Speak to the Mountain? Faith, Fiction, and the Cessationist Debate

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I have my co-host, minister and friend, Chino Ross, pastor and the voice of the understanding, scripture, and truth by Chino D. Ross, YouTube channel. Chino, it's good to be back and I'm a little excited to talk about the different things that we believe and why. I get asked all kinds of questions. You've probably seen it in the comments and I get some very odd emails. The most common one is after you've been in one of these

cults you're following some man and that manager, mediator between God and man, the most common one I get is obviously, well if not this our central figure who shall we follow? That's one of the most common. But one of the most interesting ones is I get people who send me, well, if our leader wasn't biblical, tell us what church is following the Bible. And my answer is always simply, well, you've got the book. Can't you just read it, man? It's right there. You can read it. But the people have been so manipulated to believe that they are not powerful enough. They don't have enough wizardry to read

their own Bibles. They must have another figure to do this. And that leads to all kinds of questions. And the biggest one, which obviously in the exposure of the divine healing cult, you get the question, are you a cessationist or are you not a cessationist? Continuous, I guess, is what it's called. And I just look at both of those and I say, well, what do you see in the Bible? It's not my opinion. It's, you know, what do you see? So I'm a little excited to get into this because people have asked these questions forever.

And I don't think that we've really had an entire podcast dedicated to just talking through that. Yeah, and maybe we won't get through it all today. So maybe we'll end up having two of these. But how rights you are, John? But it is difficult for people. They are so used to having an anchor. And whenever they have lost their, their anchor and their boat is just a drift and their anchor was their cult leader or the church they were a part of. And I can really sympathize whenever they have lost that anchor, which is their attachment to

the firm ground below at the bottom of the lake. They're just a drift. And I have seen people literally go in all four directions north southeast and west. It just depends on what direction the wind is blowing. And that's the way they go. I even had one woman tell me she had been a part of Freeman's group faith assembly years ago. And then she said she left there. And I think the next place was KCI hop.

International House of Prayer in Kansas City under Bickle and Jones and Cain and John Paul Jackson and those guys. And then I could be wrong, but I think the next place was some Vineyard group, which was a John Wimberg group. And then she put in parentheses after the big smiley face. Yes, I'm a cult follower.

She says, you know, I just can't seem to help. She said, I can't seem to help it. And I said, I understand, you know, I don't appreciate your humor. She said when Hobart died, where am I supposed to go? You know, where is the movement of God?

That's what people are looking for. Instead of doing what you just said, we all have the same material available to us. And it's the only material we have available to us. And it's God's word.

And rather than just open that and really start digging and trying to figure out for ourselves, well, what should I believe? Then she left faith assembly goes to KCI hop, goes to Vineyard. She said, I'm a cult hopper. I'm just hopping around from one cult to the other.

And you do appreciate someone's humor about themselves and their experience. And she's definitely not the only one. There are other people who have done that. What I have seen, and I'm sure you've seen it many more times than I have, even in the comment section on some of our podcasts, will be reactions from people.

I would say most of them are probably the few comments that go down this line, most of the people that make those comments are probably still tag along to Freeman or to Brandon or to whomever.

And they're misinterpreting what you and I and your other hosts are saying against these false ministries. They misinterpreted to say to mean in their mind. I don't think you guys even believe and then fill in the blank with 10 words or less.

You don't believe in miracles. You don't believe in healing. You don't believe in spiritual gifts. You don't believe in the Bible. You don't believe in Moses. You don't believe in Paul. You don't believe in truth or whatever. It's just you don't believe.

And that's a pretty broad accusation to make. I don't think it's made on any good. foundation because if they would have carefully listened to the podcast, I've given examples of miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, either in my life or someone that I feel confident in. The one thing that I think I have shared enough about is that these experiences I feel have normally been in just what I would call normal people's lives. And that was maybe a point we can get to in a future podcast, maybe even the next one. So I won't say much there,

not in the big ministers' lives or just in normal people's lives. So I thought today maybe we would look at what are some parameters for believing in faith and in divine healing and spiritual gifts in particular. What are some parameters in the Bible versus this backdrop of the loose questionable practices of Hobart Freeman and of William Brannum and of any of the people past and current. There are a lot of people that are out there today. I mean, I've probably more than ever in the past who have ministries that are allegedly performing healings and exercising

spiritual gifts that I would probably find fault with. So I am 100% just so I make this clear, a continuationist. I am not a cessationist. I've actually done some of my own podcasts, not with you John, but with someone else in favor of continuationism and against cessationism.

