The Self-Exalting Spirit: When the Messenger Becomes the Message

Hello, 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, Chenna Ross, pastor and the voice of the Understanding, Scripture, and Truth by Chenna D. Ross, YouTube channel. Chenna, it's good to be back and this topic that we have today, I'm very excited to get into because this is something I really have not yet talked about in this podcast. You get to be the first one who goes there with me but I'll

tell you a little bit of background of why this is important to me and why I feel so inclined to do it. So today we're talking about the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit. If you're a Christian, that's a big part of Christianity, the Holy Spirit is the one who comes and leads you and guides you, right? Well, whenever we were in the Branham call and I was on a business trip, I think it's a San Jose if I remember the city correctly and I just happened to fall upon in the trip to the business center that I was going into. It just happened to

fall my lot that the taxi went by this big place that looked like this Egyptian tomb or something. So I'm getting out my phone and I'm looking what is this place, man? And come to find out it's the largest Egyptian museums in the United States. So whenever I discovered this, I'm like, man, I got to go see that. I'm fascinated with Egyptian history. So I get in there and I'm learning about some things I knew, some things I didn't, but as I'm going through the different tours that they have, they've got these like paths that

you go down and I'm learning about the artifacts themselves, what it is they have, but also the culture. And I'm starting to see similarities between not only the culture but the themes and what I grew up with and the Branham religion and the thought suddenly struck me. Now I was fresh out of the cult. I had I really knew nothing back then. But the thought suddenly struck me. This is oddly similar to this ancient Egyptian mythologies. It's oddly similar to what I escaped. And then as I got deeper into it in the center, they had some kind of a, I don't know what this was. It was like a

big statue or something that said who sponsored this place and it was the rose accrucians that sponsored it and I knew nothing about this I'm like my phone what is a rose accruciant and it's an esoteric society with secret knowledge and comparing even that to what I came from it I found as I'm reading and learning about rose accrucians I'm thinking how similar this is to the cult I escaped and then the thought suddenly struck me the way that they presented the Holy Spirit in these movements was an esoteric manner of Holy Spirit it was one that had

secret knowledge so when the Bible says the Holy Spirit will lead you and guide you into all truth and there's various passages right well in the message cult and bladder rain in general the Holy Spirit was to lead you to the secret mysteries and so this was my first time that I ever suddenly stopped and thought about the difference between what does the Bible say about the Holy Spirit and what were we taught about the Holy Spirit and that sent me down paths of research I can't tell you how many books I read and how many different things I studied trying to learn the difference

between the two and they're vastly different you know I didn't know where you were going John with Egyptian Museum but I love where you ended up and the passage that he when the Holy Spirit comes he will bring all things to your remembrance he'll take of the things of me and reveal them unto you and he will show you things to come and going back to what we had looked at in our last study on Exodus and hermeneutics the original meaning purpose application interpretation of that passage is obviously to those apostles the 11 that he was talking to in the upper room there was no

possible way apart from the Holy Spirit that Matthew who was one of the apostles John who was another of the apostles could have possibly remembered all that we now have in Matthew and John's gospel that'd be impossible for them to remember all those stories and then Mark and glued the other two writers and and so the meaning was that when the Holy Spirit comes he will bring all of that to your remembrance so that you can remember everything I said and taught and did who I said that to and where we were when this happened and how many lows and how many fishes they

would never be able to remember all that if he did not bring that to their mind so that's obviously the first application of it and you're right people have misinterpreted that and they're okay having the Bible but they're looking for a deeper revelation than what the actual Bible has, which is Matthew and John, as well as the rest of the 27 New Testament books.

And that's not what the passage is saying. You're not going to get, you know, number one, it applied to them mostly and primarily so that we could have an accurate record of the life in teaching in Christ. And then secondly, you're not going to get any more revelation in what you've got in the 66 books of the Bible. That's the whole problem with this extra biblical stuff that continues to come from Charismatics. And as far as Dr. Freeman goes, even though he was orthodox as far as this is concerned, he said that the Bible is, from cover to cover, Genesis to Revelation,

it's the Word of God, it's inspired, it's infallible, it's inherent. Those are the, you know, the orthodox statements of the Christian faith. He would agree with all that. There were many times when he got to some esoteric teaching, such as the overcomers of the manchild, then he would warn people. Now, the Bible says, don't just follow the dead letter of the Word, but you have to be open to the spirit of the Word and not just the dead letter.

And I always wondered, what do you mean by the dead letter? Do you mean anything actually in the Bible? Are you dare going to call that the dead letter of the Word? You know, he was very unclear on what he meant by the dead letter. And you know, it's one of my big problems with Dr. Freeman.

It was just a hodgepodge of theology and, you know, what he'd give you with his left hand, he'd take away with his right hand. And what he'd say out of the left side of his mouth on on Wednesday, out of the right side of his mouth on Sunday, he would say something that would contradict that. And it was just a complete mess all the time, which takes us back, does it not to good exegesis and good hermeneutics. So that would be my little spill on what did, what does John really mean? He's one who records those verses you and I

just referenced in John 14 to 16 in the upper room discourse. What did John really mean by that? Not what Brannum followers and Freeman people have thought, that's for sure. And it would probably take me writing books to explain my full thought on what I just said.

Hopefully somebody catches what I was trying to mean by that. But the nature of God that was presented, which includes the Holy Spirit, which is what we're talking about today, the nature of God himself was different in these cults. Another example that I'll tie into this.

