Faith Healing, Fraud, and the Power of Storytelling

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, 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 to talk all things Hobart Freeman and faith healing and healing revivals and this episode we briefly discussed it before recording but this is a topic that fascinates me. I like to learn some of the psychology behind what makes people think and act the way that they do

and a lot of the characters that are on my website and all of the research people think that I'm just so strongly hardcore against them and that I have hatred or whatever is their thinking after they see it but it isn't that so much as I just want to understand why what made them tick. Gordon Lensy for example, he was raised in a cult, he was raised in the cult of John Alexander Dauy and I think he was taken out of that cult at an early age and then transplanted into Amy Simple McPherson's four-square gospel church cult and he

was mentored by I think he was mentored by Charles Fox Parham which had another cult and so him coming into contact with all of those different varieties of people gave him the Christian identity from Amy Simple McPherson's church, Pentecostalism and faith healing from both from Parham and from John Alexander Dauy. Dauy and Parham both claimed to be the return of Elijah so he would easily accept William Brannum as the return of Elijah plus Christian identity had those themes too. So the background that made Gordon Lensy who went on to found Christ for the nations and was Brannum's campaign manager is

very easy to see why he made the decisions he did and you know putting ourselves into the positions of some of these people, they would be very difficult for us to break the system that had created us. We have to discover the truth, we have to wake up and snap out of it and some people do some people don't. So true John and you've got to remember I wasn't raised in any of this like you were I was born into a Presbyterian church raised by godly mother so I new things about Billy Graham or Charles Finney or, you know,

things like that, but I had not heard any of the names of these healing of revivalists and evangelists or Roberts. I mean, that was a big name person back then. I don't think I'd ever heard of Orrovers and especially not any of these other people that we've been talking about.

The ones that you just mentioned, I had to study those out on my own, but where I was introduced to them was through Dr. Freeman. When I first began hearing his messages, I was 17 years old.

So we're back in the mid 1970s. And I had heard other contemporary charismatic speakers, like Bob Mumford and Derek Prince and Ernst Baxter and Charles Simpson. And Bob Winer with Maranatha Ministries out of Kentucky and Catherine Coolman.

I'd heard a few people like that, but I hadn't heard the historically big name people like Brannum and Co and T. L. Osborne and A. A. Allen. And as you mentioned, John Alexander Dow, we all the way back to, you know, the late 1800s and early 1900s.

So all of that came about through listening to Dr. Freeman. And the one that he was especially hung up on, I use that term now, didn't use it back then, was William Brannum. And of course, I was, this is what is so dangerous about all of this.

When you have ministers that rather than exegeding or expositing scripture, they are really just storytellers. And I continue to listen to stay up with what we need to be talking about here with Freeman and to keep it fresh on my mind.

I continue to listen to old messages of his even now. And I heard one the other day, I can't tell you which one it was. It was in the, they put out a group of tapes after Hobart died that had never been put out before.

We'll talk about that later just to keep interest going because the man's dead and no new material is going to be forthcoming. And I want to say 90% of it. I mean, it's just shocking.

He'll start with a passage. And I don't even know how you can tell that many stories. But it was a faith in healing message. And he literally went from story to story. Now, when you tell the story, something would click in his mind about a verse that might tie into that.

He would never go to the verse, but he would just reference it. He'd mention it and then he'd come back to that story or to another story. I didn't know that that wasn't a biblical way to teach.

I didn't know that that wasn't teaching his storytelling. I didn't know. It was just, you know, he'd have a tape and they were, I don't know, $3 back then. get my $3 together and send in a tape order for three or four or five messages, whatever.

And then I would get these and I would put them into my, you know, my old tape player and push play. And I would, and I would look at the title and think, oh, this is going to be so interesting.

Something about healing or faith and he would always start with a passage. And so we'd go to this passage. But I did not have any idea what was happening right in front of my eyes.

I did not know that's not the way you teach the Bible. He would just lift the bird. I had no idea. None whatsoever. It was years later before I understood, well, that verse is in a context there.

And in order to understand what it means, we have to understand what it meant, you know, there's always what it meant and what it means. What it means is the application you can draw, but you can never draw any application if you don't, first of all, know what it meant.

And I was just, I think like everyone else under these other ministers, mesmerized by the stories that he could tell. And he would talk about William Brannum all the time, had never heard of the guy, had no idea who it was.

As you hear these messages, you began to pick up little pieces of the story. And I was able to just from those tapes before I ever got Dr. Edwin Harrell's book, all things are possible.

Before I ever got that, just from Hobart's tapes, I could put pieces of Brannum's story together. Of course, just those pieces that either Hobart himself knew or wanted us to know, but I knew he was some poor guy born in Kentucky and an angel appeared to him when he was young and called him into the ministry and just, I mean, I had sat in church my whole life.

And I had never heard stories like that. My church services would often put us to sleep, especially as kids. So to hear stories like this of him, of Brannum out in the woods and he would just, the squirrels were so afraid of him, all he had to do is just speak the word, the spoken word.

And they would fall out of the tree, you know, like a possum upside down dead and surrender to him. And I'm 17 years old, you know, I was dumber than a bow-danker like so many people.