But I think what could be helpful for people who are following this particular podcast of years relating to Dr. Freeman is to continue to demythologize Hobart Freeman. And the way you demythologize someone is you give them some legs and some arms and some eyeballs, you know, you put some flesh on the bones and make the person real rather than this shadowy, misty figure, as Hobart always was, he would just appear on the scene from the anti-room behind the pulpit. He would deliver his message and he would just disappear out that back door and hop in his car and June his wife

would drive him home. And I even had a conversation this weekend on the phone with someone about that. Can you imagine what it was going through anyone's mind? I guess nothing was going through anyone's mind that that is a Christian pastor. He was a pastor of the church. That was his flop.

And he claimed to be the leader in the pastor of the church and that you have no interaction with the people beyond just appearing like a David Copperfield giving your sermon and then just disappearing and not have to deal with anybody anymore. So I think the more we can demythologize, Dr. Freeman, the more you have demythologized William Brannum and these other leaders, the better people are and here's maybe where I want to start the biggest secret that Dr. Freeman had that should not have been a secret. All you have to do is really listen and pay attention but the

biggest secret that Dr. Freeman had was that he hijacked his theology from other people. He hijacked everything he believed from other people and I'm not saying it's wrong to borrow. That's the only way to know anything is we all have information and knowledge built upon information and knowledge that people before us have come up with and we have learned from them.

The problem is when you try to exert this view or this feeling that all of your views are original to you, that this knowledge and these doctrines are all original to you. That's a huge secret that people weren't aware of. They came to faith assembly and the way Hobart presented the material, it was always the denominations are all wrong. If you read any commentary, it will be wrong. Everything was wrong, wrong, wrong except what I'm about to tell you and so they thought it was all original with him. And what I've tried to do in debunking this false idea

of Dr. Freeman is say, look, all you have to do is go back and look at the positions he took, for instance, on the sermon on the mount, on non-resistance, on not taking the oath, those are some of the core beliefs of the grace, brethren, denomination. And so when Hobart became charismatic and would begin saying, now in the seminary, I tried to teach students to sermon on the mount and they wouldn't listen to me, they would revolt. He's talking about the Southern Baptist seminarian lawful, which was a liberal seminary at the time and they didn't

believe that the sermon on the mount was valid for the Christian in this era or in this age. But he did learn that at Grace brethren, theological seminarian, Winona Lake, Indiana, core belief of theirs, they were very well known for that. And something else that the brethren were very well known for was their practice of what they call plain dress. So all the Hobart stuff about pants and shoes.

and neckties, and jewelry, and dresses, and none of that was original to Hobart. He did, in another words, read the Bible and find that teaching for himself in the Bible. No, absolutely not. He was influenced by Grace Brethren.

For that, for the sermon on the Mount Teaching, and then when you move a little further in Hobart's life, where did he get these views on faith and healing that all you have to do is name and enclaim it?

Mark 1124, he got it from Kenneth Hagen, and where did he get his views on various interpretations of revelation and church ages and the manifestation of the sons of God? He got it from William Branham and the people that came before him.

So the biggest secret about Hobart, which should not have been a secret, is that none of his theology was original to him, and I'm not saying that's wrong. You're not supposed to have original theology.

There's something wrong with you. If you're the only one who believes and knows all of this stuff, all of us have learned things from other people. Our theology is built on things we have learned earlier, but the secret was, oh, this is all directly from God to Hobart, because they thought it was original, and that's the way Hobart presented it, it made them afraid to question or challenge anything, and that was just part of the control of the information input in the lives of those people.

You know, people from both sides of the equation ask me through emails and comments and even phone calls sometimes, what are you? Because whenever I'm talking about some of the things that we found in our research, that offend the cessationists, though they'll blast me and say that I'm continuous, and on the opposite side, it's the same direction.

And to be open and honest with everyone, I'm a continuous skeptsationist. I look at everything a little bit skeptically, because I have to, that's the way that we were trained. We were trained with a false notion of almost everything, and once you understand that, no, there's a man behind the curtain, and when you pull the curtain back and you see him pulling the strings of all of the people, you have to realize that some of it may have been real, some of it may not have been real, you have to have a healthy level of skepticism,

which is what I have, and I don't land on either side, which is kind of funny. One of the things that I try to do in the podcast, and I'm not very good at it yet, hopefully over time my speech will improve, and I can do this, but I try to explain that it isn't just the minds that they hijacked.

They hijacked Bible verses and they ripped them completely out of context to make them sound more beneficial to them and their ministries as they did this magic trick on the stage. And they also did not take the time to learn the language and the structure of the passages from the Bible.

For example, this is a plain terms example. I like to use things that people can relate to. Whenever I am doing a job and I go to my boss and I've done this great job and I walk into his office and I say, man, I hit that out of the ballpark. If I were to write a letter to the Galatians and write, I hit that out of the ballpark.

It doesn't mean that I literally took the job and hit it with, I just hit my microphone, hit it with a baseball bat or a better example. I'm one of these people who is very impromptu. I do things without, sometimes without even thinking, I'll just act often before I do.