So one of the things in Laterane, and I don't know if Brannum started this or somebody else did, but they would take little passages that had words that I hate to it, but I feel like there were a lot of uneducated people that just didn't understand some of the language in the King James version that they were using. And they would just use it against them, right? But one of the passages was Ephesians 4 or 30 through 32, where it says, do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you've been sealed for the day of your redemption. And it goes on to say, get rid of

bitterness, basically it's saying, don't, don't make God sad because of your anger against one another. That's literally what the passage is meaning, right? Grieve not the Holy Spirit, but what these guys did was they would take the first part of verse 30, leave off the second part, the ceiling, and say, be careful, because if you question the prophet, you might grieve the Holy Spirit away. And so God then becomes this very much like the Egyptian gods, a very bitter vengeful God that will just cut you off if you question. And so the Holy Spirit was this scary thing

to us. We actually, I can remember these altar calls where the children would go off the teenagers, and they would always have this question, hey, do I have the Holy Spirit? Because if not, I am doomed to hell. That's the way they taught it. And B, did I accidentally do something that made him grieve him away, the Holy Spirit away? And so there was always this fear, you grew up in this fear, am I saved or am I not saved? Rather than messages from the Bible that are giving you some sort of positive confession, some sort of security that God loves you, God's going to save you.

Yeah, absolutely. And here's another one of those passages. I just turned to it, John and John 16. This is a favorite one of Hobart's that he would twist in verse 12. Jesus said, I have yet many things to say unto you, but you cannot bear them now. And he's reading that as though Jesus is talking directly to us today, and he's not. He's talking directly to the apostles. And then we have to, by good, hermeneutics, determine in what way can we apply this to ourselves.

But he said to the apostles, I have many things to say to you, but you couldn't bear them now. How be it when he the Spirit of truth has come? He will guide you into all truth, and then he will teach you things. And so Hobart would say, you know, well, the Bible says that he didn't give us everything that, but when we get the Holy Spirit, then he's going to finish the revelation. And he'll give us additional things. And that's how they ended up going on and adding to what's actually in the Bible. And he was just a mess, and that goes back to poor exegesis and poor hermeneutics.

But I want to go down a little different path today than exegesis and hermeneutics with regard to the Holy Spirit and talk about the Holy Spirit and his gifts, especially things like healing and prophecy and dreams and visions. Paul gives us several, in his letter, several different listings of gifts.

He gives one in 1 Corinthians 12, there's nine gifts there, gives another list that's quite a bit different to the Roman Christian, over in Romans 12. The only gift that's actually seen in both of those is a gift to prophecy. And I'm not so much concerned today about the gifts mentioned over in Romans 12 because those are gifts like giving, ruling, exhortation, you know, there are things that don't have that external, explicit, obvious, supernatural connection or connotation to them. Verses to ones over in 1 Corinthians 12, which obviously do. You have healings and miracles and prophecy and speaking in tongues and words of knowledge

and words of wisdom and things like that. And this isn't just an aside because before we're through with our discussion today, we're actually going to play one of one of the excerpts from a message of Dr. Freeman, where he is allegedly operating in these gifts. And I hope by the time we get there and when we're through it and we evaluate that people will be able to see the difference between the difference, the difference between what's good and what's not good and what's right and not right. And look, I mean, this is a very popular subject on,

very popular subject on YouTube. I mean, it is all over YouTube. People really are fascinated with prophecy and dreams and visions. There are even schools you can go to and be trained as a prophet.

And you know, I see you smiling as I'm saying this because

all of this stuff is just so silly and unnecessary. Nobody in the Bible is trained as a prophet. You're called and gifted that way. There are classes you can take now where they teach you step-by-step how to interpret a dream and how to interpret a vision. And that, I'm one of these old-school guys, old-school in this sense. If it's not in the Bible, I'm just very lazy and suspicious of it. Joseph and the Old Testament was given dreams and visions. And Daniel was given dreams and visions. And Nebuchadnezzar was given dreams and visions, which he couldn't

interpret. He needed God's prophet to do that for him. And nobody is going to... going to school to learn how to do it. It's not, you know, first semester, second semester, dreamology or visionology.

And there's 14 steps that you can go through. When God gives a person a dream or a vision, he and some matter or another, and in some moment of time or another, is also going to show them what that vision and what that dream means.

There'd be no sense in giving it to them. If he gives it to them and then they have to go to school or go through a class to learn how to interpret it. So these are just some of the things that we're seeing out there in YouTube Land.

And, you know, you also bring into it this huge prophetic movement, which I don't know who coined the term. You know more about the terminology. I think John that I do, but the NAR way back in the day, I can remember this back in the 1980s.

It was just thought of, I think, spoken of as the prophetic wave. It was a movement. And I'm sure there were earlier beginnings to it, but in the 1980s, it became, it was new then, new as a full-blown movement, but it began to grow.

It took off quickly in some later podcasts that we'll do. I hope I'm gonna talk about how once Hobart passed off the scene and those guys at Faith Assembly had lost their mooring, then the leaders like Steve Hill and Jeff Barnett and some of the others, they headed right to Kansas City because, you know, they needed some leader, they needed some new thing to follow and some of them to this day.

Here we are 40 years later still following that movement. We called it the prophetic wave back then. And I was always hoping that it was a wave goodbye, but it wasn't. It was a wave to stay.

And I don't know, maybe the 90s and early 2000s, maybe it took a little bit of a dip. I don't know, you know more about that, but look at where it is today in prophecy and the existence of these modern-day prophets.

