Once Saved, Always Confused- The Cult Theology of Eternal Security

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, Cheno Ross, pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Cheno D Ross, YouTube channel.

Cheno it's good to be back and I'm actually a little bit excited for this episode. We were talking a little bit beforehand and I know you probably didn't see it in my face or my voice but this is a topic that I am very passionate about and I may not be able to contain to an hour because this affects every single aspect of your life when you're in one of these cults. It is it is a terrible thing. It could be a good thing. If you're a Christian it should be the most wonderful thing but for what we escaped it was destructive and it was

heavily destructive. We're going to be talking about eternal security and what we had was really if you follow all of it out to its logical conclusion what you really had was eternal damnation and we were talking just before him. I in the Branham cult it is taboo if you install Christmas lights because you'd see you're supposed to avoid Christmas, Branham preached against it while he you know he had a tree and he celebrated Christmas. I just hung permanent Christmas lights because I got tired of going up and down the ladder and they they changed during the year to other things so if hanging Christmas lights makes you of the

devil I'm permanently eternally of the devil by the group now. So I have eternal damnation and the irony is as I was thinking through that long before you and I talked about this podcast episode I was thinking the irony of that they would eternally damn me for hanging Christmas lights but if you're in the group you still have this eternal damnation because again follow it out to its logical conclusion that's where it ends up and not to go too far I'll let you open up and and introduce this but I remember vividly there were people after the service

had ended they would all hover around the altar crying their hearts out worried that they were not saved what can I do to be saved they had eternal questions basically there was no eternal security they had eternal discomfort I was the eternal insecurity right eternal insecurity. I was among those who were up front crying because you can't get eternal salvation. If you follow it out to its logical conclusion, the doctrine, they'll use that phrase, you have eternal security, but what you end up having is you have a bunch of people that are so confused because you've made a complete mess of the gospel. They have no idea what is the gospel,

really no idea how to gain salvation. I'll put it like my grandfather said to my father, one time when I was writing in the car, he said, I was a Methodist minister and William Brannum was preaching on salvation and he made a comment and I looked at him and I said, well, if that's true brother Brannum, all you have to do to be saved is believed in Jesus Christ.

And he said, William Brannum got real quiet and he looked around like this, they're in a restaurant and he says, don't you never tell nobody that. And as a child, I'm thinking, wow, that's weird and that's odd and mysterious, but now as an adult, I'm thinking that moment represents the entire movement. You do not know the gospel, you do not know salvation, and the leadership wants to keep it in a bottle where nobody can get it. And what our listeners do not know, John, is that it's not as though you and I are bosom theological buddies and we sit beside each other

on the front pew at the same church all the time. We're podcast colleagues. I don't even know all of what you believe, you don't even know all of what I believe, but somehow we share this this common background of Brannumism and Freemanism that came from Brannumism. So as we've gotten to know each other over the last two years, we find out we have a lot of former beliefs that we no longer hold to and we have a lot of current beliefs. And that is because we have jettisoned the beliefs of Brannum and Freeman and tried to come to a biblical understanding

and adopt a biblical belief. And I know you have tried hard for a long time, long before I was one of your co-host to document all the historical facts of Brannum and of the people that influenced him. There were predecessors prior to Brannum that influenced him. And to try to show that what they claimed to have happened or to have occurred, maybe didn't, it didn't occur, happened when they said it, the way they said it, you know, you've done a good job of documenting Brannum, retelling stories and multiple different passions which simply can't, you simply can't

align those and get those all to agree. So I don't think that You ever, from the beginning, I could be wrong on this, but that you ever so much intended your historical research to be biblical and theological, but in so doing what you have done, I think you have helped to show people how vastly different William Brannum's message and ministry were when you just lay that side by side with real Christianity and what you see in the Bible.

That they're just really two different things. So I think you've helped people maybe more than you realize, see what a crazy religion that was that that came out of without being overtly biblical or overtly theological.

Just saying, hey, here's what Brannum said. The angel appeared to him here and it was here and then it was there and it was this year, but then it was that year and people, they have to pause.

I mean, when you hear all that, you have to pause and say, well, I just thought this was a cut and dried story, the same from beginning to end. Now I'm saying this is maybe not so much true.

It seems to me like you maybe went through more of a crisis of faith and I know you have told your own story and mine wasn't a crisis of faith where all of a sudden, mine was very, very gradual.

What I've tried to share with people so that they know is that from a junior in high school, I began being a Hobart Freeman follower and he didn't have that many tapes back then.

They were all a taped message, you listen to on a tape recorder and I'd listen to them on the way to school, on the way home before you go to sleep at night, on your lunch break at work, I just summer job, just whenever you had opportunities, I was listening to tapes.

He ended up having 1,157 of them by my count. Now I could be off one or two, but if I am, it doesn't really change the fact there are 1,100 plus, 1,150 plus messages, all of which I've heard.

So what happened for me, and this was gonna tie into our study of eternal security or our discussion of it today, what happened to me was I, before I was able, because I'm only 17, then 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 years old, before I was able to theologically and biblically, really understand what was wrong with what Hobart was saying.