Sometimes I'll come home and I want to do a construction project and I'll tear the walls out of the house. When my wife will come home and she'll see the mess and she will go nuclear.

If I were to write a letter to Galatians and write, and my wife went nuclear, it doesn't mean that she literally exploded in my house. Whenever these ministers can find any phrase that has any sort of metaphor that they can use to apply to their magic tricks, they'll use that and rip it out of the context of what it means.

It became so widespread and so commonplace that even I'll say this, but it will offend people. I get often criticized for the people who think that I'm a cessationist. They'll say, well, you're a cessationist.

What about when Jesus said, speak into this mountain, be thou removed? My answer is usually, well, the moment in which you can find a human who has done this, you'll understand why that was a metaphor.

Instead of not a metaphor in the Bible, because I can't think of a single human who has done this in world history. That was a metaphor. It was over-emphasizing something that he was trying to convey in my opinion.

Now, everybody's welcome to their opinions, but they hijack the verses, they don't understand the metaphors or the context, and they want to be very literal in the cases where it benefits them and very not literal in the cases where it doesn't benefit.

You cannot have both, and so I'll clear the air right here. Like I said, I'm a continued scapestationist. My father was healed in one of these ministries after the cult leader prayed for him and said, you will be healed.

Who was it he had? I think he had rheumatic fever. He was... Even so long to live, apparently according to my grandfather, goes in the prayer line, he gets prayed for, he gets healed.

So if this is true, I myself would not be here today, if that's the case. I would like to believe that my family is being honest and maybe they are. I mean, I've seen some of the history and I know that he was incredibly sick, but what I don't do and the difference between most of these charismatic Pentecostal style cults, I don't attribute the healing with the person who is on the platform claiming, I can heal you if you come to me.

I, those are two separate things. That is the Wizard of Oz type of religion, and I just don't, I don't buy it anymore. So I may continue skeptsationist. John, it's perfect. We're gonna go down all of these same paths.

I think my belief and your belief are very similar to one another. I actually had someone within the past month talking to me on the phone from out of state about that particular verse in Mark 11, 22 about the mountain.

And he said, well, it does say that. And I said, it does say that. So I said, so we're in agreement so far. It does, you say it says it, I agree it says it.

But the point I made to him was the exact point you made. I said, but if that is so, if that's what it meant, then that would be something pretty regularly seen and pretty easy to accomplish.

And I said, I am unaware of a single case in human history, including in biblical history. I'm unaware of anybody who's ever removed a mountain by simply speaking to it. I said, are you aware of that of anyone?

And he said, well, no. And I said, well, doesn't that tell you something? I mean, it's got to tell us something. If it just meant speak to the mountain and Hobart talked that very thing because Kenneth Hagen talked that very thing.

Hobart said, he was looking at a specific mountain and he meant that specific mountain right there that if you would command it to be uprooted and remove itself and drop into the ocean, it would do it.

And as you just said, John, unfortunately, all of us believers, we love God's word, we believe God, we believe God's word. So we're reading that and that is what it says. And so before you know it, a person who is not using proper harmonutics, who is using scissors and paste, playing biblical hopscotch, he can string together enough verses and ideas and thoughts.

And then you'll give you examples outside of the Bible of somebody in the 1920s that we have no way of verifying. They raised the dead and they did this and they did that. And it just becomes, you know, it's just a snowball effect.

And before you know it, you have all of this cult. doctrine, and that's just not the way things go. You gave the example of, you know, your head exploding or your wife going nuclear.

I'm going on this Thursday night. I teach every Thursday night a home Bible study in the book of Revelation, and you know, the book of Revelation, let's all be honest, it is full of symbols and figures, but it's also full of real truth that's actually going to happen.

How do you distinguish between the two? And I have been teaching the group that I teach. It's not as difficult as it seems if you will be humble and honest with the text. You have to go to it not trying to make it mean anything. You have to go to it, and you have to do this with any text or the Bible.

Willing for it to be literally like that, but also willing for it to be some type of symbolic or figurative meaning. And so the example that I plan on giving Thursday night of this week is this sentence similar, very similar, John, what you just said, but it's a sentence where the discerning listener has to recognize that part of that sentence is symbolic.

And part of it is literal and the example I plan on giving will be this. I'll tell the story that this man heard such good news that he was overjoyed and he jumped over the moon.

OK, now a literalist is going to say, well, I believe he was literally overjoyed. Now he literally jumped over the moon. The figurative guy says, no, I don't believe you could jump over the moon.

So what? I guess he wasn't overjoyed. Why can't they both be true? Why can't part of that sentence be symbolic or figurative? And that's the jumping over the moon. We know because of the size and distance of the moon. No one can jump over it. Why can't that part be symbolic or figurative?