There are so many of them, they are proliferating. It's like you could have a registry now. You should maybe even consider doing this, John. You could have a registry of false prophets. They could pay what, $25 a month, just to be in the registry.

No, a false record registry, but they generally overlook stuff like that. As long as they're getting advertisement, even negative advertisement is okay for them. There's money for you, there's advertisement for them and there's warning for all of us of who we shouldn't follow.

There are just so many of them out there. Schools of prophets and classes of the prophets. And to me, it's all totally evil. It's all totally unacceptable. it's unfounded and it just doesn't have any biblical basis at all.

You saw me laughing and I was actually trying not to but it's funny to me and honestly it shouldn't be funny this is a very serious thing we're talking about but if you think about what is actually happening and I don't think the average person who's in these movements realizes what is actually happening it begins to seem very much like a b-rated comedy movie because so you mentioned school these people have schools for prophets. Well in Kentucky there is a school of the prophets. There's a guy named William Souters he started the gospel assembly which turned into another destructive cult. We have evidence that William Branham was attending

the gospel assembly schools of the prophet and so he was and interestingly this all came about because many of the things that William Branham claimed about his own supernatural events in his life that were a complete fiction they are eerily similar to William Souters events in his life that I'm certain were also you know a complete fiction. So there's some plagiarism there there's some copying there but so I'm an artist and I'm a musician I'm both um my music I play by ear I tried to take lessons and learn by notes and I'll never forget my piano

teacher one day she just slammed the book shut and she says John play that song we were just playing and I said you close the book I know I close the book play the song so I played it and I played it perfectly and she says that's exactly what I thought you're you're listening and playing you're not reading a note can you even read these notes and I've been taking lessons a year I said no not really I just listened you play it and I play it. So I'm a musician and it just comes naturally

to me I have seen other musicians who they do learn by note and mechanically you can learn to be a musician mechanically you can learn the notes you can learn how it all works the timing there are some people who can there are also people who can't carry a tune in a bucket who can't carry a rhythm at all who they can take lessons as much as they want and they're never going to learn it it's just not in their nature same thing with art I'm an artist I like to draw I can draw I have taken some classes mechanically they can teach people to mechanically move their

hand but as you know some people just can't draw it's not in them right so apply this to what they're doing in prophecy the way it works when these guys have these quote-unquote schools of prophecy they're trying to convince you that they have the power to teach you something that should be coming only from God and so they're taking random individuals who who are not prophets at all and they're saying things like you need to randomly go around and make predictions and see which of your predictions come true. Focus on those. And so what it becomes

really is a numbers game. If you can play the numbers well and if you're rolling the dice and you're hitting the right number each time you roll a prophecy, well then you're better of a prophet than those other people who are also guessing at their prophecies. And then with all of the connections to all of this, the ones who are guessing better than the other ones, they become more famous. And then now once you get to this level where you're famous, you get up on this pedestal where you have to maintain that level of prediction. So you augment it

by things that you see, things that you know, things that you can go investigate and find out for yourself. And you randomly include those. And you know, they're very smart how they do it. Sometimes they will, you know, in the form of prophecy they'll say something and not really claim its prophecy but say something that they know already before the fact. And then people hear it and they think they're prophesying. So there's this big wide scheme that goes with this. But in the end, you're trying to forcibly give people something that they do not have that should only be coming

from God. And if you understand what the word prophet means in the first place, you can't do that at all. Either comes from God or it doesn't. Absolutely. I think I sit in the last podcast so on that I have often thought that being a true prophet is easiest seeing in that regard to do in the world because God just gives you the words. You don't have to manufacture, you don't think, you don't plan. If you're having to conjure up everything, it's very obvious that you're not a prophet.

And to your point of musicians and artists, you know, that is you are so true. I am not a musician. I can sing and I can dance, but I'm not a musician and I am not an artist. I could not draw a credible stickman and the people that follow my teachings when I'm riding up on the board can attest to that.

You know, I don't have any of that ability at all. They have to help me interpret my own writings whenever I try to write on the board. So, you know, I don't know where all your audience is on this subject of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, prophecy, word of knowledge, word of wisdom, dreams, visions. But I feel badly in doing, we've done 30, I think of these interviews, in doing all of these podcasts where the bulk of what we have done, the bulk of what I have done is to take away and not give back. You know, you're a researcher, you're a historian. So,

you're just documenting things. I'm a preacher, I'm a Bible teacher. And Bible teachers don't want to just take away if they don't have anything to give back. Part of the whole process of presenting a message from some text in the Bible is to explain it, explain it in its setting, explain its meeting, and then try to figure out what kind of application, what can I walk away?

You know, I can't walk away from this just knowing that isn't true, this isn't true, and the other isn't true. You know, this guy's false, that guy's false, and by the way, she's also false.

And this gift is that gift that he manifested is not true, and that one is not true, and neither is that. So what is the truth? You know, what may I believe? I have often thought and said to people, I'm slowly approaching this whole topic, as you can tell, that I think that an argument could be made, this is simply a logical argument, not a one drawn from a specific passage in the Bible, but an argument could be made that the very presence of all of the false that we see is itself a proof of the truth.

And here's what I mean by that. If there's no such thing as the supernatural, if God does not heal, if God never gives a true vision, a true dream, a true prophecy, a true revelation, if there is no miracle, no such thing, if none of that, which is almost where the cessationists want to end up, if none of that is even true, then why do we have all of these warnings?

Why not just know automatically that if it's supernatural, by definition, it's false. You know, if it's a prophecy, if it's a dream, if it's by definition, it's false. If those things don't exist, then by definition, they are false.