I just believe that, you know, because here this minister who is telling it with such vigor and such zest and such believability that I just thought, which is because I've never heard of things like that.

I mean, I've got 17 years experience. Who am I? I guess it probably did happen. And so then I would begin to hear these stories about Brannum and there were two in particular that he would tell you.

and one of them, you just happen to mention Gordon Lindsay. This is the one that he would always tell about Brannum, bringing Gordon Lindsay into it because he would also talk about Gordon Lindsay and he'd say Gordon Lindsay wasn't one of the ministers.

He always portrayed Gordon Lindsay as, he was the businessman, he was the organizer. In other words, he's not one given to believe fantastic tales or stories, you know? He's an accountant, he's pencil and pen guy, and so here's what Hobart would say about Lindsay and Brannum.

He said, Gordon Lindsay was William Brannum's crusade director. We find out, yeah, that was true for a period of time in Brannum's life, you know, I didn't know anything, so I accepted everything Hobart said.

And he said, this is a way these healing revivals would take place with where Brannum, the people coming into the meeting would be given prayer cards, and on the prayer card, we would be written, I suppose their name may be some more information, but definitely what was wrong with him?

Whatever illness they had would be written on the prayer card. So as they would come through the line to be prayed for, the prayer card would be handed to Gordon Lindsay and Brannum with his gift of the word of knowledge and gifts of healings would be able to discern what the person's illness is without looking at the card.

I mean, I heard this story dozens of times by Dr. Freeman, and then, you know, he would pray for the person for the very thing that they had according to the prayer card without him being privy to that information.

And he said tens of thousands of authenticated cases of healing, and then this is what he always went in it with, and William Brannum never missed it one single time. That was my grand introduction to William Brannum, word of knowledge, and the healing line.

There's so much time packed there, and we could actually do spin off a hundred podcasts off of that little bit that you just said. But if you wanna hear more about those things, you can listen to Charles and I as we go through the revival history, we've covered most of, but two key things that I wanna point out.

One of it's just a funny story, and the other one is really significant if you think about Hobart Freeman and the faith healing as it is. You mentioned the squirrels and speaking squirrels into existence.

I was one of the many, many people who was duped to believe that William Brannum could speak and create an actual physical animal for the sole purpose of blowing its head off, and he would tell the story often how, and this is where word of faith kind of developed from, I believe.

I don't believe this but he would say that I was out on the woods and I was having a bad hunting day and I didn't see any squirrels to hunt and so a voice spoke to me and said, well, speak and you can have a squirrel.

So I spoke and there it appeared and I blew its head off and I said, no, that can't be. So I spoke again and blew its head off again and as a kid, you know, this is fascinating.

It's cool stuff. I too want to speak in animal into existence. But trying to picture all of the adults who, you know, anybody who's been in the meat, who was in the meeting, who wasn't yet brainwashed, trying to picture what in the world they thought.

What kind of God lets the man speak in animal to blow its head off, right? But what's funny is if you go down in Kentucky, there is a minister not going to give his name.

But he has what he claims, he was close friends with William Brannum, he has what he claims to be those squirrels that got their heads blown off. And if you have ever hunted squirrel, I don't know if you have, I have.

And skinned a squirrel and ate a squirrel, you know what I'm about to say. But this guy will take these unsuspecting, non-hunting people and he shows them the skin squirrel and says, look, and it has no belly button because it was spoken into existence.

Well, squirrels nothing more than a rat. And I mean, anybody with common sense knows that you don't see a rat on a, you don't see a belly button on a rat either. It, I think they have one, but it's so really tiny that you can't see it.

So he tricks all the people and he says, look, it has no belly button. But just, you know, that kind of trick is a funny trick and sad all at the same time. But they were tricking people in these revival meetings as well.

The Gordon Lindsey, unfortunately, was part of it. We can prove without a shadow of a doubt. While they're claiming thousands and thousands and thousands of healings, some ministers such as Alfred Pol, who was there during these alleged great revivals where tens of thousands of people were walking out of wheelchairs and all kinds of stuff, he said that he could not find one single person that had been healed.

And many people, after the random, the random tour had came and gone, many people lost their faith because some of the people who were allegedly healed died. And their family said, what kind of God is this to heal my family and then they die?

And they wanted no part of God whatsoever. So he said it was a huge crisis for his own faith. And the prayer cards, I mean, anybody knows that that's a parlor trick. You know, you can, you can do the same kind of tricks yourself.

But the names and addresses written on the cards. There are instances where they're out of order on the recordings. And when the cards were out of order, Brannum would get his, they called it discernment or now they call it word of knowledge, but he would get his word of knowledge out of order.

So Mrs. green walks up, but she's supposed to be Mrs. White, because Mrs. White is the next one in line, but they're out of order. He says, and you, you're Mrs. White, Mrs. Green.

