned a farm? Have you noticed that once the corn is cut or the soybeans are cut the do's are out in the field first and the bucks follow later. So we see what the effect is the do's are out there first. What's the cause of that? So he said well now I can tell you why that happens. He said the bucks hanging back in the wood line which they do and he said because they're curious they want to figure out are there any hunters out

there and so the way they figure out whether there are any hunters out there they get their antlers and push the do's make them go out in the field first and if no guns are fired the bucks say well there's no hunters out there so I can go out there and I just wanted to say no you have the effect right you have the calls wrong that those bucks can't process are there any hunters out there today I'm gonna make the do's go get kill first they just have this because of their age and maturity they just have this wearingness to them and they're not

gonna walk out there first let's go back to Hobart and the trip to Israel he got the $700 balance 45 minutes before the plane left there's a couple of different ways that could happen here's one way. And here's the way that I think we all fall that it happened without drawing it out on a piece of paper and identifying it. Here's how we thought it happened because he said God miraculously supplied the money. Look, if there was a businessman sitting on a bench in New York City and he was getting ready to make a trip to Phoenix, Arizona, and he's not even a Christian and he's never laid

eyes on Hobart Freeman and an angel appeared to him and said, look, I want you to get $700 out of your wallet and you see that man over there by the water fountain. I want you to carry that money over there to him and hand that money to him $700. No more, no less. And then you can come and sit back down. If that had happened, that would be awesome and wonderful. And that would be a miracle.

And if it happened, I would believe it. If it happened, that's great. But you know, if that had happened, that's the way Hobart would have told the story because that would have been a true miracle.

You know, you're going to tell it as good as you can tell it. An anonymous donor wants to pay Hobart for the balance of your trip. He's going with the tour group. There are other people that don't want to see this old seminary professor stranded behind. And so they all for the $700.

I mean, that I believe is how he got the $700. But we're told this story in such a way that it's all these stories are somehow miraculous. You shared one earlier about the guy, you know, drowning in the river or something. And you know, if an angel literally came from heaven in shining white garment, which I believe can happen, I would never rule that out. Angel still exists. He could come from heaven and pick you up out of the water. And I would be the first to thank God for that. And I'd want to hear the story. And, you know, I would bow before the Lord and worship him

for sending an angel to rescue someone. And he did an Old Testament and a New Testament times. And I won't say that he hasn't in modern times and won't in modern times, you know, but if he does, he does. And if he doesn't, he doesn't. And if he chooses another way to go about rescuing a person, please be honest. And please tell us the Lord helped rescue me. And you can explain the method by which he did it. I've said before, John, concerning my own financial wealth and well-being now.

I would never say I've done it by the strength of my own hands. God has blessed me with this. But I haven't gotten any envelopes with half million dollars in them, though, anonymously given.

It's been by hard work on my part and my wife's part to give us the things that we have now. And I still thank God. God for it. I still give God all the credit for it. And I do. He's given us the health and the job and the contacts and just knowing the right person and being in the right place at the right time and sometimes being pretty hard off and then a new job opportunity comes along. And we don't just say, I was just lucky that it happened. We say, thank you Lord, that you brought this into my life. And thank you for taking care of me and

thank you for providing for me. But so far in my life, I haven't been brought bread by Ravens like Elijah was. I mean, they brought him food. And that hasn't happened to me yet. Maybe it will someday, you know, and I would love it if it did. Maybe I wouldn't because I mean, you're in a pretty dire circumstance of Ravens bringing you food. Maybe I don't want that to happen. But I mean, wouldn't that be a great story? We all want a great testimony, don't we John? I want to I want a miraculous story. I want to say that I raised

four people from the dead, you know, but I haven't. So just because someone was kind of close to death and you prayed for him and over a six month period, they got better. That's not raising somebody from the dead. We've got to keep our stories in the charismatic Pentecostal movement. We've got to keep our stories accurate and factual. And because all of our forefathers have just exaggerated everything, we just feel that it's okay to do as well. I was having a conversation recently with one of the hosts. I actually can't remember which series this was on, but we were talking about the architecture, how how the architecture

created by the latarine movement with William Brannum and the others, not just Brannum. It was carried forward into the charismatic movement. And if you understand, take the religious doctrine aside and just understand what they did and how they did it, you can kind of see this trail going forward. One of the aspects and this is a very complex thought.