But that's not really what we read in the New Testament. We read things like don't despise, prophesying, but prove all things and find out which one is true and which one isn't. And I know it's unfortunate that it's that way, but that is just the way that it is.

You have true and false ministers, John, you have true and false prophecies, you have true and false streams. If there's no such thing as those things ever happening, God could simply say, well, as soon as you see it, you can discount it because it's wrong, but that's not the way that these things work.

It does take critical discernment. And sometimes it's not critical discernment, it's just plain obvious stuff. You know, if there is a guy, who is lame from his mother's womb and we all know it and he's laying there on a couch in front of the minister upon the podium at some evangelistic revival meeting and he commands him to get up and walk and he does it because he can't. But we know right away, that's false.

Sometimes it's not critical thinking, it's just the obvious. And as we have looked in the past in Acts chapter 3 and 4 and 5, we see a case of someone who was lame from his mother's womb and there was a real miracle worked on him. So real, in fact, that the religious leaders wanted in every way possible to deny it and they simply couldn't.

Where for us, sometimes it's pretty easy to deny because we can also prove that what they said took place actually didn't take place. But we have a verse there in Acts where they're looking at the apostles or religious leaders, they're wanting to discount it. I mean, it says that they have already threatened them. Don't preach in this name of Jesus anymore. They're wanting to discount it, but then it said, but then be holding the man lame standing beside the apostles and it's like, well, there's nothing we can do. You know, we can't deny it because it actually happened.

So let me give you a personal story. I haven't given very many personal stories unless they're ones that make me look really bad or dumb or foolish because that's the reason for most personal stories. If guys are using personal stories to bolster their ministry, then I think we probably have trouble on our hands. So see if you can follow this. I'm going to give you a personal story about in my life that I'm not asking anybody to believe. You can believe it or not believe it, but I am promising you that it did happen. And there would be no reason for me to tell you this

if it didn't happen just this way. My wife and I were going to put some carpet in a room in a house that we lived one time. And we had a brother in our church who was a carpet layer.

So we got in, he had a van. We needed a long van. He had a carpet van where you could put these long rolls of carpet. We got in the van with him. Went to, I don't remember wherever the box store was to, you know, make our selection of carpet. We picked that out, loaded that in his van. And the three of us, it was my wife, me, and this brother in our church who was driving the van, we began to drive back to our house. Well, on the way, we see a hitchhiker. They're just

this young man hitchhiking beside the road. Well, I'm always, I'm always willing, and I'm not saying that people should do this. This is me and definitely women shouldn't be picking up hitchhiker. But here we got two men and one woman in this man. I see this hitchhiker and I want to pick him up because I want to use this opportunity to share the gospel with him. So I'm up in the front passenger seat. My Christian brother, the part of my church is driving and my wife is sitting in the back and so we slide the door open to let this guy in the back. We get this guy in the van. He's just a young man hitchhiking

out on the country road. I wave five and we're just making small talk and I look front really thinking Lord I really want to share the gospel with him. I want to witness. I want to tell him about Jesus and of course you can just do that if you want to but I'm saying Lord how should I go about doing this you know what should I say and so what I felt from the Lord is that the Lord gave me that young man's name and so I picked up a ballpoint pen and I got my hand and I wrote his

name and it wasn't a real common name it wasn't cheno it wasn't like that but it wasn't a real it wasn't John it was somewhere between cheno and John and I wrote his name on my hand and I just put the pen down and so I'm thinking Lord you have just given me that that young man's name. Now obviously he didn't tell us his name because this would be a parlor worse than a parlor trick if he told me the name and I say well Lord it showed me your name none of us know his name so I

had his name on my hand and so I began talking with him and I don't remember what all I said you know this has been a few years ago I don't remember how I broke the subject but I said I want to share with you the salvation message you know are you are you a Christian you know if you're not I want to share the gospel with you and as I said I don't know where your audience is on their beliefs of spiritual gifts but I'm trying to explain where I am on my belief of spiritual gifts

so I'm just barely into my discussion with him and I said look I see listen young man let's let's let's do this I said I really want you to listen to the gospel that I'm going to that I'm going to share with you what if God gives us a sign what if God has given me a sign that would just arrest your attention and maybe calls you to give more ear and heed to what I'm about to share with you and he said well yeah sure what do you mean by a sign and I said how about

if I know your name and I never met this guy obviously if we knew each other he's going to know this is a fraud I said what if I know your name what if I know your first name and he said well there's no way you can know my first name and I said well what if I do and he said well then that'll be a miracle and I'll listen to what you have to say and you know what I did John and I have myself and the other two people who witnessed this for still alive today if you want to track them down

but I hear what I do so I just open my hand and I show him my hand. And his name was Craig, not Greg. It was Craig. And I had Craig written on my hand. And he just about fell off the drywall bucket he was sitting on. So I can't believe you know my name. And that was an opportunity for me to share the gospel with him. I don't know where this young man is today, but I'm sure that you know was a powerful message to him and probably something that he has never forgotten today.

So I bet I told that story once or twice in my life. I'm even willing to do this on online. I have on my YouTube channel. I have all of the messages I've ever told. And there's over 2,300 of them. And I probably have told it somewhere. I will give anybody a $100 bill if you can find where I told that story. And you can probably find a timer too. My point is this, when Hobart would tell a story, well God saved me on the way home from a nightclub in 1952 and gave me Matthew 633 19 to 24 5 19 to 34 5 times. It says take no fault. And I went through college

and seminary and I never worked an hour and God supplied all my teeth. I've heard that story a million times. I have told that story once or twice because it doesn't have anything to do with me.