And it's very, very clear what's going on, right? And I did an examination of those prayer lines for having so much money flowing through this. We're talking millions of dollars back then. They had the most faulty recording equipment ever, because there are so many blank spots where the audio cut out during the prayer lines. And anybody with common sense knows what that is, too. Wow. Well, you know, by him drawing Gordon Lindsay into it made it a little more believable to me when he would cast Lindsay as, you know, he's not one of the ministers. So you could

rationalize in your mind and say, well, he doesn't have anything to gain. He's not one of these charlatans, you know, he's a pen and pencil accountant business kind of guy. So, you know, it would make make sense. I just want people who follow these podcasts. And I knew John that you and Charles have done a ton of research on that. And that's all well documented. And I don't have access to all of that. I just wanted people to understand in these podcasts that my introduction to what has turned out to be a completely fraudulent person, William Brannum, was to Hobart Freeman.

And I've said many times before, yeah, Hobart tried to distance himself later and say, well, Brannum got off later. But, you know, when I, as I grew up and matured as a young man and studied, I thought, well, there's nothing about Brannum that is similar to anything that Dr. Freeman taught or preached or stood for. It's just Hobart. I mean, he didn't have the doctrine that Hobart had.

Hobart taught all kinds of things on theology and Brannum didn't have any stuff like that. He didn't have any knowledge of anything like that. But I think Hobart was wanting to hold on to Brannum so dearly because that was his foundation. I mean, Brannum died in what December of 1965. And three months later in 66 is when Hobart Freeman is receiving the baptism of the Holy Spirit and starting his charismatic ministry. And it's all happening right there in Indiana. So he had learned some stuff and this whole business of the of the prayer lines, the word of knowledge. And I've shared before,

I believe in the word of knowledge and I believe in healing, but not in these wholesale revival meetings like we see where you know, it's what we could say low risk, low reward strategy.

You throw out a word in a large group of people and surely somebody's going to have that. But what Hobart was fond of doing is trying to retell the stories of some of these earlier ministries on things that were really exact.

and really precise. So consequently, for Brannum to have never missed it in tens of thousands of cases, being able to name the disease on the prayer card, you know, is simply amazing. But because that's not true, that is simply deceptive is what that is. And you're responsible for that. And if someone said, well, Hobart didn't know, well, then don't tell the story. If you can't verify it, if you aren't absolutely certain, then don't repeat the story. And I know in my, if people were John to listen to earlier messages in my ministry, when I was in my early 20s, I'm repeating some of

those same stories. Because I heard him from Hobart, because he heard him from Brannum, because he heard him from John Alexander Dowley, you know, somewhere along the line, we've got to stop the nonsense and put an end to the madness and say, we're not repeating any of these stories, any more hurt, unless we have some kind of verification of them. So another one of the big stories he would tell about Brannum, that I think he would also use to, and I know he would, to intimidate people with was, was this story? He said, now look, there would be some denominational

unbelieving ministers that would come into Brannum's meetings. And he said he could tell a story, because I know he probably heard it from William Brannum himself on one of Brannum's tapes. He said there were two Baptist ministers who had plotted between themselves that they were going to deceive William Brannum. And they knew how this worked, that you wrote your disease on the back of the prayer card and you went up through the line and then he would announce you had the disease and then, you know, announced that you're healed. So what these men did is they wrote

fake diseases and they were bad, like one of them had cancer and one of them had tuberculosis or something. I'm going to write this on the prayer card and go up through the line. And when they get to Brannum and I've heard this story a dozen or more times, when they got to Brannum, he would discern, brother, you don't have anything wrong with you. You were totally normal. You are not sick at all. Oh no, brother Brannum, no, you know, I am sick and I want you to pray for me. No, I'm telling you, you are well. You're a healthy man. I do not need to pray for you. No, you need to pray for

me. He said, you know, look at my call. I don't need to look at the card. The Holy Spirit shows me you're well. There's nothing wrong with you. And so these two ministers were up there in line together. And so then they caused a big ruckus and said, look, you know, we do have a disease on on our body. And this man is a fraud and he can't name the disease because we do have it and we wrote it on the card. Then all of a sudden...

Branham stops the whole meeting and in the midst of this turmoil He says now the Holy Spirit is showing me you two men. I see you in a motel room gathered around the table You were plotting to deceive the prophet of the Lord By saying you had an illness when you don't But thus say of the Lord the illness that you said you have which you don't you now have and you will die from it And both of the men went out and later according to the story both of them died of whatever that illness was

So when Hobart tells that story then he kind of brings in Acts chapter 5 where Ananias and Sephira Had lied to the Holy Spirit saying that they had Turned over all the money for the lands they had sold when really they had only turned over part of it and Peter Deserns that they are lying and predicts both of their deaths and they both die So I mean it is a subtle it is such a subtle work of a minister John to take a true story that we know happened because it happened in Acts 5 and

Weed it to a story that I don't know whether it happened or not But by giving that biblical background Or parallel You're just programmed in your mind to assume That this must also have happened with these two poor Baptist ministers and so what it also then brings on is Don't touch God's anointed if you ever try to touch God's anointed then you will probably die As you can imagine that story is a big stumbling block for anybody who wants to leave the Brannum cult and I came across some research that I had to confirm for myself, but another guy had published

Some information about those guys that you're referring to it was actually two men and two separate instances But he had published some some of William Brannum statements about it, which were conflicting and so I dug deeper and if you go to my website And you type in the man from Windsor you'll find the whole compilation of the research But in Detroit, Michigan, which was a hot spot for the bladder rain It was they called her Maal Beale. I think her name was Myrtle Beale. Her church was there. It was a big I think she's the one actually who ordained or commissioned Jim Jones if I remember correctly