I first of all began to see some contradictions. The contradictions were small at first, and I think when you're young, you tend to ignore those, and as you get a little bit older, and you see more contradictions, then they become more serious.

And, I've talked about some of these before, but one of the earliest ones was, if you compare Hobart Freeman's tapes from the late 60s early 70s, they are different from his messages done 10 years later.

On the late 60s and early 70s messages, he was like a wild rabbit in a briar patch running in every direction and saying all kinds of things. He loved telling his own testimony of how he said on the road home from a nightclub in Tampa, Florida, God saved me a businessman in 1952, and he gave me Matthew 6.33, seek first the kingdom, and he'll supply all my needs as my passage, and I just have gone through my whole life by faith.

And so I went all through college, and all through seminary, and never worked an hour. That's what you hear on the early tapes, and if you simply go and find Hobart Freeman's testimony tape, there is one available, his testimony.

That is exactly what he says. He said, I never worked an hour. Well, on later tapes, we found out that we find out that he did work, and I was able to, I thought then, and I totally believe now, to understand why he had to go back and then tell the truth that he did have jobs.

He had to go back and clarify and qualify because there were people taking him at his word, and there were young men there just saying, oh, well, if I just seek first the kingdom, which means stay home, don't get a job, read my Bible, listen to Freeman tapes all the time, that's seeking first the kingdom, then if I do that, why can't I do what Hobart did?

And that's exactly what people tried to do. So it was a very hyper faith, but it was exactly what Hobart taught. He said, I didn't work an hour. We found out later that he did hold different jobs during college and seminary days, so that wasn't totally the truth.

So when I heard some later tapes, I didn't reject Freemanism, but it did cause a few problems. And then I'd hear on these early tapes, he was boasting about doctors who were spirit-filled, charismatic, personal friends of his that he talked to on the phone and loved and fellowshiped with, and insurance agents.

Then I heard at the end of his ministry that anything associated with medical science is sorcery and witchcraft and demonic, and you can't have anything to do with it. And I, as I heard that, I couldn't help but slow down and say, well, I wonder why you were able to be friends back then, but you're not now.

And on his early messages, he had talked about women preachers and women teachers and talked about Maria Woodworth-Edder and Amy Simple-Mick. Pearson and Lillian Yomans, who else? Well, he actually had June stand up in a public meeting at the glory bar and deliver somewhat of a message.

That was his own wife teaching a message. I could point people to the tape where he had been out in Pennsylvania. Catherine Coolman was teaching then in the early 70s and in Pittsburgh, and he stopped by to listen to sister Coolman preach.

He was all in favor of women preachers, women evangelists, but when he got to a later point in his ministry and he began teaching on, he actually did a series on first Corinthians and we got to first Corinthians 14 where Paul said, let the women be silent in church.

And if they have a question, let them ask their husbands at home, now he's got a new doctrine. And when he taught that message, John, it was horrific because there was a poor woman there who actually asked a question, well, you know what, prior to that, women were allowed to ask a question in his church.

This poor woman had just heard a new revelation that women aren't allowed to ask a question and Hobart really read her the right act. And you know, that really, really disturbed and bothered me because what I needed to see was, look, if you've had an earlier position that you no longer hold to now, I'm fine with that.

We all have changed our positions, but you've got to explain that to the people. You can act as though, well, I've always had the truth, quote unquote, about medical science and doctors. I've always had the truth about women teachers.

Hobart changed his position and he wasn't fair to the people to come before them and say, look, 10 years ago, I believe that you could be a Christian doctor. Today, I no longer believe that.

I have a new view. I'm actually 100% okay with that because we're all allowed to change our position. What we're not allowed to do is pretend as though I've had this position all along.

And so you know what that did, John? That created so much confusion in people's minds so that there was this cognitive dissonance that they went through. Well, I thought he didn't believe that. Well, now he believes this way and you know what they ended up doing?

They always put the blame back on themselves. Well, maybe I misunderstood. There must be something about me. No one was ever willing to challenge and question Hobart and say, listen, Hobart, you gotta come clean it.

If you wanna change your position on something, we all have that right. But if you're gonna be the pastor of this church and a public speaker, you owe it to everyone to explain the fact that you have changed your position and to tell them why.

You know, it's funny because whenever you're talking and you're talking doctrine, and I can map visually in my head, my head starts spinning when you're talking Hobart because I can map those doctrines and I can trace where they come from and brand them as them and beyond.

And you can clearly see how it shifts and changes as it gets into Hobart. But here's where it gets odd. Even what you're mentioning with the scatteredness of the doctrine, right down to the structure or the lack of structure thereof of his teachings, that you can find also in Brandemism.

And there's no way that he set out to copy a theological mess. But I think what happened is there were many people who studied Brandem to try to figure out, hey, what did he do?

How did he grow the following as big as he did? How did he spearhead the revivals? Be, what doctrines did he introduce? And let's pick and choose because they, you know, not everybody after Brandem thought that Brandem was 100% correct.

So Hobart was going through, what did Brandem say that was correct, what was incorrect? And here's the mistake that is made by every single one of them that I've looked at, not just Hobart, but all of them.