It was all for the benefit of that young man. And that's my point about spiritual gifts. I think that one of the ways that we can either rule them out or at least become suspicious is when we see these ministers using all of this stuff to build up and attract attention and verify and authenticate. And we found out 90% or more of what they're claiming happened didn't even happen anyway. But even the things that we can't disprove. So therefore even the things that maybe did happen.

And I'm not saying that Hobart Freeman did not have, earlier in his life, valid word of knowledge, a valid prophecy or a valid dream or a valid vision. You know, I don't know. I can't rule everything out. I can only definitely rule in what I know was fulfilled and I can definitely rule out either A, what just sounds cookie or B, which has been proven to be false. So your audience, John, may be split halfway down the middle. I don't even know where you are as a Christian friend and brother. I don't even know where you are on all this. I'll give you a chance here just a minute.

But I bet your audience may be split down the middle where half of the people because of all of this foolishness that we've heard. and you and I have been a part of exposing all of this foolishness that we've heard.

They're just tired of the lies, they're tired of the excesses, so they just said, we're going to jettison all of that. We don't believe any prophecy, no visions, no dreams, but probably half of your audience would say, look, in reading the New Testament, I just cannot, in good conscience, rule out all of these things.

I still think God can and does heal that there can and are true prophecies that God has and will continue to give true dreams and visions. That's probably where people are, and I certainly don't blame the people who have just thrown it all out because it is definitely a mess that we have on our hands.

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So my story of picking somebody up off the streets into my truck is quite different than yours, but I was working with my employees and we were going into a restaurant in downtown Clarksville.

As I'm walking in, this guy with a will work for food, sign on his chest, and he was, I don't think he had a shirt on, he was just sitting there in blue jeans.

He grabbed my leg as I'm walking in and I'm like, man, I'm trying to get in. So I got into the restaurant and right as my food was set down, my wife called and she said, she called me and she said, my radio just exploded in my vehicle. You got to come get me.

So I dart out and I'm not really thinking clearly. I'm supposed to be in a business meeting. My wife is stuck on the side of the road somewhere with my young kids. And as I'm walking out the guy grabbed my pants leg again.

And he said, Mr. I'm just trying to get to the interstate. Can you give me a ride? I'll use my thumb. I'm trying to get south. And so I said, sure hop in the truck. And as he hopped in the truck, I realized I don't know this man from Adam.

He's much, much bigger than me. He's in my vehicle. This was probably a really bad idea. And so I carry a 45. I pulled my 45 out and I set it in my lap.

And he looked at me and said, Mr, you got a gun? And I said, yeah. And he said, you're not going to shoot me with it, are you? I said, I sure hope not.

And he looked at me and said, let me out. I just live right across the street. So the whole ploy was a lie. I used my discernment after I'd made my stupid mistake to realize that something's off here.

This isn't right. I was using wisdom. And the point of all this to make is, you said you didn't know where I stand. Where I stand is this. There are a whole lot of frauds in this movement.

And whenever they claim prophecy, think about the things that they're claiming. For example, William Brandham claimed that he prophesied in 1933 that cars would be shaped like an egg. What value is that to the Christian world?

What value is that to him, to anybody? Why would God give him this prophecy? What is the purpose of it? Nobody asked these questions. And this became fundamental, laterane theology that he had this prophecy.

Then he proceeded to have people write their names in their addresses and their diseases on the back of these things called prayer cards and pass them in a basket. And he would use what he called discernment, which isn't biblical discernment, but he would say he discerned the diseases, the thoughts and secrets of their heart.

And he's basically discerning what they wrote on the back of these cards. And so he starts in these prayer lines and he says, God told me that your address is such and such. And nobody in the audience had the wisdom or discernment to think, does God really need my address to heal me?

And didn't I write it on the back of that card anyway? And then fast forward into today's world. So I am watching guys in the NER who are claiming to be prophets who ironically are plagiarizing many of the themes and statements and William Brannum is sermons.

So they're getting it directly from Brannum. And they're hosting these, I don't know what you call it, it's like a prophetic showmanship. They get up and they start rambling off people's addresses and says, you, your address is such and such.

And then they'll give this very vague, God wants to bless you. Of course, God wants to bless them. Nobody's using the thought and the discernment to determine, is this real, is this guy really real?

What is the purpose of it? So you ask me where I stood. So the story that you gave, if it's true or not, I'll let the audience decide that. It had a purpose. It convinced the man and you had the conversation about Jesus.

I can see that has a purpose. But I watch these guys who are claiming prophetic. And there's no purpose whatsoever if they were me having made a really stupid mistake They would have left the guy in the truck and who knows what would have happened to them I totally agree John most of what we see out there is false and my point is These these are big-time ministers and they're using these gifts quote-unquote. I don't think that they're Gifts at all in their life to establish and to promote and to expand and to authenticate themselves

That's what is all about. I mean, it's just it's just a house of cards You know, it's just a wilderness of a thousand mirrors that you have going on in these services out there It's all about them. It's all about their ministry But I think that in the Bible the true purpose for the gifts of the Holy Spirit are to help other people It's not to boast or boast about ourself. It's not to glorify ourself It's not to you know put on the Marquis and that's what these ministers have used it for so in the

illustration that I gave you know I tried to give it in it's in a in a very factual way but within its context and setting and You know, I've never used that on a Marquis You know come listen to the guy who one time in the past Wrote a man's name on his hand without knowing it and that was true I don't think that's the reason for the gifts. I think the gifts happen in our life and They are to help us or to help another person in some particular need And I'll give you another example from other people just this very weekend on Saturday