But Brannum is holding a revival in this area and the newspapers published some of the fraudulent activities in the Brannum campaigns And so people were obviously doubting and so Brannum starts telling this tale How exactly like you said a man tried to trick him and he come up on the platform and he said And God has told me that the very things that you wrote on that card you now have go home. And he said the man walked out. In another instance of him telling the story, the man fell paralyzed and couldn't walk out and had to be carried out by two ushers. In another story,

he did get tuberculosis and he died six months later. In another one, he's still suffering with tuberculosis to this day. And this was like ten years later. And in one, he got so afraid because God was going to strike him down that he ran screaming. So is he paralyzed? Is he dead? Is he alive? Did he run screaming? None of the stories matched. So the whole thing was invented.

And it looks to be just a publicity stunt to try to counter all of the things that were published in the newspapers that exposed him as a fraud. So a whole bar only heard one account probably.

You know, I'm certain that Freeman heard William Brown. I'm tapes. But you know, he didn't hear all of them like I've heard all of Hobart Freeman's tapes. So I'm pretty familiar with the stories that he's told and you know, when they're consistent and when they're not. But it sounds to me then like he he heard he heard that on a message. And you know, again, Hobart came from a Southern Baptist and then a brethren background. And you don't get miracles like this happening in those churches. And you know, it's just it's just such fantastic stuff that you're hearing.

And I think it just it plays on all of us who are Christian believers, you know, we would like to see miracles happen. We would like to see miracles in our life. We have a book that we love dearly the Bible and it's filled with miracles. And I think Christians naturally wonder, well, why don't I see some of those in my life? I would like to see some of those. And I think people do see some of those. I think what people forget when they read the Bible is this is a book that took place basically from the time of Abraham to the time of John writing the book of Revelation

over a 2000 year period with hundreds of thousands of Jewish believers and then thousands and thousands of Christian people. I mean, the scope of it all is huge. So and it's all compacted in 39 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books 2000 years of hundreds of thousands of people in their experiences. There's no wonder that we see the number of miracles that we do. But we tend to think as though they must have had a miracle happen every single day of their life.

Because we see so many miracles. As someone has said in I think in a comment on one of our podcasts, we did recently about dreams and visions. You know, there are schools now where you can go and learn to dream and learn.

to have a vision. And that's not biblical at all. God, the Holy Spirit is either gives you one or he doesn't. But the people in the Bible who had a dream or a vision, they might have had one every 20 years. It's not as though they had one every time they went to bed at night. But that's what we're wanting Christian people today. And that's what people are expecting. And so that's what these schools are training you how to do. And the person who made a very great comment on one of the podcasts said, yeah, I mean, it's not like the guys in the Bible had some kind of miracle, you

know, happen every day. The axe head that swam where they lost the axe head. And he said, throw a stick in the water. And the axe head will swim and attach itself. There's only one of those, there's only one story about the axe head in the Bible. And that's in 2000 years of God's revelation and of God's history with his people. And yet, you know, we're wanting to claim that our washing machine that's broken down just immediately start working and our dryer start working. And you know, when we have the wherewithal to go get another one, if not a new one, at least

to use one, I think it's just a real misuse of the true stories of true miracles and true dreams and true visions that happen in the Bible. I would encourage people, yeah, you know, God says when he pours out his spirit, these things will happen. So expect them to happen, but expect them to happen in in God's way and in God's timing. And if you have a couple of really significant events in your 30 years of Christian life, count yourself blessed. But if you are expecting to see something every month, count yourself, probably a candidate to be deceived. And I think that's probably what's

happening with these other people. So as I say, you know, it's just low risk, low reward. My point is Hobart did not read the Bible. It wasn't through his own personal study of scripture. And this is in my opinion, it was not through Hobart's personal study of scripture that he saw this pattern that he practiced on the end of that message the night of the Lord in the Exodus series where after you teach, you have a word of knowledge, quote, unquote, where there is a man who has something wrong with his left arm. And there's 2000 people out there. I don't see any of that in the Bible. Again,

I don't see any of that in the Bible. I think where Hobart learned this was the ministers that came before him. He saw it happening in some of these meetings that he attended or he heard about it. He did a lot of reading. He read about it in Smith Wiggles' Worth in Guy Bevington in John G. Lake. Speaking of John G. Lake, John G. Lake was another one that Hobart.

often referred to, not as many times as he did Branham, but he would often refer to, but there were two stories in particular. So again, for anyone who was raised under Hobart Freeman's ministry, and when I say that, John, there are a lot of people out there raised under the ministry, but they have not heard all 1,157 tapes.

Make sure you've heard all 1157 messages that are available before you say he said that or he didn't say that. Because I'm telling you, he did say it, and most of the time we're providing timestamps where he actually did say it.

So with regard to John G. Lake, Hobart loved to tell the story about John G. Lake as a missionary and the bubonic plague, and he would always tell this story in connection to Romans chapter 8 and verse 2.

I mean, I know all of this so well. I don't have to look at my Bible. I don't have to look at notes because I grew up as a teenager and a young man in my early 20s hearing all of these stories.