It would take several podcasts to explain it. But one of the aspects of that architecture is trying to create the vision for the people of having the miracles as portrayed in the Bible happening today at the same frequency. Like you, I'm not going to say they don't happen. But what I can tell you is a lot of the miracle, the quote unquote miracles that these guys are proclaiming aren't miracles at all. But they want to claim it because they can, what they do in this architecture, they will take something that happened, they will boast that there is this miracle that made it happen and point to the outcome and

say, see, here's the outcome. Try to prove the outcome didn't happen. Well, yes, it happened, I mean. like the guy who rented the building. Of course, he got the building, right? Miracle praise God, but what about the guy who's funding it and who's losing money because the guy's not paying his rent?

So if you understand that architecture, you understand just how wrong this prosperity gospel is because somewhere, somebody is taking all of the, all of the loss that you're claiming is gain. Yeah, it's a cause and effect thing.

I mean, some of the effects are true that this happened, but by what means did that happen? And if you go to question it all, at all, you know, you were just, you were beaten with a whip like brother, don't doubt the Holy Spirit's power and don't get your mind into it.

Just, you know, and you're manifesting doubt and unbelief and no, I'm not, I'm not at all. It's just that I think that the miracles in the Bible are all easily substantiated. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, that wasn't something done in a corner, you know, in secrecy where two old ladies saw it and nobody else.

The miracles had happened, take the guy at that was healed, that was lame from birth in Acts 3 when Peter and John went and he looked at them hoping they would give him some money.

That he was a beggar. He didn't have any other way to earn a living. And Peter makes his famous statement in Acts 3, silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I V in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.

And he took that man by the right hand, lifted him up, it said he leaped and walked and entered into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God. And not only that, it was such a problem within the Jerusalem Jewish hierarchy that they had to bring the apostles and say, you've got to stop teaching in this name of Jesus, you're causing all kinds of problems.

And we don't want to hear anymore about this, but that a notable miracle had been done, Luke tells us in Acts could not be denied. Everybody knew it. They actually brought the apostles back, a second time, beat them and threaten them, do not teach in this name anymore.

And they said, well, whether it's right in the sight of God to obey you or God, you can judge, but we know we're gonna obey God. And that man walked around as far as we know for the rest of his natural life, able to walk and he had never walked before.

The same is true in John 9 with the blind man. This man had been born blind and Jesus healed him. And he could see and the religious leaders were so upset. My point is, had it been some trade happening, some scam?

Well, wouldn't have been in... A problem the religious leaders would have uncovered that in a heartbeat and would have disproven the claims of the apostles, but they couldn't disprove them because they were true.

Even Jesus' own bodily resurrection from the dead. If you remember in the end of the Gospels, there were enough witnesses to that. There were hundreds of witnesses. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15, he had been seen after the resurrection by 500 brethren at one time, plus the women, plus the apostles, the apostles on different occasions, and other people outside of the Christian realm.

He had been seen by so many people that even the religious leaders said, we got to come up with a story. The story was, well, I think we're going to say the apostles went in there and stole his body and took him, his dead body.

He never rose from the dead, stole his body and took him away because we don't want this miracle, the resurrection, the news of that to spread any further. They knew it had absolutely happened.

So my point is, God is a miracle working God, and people need miracles no less today. John, and they did back then, people need miracles no less today. It's just, as you said before about frequency, we've got the Bible from Genesis to Revelation written over a period of a couple of thousand years, and it looks like miracles happened every day.

But how many days are within 2000 years? These prophets didn't have miracles just left and right. They might have had something happen in their life and 15 years later before another miracle happened. So it's a skewed view because we have so much compressed into this one book we call the Bible.

It's a skewed view for people to think that God's just going to heal you of everything, heal your cats, your dogs, your livestock, your car engine, your washing machine, your dryer, your age fact.

And that is the message that came out of faith assembly, that if you have faith, well, you can talk to this tree and tell it to uproot itself and move itself somewhere else. So if you can do that, and that's not the message, by the way, of what he's saying there, people need to read that more carefully, because if that's true, we would run out of business all repairmen because anytime anything breaks, you just claim the healing of your dryer and it would be healed.

So no, it's not an accurate message at all, and it created false expectations for all of these people. And it created this hierarchy where the ministers saw things happen, quote, unquote, and the people didn't financially, but what have I said all along?