You come in with this mindset that, A, this is a minister who has a message, who's on fire for that message, who has a consistent message, who believes what he is saying, all of which, as I've studied Brandem is not true.

Write down to, he really didn't even believe what he was saying. The consistent message, so you talked about women preachers. Brandem's church, I was shocked to find out. Originally, there was a female, I think she was either a youth minister and assistant pastor.

She got angry and stole half of his church if I understand the history correctly and started another cult right down the road. So there's two cult here in Jeffersonville. She grew into this massive cult following.

After this happened, he started just condemning women preachers. And I'm using that phrase because that's what's indoctrinated in my head, women preachers. I should say female ministers, but that's the way he would just harp and condemn them, but yet you can find photographs of him with female ministers.

So that wasn't consistent, but here's where it gets really odd as it relates to our discussion today. I have studied, like I said, eternal security is something that really fascinates me. I want to know more.

And I studied Brandem, just his scattered theological mess that he created and tried to organize a pattern and establish a pattern. And it becomes like, I don't know if you've ever done this, but if you had this five gallon bucket of white paint and you watch the guy who's dripping some paint in it swirling and you're trying to find the swirls, well, there's only one swirl.

It's easy to see that here's where the brown exists, but once they stop start dropping brown, on and green and red and make to blend the colors. As it starts to mix in, you start to see all of these different traces, and by the end of it, you can't find any trace of those colors.

It's blended to this weird mess. Well, what you find with Brannemism is that he doesn't believe what he's saying, and he'll go preach tailored to the crowd that he's speaking. So if the crowd believes in eternal security, that's what he's preaching for that crowd.

But if the crowd is against it at another church, there's no way he's going to preach it because they'll never invite him back. So he preaches their theology. And what you end up with is this blended mess of theology, none of which makes any sense.

However, by the frequency of the people who invited him to their churches, you can see some sort of strategy that's emerging. So in the early years, from 40s to probably early 50s, he's mostly invited to the church by Pentecostals, the Laterane revival is flourishing.

The assemblies of God has not yet started to sanction him. And he is teaching that you don't have eternal security. He's tailoring his message to those crowds. But about the 1950s, he starts preaching the eternal security doctrines that got really popular and emerged into the charismatic movement.

Once everybody started sanctioning Brannum and his cult became more destructive and more isolationist, then it turned into this weird dualism. Yes, you have eternal security, but you can also be eternally damned. And add to this weird mix, he's preaching the serpent seed doctrine from 1957 forward.

So he would mix in with this, but if you're of this elect seed, you can't be damned. So you've got eternal security on the left, you've got non-eternal security on the right. And in the middle is this racist serpent seed doctrine where you're in neither category.

I hope people can hold that fault of that you could be elect and then you could not be and then there's something in between because we're going to get to that because that's where Hope Art ended up.

And of course, I don't know how much of this he got from Brannum because I don't know Brannum is the way you do. But I saw not only those contradictions that, you know, whenever you first hear him and you're so excited about your walk with God and you know, you're so excited that maybe I can do Matthew 633 and not have to have a job.

You're just, you hear the positive and then you don't hear later on when he says, well, I was a night watchman and I graded papers and I did this and I did that. But as you get older, then when you when you then hear sermons and he is rebuking the men for just sitting at home and not getting a job. And then I'm saying to myself, but wait a minute, isn't that kind of what you encourage them by your whole testimony?

That was your whole testimony story. So that's why people like Malcolm Weber, I've told this story about Malcolm Weber, who was down in Australia at the time. He wasn't going to put any new tires on his car because the children of Israel walked through the wilderness for 38 years and their clothes and shoes didn't wear out. So I mean, if that's true and that was true and the way Hobart was teaching things, anything in the Bible that ever happened to anyone, well, you can just claim it for yourself because God's no respecter of persons. He'd pull these verses out of context because Jesus is the same yesterday

and today and forever because all the promises of God in Christ are yes and in Him amen. He'd pull all these verses out of their context and encourage you to think that any miracle that's ever happened in the Bible will happen to you. You just have to have enough faith. So I don't blame Malcolm for that thought that he had way back in probably the 70s or early 80s because he had been influenced by Hobart as had I and as had everyone else. His main tape man was a guy by the name of John A. Bill, who lives not many miles that direction from me right now. He was the main

person who did all of Dr. Freeman's tapes. You can find John A. Bill's testimony and he tells when he got married and went on his honeymoon, you know, he didn't have a dime and that's the way you do it. You just pick a destination spot, take off driving and trust the Lord to fill your tank up with gas and provide all of your needs because that's exactly what Hobart Freeman had told them early on. Well, when they began trying to do that and it didn't work, then you began having all kinds of problems in the church and then Hobart had to come and say, now we need to have a message on

misconceptions regarding faith and healing. But he would never say, I'm so sorry that I misled you people. They didn't understand because they weren't able to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Hobart didn't just not have a job. He did have a job. He had multiple jobs and had he not had a job then he would have condemned by scripture, would have been condemned by scripture, where Paul said, if you don't get a job and provide for your own house, you have denied the faith and you are worse than an infidel. No one thought to bring that passage up to him. They were just so

enamored with everything. So not only was he contradictory, but he was, I thought often confused literally and profoundly himself about what he taught. One of the areas that we've already talked about, I'll just mention it in passing, that I know he got from Brannum, that he was so confused about was the doctrine of the Trinity.

