Hobart Freeman and William Branham: An Interview With Chino Ross

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-brannum.org, and with me I have my very special guest, Chinno Ross, pastor and teacher. Chinno, it's so good to have you on here. We've had a few conversations and you have some pieces of the puzzle that I was also missing and we started discussing those said pieces and I realized that it probably better just to have you on the podcast so that everybody who's looking for the same sources of information and some quotes that

can direct them towards the research of the the beings in particular that we're going to be discussing, which I'll introduce later, be good to have you on and let everybody hear it from the horses mouth, but I'm like I say I'm really glad to have you on here. I'm excited and maybe if you could just take a moment and tell everyone a little bit about yourself and your work and YouTube channel, etc. Thank you, John. I have looked forward to this as well. I have followed some of your podcasts on William Brannum and things related and then when I heard a little small podcast,

you did on Dr. Hobart Freeman, which only was a couple of minutes. I thought I know a lot more about that. Maybe I need to talk to John. So I am 65 years old. I have been in the ministry since my early 20s, a pastor to church in Minnesota, a pastor to church in Vermont. I do have a YouTube channel that is entitled Understanding Scripture and Truth by Chenot D. Rawls and that contains just over 2,000 messages. The earlier ones are audio. Back in the Stone Age, we didn't do or didn't have video, but the more recent ones are video and audio just on a variety of topics.

Some of those topics being William Brannum and Hobart Freeman and especially Freeman's connection to William Brannum. For me, it's just fascinating because I knew so very little about Hobart Freeman and when I learned that he actually...

actually started his ministry not 10 minutes for my grandfather's church. And then was doing the same thing as William Brannum. I realized that there had to be a much deeper connection. And what's interesting out of all of this, I have friends who are in the current Brannum organization and other friends who were working there and who have left.

And one of them who his father had left, he told me that there was a much deeper connection between William Brannum and Hobart Freeman. And especially the cult following that continued even after Freeman.

And he said that they were sending crates of Brannum. I call it propaganda, but they would call it Brannum sermons, Brannum messages to Freeman and his cult following. So like I said, I'm really excited to have you on here to talk through this because as we explore the connections between Freeman and Brannum and then bring forward all of the word of faith people that you and I talked with, talked about briefly, but word of faith people that were also so connected to this, it's just fascinating.

I think it would really help your audience, John, if I just gave you this little brief bio because it explains my connection to Hobart who was my introduction to William Brannum. So I was born and raised in the deep south.

I live in Kentucky now. I live in a state capital area, Frankfurt. But I was born in Memphis, Tennessee and I had been raised in a Presbyterian church. I was an unsaid youth, but my mother had faithfully brought me to the Presbyterian church.

And in the mid-70s, when I was 15 years old, just in a sovereign work of the Holy Spirit, it wasn't in a revival meeting or anything, it was alone, but I was converted to Christianity and was over the winter break in one of my high school years.

And so when I went back to school after this winter break, I had my Bible and I was a different person and I was trying to evangelize everybody. And six months later, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit under the influence of some other people in our local church.

And at that time, we just began going to whatever charismatic meetings were available. And they were primarily things like full gospel, businessmen, fellowship, international meetings and whatever else we could find. And after doing that for about a year, which was good, but all we were hearing were just other people's text monies.

And I wanted something more. I couldn't sharpen my teeth on that. And so in the spring of 1976, Dr. Freeman, who was still traveling at the time, that was the last year he traveled going one time to different cities around the United States to teach. He came to Memphis and I can't remember because it didn't attend whether it was a Howard Johnson motel but he would often go to something like the Howard Johnson motel, read a conference room and have a seminar for the weekend.