The reason the ministers were blessed so much financially. lays a large flock that they could fleece. That's how they were able to have so much money. And those of us like myself who had a small congregation, I never made more than 20,000 in a year.

And I thought that I was a faithful servant because my money wasn't raining down from heaven or growing on trees. It was coming from the faithful people that were listening to me teach. And I didn't have 2,000 like Hobart Freeman had.

You mentioned healing of the dryer. You probably saw it. I'm trying real hard not to laugh because that was a real thing, man. If you're in the divine healing movement, it's not just people that you pray for.

I know people who have prayed for their dryer. I know people who've prayed for their dishwasher, man. I may or may not have prayed for a car radio myself and may or may not have witnessed a miracle when it started working.

That's just the way we were. Now do I believe like that still? No, but, you know, so my grandfather's car radio had not worked for years and years and years. And I came to visit him and he, I wanted to listen to some music.

And I stuck the tape in. He still had a cassette tape in it, pushed it in, it didn't work. And I just grabbed all I have and you prayed for it. I reached my hands on it like I would a human and prayed.

I kid you not, the thing started working. It had not worked in years. Now can I say God did that? I don't know. Looking back, I don't see any scriptural basis for praying for a car radio yet it worked.

So who knows, who knows the magic and, you know, whatever happened, who knows. But the people are so caught up in that that they start to believe themselves to be sorcerers. That's the real problem with it.

It's not that I have anything against praying for a dishwasher or dryer or a car radio. But the people who do it and then some coincidence happened, which is likely, I'm gonna say that this car radio thing was a coincidence.

Some coincidence happens. Well, suddenly I know how I felt whenever it started working. Man, I have the power. I'm gonna go pray for something else and you go around praying objects and speaking objects and it's no better than Lord of the Rings, man.

And I can also tell you this, that when you're in that mindset, you're not really looking at God as God being the power of doing this. You're thinking, I spoke and that happened. I prayed and that happened.

That's me. I know exactly what it felt like. Now, I did say in Jesus' name, so I called on the name like all these people do, but this is not Christianity. This is entirely something different.

And I also would make another distinction here, John. I don't know about your radio. God could have done it or not. I'm not for sure about that. But I'm always open to God working a miracle.

But here's another distinction. I think we really need to keep in mind. It's if a person was... was so poor and destitute, and maybe not by their own fault. And that they literally didn't have money to pay to get some mechanical item working.

You know, I just think God is much more likely to actually help them than the rest of us who just go buy a new dryer. You know, go pay a mechanic to fix your car.

I think that is just kind of ludicrous. It's almost tempting God. When you are well within your own means to have something taken care of, it's different if you are a poor person, a destitute person, where it's, I mean, I would just say it's much more likely that God in His mercy and grace and love and kindness, just because that's the way we operate.

I'm much more willing to help a destitute person than I am a rich person who says, well, you loan me $5. I'll say no, absolutely not. I'm not going to give you anything because they don't need it. I mean, that's the point.

They just don't need it, but a poor person does. But this teaching created this false separation between the ministers and the people where the ministers thought that they were following in Hobart's footsteps. You know, I'm living by faith too, and so I'm buying big cars and I'm building new houses.

And then the people, again, John, still, they're not looking at calls and effect. They're saying, and I think we all want to be under someone or something that's successful. Who wants to be a part of a group that's a failure?

So if your leader is saying he's accomplished all these things by faith, then just by proxy, you feel like that you're accomplishing things by faith. As long as your minister is succeeding, then, you know, by identification, you are succeeding with him.

And so that's what was going on with the other ministers, the top tier of which were just sitting in butter because they had so many people. And so they can march around saying, you know, I'm a prosperity teacher and I put it into practice because look at all that I have.

And they failed to realize and the people under them failed to realize the reason that you have all you have is because of the number that is following you. So I have reached out to some of the people from faith assembly from years ago, who were on the inside, they knew what was going on.

And this is from, I won't mention any name, but as soon as I start reading this story, this brother is going to know I'm sharing his story. But I, he said, look, you know, he said I was one of the people in the church who was, let's just say a building contractor.

Oh, he said, as the money started coming in for the ministers like Bruce and Steve and Jeff Barnett and those top tier ministers, as the money started coming in for them, then, you know, those of us who were good at our trade, we were hired by them.

So I said, oh, so you've got stories you can tell and he said, I've got tons of stories I can tell. So here's one. And I'm reading this message from this anonymous brother who I'll just say lives down south.