And the first part of the sentence, he was just overcome with joy, be literal. He really did feel a lot of joy. So, you know, Johnny just goes back to what we've talked about in the past. And that's just basic, simple biblical hermeneutics.

You have to be able to read the passage, the text from the original author in its context to the original recipients. But that's part of the problem with what Hobart did with his teaching of scripture.

What was so attractive to Christians who first heard Dr. Freeman was Dr. Freeman read the Bible interpreted it and taught it like it's a personal letter to him. And I know when I say that people are going to maybe have a little bit of a negative response. Chino, you mean it's not?

personal letter. That's exactly right. It is not a personal letter to me or to you or to him. I mean whenever God revealed the Pentateuch to the prophet Moses, you know, 2000 years to 3000 years ago, we were just a speck in the divine mind and the distant future. He, no, the Bible is not a personal letter. That sounds warm and fuzzy and emotional and gives us nice warm feelings that this Bible is a personal letter to us. But no, it is not a personal letter to us.

You know, in the first place, it's completely misunderstanding, again, the original author and recipients. And in the second place, it is completely overestimating ourselves. I mean, do I think God wrote all of that with just me in mind? You are really overestimating yourself.

If you think this is a letter from God to you, this involves way more than any single individual. So when Hobart would read it, it's a personal letter. So all of these stories and all of these miracles. As I've said before, it's like going to Basque and Robbins. It's just whatever flavor you want for the day, you can, you can pick where previously these Christian people who are now in love with Hobart's way to interpret the Bible had thought that these are special accounts because they had probably been taught that in their denominational church correctly. So that these are

special narratives, special accounts in the Bible that related to those people at that time and may have deeper spiritual meanings or something in the future, but it was real and it was and it was real for them. And a good example that we have used more than once here is the eyesight of the prophet Moses, which Hobart just made hay out of those last verses in Deuteronomy 34.

He said Moses was 120 years old, his eye was not dim. And so they just used that for throwing away their glasses, everyone's believing for their healing, no one ever saw any better. Hobart's eyesight declined. And they're not failing to realize that was a specific thing that Moses had need of.

Can you put yourself, please, back in the position of leading several million people out of Egypt across the Sinai Arabian desert. It would be very nice to have perfect eyesight and see in the distance what's coming up, what is there or what isn't there. There's no weird reason why Moses had great eyesight. It was a practical reason, but he needed that kind of eyesight because he's leading this group of people across a desert area. And if you can go to the eye doctor and get a pair of glasses and see better so you can pass your test at the driver's office and get your driver's license

and drive, go do it. That verse is not an indictment against you for going to do that. But there's a classic example of Hobart having read the Bible like this is all to me. And what can I get out of it for me? So you're going to get you can live to be 120 because Moses did. And of course, Hobart didn't. I won't. I hope I don't. I don't know anybody who does. You live to be 120.

You can have perfect vision and you can be just as strong at age 120 as you were at 20. That was supernatural and it was needed for Moses and it's just not needed for us today.

I think the necessity is something that is often overlooked whenever you examine these movements or if you're in a part of one of them. Because the way it works, if they find a particular miracle for a particular situation in the Bible, they'll say, this fits you too. You too have this scenario. So you too, step right up and give me money. It can be healed of this whatever it is.

And there are things like, you know, in the ancient world, they didn't have prosthetics. And you have Jesus who is healing people with missing limbs, Jesus who is divine. Well, they try to use that same scenario and say that I don't know Kenneth Hagen, Hobart Freeman.

You too can step right up and you can grow a new limb. And I have yet to hear of anybody who actually grew a new limb in one of these things. But that's what they advertised.

But in the ancient world, they didn't have the advancement that we have today. In the modern world, we can simply pray for the money to get a prosthetic or if you have insurance, etc.

The prayers for your necessity, your needs are different. The needs are different today than they were back then. And there are a lot of medications that can heal the diseases that many people could have gone and avoided the medications and gone for prayer for, sadly some of which died. Well, the need is different today because they could also have just simply gone to the doctor. And I know you probably have come and encountered some, but I know many doctors who are Christian and they some of them will pray right there with you in the room if you ask

them to. And it's not that they don't believe in healing, but they are aware that they have the ability to help you because they have tools that they we didn't have in the ancient world.

So if you take the needs of today and compare them to the needs of the ancient world, it is too completely different. scenarios. And like we said before, they like to paint a picture with a broad brush based off of what they read in a certain passage that applied to a certain individual and try to rip it out of its context to say that you too can step right up and be healed and give me your tithe.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org.

On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. Yes, John. I would just encourage people as they read the Bible and you read these great stories of faith and miracles performed by Abraham or Moses or Joshua or Elijah or Paul or Jesus.

Don't necessarily read those as events that are to be duplicated today or that are repeatable today. And that is exactly what Dr. Freeman taught. And that is why his message gathered so many people together. Because let's face it, people have needs. O'Bard himself, as I've tried to document and demythologizing him, he had financial and healing needs.