I got a rather long email from a lady in another state who They actually she and her husband Have both their they were until just recently a part of one of these satellites of faith assembly She and her husband their whole family history back to when they were children from what I understand They were brought up under Hobart Freeman's ministry They ended up, you know Getting older and getting married and now as a married couple they are in a faith assembly Satellite group and I've listened to the guy teach there and you know He's stomached in a bowdanker, you know, he cannot preach himself out of a wet bag

He's not qualified the church isn't good so this young couple has actually been raising some questions about Well, what about our in this church? What about our interpretation of this passage and what about this and what about that and guess what they're getting The cold shoulder you know it nobody wants to engage you're going to challenge the churches of Arrogative opinion about something church has no interest in engaging with a couple who has very valid and very serious Questions about things being done and taught in the church. So anyway back to my point She told me that the Lord had given her husband a dream and the dream was a dream

of warning about this, it ended up being a dream of warning about this church that they were in that they are now out of. So I take something like that as being just an extra encouragement from God to a young couple who don't want to make the wrong decision. You know it's like you, me, any of us leading the cult to leave the group is to leave everything and as she went on to explain you know we have no fellowship with my family, with his family, with any of our former friends that we grew up with. It's a huge decision to make and rather

than them just have to walk out on a limb and make it on their own which they could have done and I'm sure eventually would have done and they did do. Here comes the Holy Spirit giving this man a dream that helps fortify his position.

I'll give you another example. These are just examples that I know that I happen to believe. They just happen to you know us little people. It's not all the big people in ministry. I say all the time I trust to sheep way more than I trust any of the shepherds. It's just the people in the church that I have a lot more confidence in than any of the leaders. But I think John it was the first young lady that you did in our story on Sarah Kirchhoff Rundell on Faith Assembly. When I talk to her on the phone and then I pass you know contact information along to

you and you guys hooked up and you did an interview with her. She told me this really great healing story from the early years of her father's life even before she was born. She just had grown up with the story. Her father had told it to her and so you know I asked more questions about the story you know. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you that are do you feel certain that happened yet? I am getting to talk to her father and I said I heard from your daughter this story about a healing you had way back in your 20s and I said I just want to

hear the story. Would you mind sharing that with me and he shared it with me. And then I asked afterwards I said do you feel looking back now you know for that was 40 50 years ago. Do you believe and he has left you know the faint the Freeman message do you believe that was real and that it was genuine and that it really did happen like that you know back then he said absolutely and I said you know what so do I and here was a simple story that guy was a young man in his 20s from the East Coast. He had real severe severe stomach issues. He

didn't even know what it was just very severe stomach issues and pain in his stomach. He ended up at a church out in California and he is up in the balcony. And I don't know who the minister was, but it was a minister down front who said he had a word that Someone there had a stomach condition and then it became more specific that there was a man who had a stomach condition and then it became more specific and it's someone up in the balcony and then it became more specific and it is you young man and

He said when the man spoke that word he said he felt a change in his stomach He said those problems and pain Severe condition that he had went away and it never came back There's no reason why I don't believe that you know, I believe that Wholeheartedly. It's funny that the cessation is John want to make this big connection between Anything that's supernatural and the clothes of the canon in scripture. They say now as soon as the canon closed since all of these were To confirm the ministry of the apostles and that's simply false That's not at all what the New Testament records said but since they argued that the signs were to confirm the apostles

ministry once they finish writing the New Testament that all the signs stop and you know That's just the lamest argument What does the Completion of the New Testament have to do with that man's stomach condition?

Whether the Bible is completed or not doesn't help him at all He still needs to be healed and there are many times that Jesus performed miracles and they were to authenticate him as the son of God And you can see that in the passage and there are many other times where the gospel writer said that Jesus simply looked out over the Multitude and he had compassion on them and these people had dragged sick people from all over Northern Galilee and People possessed with demons and he had compassion on them and he just healed all of them

And it doesn't say he did that to prove he was the son of God He did that because he was God and and he had compassion on those people Doesn't God still have compassion today wouldn't God still want to heal someone today?

No, not in Hobart Freeman's message and method where all drugs are Demonic and all doctors are demon inspired and if you ever go there You're going to lose your salvation. That's not the biblical message But the biblical message is still there that God does heal and that God is willing to show his people a Past present or future event that might somehow help them save them aid them in their lives I can give another Story of of my own that was very important because it connected to Hobart Freeman So I didn't have this event someone in my church did but listen to this real briefly and then I want to play a clip from one of