Love you brother and thanks for sharing this. Said I did work for Bruce Kinsey for a number of weeks but he was a weird bird. He didn't like hanging with anyone who didn't fit his click.

Hunters, macho like guys, those were the people he wanted to hang out with. And I just wanted to read this for people to maybe just slow down and take a breath and process and say, does this sound like anybody in ministry in the New Testament?

I was talking to someone the other day on the phone. I said, think of the Apostle Paul, the greatest of all the apostles, the one to whom we are indebted for so much of the New Testament.

And in Acts 16, when he was in Philippi and Lydia, the seller of purple die was converted under his ministry, she said, if you have judged me faithful, then I want you to come into my home while you're in Philippi and just stay with me.

And when I read that, I think what a beautiful person Paul was but how humbling for him, he's just gonna live in a back room of this new converse house, Lydia's house. He didn't, we know our ministers, they want special treatment, put up in a nice hotel and nice food and a nice car.

And here John is the Apostle of the Apostles. Probably he's got a corner bedroom and Lydia's house, a brand new converse. He's got to get up and go sit at the same table with all of the rest of the schmucks around there and have dinner and Paul's fine with that.

Paul is totally fine with that. I just love the ministers of the New Testament because that's the way they were, but not our ministers here. He said, no, he wanted to hang out with hunters and macho-like guys and he was super paranoid over his first kid.

So I made a custom plain rocking chair kind of thing and heat for his first child. And he told me what would happen if his kid fell off and got his leg all tangled up in it.

He said, I still own the classic registered McGregor Persemin golf clubs he sold me. He got rid of his golf clubs. He gave up golfing because he wanted to study more and he says, smiley face, smiley face.

And I said, well, do you have an actual story? He said, sure. I remember it like it was last week. I've got a great story, but I'm a little ent- demodated and embarrassed to share it, but here goes.

He said actually wallpaper and wall covering was one of my things during that time. I had a national account and could provide materials at cost. I usually marked it up 10% and I didn't know anyone anything at my cost.

So here's the first part of my story. The part that still bothers me to this day. Hanging materials involves razor blades to make clean cuts. You go through hundreds of them. And Bruce asked me to be very careful and account for all my blades as he had a small child in the house.

I did my best, but when you know it, after I finished up one day, Bruce found one razor blade. And he laid into me. How could I be so careless? And honestly, I felt bad that I had failed to find that last razor blade.

But he told me if I wasn't a brother, he would be all over me for doing this. So, and I liked Bruce. Bruce wasn't perfect neither am I. But the people that worked for these ministers, John, can share some stories that give you a different insight to how these guys were and how they operate it.

Bruce would probably beat him up if he wasn't a brother. And he said, and here's the second part of the story. He said, he spoke at a Friday evening meeting. He had the Friday night meeting at the glory barn.

And he was talking about building his new home. He says to me here in this text, remember, no one was building homes back then, unless you were in ministry or independently wealthy because no barring money was allowed.

Here's that division between the hierarchy who had enough money because they had a big enough following. Nobody else is just renting. He told the congregation and this guy was sitting in the congregation. He told the group that he was quoted $1,500 to $2,000 for the material and that the guy, which was this brother, was gonna charge him another $2,000 to install the materials.

He said he went to a meeting at another place that week and God blessed him with $3,500 in the offering that week, the most he had ever received. So he began telling the story, praise God.

God provided $3,500. He said the crowd was praise the Lord, hallelujah. But then he mentioned the brother who was gonna charge him $2,000 to do the work. And the crowd was no moans and groans like you're getting taken advantage of.

And this brother said, here he received $3,500 in one night and everybody's saying, hallelujah. And then the brother who's gonna charge him $2,000, charged 2000 because that's what he needs to charge to make a living, then everyone is all moans and groaned over that.

He said, that experience really pissed me off. Here I was, the guy trying to make a living and support my wife and five children, and this guy, Bruce, in one meeting triples my income.

I never spoke to Bruce after I finished the work, and I believed he left shortly there after. We did not have a relation shot, relationship outside of work after I did this for him.

So I just think, as I said, John, the ministers are just sitting in butter, they're taking advantage of the people, the people are trying to earn an honest living, and the ministers just have this aura to them and this following of the people, the people are so excited that Bruce had this big offering, and then they're down on this fellow church member.