He was so confused. He had been brought up believing in Orthodox view that God is one in essence and three in person, that there is a oneness we can speak of with regard to God and there is a threeness with regard to God.

He heard Brannum and he was so enamored with Brannum because he thought that all of Brannum's miracles were real that he could read people's mail and predict people's death who had tried to deceive him in the healing line and he had heard all that nonsense, thought it was true.

So consequently had bought in to his own assumption that Brannum was a true prophet of God. So then when Brannum had some weird things to say about the Trinity, Hobart couldn't discount that. He just couldn't because this is a prophet.

Now Hobart did end up discounting some of Brannum's stuff but today he died on later tapes. He said, this is a quote, I don't care what anyone says. William Brannum was God's prophet. Well, I mean, that tells you to the day of his death he was a believer in Brannum, not in Serpent Sea, doctrine per se, not in some of his other stuff but he still had this core belief that William Brannum was God's prophet.

So when it came to the Trinity, we played these clips before, we're not doing that again but Hobart had a tape entitled teaching on the Godhead and he also has one on the eternal personifications in the Godhead.

He couldn't say he persons because he didn't believe in persons but personifications within the Godhead. One of those tapes, he says, one this is heresy, the other one said, he says, one this is not heresy.

So that says it all right there on two different tapes if you can condemn oneness the Jesus only view as heresy and then on another one you say it's not heresy. What does that tell us?

But you're confused in your own mind and do you know what else he was confused about the doctrine of eternal security or salvation? You know, eternal security, John, as people probably know goes by a variety of names.

Sometimes it's referred to as a perseverance of the saints. Sometimes it's referred to as the preservation of the saints for people who do not believe in eternal security.

They refer to it under a pejorative statement by saying, oh, that's the belief once they'd always say it. And the reason they say, once saved always saved, is because even though that does express correctly what eternal security is, if you've ever been saved by the blood of Jesus.

by the power of the Holy Spirit. If it's ever happened, it cannot be undone because that's a work of God. Even though it expresses that eternal security by saying, once saved always saved, it's that flip and attitude.

It is a straw man that those people will bring up and they say, well, those of you who hold to eternal security believe that once you get saved back in 1964, then you can just live like the devil.

You can do whatever you want to do and you can never lose your salvation. That has never been the reformed view of eternal security. That's never been the reformed view of salvation. The reformed view of salvation, Paul's teaching on salvation never says that salvation is simply an event that happens somewhere past in your life and it has no bearing on your day-to-day living.

Paul said, if you are saved, you'll produce the works of salvation. Not perfectly, you will still err and sin in your life, but if you've ever been saved by God, then you are eternally saved by God.

Hobart's teachings will show that he grossly misunderstood and therefore grossly misrepresented the opposing opinions and that was because, and I'll take a break, John, that was because just like with the Trinity, where Hobart could see passages where there seemed to be three, like at Jesus' baptism, the Father in heaven, the Spirit descending, the Son being baptized, he could also see passages where Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father or the Father in I or I.

So he was confused about that in the same regard. Hobart could see passages where it seems like that if you're saved, as for instance Jude says in the end of his epistle, Jesus' half-brother, you're kept by the power of God.

And if you're saved, it means that your name was written in the Lamb's book of life back before the world began. How can it be written and then unwritten? So he saw those, but then he saw other passages where, like in the end of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said that there will be those who say, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and done many wonderful works in your name.

And he'll say, I never knew you. So Hobart saw this dichotomy that he was not able to explain, so he's going to come up with his own new theology. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through...

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I watched a football game one time, and the quarterback walked out. I can't remember what the event was for or why, but they handed him a baseball, and he pitched the most perfect pitch with a baseball.

It was a football game, and I was watching this, and I wasn't paying much attention because I was wanting to watch football. This was pre-game ceremony of some kind. They were celebrating something. I can't remember what it was, but the point I'm wanting to make is this, if I were to try to canonize that football game and say the best way to throw a perfect pitch of a baseball is in a football game.

Everything that I said is correct. I watched the perfect pitch. I'm watching a football game. The environment doesn't fit the situation, but yet it happened, right? The problem that I have, when I started studying this subject, eternal salvation, the problem that I had was I studied random and believed it was a consistent message.

It was a confusing message, because he would preach one way or the other or the doctrine in between. I knew them all, and I knew every side of every argument, and yet tried to, like you said, through cognitive dissonance, try to make them all fit, and what you end up with as mental spaghetti.

You had the passage, what is it, Ephesians? It says, once you're sealed, you're sealed with the earnest of your inheritance. You're sealed by God. You have eternal security, but then I would listen to him preach damnation upon the souls of those who didn't join into the revivals or who had sanctioned him, and he went all the way back to Hebrews where they commonly use this one.