And that verse says, talks about the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. And if you have the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, you are set free from the law of sin and death.

In Hobart, and I would challenge people, go read the first few verses of Romans 8, and see is he talking about a spiritual law of life and a spiritual law of death, or is he talking about bodily healing?

If you listen to Hobart actually has a message, it is tape number F 112 is actual, the actual number of the message. I don't think they go by messages anymore, but it's entitled the law of life and the law of death.

And it's taken from that verse. And he actually says, this is not talking about spiritual life or spiritual death. It's talking about physical healing. Hobart had such a sickly background in his own life.

All the verses, all the promises in the Bible had something to do with temporal, material, physical blessings as far as he was concerned. And so he would love to tell the story of John G. Lake, who ministered in Africa, who was around the Bubonic plague, but who was never negatively affected by the Bubonic plague at all, which is a very communicable, contagious disease, and it can be deadly.

And so he would say, now this is what John G. Lake would always tell everyone. This is what John G. Lake said. You can take the spittle that comes out of the mouth of the corpse.

They just die. They've just fallen over dead of the Bubonic plague. You can take that spittle out, and you can rub that on my skin and then put it on Under the microscope, and all those cells of the bubonic plague will be completely dead.

Why Romans 8 too? I have the spirit of the law of life and liberty in Christ Jesus, and it has killed all of those cells. Again, I'm 17 years old listening to this. And I think, well, I don't think my pastor and my Presbyterian church has that kind of power.

So, you know, I'm much more likely to listen to Hobart Freeman and John Lake than I am my Presbyterian minister because of these stories being told, all of it based on Romans 8 and verse 2.

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I think that's really the danger of these groups because they have put such power into the minister's hands where they become sorcerers to the people. And they can, like Brannum, he can speak and this guy will fall dead on the platform.

Well, people believe this stuff because the way these ministers do it, they read the Bible and they show examples of horrendous things that took place against people who were rising against the children of God from the Old Testament.

And they'll try to insinuate that they have the same powers. In some cases, they'll just blatantly say, I have the same powers and I cause this man to fall dead on the platform or whatever is the thing that they said.

And people believe it. And in doing so, what they have created is a different religion altogether. They're creating a religion of sorcery where the ministers are the sorcerers and it distracts from the God and the heaven because the God that's on the platform has all the power.

Hey, it's so true. And why is it people are still struggling to see that today? You know, here we are 40 years after Hobart's death, over 40 years, 40 years and two months, three months after his death.

And, you know, there aren't many, but there are a handful of people out there upset that we are dealing with this. Well, brother Freeman, he didn't mean any harm. You know, they're always trying.

find their best to put a positive spin on it. And part of me understands that. I know that's, you have fond memories early in your Christian life of some things you learn from Dr. Freeman or you have very good feelings of times with other believers in some of these meetings.

And so it just is almost too much for some of these people to handle that Hobart could have been wrong. You know, and if he was wrong, well, he didn't mean to be wrong or he didn't do this or he didn't do that.

But you know, the evidence is simply overwhelming. If you're going to be, this is what people need to just hone in on. If you're going to be a public speaker, you're responsible for what you say.

One of the things about Hobart's method of speaking is people, because he had trained them to think this way, really believed that Hobart didn't speak by preparation, but he spoke by anointing. As though that is the way a minister is supposed to speak.

And again, we'll go back to scripture. The prophet spoke that way. Why? Because they were prophets. And we're not. And the apostles often spoke that way. Why? Because Paul was called up to the third heaven.

He was taught things directly by Jesus Christ. We're not an apostle. We're not Paul. We don't speak by inspiration. If you speak by inspiration, which means you stand up at the pulpit with an empty head praying the Holy Spirit will anoint your mind and your tongue and start talking, you're going to say either nothing because your head is still empty or a lot of nonsense, which happens.

Or you're going to repeat stories that you've heard elsewhere. If you're a public speaker, you speak by preparation, means you need to know your subject matter. You need to know what it is you're talking about.

I mean, it's just like what you do, John. You have all this research behind the conclusions that you reach. Well, hey, Brandon, he didn't have any research. He just talked in all of the cup.

Hobart didn't have any research. It was incumbent upon Dr. Freeman. If you're going to tell these stories to do some research and find out, now did any of these things really happen? There's a difference between Hobart standing up and telling the story and you or someone else doing the research.

Okay, now let's find what message was that? Where was Brandon? What were the circumstances? Do we have any newspaper articles about it? Do we have any eyewitness testimony about it? Are there any people still alive that we can talk to that we can ask questions?

Let's compare that account of the story. free, with all the other accounts of, oh, we've got seven versions of that. And as something can't be right here, something has to be wrong. Either six of those versions are wrong, or all seven of them.

But they can't all be right. Did Dr. Freeman ever do that? No. And Dr. Freeman was trained in seminary. He wrote books, a one of which an introduction, Old Testament prophets, was published by Moody Press.

And you know, when you write an academic book, you know what you have to do? You have to footnote it. You can't just say, well, I think that this guy believes such and such.

You have a bibliography, and you have to footnote it. And that's how you do real research. That's how you write true scholarly material. You have to be able to document, otherwise, it's just all, he said, she said.