Hobart messages. This happened in either the late summer or the early fall of 1984. Remember, that's the year that everything's going down at Faith Assembly and that's the winter in December of that year when Hobart will die. Because I had been critical and because I had written three critical letters, they had cut me off and I was not allowed to buy any tapes, I did not know what was going on at Faith Assembly those last months prior to Hobart's death. It was the things that I found out I found out later and I was so surprised

by them. So as we in our church, I'm pastoring a church in Vermont at the time and as we're just going merrily along in our church, you know, we're not a Freeman satellite church by any means. I was teaching a 240-something series, message series on biblical and extra-biblical literature and five years on Christian ethics and we were just doing our own thing. After I got through with a Sunday morning teaching, I got through talking with the people and I was preparing to leave and I had one of the brothers in the church come up to me, an older brother in the

church come up to me and he said, look, brother, I had a dream last night that I believed from the Lord and I just want to share that with you. I said, sure. And you know what he shared in that dream? He shared two things. The second thing I can't tell you, I can tell you off the air but I can't say it on the air because it just wouldn't sound right. But the first thing I can share, you know what he said? And we did not know anything that was going on at faith assembly. As we're going to get into, let me pause for a minute and jump ahead,

we're going to get into in the next podcast. Dr. Freeman was really ill toward the end of his life of multiple things and those were the very things he died from. We weren't aware of that because we were not in any type of contact with faith assembly. So this brother says, well, there were two things in the dream. He said, number one, Dr. Freeman is going to die. Well, he didn't mean like he's going to die. We're all going to die. That's no dream. That doesn't tell me anything. And it wasn't even, well, he's going to die someday, one day, that's not anything. What the impetus, what came along with

Dr. Freeman is going to die is Dr. Freeman is going to die suddenly and soon. I don't remember him saying those words to me suddenly or soon, but that's how he took the dream that he'd had the night before. And that's how I took the dream that he was sharing. If you saying Dr. Freeman's going to die, well, that means this is getting ready to happen. And you know what, within four months, Dr. Freeman had died. It put, and you know, whether that dream was going to come the past at that time, I don't know, you know, all I can do is lay it on the shelf, time

will tell. You know, when someone gives a prediction, you don't have to get all up and arms over at time will tell. But normally with that prediction, I think come some kind, if it's a true dream revision, come some kind of awareness that this is probably true.

For instance, in the end of Acts chapter 11, Ag of this, who was a prophet in Jerusalem had gone up to the Syrian Antioch Church, and he went up there with a word, and he said, gave a prophecy, he said, thus says the Holy Spirit, that there's going to come a famine in Judea.

And Luke tells us that it did come to pass in the days of Claudius Caesar. Well, the people didn't wait for it to come to pass. The people sense that was a true prophecy.

They began to take up a collection of money and food items because they knew that their brethren down south in Jerusalem and Judea were going to need that very soon, and that's exactly what happened.

So I just say that to say that sometimes along with that dream revision, if it's true, you just kind of know it's true. But here's the point that I'm trying to make in criticism of all of this, is that these big time ministers always seem to have a dream and always seem to have a vision.

I think these things are relatively rare when they come along. I don't think they happen every week, and I don't think you can train people how to go about doing it. I just think they happen when they happen, and it's the goodness of God for him to give that to us, and we're very thankful for it, and it generally very much helps us in our life.

But is it sent to promote us, or to promote our ministry, absolutely not? I think when you transfer those things to that realm, then we probably have on our hand somebody who is going to be a false minister.

So I think what you just said is a good tie-in to what I tried to say and probably did very poorly at the very beginning. The nature of God is totally different in these religions.

And as I was studying through the culture and the mythologies of the ancient Egyptians, if you understood how that worked, the Pharaoh was the mediator between God and man. He was basically the Lord speaking to you.

In those religions, and it wasn't just the Egyptians, many cultures around the world had this, the equivalent to the Holy Spirit would be the Pharaoh or the King or the monarch, who is one with the ancient pagan deities.

So that's how it worked. What I see in these movements where these guys are pretending to be a prophet, most of their prophecies, if you look at, if you critically examine them, they have one sole purpose, and that is to point back to the guy who's on stage and say, look at me, look what I've done.

Now listen to me because I am the voice of God to you. Yeah, it's so true, John. So I think this would be very helpful if you wouldn't mind playing a clip. This clip, John, is gonna come from the last, the very last message Hobart taught in that series called Exortations from Exodus.

That was the last series that he was teaching before he ended up dying later that year. And the last message, at the very end of the last message, starting at the 53-minute mark, basically, and going to the 56-minute mark.

So it's a three-minute clip. And what people are gonna hear on this, there are four so-called words of knowledge for healing. And what I want people to do when they listen to that is, what do you think of that?

Does that make sense to you? Does that sound valid? Does that sound genuine in light of some of the earlier examples that we have given? It's injured or something, no matter with your left arm.

That's all I see is the arm. Praise the Lord. Then you have it in Jesus' name be healed, in Jesus' name be healed, in Jesus' name. Well, all over the building, be healed wherever, wherever you're believing for that.

Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Oh, Shalom, accursed, and in the name of the God of the Holy Spirit. Bless the Lord.

Bless the Lord. Fue, but not our Superfication. Thank you, Jesus. Hallelujah, praise the Lord. Praise God. Now we've got a right hand. I don't know where the man or woman, some infirmity or whatever the right hand.

Well, since I don't know if it's a man or woman, we've got both. Hallelujah. In Jesus' name be healed.

In Jesus' name be healed. Praise the Lord. And I chose a throat condition. None of these is saying what it is. It can be any number of things.

Throat condition in the name of Jesus. How many? How many? Praise the Lord. Well, you know, they do get healed, so in the name of Jesus be healed. In the name of Jesus be healed.

Thank you. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah, that kind of thing. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. Praise God. Praise the Lord. Amen. Hallelujah. I believe the Lord wants to quicken our faith through these healings that you've been faithful to believe that they are coming and now here and there you're receiving them.

Hallelujah. I don't know what this means. There seems to be an injury, a cut, or an injury from a piece of machinery or something. Does anyone have a need like that? That's all I can make out of it.