So he himself was suckered in to this false message of faith and healing in 1966, just like he suckered people in after that. He heard, oh, wow, God's going to heal my polio leg.

God's going to heal my heart condition. God is going to heal my poor vision. God is going to put money in my bank account. God is going to grow hair on my head because my hair is thinning and I'm claiming Psalm 103 that he renews my youth like the Eagles and he tell these stories.

You know, the Eagle, he never gets old and bald. He just sheds some feathers and gets some new feathers. So he's taking something literal that happens to the Eagle. We're back to this hermeneutic again. You had to be careful to figure out what symbolic figure it is and what's literal. And he would say, oh, I'm going to take that literal. Obviously, you know, the things that are bad.

we're going to interpret those symbolic, the things we want, we're going to interpret those literally. It's like the church would leave all the curses for Israel and take the blessings for themself. It's just a very, very selfish way to read the Bible. And as we've said over and over again, not only is it not scriptural and if people can't handle that, then I say, we'll go with verifiable facts. Not only is it not scriptural, it doesn't work. People died by the hundreds at faith assembly, the leader himself who did not go to a doctor who preached and believed miraculous

healing to the very end died of multiple diseases. It does not work. The people who've been waiting for their manifestation for the last 20 or 30 years are still waiting for their manifestation. When are they going to wake up and say there's something not right here? You know, they're so afraid to challenge or question anything. But you shouldn't be. It's time to wake up and say, wait a minute, you know, nothing has happened. The Mark 11, 22, speak to the mountain, speak to the fig tree, drive the fig tree up from its roots and throw the mountain into the sea.

Do you know anyone who has done that? Well, no, but I just believe God's word. No, you really don't believe God's word. You're living foolishly. You are denying the reality and the facts. You know, the burden of proof is on you. If that's what that verse means, surely there is an example somewhere. And hope art, however, John, would find alleged examples. I'm thinking of something now and I'm thinking of the crossing of the Red Sea or the crossing of the Jordan River by the Israelites under Joshua. He would find examples in some foreign country that none of us could verify

or document, but he would tell the story as well. Of course, it happened. And if you don't believe that, you know, you're just doubting God. You know, if you if you didn't believe the stories that he told, which he didn't verify and couldn't verify, for some reason, the fault was yours, not his.

It was your lack of faith. It was because you are a doubter. But I don't know if people are familiar with a book that came out in the early 1970s. It was written by a man named Mel Tari. It was called like a mighty wind. And it was about these so-called miracles and revival that was happening in Indonesia then. And in the early to mid 70s, hope art talked a lot about the stories that came out of that book like a mighty wind. And Mel Tari became a pretty well-known figure, ended up in the United States traveling around to Pentecostal and charismatic churches.

everywhere. And the story that Hobart would like to use among many. And I've read the book. And it has, you know, it has fantastic things in there like these children who were hungry and they needed to get to the top of the, you know, coconut tree. And they had no way to get there. And so God just created like lizards feet on them. So they could literally just stand on the side of the tree and walk to the top of the tree and get a coconut and bring it back down. You know, I'm sorry.

I suppose that could happen. I doubt that it did. I've never saw it happen. And I don't know anybody who knows anybody who knows anybody who knows anybody that saw it happen. I'm telling you what, this is a whole dangerous realm that people are getting into just believing what I call just lore and legend. It's just lore and legend that the cult has dreamed up. But one of the other stories they would often talk about because they had a biblical precedent crossing the Jordan river, is oh yeah, they would be fleeing from their persecutors in Indonesia and they would come to a river

and they would just smite the river with their bamboo rod and the waters would part and they would go across. Or on another occasion, they would just come to the river and just like Jesus and the Apostle Peter, they would just step out in there and the water would only be about ankle deep and they would just walk all the way across the river. And then with their enemies tried, they would drown whenever they stepped in the river. God is certainly capable of doing that to protect his people and I wasn't there. So I cannot say whether it did happen or whether it didn't happen. He

is definitely capable of doing that. He's capable of protecting his people from their enemies in a variety of different ways. My problem with that, with that book and with visions beyond the veil that Baker printed way back in the early 1970s, all these five and six-year-old Chinese orphans, Hobart said, from this book, Visions Beyond the Veil, are given visions of heaven and they're on par with John's vision in the book of Revelation and they're little beggar children that can't even read or write and they have all these tremendous visions. To me, that just sounds like charismatic chaos,

it doesn't sound like anything that has any kind of solid biblical footing underneath it. But yet, Hobart is tall-faced things. I've given these examples before John because Hobart would, you know, he would just say, God will multiply the lows and fishes just like he did then. And so, Hobart gave several examples on tapes from the early to mid-70s.

of people who would drive cross country with no gas in their tank, and they told him the story, and then he came and told it from the pulpit. Well, I don't know that he told their story accurately.