But as you said a moment ago, with the wizardry involved, that's the power that these ministers took upon themselves by the methods that they employed. And I think that they realize, I don't think they realize I'm a wizard.

But I think they realized that they held sway over people. They could see it in the eyes of the people getting as big as saucers as they're telling these tales. And then they could see that these people have a huge reluctance to say anything negative against them or their ministry.

I mean, right away that tells you, and you should easily readily know as a minister, I've got power over these people because they are not willing to come against anything I say. So huge criticism directed specifically at Dr. Hobart Freeman and the ministers that were under him.

I was a young minister myself, not directly under him in Indiana, but my message was patterned after Hobart when I was in my late teens and early 20s because that's all I knew. And people have asked me, well, channel, how are you able?

What was it about you? How were you able to figure out that Hobart was wrong? Well, as I've said, I'm really thankful that I did not end up in Indiana. I don't know what would have happened had I graduated high school skip college, which was my desire and moved straight to North Webster and be a part of the glory bar.

And my parents for bad dad and I'm eternally grateful to them for that because what it did, it sent me to college where even though by the time I graduated from college, I still believed every single thing Hobart said, but at least it had given me some groundwork to understand what truth is and because you listen to these different professors.

And you kind of come to admire and respect some of them because of this vast amount of knowledge that they have and you realize, well, they didn't get this in any supernatural way. They got this by a lifetime of study.

That's why they know so much about the subject. So when I went into ministry and became a young minister, that's exactly what I did. I bought every book under the sun. And I still got a ledger over here where I would have, and I was just poor as a church mouse, where I might have, I don't know, in my first year of ministry, I might have $800 income in a month.

And then I look at the ledger and I spent 350 of that unbinded books. And I have month after month after month like that. I have some months where I'd look because I kept a tally of the books I would buy.

I have, now this would be, this would be abnormal to be sure. But I would have some months where I would have bought 46 books in one month because I wanted to know. And in the process, guess what happened?

You know, you just grow up and your eyes get open and you say, come on, Hobart, you know. You totally misquoted and misrepresented that because I actually, and I'm not even talking about charismatic stuff, I'm talking about something that he's getting from Merle Unger, or Merle Tenney, or somebody else, you completely misrepresented that because I actually have the source and I've read the source and I've compared what you've said and you've misrepresented it.

When I began saying just little things like that, then it began to tell me, I need to put some breaks on here and I need to pump the breaks and slow down and really research this.

But I was still hearing some of what Hobart was saying. He would still talk about Brandham. He would still reference John G. Lake. And so another one of the stories that he would tell about John G. Lake, I actually want people to hear in his own words.

But I was reading Dr. John G. Lake, some of his experiences. He had 100,000 healings in five years in his church in Seattle authenticated. No, I don't go about authenticated. You either believe it or you don't.

Boom, that's it. I don't see Jesus, you know, getting a medical report on it. But anyway, that's the way he did it and that's between him, the Lord, 100,000 authenticated cases in five years, everything imaginable.

Not little headaches, everything that you could imagine. He healed. He said in one case, a woman had had her ovaries, tubes, womb cut out. He laid hands on her and she very soon thereafter became pregnant from her husband.

And God, he said, had restored all the organs. Restored them. That seems like someone in the church that happened to them here. Somebody has told me that. I'm almost positive. But anyway, there's a case.

What are you going to do? What are the skeptics? gonna do such things. So this was a story that he often told, you know, he not only told the bubonic plague one that, you know, just put the spittle on my hand, put it on the microscope and all those germs and all those cells of the bubonic plague will be dead.

But he often told this story. And so I just have a little bit of it. You've just played it. But here's what he said. He's Dr. Freeman said, I was reading John G. Lake, some of his experiences. He had 100,000 healings in five years in his church in Seattle authenticated.

Now I don't go about authenticating. You either believe it or you don't. Boom. That's it. And then he ends by saying, what are the skeptics gonna do with that? So this whole business of authenticating a healing, I find really interesting. And I find it interesting in this regard when Hobart would try to tell a story from the past, such as this one with John G. Lake.

This was an often told story. He would refer to the sheer volume of healings that John G. Lake had experienced in his church up in Seattle, Washington that he had 100,000 of them.

And you go, wow, I mean, 100,000 healings. But then he always said, it wasn't just, you know, take it or leave it. You can believe my word or not. Authenticated. Authenticated. So here's the point that I began to see with Dr. Freeman. If it was something from the past, like the experience in Dr. Lake's church, and he could say that these are authenticated healings, well, that just closed the door on any further scrutiny. I mean, it's just a slam dunk. This isn't some crazy pentecostal riding on the back of a donkey or swinging on a chandelier. These are authenticated healings here. So he was all big with authenticating

the healings. But then if you wanted to authenticate anything happening at faith assembly, oh brother, you know, where is your faith? You are, you are testing God. You know, you are living in doubt and unbelief. If you ask for, could we please have this healing authenticated? No, that was absolutely taboo at faith assembly. So consequently, after some of these healing events and healing lines, like the one on the night of the Lord, the end of that message in the book of Exodus teaching. And I'm not disputing or denying that someone might not have been healed. Maybe they were what I'm looking for is authentication.