I mean, who would want to charge you 2000? Why didn't he just do it for free for you? I think that's what a lot of the ministers expected, and heck, you're already putting money in the offering, and now you got to work for them like slaves, you know?

I think that's probably what was going on in a lot of these cases, and I'll tell you, some of the worst people you can work for, either church people or relatives because they both think that they are owed something by you, and you just have to be very, very careful with them.

So if I could maybe turn this in a positive direction here at the end, John, and talk about, I do think that financial prosperity is something that the Bible does talk a lot about, simply because I think the Heavenly Father is very concerned about every need of ours, every single solitary need, not just spiritual needs, but material needs as well.

But I think Hobart and the prosperity gospel went about it in a wrong way with this faith formula theology, name it, and claim it, determine a need you have, isolate a passage out of context, and then claim it, and then expect somehow something supernatural to happen.

Rather than teaching the rest of what the Bible says about how God prosperous His people through intelligence, through schooling, through learning a job skill within an area where that job is in high demand in your area, some further degrees, how about just personal hard work and discipline?

I know all this sounds like, well, I want a miracle to happen in my life. Don't we all, don't we all. But read the book of Proverbs. He, how the apostles took care of themselves, Paul clearly, John in Acts 20 said, I provided not only for all of my own needs, I provided for the needs of all the people that travel with me.

And when he said he provided, he means he provided. He means I didn't take up an offering for myself. The offering that Luke talks about in Acts chapter 11, and that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 16, was something that Paul was taking up to carry back to Jerusalem to the poor saints there.

And speaking of the poor saints in Jerusalem, we know that they were there because we read about them with the deacons being appointed in Acts 6. We know about them because Agabus in Acts 11 had a prophecy and said that a famine was gonna happen and that it was gonna affect Judea.

And Luke tells us it came to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar. And why didn't Paul, the apostle of apostles, just say, well, you know what, I need to start really teaching the entire message of faith to these people down in Judea so that they can claim their needs to be met.

That's not what he did. He took up an offering for them. In other words, the Bible recognizes that there are wealthy believers and that there are middle class believers and there are poor believers.

And if that, if this faith message is something so miraculous and so accurate, then why didn't the apostles say, how can we have poor people in the church? What is wrong with their faith?

We need to be teaching them the end time message of faith and then they can get out of this poor situation therein. No, you're always gonna have people like that around you, it doesn't have anything to do with faith message or no faith message.

I think God's general way in prospering his people, if we read something like in Deuteronomy 28, if we will love him, serve him, obey him, it's not an infallible guide, but what he does say is he said, I'll bless you coming in, I'll bless you going out, I'll bless you in the store, I'll bless you in the city, I'll bless you in the field.

But what he never says in Deuteronomy 28 to the Jewish people or to us today, what he never says is you need to go claim your inheritance, claim your promises. What he says is these blessings of Deuteronomy 28 or of whatever else you wanna find, these blessings will come on you and overtake you.

That was a part of the covenant agreement God had with Israel. If you will love me out of a pure heart, if you will serve me out of a pure heart, I'll take care of you.

And it may be with the feeding of a raven as it was. with Elijah, but odds are it won't be that way because everything described in Deuteronomy 28 had the people simply living their normal life and he will make sure that they are blessed in their normal life. So I think that's the the accurate biblical message of how God is going to prosper us.

It's through job skills. It's through education. It's through wise investments. It's through planning ahead. It's through all of these quote unquote boring normal ways and I'm sorry that the charismatic and pinnacle some movement. They just want a miracle every other day, if not every day, but as we've said, that's normally not the way that it's going to happen. If we will love the Lord and serve him out of a pure heart, then I think blessings will come on us and overtake us. It's very little I could add to that, but I will say this, the biggest problem that I see

with this type of religion is that there's always a winner and there's always a loser. And what happens over time, the people who keep losing and keep losing, they they quote unquote lose the faith.

They leave the foe because they've they've lost and other people have taken their gains. It's always this prosperity gospel where they're taking the prosperity off of the backs of somebody else. And over time, the people are just to have enough and they leave and the people who remain in it, they scorn those who leave is not having enough faith. But is that really the case? Or did they just have enough? I've I've given you enough of some money. It's time for me to leave. That's that's how I see it. But anyway, this has been great fun. Thank you for doing this and hopefully

our listeners have got something that can help them if they're trapped in this type of religion. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the NAR, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.