There's number one, number two. I don't know that they told their story accurately. There's number one, you know, there are just too many problems with this. We, in order for God to be glorified and people to be protected, we need to know the truth of these matters. And we don't need to be doing all of this exaggerating, lifting Bible verses out of their context. Yes, Jesus did multiply the loaves and fishes. And yes, Elijah and Elijah did it under their ministry with the woman with the oil and meal feed me first, and then you will not run out. And she didn't. Those are pretty rare

miracles in the Bible. And so I would say that if miracles like that happen today, they would be pretty rare. But the way they are tall and charismatic circles is this is just run of the meal.

This is just ordinary stuff, whatever you want. When you pray, believe that you receive it, and you shall have it, Mark 1124. And so we've been told all of these stories in the Old Testament and the New Testament, you and I have talked before on some podcasts about the anointed cloths. And I did have several people reach out to me and say, you know what, I never did notice. Until you pointed it out, that the text actually says, God wrote special miracles by the hands of Paul. Wow, I never even saw that. And it's right in the text that may mean to tell you that was something

special for Paul that all the other apostles weren't doing that. That was something God was doing by the hands of Paul. It's interesting. When you are willing to read the Bible for yourself and read it, put all it put my doctrine, your doctrine, hope put everything else aside. You can put my doctrine aside for sure. It's not worth anything at all. Just read what the Bible itself says. And you may end up on a whole different foundation, rather than I've given this example before, I'll give it one more time. And I don't mean to I'm not blaming Malcolm Weber at all, but Malcolm Weber was

a Freeman follower who heard the message in Australia, moved over to the United States to be a part of faith assembly in the summer of 1984. And he was only there six months and Hobart died. So I mean, he almost came a little too late, but he did stay and believe all of that stuff then. He did transition away from that later, but earlier in his life, because of the way that Hobart read interpreted it.

in Totha Bible, like these are just run-of-the-mill miracles they are available to any believer, any day at any time, if you'll just exercise faith. Then since he saw the children of Israel going through 38 years in the desert and their shoes never wore out, then he decided, I'm never going to change the tires on my car.

I should be able to get 500,000 miles out of them because look at the mileage, quote-unquote, that the children of Israel got out of their shoes. Failing to understand, that's a special miracle for special people at that time.

I'm not blaming Malcolm at all. Where would Malcolm have ever come up with that? And I did stupid things like that myself. Where would any of us have gotten stupid ideas like that, except Colbert was communicating that?

People have tried to shift the blame away and say, well, Hobart never said you shouldn't change the tires on your car. He didn't have to say that. He didn't have to say that. By virtue of the fact that he presented the miracles of the Bible as a golden chorale buffet, you can just walk now on the line and pick anything you want.

That is the way he taught Scripture. So all of us naturally would walk away trying to get out of that whatever we needed in our own life. And that's simply not the way we're supposed to deal with the Bible.

You know what's interesting? I have a lot of friends who have escaped, and they were so burned by this religion they want nothing to do with it. Some of them are now atheists because of this type of religion, which is really sad if you think about what was created and the difference between what they experienced and what other Christians experience.

But many of those same people will read the Bible because they want to understand what was they were supposed to believe while they were in this thing teaching them something that they should never have believed in the first place.

And some of them are quite intelligent whenever it comes to reading the Bible. They know many things because they actually read it for what it says. And the difference between that and somebody who has been manipulated by this, there's this tendency to try to retain something, to hold onto something that you had and believed.

Even if it's false because this thing goes through your head, it went through mine. It all can't be false. Can it all be false? You start going through those loops and you keep trying to.

You keep trying to hold up something that was false. And by doing so, you read other passages through this one false belief and the whole thing says something different. But when these authors were writing, like the letters from Paul, this was a letter.

This was something that had context, it had meaning. It wasn't meant to take one section, one paragraph and create a whole doctrine and run with it. He would have... I sincerely think he would roll over in his grave.

I mean, there are people... We're doing this today, man. What are you guys doing? Do you not realize that I was writing this letter to so-and-so? But that's the way that it has been taught.

And sadly, I have visited a lot of different churches of a lot of different varieties after leaving. And it seems to be, except for some of the ones that have really reformed, it seems to be a common thread.

They like to get on their soapbox, whatever the soapbox is. And if they can find a paragraph to wedge under that soapbox to prop it up just a little higher, that's the way that they do it.

And what happens is, it's creating people who want nothing to do with the faith at all. Unfortunately, John, I've talked to several people, not many. They're definitely in the minority. But they've been very honest and up front with me.

They were followers and their families were followers of Freeman. And they got away from it and just saw his death. Everyone else's death, the church just splintered, imploded, fell apart. And then they look back and see all of the legalisms and bondages and how mean spirited those people were.