And what we often see because someone commented, oh, you didn't play the rest of that message where everybody gives testimony of their healings. I'm not certain that they were healed. I hope they were.

If they are suffering, I hope to God that God did touch them. I don't want to see anyone suffer. I would like to see everyone healed. As we read in the end, or I referenced in the previous podcast, go and look at the last four verses in Matthew chapter 4, or go look at Matthew chapter 8 verses 16 and 17.

Jesus didn't heal some. He healed everyone that came to him. So the more the better, as far as healing goes, but were they really healed? And the people who said, who came up and gave a testimony and said, I just want to thank the Lord for the word that Brother Freeman had, because when he prayed for me, I was healed.

I hope that you were actually healed, and that's not you just confessing your positive confession that you were healed. As I found in talking to some people many times, that's what they meant by them saying the Lord healed me, because they talk in a cult language.

They talk in a certain speak, and it's not the way the rest of us talk. If you ask me, how am I doing, I will tell you, I feel terrible today. That's actually how I'm doing today.

If you ask them, how are you doing? Here's a response you got. God is faithful. And I'm not asking for anything out of the apostles' creed. I'm not asking for a theological statement. I'm actually asking, how are you doing today?

And they did not believe you could say anything short of God is true, and God is true to his word. God is faithful. I've got the victory. Jesus is Lord. Those would be the responses you would get when you're asking a simple, simple, brotherly question, how do you feel today, or how are things going with you today?

You could not get a straight answer out of them. So when the person went up, my point is, John, when the person went up and said, yeah, the Lord has healed me, do you mean that you have, by faith, received the healing, but you don't feel any better at all?

That more times than not is what the person meant. So it's like this authentication, it was used, but then it was denied. It was used as long as you're not wanting to authenticate any of our healings here.

He said, it'd be a sin to try to go to the doctor and have anything confirmed. He said, I mean, Jesus didn't send anybody to the doctor to have anything confirmed. Well, the lepers actually did go to the priest, and it was confirmed there that they were cleansed of leprosy, but that's another story.

I just saw a misuse of authentication. If it's in another ministry that we can't get our hands on, then you just say, that's 100,000 authenticated healings. But if it's someone right here in the service and they are missing their left hand, I want to see the left hand.

on the body now, and then I'll believe. And the people say, well, that's just like doubting Tom is seeing his believing. And Jesus said believing is seeing yell that is me. If you say you've got a new left hand and there wasn't one there before, I definitely want to see that hand.

Otherwise, you know, we're just going down an endless rabbit hole with these people. I find it interesting that in these church settings, a minister can say, you're healed. And if you ask them, and they haven't yet been healed, they've been manipulated to lie about their healing.

And they'll come out and say, yes, I'm healed, even though they're not healed. But they're what they're thinking. Like you said, is positive confession. I'm not healed yet, but God is going to heal me.

Yet, if they were at a political rally and a politician says, I'm going to give every one of you in those seats $5,000 of your tax back, they would go home and they would say, well, I'll believe it when I see it.

It's not the same thing. I know it's well overused, but they've got these memes out there where if you're a faith healer, why didn't you go into the hospital and empty out a hospital?

And it's all because of this positive confession because they'll say, well, the people in the hospital, they can't be healed because they don't have the faith that you people have. And is it really faith or are they just lying?

Yeah, and how many of these are, and again, I just want to give plenty of room for people that were truly healed. And I've heard stories, I've relayed some of them on the podcast where people were truly healed but how often has that really happened?

So many things were said to have happened at faith assembly that didn't happen and we can start with the most obvious one because we can see it with everyone and that concerns people wearing glasses.

And we probably need to just spend some time on another podcast. I do have some interesting things to say about that and interesting things to say regarding Dr. Freeman's own experience that maybe people will, maybe people didn't know and maybe they'll go, wow, I did not know that that cast this whole teaching about eyesight and glasses in a new light, but go post Hobart Freeman's death.

You know, prior to then talking about healing, talking about authenticating or verifying it, prior to Hobart's death, you just won't find anybody wearing glasses at faith assembly because he had talked against it constantly.

He said, if you're healed, Mark 11, 24, you've already been healed past tense and you shall have it, you'll receive it whether a moment or a month, it will happen. If you're healed, then why would you wear glasses a person who has good vision, doesn't wear glasses?

So he used this twisted logic that sounded so good to people. You know, why take your kidney medicine if you're healed? You know, why take your insulin for your diabetes? If you don't have diabetes anymore, right?

And you don't, right? Because I prayed for you and you claim you're healing and you don't, so since you don't have diabetes and a well person wouldn't be taking insulin, that might make you sick.

And so people would stop taking their insulin and there are any number of cases of people who died. I mean a large number of people who stop taking their insulin and died. I don't know of anyone who truly had a severe medically recognized case of diabetes who was on insulin, who stopped and was healed.

I believe God will and can heal diabetes. I absolutely believe that. And maybe there are cases that I'm unaware of and I would love to know that, but I do know of the cases where people stopped and they died and that calls to church all kinds of problems.

But as far as the wearing glasses, nobody had glasses on. Now, could they see, heck no. That's why the newspaper reporters who would be out in the parking lot would say, because they're pretty nifty guys.