It's impossible once they fall away that you can renew them into repentance. They are doomed forever, man, so I've got both of these things in my head, and I can go down the list, I won't do it, but I know both sides of this argument.

Broaden this past branemism, now you've got denominations, and you have denominations that favor the balance of one or the other. And neither one of them, in my opinion, are looking at, they're looking at the baseball that's thrown in a football game.

This is a letter that's written to a specific situation by a specific apostle and not every single statement that is being applied to eternal salvation is really applied to the church as a whole.

In some cases, it's just applied to a specific situation. So now I have to separate theologically, well, what is intended to be for me? What was for the situation? If I'm in that situation, how do I apply it to that situation?

Where I ended up with is this, I know people want to find out what I believe on the subject. And what I believe is this, this is something that if it were important to my salvation, to have an opinion one way or the other, it would have been clearly written that you must believe it this way if you want to be saved.

So where I ended up with is, I'm still learning. Oh, John, I mean, that's a cliffhanger. Now you've left everyone with a cliffhanger. Well, I will take a step past you and tell everyone what I believe, but that's not that important.

It's what my real goal here is to show how confused Hobart was and where it left the people. As I said, the reason I'm even wanting to talk about this is I have had several people actually ask me, will you please talk about eternal security because my mind is spaghetti over all of that.

I've heard everything Hobart said and it seems like he's talking like, I can know that I'm saved. He did a whole series on first Sean, the little epistle of first Sean. And he back in those days, this would have been the mid to late 70s correctly stressed that what John is saying in his first epistle is there are some things that you can know.

And one of the things that you can know is you can know that you have eternal life. That is exactly what John's epistle is about. You can know that you have eternal life. And then you go back to faith assembly the next month and you find out, oh, maybe I can't know.

And it's because Hobart himself was confused. So for instance, he will, I'm just going to pick some random passages that come to mind because I think Hobart, he just did not understand how the New Testament authors would use terminology.

For instance, in Acts chapter 8, this is the case, I'm sorry, yeah, that's Acts 8. This is the case of the sorcerer who saw who heard the message of Philip that Philip was preaching in Samaria, the gospel of Christ.

And it says, I don't know the verse, but it says in Acts 8, Philip believed those things that were said. So when it says... As that, then what Hobart would assume is he became a believer.

He became a Christian. It doesn't say that. It just says that he believed those things. Another password would be the soul or in the seed. You've got the soul or soul in the seed.

You've got several different kinds of ground, but in some of those before you get to the really good ground, you have other ground that does receive the word it says a non with joy and maybe produces a little bit of fruit, but then by and by persecution arises for the word sake or cares of this world, choke it out, or whatever the person's case is, they lost that seed or that early growth that they had.

And of course, Hebrews 6 is the big passage. That's the one, Hebrews 10 to a lesser degree, but Hebrews 6 was the main passage. Again, not understanding it, John, as you just said, against the backdrop of this isn't a pistol written by one of the early church leaders.

We don't know exactly who, but written to Jewish Christians who were a part of a Jewish, that's why it's called Hebrews. They were Jewish. They were Hebrews written against that backdrop of them being tempted to return to the Jewish way.

That's why there's so much about the Old Testament sacrificial system there. And so because Hobart did not know what to do with how can you have a saved person and then an unsaved person, then he created this hybrid in between of a saved person who is an elect saved person versus the saved person who is non-elect.

And you say, are you sure Hobart taught that? Yes. Listen, you don't have to play this clip. I'm just gonna read this, but Hobart in 1979, 1980, over that fall, winter period, he did a little nine tape series on the Book of Jude.

That's only 25 verses in this small epistle. The little epistle right before the Book of Revelation. And he called it the judgments of Jude. And it was all about judgment. This created so much fear in the life of the members of faith assembly.

And on one of those messages entitled the preservation of the elect from seven minutes, 50 seconds to eight minute and 16 seconds, here's what he says. He's talking about how can we reconcile these passages where it seems as though someone was saved and then they lost that salvation and there are other passages that seem to teach that if you're saved, you can't lose that salvation.

How do we reconcile those two? So here's what this clip says. Now, the question- Shen was posed me, is it possible to be saved and not elect? He says, it is. Now, I notice it's mighty quiet. Well, you've got to come to some biblical conclusion on these things, like Hebrew six, cannot even renew themselves to repentance." So, I remember when I first heard that and I thought, you're positing a difference between a saved person who is non-elect and a saved person who is elect and then he said, I noticed it's mighty quiet and I thought, I know exactly

why it's quiet because they were simply stunned. They could not figure out. I thought election was unto salvation. How can you be saved? Do we understand even what that means? I don't think Hobart did. Saved means you have been born again. John's Gospel chapter three, the teaching with Jesus and Nicodemus. If you're born again, how can you become unborn again? If you have been regenerated, saved, washed by the blood of the Lamb, how can all of that be undone? What I understood from the teaching of the New Testament is that salvation is the work of God from start to finish.