I mean, you want to talk about a cult. Brandham's group is the same way. Freeman's is the same way. I would assume I hop is the same way. If you leave one of those groups, you are shunned by everyone else.

Now tell me what part of Christianity does that resemble? That has nothing to do with Christianity. That is nothing but a darn religious cult. And you're mad because someone doesn't agree with your little cult views anymore.

And so they pulled out and so I'm not going to talk to them anymore. And they don't. And it could be relatives. It could even be a husband and wife or children or parents.

And you don't even hear from those people anymore. That is not Christianity. That among, along with all these other things we're saying, should show people right away. There's something seriously wrong with this. And yes, John, I could not agree with you anymore about Paul, about any of the books of the Bible.

Those were letters from Paul. The Pentateuch was a very important formal five-book document that Moses wrote for the Nation of Israel.

There's something wrong with us as Western Christians and Western civilization. If we think that what we are supposed to do is go to the Bible and find something that's talking to me. I mean, if you just turn on TV, all of the garbage that's on the Christian broadcasting, satellite, network people there, they're just messages where people can go and get something for me today.

I'm hurting today, something for me today. Go read the book of Leviticus. I don't know that you're even going to be able to walk away for yourself that day with anything from the book of Leviticus, but that's God's Word. What I have always tried to teach my listeners, church members, students that I have taught for 45 years is we have to approach the Bible. I call it the three ages with humility, with hunger and with honesty. You have to have those three things. You have to be hungry like I really want to know the Word of God. Thankfully, John, I have that in my heart

and I give God all the credit for that. I am hungry. I really, really want to know what God's Word teaches, and I don't presume to think that I know it all. I really do want to know. I really want to know. Then we have to be hungry. We have to dive into it and spend time reading it and meditating on it. Then we have to be honest. This honesty factor, the honesty factor is one of the things that affected me early in my Christian life and ministry in my early to mid 20s. Just as a Christian, I think that we have this natural

tendency because we are born again to want to be people of the truth and to want to be honest and speak the truth. Here's what I'm going with that. I had a healing doctrine that I got from Hobart Freeman and Kenneth Hagen and the other people, Marilyn Hickey and Charles Capson, Fred Price, and there were so many faith teachers. But the bulk of what I got I got from Hobart Freeman. I get this faith and I get this healing message from him and I'm all in over my head. I believe everything he says is true. Then because I'm a Christian

and because I want to be honest with God's word, when I read the Bible and I come to a passage that says to Timothy, we've talked about this a lot before, Timothy, you don't need to claim your healing and walk it out and confess it and endure or just take a little one for your often infirmities. When I read that, wow, see my honesty kicks in and I go, what am I going to do with that? What am I going to do with that? Because that doesn't fit my healing doctrine.

Or when Hobart became so upset against medical science and he said, all medicine is demonic. It has sorcery and witchcraft origins. You can't go to doctors or anything like that. And then I reading Colossians 4 that Paul referred to one of his favorite people, Luke, as the beloved physician, not like he was a physician, but then he got the end time message of faith. And so he had to reject being a physician. Paul would never even use that if there's some kind of witchcraft or sorcery connection or origin to that. Paul would never have used that. Paul, in other words, didn't think there was anything wrong. There was no

contradiction to anything Paul believed and taught anything Luke wrote about in his gospel or the book of Acts by calling him Luke the beloved physician. So what happened was my honesty began to kick in. And I said, you know, these passages don't square with my theology. And so something's got to give. And of course, my theology was freemanism at the time. And so I was coming to the place and it didn't happen overnight. It took time. It's always layer upon layer. I haven't found a person yet, you know, who listens to one podcast or one of my teachings and says, I reject everything

freeman I've ever been taught. It doesn't work like that. It's layer upon layers. It's line upon line. You're slowly able to unpeel the onion. Show them what's what's really wrong. And you know, show them the direction that they need to go in. And so my my desire to be true to scripture because I knew John that if I keep looking at these verses and just close my eyes to them and hold onto my freeman doctrine, that's not good. There's no way there's no way that Hobart's doctrine is better, more valid, more accurate, more true, more godly, more faithful than Paul's doctrine. If I'm

got to choose between the two Hobart and Paul, you know, we've all got to choose Paul. Paul is giving us the inspired word of God. And so if he is able to say that I left trophimus sick at my leetus, if he's able to say that, he didn't say, well, trophimus was having a trial. That's the catch phrase for being sick, having a trial. If you ask anybody at Faith Assembly who wants sick, how are you doing?