They would be out there in the parking lot watching and they say, would see a half a dozen people come up with glasses on, take them off, put them in the glove compartment before they went in church.

So that told you right away that people are living under a lot of fear and a lot of pressure. And that was the method of faith assembly. The peer pressure there was simply immense.

So people would go in there to try to, you know, be a part of the service, blind is a bat. You know, I've got any number of people that I've talked to even recently.

So I couldn't see my hand in front of my face, but I was healed, you know, but I was healed. What I'm saying is go after Dr. Freeman's death and watch who's wearing glasses.

They all put their glasses back on. So what does that tell me? They were never healed, right? Now, Hobart's theology would say, well, no, they doubt it. No, Hobart. Sooner or later, you've got to live in reality, you know, they were never healed.

Of the multiple things he was sick from that he said he was healed. You know, eventually he had to face reality and that was called death. He died of the very things he said, I don't have because I've claimed my healing and I was healed by Christ in the atonement.

My healing is already done. He had to face reality and thankfully, so many of these people, John, did not have to die. Some did, but the majority did not have to die to live long enough to eventually face reality and they put their glasses back on.

So a good point in person is Jeff Barnett. Jeff Barnett was one of the main ministers at faith assembly. He was a bully. He was arrogant to the people. Um, anyone who failed their faith trial and his church down in acting outside of Indianapolis He would use them as pulpit fodder and say oh, they failed their faith trial and they doubted Look up Jeff Barnett today and who's got on a pair of glasses and you know what my opinion on glasses is if you need them where them I'm very blessed to be 66 years old and I don't wear glasses because I see okay

But that doesn't mean I have some huge amount of faith or anything. It just means that's just reality for me But Jeff's got his glasses on yeah, but he was the very one Who would disparage all those people who put their glasses on back then?

So we see all of this hypocrisy happening happening, which is just not a pretty picture with faith assembly No, it's not and you know as a person who has diabetes I have heard the claims of the people who were healed with allegedly healed with diabetes and a lot of people who Don't understand this I think it slipped over their heads, but there are two types of diabetes There's type one where your body cannot produce insulin You must take an insulin shot every time you eat or your sugar is going to go through the roof and you will

Start to lose limbs or die. That's how bad it is Then there's type two which your body does produce insulin and it doesn't absorb it properly It doesn't use the insulin and so they have medication for this as well Well in the cases of type one it is Non-reversible you have it for the rest of your life you will be taking shots for the rest of your life I do not know of a single person who claimed to have been quote unquote healed of diabetes Who was type one not a single person?

I do know people who were type two who claimed that they were healed and Oddly enough if you study their eating habits after their alleged healing Diabetes type two can be Supplemented it can't be fully healed by The things that you eat, but it can be brought into a state of remission by the things that you eat If you cut out all your carbs and you start eating very healthy you lose a bunch of weight It can in some cases reverse it down to a state of remission where you don't really have diabetes But you also can't eat like you did before and you'll find many cases of the people who were quote unquote healed of diabetes

They're eating habits were largely a contributing factor to the reason why they're quote unquote healed There are other people like myself. I unfortunately I tried to reverse it in the same way and It did not work. So there are people who cannot do it through this now can God heal?

That's a different story altogether, but what I'm trying to say is the people who are Claiming healing you'll find a lot of time times, they're augmenting this healing in some way physically in their bodies.

And anyway, I could go off on another tangent on that, and I won't. But all this to say, what the Bill of Goods that the people were sold by these ministries claiming the healings is not what it was cracked up to be.

These guys had a way of presenting it in such a way that made people believe it and accept it, and sadly, convinced them to lie about it through positive confession. And many of them continued to suffer for the rest of their lives.

And I can't imagine being a man or a woman who would do this to another human being. But this is an awful state to put them in. So I'm glad people like you are stepping up and helping try to untangle this mass and help others escape from it.

Yes, John. Not only have they suffered for many years, many people have died, and they've lost loved ones at a very early premature time in their life. And I'm not going to, you know, go down a dark path like I would want all that blood on my hands.

I'm not going to go down that path. You know, the past is a past we just need to learn and be careful. And these are very, very serious conditions that some people have. And people may find fault with the fact, why don't you guys do in these podcasts?

Why don't you just believe God and have faith in God? Well, we do believe God, but there's more to the story, obviously. Look at what we've just talked about today. There's more to the story.

And and we want to give glory to God for people who've been healed. But we also don't want to be made a fool of as these ministers have been so prone to do for so long.

And I mean, I was made a fool of when I was a young person. So I have many other people. I mean, it's just just the way life is. You live and learn. I don't live in, you know, deep regrets today.

Like, why God? Why did you ever bring Hobart Freeman into my life? I've never crosses my mind. My life is my life. And I've got good and I've got bad in it. And and I'm thankful for all that's been there.

And we just grow and live and learn as adult Christian people. And I think the burden and responsibility then is on us to in the best way we know how, which is hopefully in a loving and a kind, but a factual and direct way.

Try to help people in the future so that maybe they don't have to experience some of the things that we have experienced in our past. Absolutely. Well, 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 new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian. identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

The NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible. The NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.