And salvation is not an excuse to live any way you want to. Paul would argue, if you don't have the signs and the fruit, it's all about fruit. If you don't have regular, consistent fruit in your life, then it doesn't mean that you're saved but you're not elect. It means that you're not even born again yet. I just think Hobart did not know how to deal with those different types of passages. And so he says, there's another group of people, the elect, there's the saved, there's an unsaved, and then there are the elect. And notice how he said, the question was posed to me.

Guess who posed a question to him? Here is my own typed up just the first half of Dr. Freeman's Biblical Theology series. There were 124 messages in this. And on message number 71, which is a very back of my own typed notes, it's very interesting when I listened to this, I heard a question asked by someone in the audience. And do you know who that person was? It was Bruce Kinsey, his son in law. Bruce was a pretty sharp guy. That's why I always regret that Bruce died, that Bruce left the church under the circumstances that he did and was just ostracized by all of those people.

I wish I could find someone out there and YouTube Land, who was a friend of Bruce's, who loved Bruce and was a close friend. I would really, if you're out there, locate me. I would really like to talk to you about Bruce's life.

But in any event, this was the message number 71 in biblical theology entitled The Biblical View of Eternal Security. And what was Hope Art doing? He was going through that same business of, well, no, you got passages that say you can lose your salvation and you've got passages that say you can't lose your salvation, that you're kept by the power of God. So, you know, the burden is on you to understand the biblical doctrine. No, the burden is on you as a teacher to help explain that to us. So here's the question. Here's my handwritten notes in here when I went back and

listen to this. And you can tell it's Bruce because Bruce's voice was very recognizable. Bruce asked the question, and John, this is going to go back to what you said. You didn't even know it, but earlier in this podcast, Bruce asked a question about the ceiling of the Spirit.

He said, well, if we are sealed by the Spirit, he said to Dr. Freeman, I'm not understanding. So he said, if Hebrew 6 is talking about people who have been sealed with the Holy Spirit, then how could they ever get unsealed? Bruce saw there's a logical inconsistency in this.

You've got to say either God is able to both save you and keep you. It's not my works of righteousness, which we have done, but it's according to his mercy that he saved us. And after we have been saved, then Paul said, it is God who works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

It's God the Holy Spirit who even gives us the desire and then the ability to live the Christian light. Hobart had this weird view about perfectionism, and he would say Matthew 548, well, I'm not perfect yet, but I'm claiming it. That's nothing you can claim that you're going to be perfect, because that's not going to happen in this light. So because he was so confused, John, about so many different doctrines, he had this view of perfectionism, so he was very intolerant of Christian sin, of sin in a Christian's life. He just thought that was a contradiction. How can

it Christian sin? And yet that's exactly what the New Testament teaches that even though we are regenerate and we are elect and we are saved and we have been born again, we are in the process of being sanctified. And it's not going to be completed until we're in the next life. Some people sin more, some people sin less. Bruce was smart enough to recognize if there was a divine dealing done by God, done by the power of the Holy Spirit, how can you ever be unsealed?

And that was his question. And then my comment, I said, Hobart had no answer for Bruce's question because he couldn't understand Bruce's question. Hobart himself was so confused about the whole matter. There's no way that he can understand what Bruce was asking.

I usually take a neutral position most of these arguments because in the end, you're going to find hundreds of different scenarios where you can support your argument. And what you end up is the circular debate that never ends.

What I instead really enjoy as I'm trying out new churches, I like to see what happens whenever I go to a specific church that I know their theology and their position. And then they read a verse from the Bible that fully contradicts it.

One of the churches that I attended, they were very heavy into Calvinism, which raised all kinds of questions for me around some of the teachings they had, but it wasn't the eternal security, if I remember correctly, it was more about perseverance of the saints.

And they had their favorite verses that they would read and supporting that perseverance. He who overcometh, you know, the chapter from Revelation. Well, this particular church, there was a minister who came in who wanted to go through chapter by chapter and just systematically go through the Bible and instead of preaching about the world around him, let's focus on the Bible and how does it apply to the world?

Which is good, I did like that. But the moment he hit some of the eternal security statements, it was funny to watch because as he's preaching it, you just watch his face change. He's like, well, how do I do this?

How do I dance around this? And then what happens is, as he's preaching it, he would say, he would read the verse and then he would qualify what was written by the author of the verse.

And I'm sitting here thinking, now if you're having to qualify what you're reading directly from the Bible, do you really believe what you're saying? Because you can't read the Bible and then qualify it with the exact opposite thing.

But that's what you have to do if you take one position or the other and don't understand the entire, you know, the entire scenario that's being given. So I'm sitting here and I'm listening to this and at this point, I had not studied theology as much as I have now.

So it was more confusing to watch him try to preach the opposite of what the text was saying, but it became even more problematic for me as I'm watching not just in that instance, once you do this, once you go down that path of saying, now this verse says this, but it means this other thing that we believe.

Once you go down that pathway, every verse after it, you've changed the context and it's like, you're going down I-65 and suddenly you just hang right. You don't know where you're going, but you're not on the interstate anymore, buddy.