Oh, God is faithful. God is true and God is true to his word. Well, how are you feeling? I'm just going through a trial. A trial. What do you, I mean, trial was just called terminology for I'm sick, but I can't say it. A trial is I'm sick, but I can't say it. Paul could say it. Are you better than Paul? Am I better than Paul? You know, that's what I had to come to grips with. Do I think I'm more spiritual than the apostle Paul? You know, oh, don't flatter yourself out there. It cares

for a person to think, oh, I- But never say I'm sick. Paul did. Yes, he did. Yes, he did. And so as I began to see those things, if you are hungry, humble and honest, you have the three H's working in your life, you're okay with that because here's what's going to happen. Unfortunately, you're going to have to change your doctrine. And that's not easy to start with. That is a process that we all go through. So unfortunately, you're going to have to admit that you were wrong in this area. But fortunately, you get on God's side and the Apostle Paul's side and the

side of Prophamus and Luke and all of these other biblical characters that we read about. And we leave Freeman and Hagen and Copeland and Brannum and John G. Lake and John Alexander we leave all those guys and we go to the side of the writers of Scripture. And I mean, what a wonderful journey that was for me back then. It continues to this day to be a wonderful journey. I definitely don't know at all. I'm learning things every week in my life about the Scriptures, which allow me to navigate away from an earlier position. You know, maybe it's just

something very, very small, nothing to do with healing, it's some doctrinal issue. But you're able to navigate away from that and you're able to go toward God's Word. And so it gives you this freedom. You know that you're that you're reading Scripture accurately and faithfully. And I never tire of saying this in my teachings. I always find new ways to say it. There's a reason we have three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, not just one. So it's okay to be repetitive on occasion and say some things again if you can find a new way. But here's the way I've always tried

to communicate it to people because I'm always looking for because I am a Bible teacher and preacher. I'm always looking for effective ways to communicate the truth. You know, an effective way that's not offensive, but that resonates with the people. And this is always resonated with people when I share it like this. And I say, if when you are reading your Bible and you come across a passage that you don't really like, I don't know any other way to say it, but I just don't like that passage because it doesn't fit my doctrine, you know, take your whatever your view on the rapture is.

If you read a passage that doesn't fit your view, it could be, you know, give, give yourself grace. It could be that your view is wrong. Now maybe you're just not seeing the passage right, but give self space and grace, it could be that your view is wrong. And that that passage is going to be the first one that puts you on the right path of being able to interpret scripture correctly.

So all of these little passages, John, about Trophimus was sick, and a Paphroditus was sick, and Timothy was never told to claim his healing. He was just told to drink some wine, and Paul is able to use the word sick instead of trial. He didn't, and Paul knew, let me just say, this Paul knew more about the atonement and the meaning of the atonement than any of us do. Again, don't flatter yourself, charismatic person out there. Well, I think healing's in the atonement.

You think what you want, but don't flatter yourself to think you know more about the atonement than the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul knew more about the atonement than all of us put together, and he still said that certain people were sick. He did not shy away from that terminology.

Everything turned out fine. Everything will turn out fine in our life. If we'll take God at His Word, be humble and recognize that God's Word is a master and we are the slave. You know, there's a lot of pride that goes with trying to hang on to the things that you believed.

And I was telling this just last week, I was talking to somebody, and one of the exercises that I did when I was going through all of the Bible reading it over and over, one of the times that I passed through it, I was taking note of all of the sins listed in the New Testament just because I was curious. And I found that the most common thing mentioned was pride, and there were other sins that were strongly linked to it. So you could say that pride was a root of a lot of the sins mentioned in the New Testament. And then it kind of humbled me because I was trying to hang

on to all of these things, too. And I asked myself, well, why did I do it? And it was mainly because I didn't want to admit that I had been duped, and I was so far off. But the pride is what makes people hang on to these things. And one of the freedoms that I have now that I didn't have back then, I get people who comment or send me emails and say, you're wrong about this. And one of the freedoms that I have right now is sometimes they may be actually correct. I might be wrong because

I make a lot of mistakes. But I have the freedom now to say, yeah, you're right. I messed up.

It's kind of freeing not to have to have that over your head to try to be right all the time. There you go. I'll be honest, I'm not right most of the time. I have to go look things up and correct myself. And that's why whenever I find a mistake, I publish a correction to that mistake.

So it is a freedom. And sadly, if you're one of these cults, it's a very difficult thing to do to admit that you've made a mistake that you've been wrong. So I enjoy that freedom. And hopefully as we get further along in the pod.

asked, we can help other people to enjoy that same freedom. So thank you for doing this. John, I enjoy that same freedom tremendously because, you know, I teach every week and people have questions they want to ask. And I tell them in advance, I said, there's one particular question that I will not answer. I refuse to answer. And they say, what is? I said, the one I don't have the answer to, that's the one I will not answer is because I don't know everything. But yeah, ministers feel like they have to know everything. And Hobart felt like he did know everything. And he obviously didn't absolutely. Well, this

has been fun. If you've enjoyed a show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. From 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.