All right. You come for prayer. Praise the Lord. Those who have that, you come for prayer. Okay. So on this very first one, here's what he said. Hobart just starts in and it's always in such a weird and vague, even his terminology, but I'm quoting it.

Here's what Hobart said. Well, he shows a man with an injured or something that matter with your left arm. That's all I see is the arm. Okay. That's his word. And then he says, praise the Lord because someone has probably raised their hand and said, that's me.

And watch this, John. He says, praise the Lord. Then you have it. In the name of Jesus, be healed. In the name of Jesus, be healed. In the name, well, all over the building, just be healed.

Wherever you are, you are believing for that. That's the end of this first word of knowledge. The second one goes like this. Now we've got a right hand. I mean, what do you mean when you say now we've got a right hand? Well, I've got a right hand.

You've got a right hand. We've all got a right hand. It sounds like an auction or something. Now we got a right hand next. It says now we've got a right hand. I don't know whether man or woman.

Well, that makes it easy. Some infirmity or whatever. Well, that makes it easy. The right hand. Well, since I don't know if it's man or woman, he's looking out in the audience. We've got both. So Hallelujah.

Look, we've got 2,000 people here. We've got a man who's saying that God is giving me a word of knowledge for a healing. Why can't he write the person's name down as I did and point to them and say, and you're the man.

You know, when Nathan had a prophecy about and he gave this parable when he went in before David, you know about this man in his sheep and he... And he didn't take care of him.

He had plenty and David said, oh, that's a terrible person. That's a terrible person that did that. Nathan said, thou art the man. He said, you are the one. He didn't just generally say, when the Lord shows a man with an injured, or now we've got a right hand.

I don't know whether it's male or female. Hope art has an audience of 2,000 people. The likelihood that there is a man or a woman who has something wrong with their right hand is extremely high.

It's extremely high. This is not a biblical use of the word of knowledge, or the word of wisdom, or divine healing, or prophecy, or whatever you want to call it. This is not a biblical example of that.

It's actually an example in my opinion of a fraud. And I know there are people that follow hope art that would be terrified. They're actually afraid that I may die for saying that. They wouldn't dare say anything like that.

I don't hesitate saying that. That that's a fraud. That's a fraudulent use of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. To say, we've got a man with a left arm. Now we've got a right hand, could be man, could be woman, and don't even know which.

Oh, we've got both. Well, that's great, so all of you people are healed. The third example he gives, and I quote, praise the Lord, now he shows a throat condition.

I have a throat condition before we start these podcasts where I have to call and get ready to talk. Now he shows a throat condition. None of these is he saying what it is.

Why isn't he? It can be any number of things end up quote, that way you're certain to get someone to raise their hand so you can pronounce them healed. And then here's the fourth and final one.

I don't know what this means. This seems to be an injury, a cut, an injury from a piece of machinery or something. Does anyone have a need like that? That's all I can make out of it end up quote.

And then a bunch of people do come up. You know, I don't know what people think when they hear that now. I don't know what people thought back then, John. But when I heard that, when I first heard that, when I finally got my hands on that message and got to hear that, I just thought, this is some chicaneery.

This is some slight a hand pulling a rabbit out of a hat. If God has the ability to, and he does, to give you a word for someone to be healed and he does, and he will, I believe God still does that.

But if God has all of this ability, why does he stop short? Why does he just say that somebody could be man or woman? has something wrong with their right hand. It could be an infirmity or whatever.

It could be an, it could, why does he stop short? Because I don't think it's God doing it. I think it's all coming in the mind of the minister. He just has this feeling because I know this is exactly how William Branham and Oral Roberts and all of these other false prophets and false ministers did it.

They said, now the Lord has shown me a brother here, and when they say the Lord has shown me a brother has a severe condition with his left hand, if you're saying that in a meeting with an audience of two people, I'm all in favor for that word, brother, because we're gonna find out in a hurry.

If you're saying that in an audience with 2000 people, that is a sleeve of belonging is all that is. Because anybody, I could do it, you could do it, any fool could stand up there and say, the Lord has shown me that somebody needs to be healed with their in their left hand.

Somebody in a group of 2000 is gonna have that problem. So, look, I'm in whole-hearted agreement with what you have said, what I have said in the past in discouraging people to believe these tricksters and these religious hucksters out there, but I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater and I wouldn't rule out the very real possibility of the supernatural in all of our lives.

But just be careful when it comes to some big time figure up on the platform. I would rule that out about 11 times out of 10. That's how much I would rule that out.

And what you described came directly from Branemism. Branem would stand in front of an audience and he would do his little address gimmick. And then at the end, he would say, and I take every spirit in this building under my control and he would blanket heal the entire mat.

They called it in the newspapers, I think his Branem campaign team called it in mass. He had healings in mass and interestingly, in one of his more famous revival tours, he had one of the healings in mass, but one of the people who were taken to the stage as they would bring people up to the stage to build up the hype and get everybody excited.

One of the girls who was taken up on stage was allegedly healed in city A. Then they went to city B, the newspaper reporters noticed that it was the same exact girl in the next city that had just rose up and was healed.

So you have to understand that there's a little bit of trickery that goes with this. And like you said, in the end, for some of these guys, it's nothing but a numbers game. Get enough people in the building, get their hype up and they're gonna believe whatever it is that you tell them.

But this has been incredibly fun. and hopefully people can catch that it was what they're selling you is a different spirit and A, you have to understand they're selling it to you and B, you really need to understand it is a different spirit. I totally agree, John. Thanks for the opportunity. I just feel better having given something back and not just taking away all the time. Absolutely. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-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.