And that's how... these sermons were. So I kind of choose the middle ground on things that are an in-list debate. And I'll qualify that statement by, if you look at some of the doctrines that have emerged over the centuries, there are centuries of debates from one side or the other. And it will never end. Until we die, until this world is no more, those same debates will always exist. And people want me to get in one side or the other. And I just don't do it because to me, this is fruitless. And my main goal is to show Hobart's confusion

over not to convince anybody of one position or the other. But if you notice from these clips that I've read and the statement from Bruce, Hobart had allowed questions during earlier teachings. I mean, during the teaching, you raised your hand, he would allow questions.

As time went on, he would not allow questions. And I think so much of it had to do with the fact that he was some self-confused and did not want to be put on the spot. So for instance, in this same series called The Judgments of Jude, done from 1979 to 1980, the same message, the preservation of the elect, the 14-minute and 58-second mark, listen to what he said, don't even come up here and debate it with me. It's all on the theology tapes. See, he does not want to have to go through. Bruce had already cornered him. And as I said, Hobart

couldn't answer the question because Hobart didn't understand what was being asked. But what I want to do here in conclusion, John, is to show the severe ramifications this had on the people there at Faith Assembly. As I said earlier, I've had some people ask me, will you please talk about this because I've gone through my Christian life because of Hobart's fear and threatening and damnation approached everything. I mean, he even called this study The Judgments of Jude. He always wanted to keep people eternally insecure. He really did. He wanted to be able to answer texts. So he comes up with this, well, you can be saved but not elect. The elect is a certain

category. And the saved is another category. But he just loved threatening people and has kept people so insecure. So here is a clip. I think I actually gave this to you last week, John. So you're going to have to go in our communication last week. But if you could play from the preservation of the elect, the 16-minute, 43-second mark to 17-minute, 37-second mark. I want to tell you that Seth the Lord, they'll not get off in there. They will be preserved because they'll persevere in obedience, in faith. They won't run.

to man when they break a leg. You've got no assurance that you're one of the elect when the emergency comes or the trial comes you're run to man for help and some of you done it and we're not going to condone it in this church. We're going to tell you you miss God. We don't stand at the door and say you can't come in if you've got a cane or a crutch but you miss God and you are a sorely testimony to this church and some of you sat out there for months and years and

when the baby came or whatever you turned to man because you were afraid. There's no excuse for that. Not in this church. I love it when people get to hear a whole barred himself and they said they love it too. They said well I won't say what they say. It's pretty critical. I will say this much. They say that oh nasally, whiny voice. I just about throw up every time I hear it and they say worse things in that as well. But I like people to hear his voice, his tone, not me saying that he said this but I do have it because I have all of these things

transcribed. This is on that same message where he's trying to talk to the people. They are shocked. They're in stunned silence because they've never heard they've never heard anything like this that you can be saved but not elect gone through all the salvation. Jesus has died for you. You've been born again. You've been regenerated. You've been sealed by the Holy Spirit and then you can lose all that. I know that was new to them and they're trying to process process that and he says in this clip I want to tell you and here he goes on a

rant. This is the say of the Lord. They will not get off an air, the elect. They won't run to man when they break a leg. You've got no assurance. You're one of the elect when the emergency comes or the trial comes and you run to man for help.

But some of you have done it and we're not going to condone that in this church. There are some other statements about if you're trying to have a baby and you know he's forbidding any medical science and he said if you do that then you will lose your salvation and you will only prove that you were never elect to begin with. Then I have one other very brief clip on a different tape but the same series John. It's in that same series the judgment of Jude but it's on the tape entitled The Day of the Lord. This might be the last one of that series. It's

the very beginning six minutes and 53 seconds to seven minutes. and it's in 36 seconds. These people are falling away. You fall away, we'll say it again, from faith assembly, you're falling away from the faith.

You can call it whatever you want. If the five-year-old stands up there and reads the word, a promise of God, and some skeptics sits out there 25 or 35 years old and says, I don't believe it, he's falling away from the word of that five-year-old because it came right out of the word of God.

So when you fall away from the word of faith assembly, you fall away from the faith because that's all we teach is faith and it's right out of the word of God. You find something, you find something, find something that isn't in line with the word of God.

You go ahead and find it. No, I don't care what that sounds like. This is classic faith assembly and Hobart Freeman. Here he takes a step beyond if you go to the doctor, you will lose your salvation and it'll fall in a way, you're not elect.

Here's what he said, these people who are falling away, if you fall away from faith assembly, you are falling away from the faith. He's equating membership in that church with election that you prove your election of God only by being a member of that church.

So he gives you no hope, no ground to stand on at all. If you saw something in the church or in Freeman, his teaching, his ministry that you disagreed with and that you left the church over, then because you did that and when you did that, if you fall away from faith assembly, you fall away from the faith.

And people heard the rest of it. He said, you find something, you find something, find something that isn't in line with the word of God. No, I don't care what that sounds like. So he claimed to be infallible.

He claimed right there, you find something that I've taught that's not in line with the word. He said three times, you find something, you find something, go ahead and try to find something that's not in line with the word of God.

And then he says, I don't care what that sounds like. So this is the life, John, that people had to live as they exited faith assembly. I think it's the life that so many people live for months and I hope not years when they leave a destructive religious call of personality that just keeps people in the worst forms of bondage because everything you know about God and Christianity is tied up in that church or in that group.

And it is a fearful thing to leave one of those places because that's God, that's Jesus, that's church, that's Christianity. And if I leave that, now you and I, you're... So far, removed from that doesn't bother you, but I know it bothers a lot of people who are recently removed from it.

And of course, what I have said all along is no church, no local church would ever use threats like that. If you decide to leave that church because you disagree with something and wanna go to another church, the first thing a real pastor would do is to discuss it with you and make sure the false knot in him or in his teaching or the church, and sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't.

And sometimes, as you've said, the church just isn't a good fit, but to, in such a haughty matter, dare people to find anything in his teaching that's not in line with the word of God.

And then say, you won't find it because what I teach is the pure, unadulterated, whole council of God. And it's just, you know, it's a laughing stock is what it is. So I mentioned the three phases of eternal security doctrines that Brandon taught.

Well, there's a fourth phase to this. And I find that this phase appears to be common in many of the groups where the leader has died. And this hit me, part of the reason why I'm fascinated with this study is because of an event that happened that I've mentioned before, I think, with you.

But it was in the post office, this guy walked up, he knew who I was, he knew that, at this point, I was like hardcore only focusing on Brandon and exposing Brandon. And I knew him and he walked up and he shook my hand.

And I was a little surprised he was so kind to me because most of them aren't, I'll just say like that. And he says, he says, I know what you're doing, John. And I thought, oh, he's fixing to come down on me right in front of everybody here.

And he says, I'm okay with it. And it shocked me. I was like, what? And he said, I'm okay with it. And he says, you know, I was there in Shreveport in 1960, I don't know what a year he said, 63 or something like this.

He said, I was there and I watched Jesus Christ on the platform. And I said, really? What do you say to this, right? And he's referring to William Brandon preaching. What you say is, I wish I was there and could have seen the Lord, you know?

So he says, it really don't matter. You can speak against William Brandon. It doesn't matter. The old flesh that's dead and gone. We saw Jesus when he was there. And I said, okay, and he says, you could do whatever one.

You could still, you could go sleep with prostitutes if you wanted. And he started naming off all of these like the seven deadly sins, right? He's saying you could go do all of these things and none of it matters because we're now living in the millennium.

Jesus Christ has come and gone. And the reason why this subject fascinates me and why I study it so much is because in the context of a cult, what happens as the cult becomes more and more destructive, eternal salvation, becomes less wrapped up with the Bible or Jesus, but it's more focused on your eternal salvation is fully bound to whether or not you believe the cult group and its doctrine. That's right.

And its leader. That is your eternal salvation. And after the leader dies and it becomes a mythology, well that mythology, if you're not following that mythology, it's like the worshippers of Zeus. If you're not following Zeus, you're not a Zeus site or whatever they called them, the cult following of Zeus. Well, you have shifted from the cult following of Jesus Christ to the cult following of Branum or Hobart Freeman or whoever is the cult leader. And your eternal salvation is now linked to that. So it has shifted from Christianity to this destruction. And everything that they say about salvation from that point forward, yes, they'll read the Bible

verses, but it's also qualified like the like the church that I went to almost mentioned the name and I won't. Whenever you're reading the Bible and you say, we believe this 100% except for the exact opposite. Well, once you start down that pathway of saying that your cult leader is bound to your salvation, we've done the same thing. You've taken the Bible verse, you flipped it upside down. It is now the opposite. And your eternal salvation is into something that isn't in the text at all. It is tied to the cult leader. So for me, part of the fascination is just studying that

mindset because the psychology behind it is unbelievable that people can disconnect that part of their brain and go down this pathway and still think that they're logically Christians when they apparently have just lost all concept of Christianity. And what is so surprising to me is that the people after Hobart died, the people at faith assembly, they beat themselves up by saying, well, God had to remove brother Freeman because we it was our fault because we were all looking at a man. You know, we all had our eyes on a man. And what I said to them is, yeah, you did have your

eyes on a man. And that's exactly what that man taught you to do. That is exactly what he taught you to do. He never deferred to other people or other experts or other scholars. There were no other experts besides him. He was an expert on everything from marriage to raising children to theology. And he's the one who drew everyone's attention to him. And that's, you know, sign number uno that you are in a false cult. When that minister points makes everyone look at him, agree with him. You can't disagree with him. You can't ask questions anymore. You know, he just

rebuffed everyone and said, it's all on tape. And the reason that I always felt that people had questions, I know the reason that I sometimes had questions. then is because what he said on the tapes was so confusing. Had it been as clear, and he'd always say, it's clear, I've already dealt with it, and I would go, you dealt with it, but you didn't deal with it very clearly. You know, it's as clear as mud, and that's why people are asking you questions. And the reason it's unclear is because he himself was confused, and he spoke with a fork tongue. Absolutely, and the fork tongue bothered me so I left, and if

somebody's still stuck in one of these groups, you can leave too. It's that easy. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.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.