So this was in the spring of 1976 and some of my spirit-fuel friends attended that and brought some tapes back. Why have never heard anything like that? Because here was a man who had graduate degrees, a doctorate in Old Testament and in Hebrew, a doctorate in theology so he was grounded in scripture but he was also spirit-fuel and he was consistently teaching through the Bible different doctrines or different books of the Bible that was very interesting and very appealing to me and I really gravitated toward that. So he would have some of his messages that were

say teaching on the book of Ezekiel or the book of Daniel and then he'd have other messages just teaching popular doctrines like healing or deliverance and it was on those messages. I began to hear names, names of people that I had never heard of, A.A. Allen and Jack Coe and Smith Wigglesworth and you know these people, you've covered some of these people before, Amy Simple McPherson, Charles Parum, just his long line of people and I thought wow there's some history here in the 1900s to this Pentecostal movement and then he mentioned the name William

Brown. I had never heard William Brown before and he would tell stories and the stories that he told were just incredible and what made me as a teenager believe them and let me just pause to say as a teenager you're not much different from a child you don't have you have not developed the ability to think critically and by that I don't mean to be criticizing but just to discern right and wrong and weigh what you're hearing with the rest of what you know and maybe asking for some proof of something. You just don't have that ability as a teenager so whatever Dr. Freeman

said, whatever the other charismatic speaker, whatever anybody was saying I was basically believing especially if they could give me any kind of verse for that but the stories on William Brown and were different because of this he mentioned Gordon Lindsay and I have read a little and knew a little about Gordon Lindsay but he said Gordon Lindsay was not a ma- and way out there in left field, that he was an established recognized man of God from Texas, and that he was William Brannum's crusade director and as they would come into the prayer line, this is the information I only knew from Dr. Freeman.

I had no proof of anything as you have been able to document so well in all of your podcasts, that they would come through the line to be healed, to be prayed over by William Brannum.

They had a prayer card and according to Dr. Freeman, 50,000 cases of William Brannum never looking at the prayer card but correctly identifying the person's illness and I was just blown away by that.

And as I said, I didn't have any information like you put on your podcast. You know, it's somewhat relatable because as a teenager, when I was in this thing, you do go through some self-evaluation, self-exploration as you're coming of age and I did this like everybody else but my focus was the Brannum tapes, I would dive deeply into listening to these things over and over and studying them because when you're raised in a cult of personality, you study things so much that you take on that personality which is another common problem for another day but I studied them, I knew the names that you mentioned

but I knew them in relation to the way that William Brannum spoke about them. Some of the people in some of the recordings, they were saintly figures in this movement and I just viewed them as that, a saintly figure who was working either in collaboration or a contemporary to Brannum and then towards the end of his life, he turned on several of these guys.

So I viewed them as the villains of the faith, right? So I had this weird mixed emotion towards some of them and I realized after I left that, you know, I've not even looked into a single person to understand who these people are and understanding that, just that alone for me was mind-boggling because this wasn't a small thing and this group that I was in, even though we were taught one of the loaded language phrases that we use is one and a million.

Our group is the elite group of Christians that only one and a million is gonna make it into heaven and you realize it, no man, there were thousands of these guys, they were all connected in these, you know, you mentioned the full gospel businessmen meetings, they're all connected through this and the voice of healing movement which later turned into Christ for the nations and I started to realize that this thing, even at that point, I wasn't really critical of it but I knew that it did not match what I had been taught.

I went away to college to the University of Mississippi. had been work coming under graduate degree. And I had become sassinated by all of these different ministers that I had never heard of. I had heard of Martin Luther and John Calvin and being a Presbyterian. I had heard of John Knox, but I had not heard of any of these other figures. And I thought, well, where have I been my whole life? What have I been missing? I found out later not much. But at the time, I'm thinking, you know, what have I been missing? And part of the alert, let me go back to the fact was, Dr. Freeman was

a trained scholar. He had gotten an undergraduate degree at Georgetown College. She had gotten his master's in theology at Southern Back to Seminary. And then he had gone to grace theological seminary and went on the lake in Indiana and, you know, quickly earned a doctorate in theology with the highest honors and then was hired by the seminary to teach Old Testament and Hebrew and philosophy and some other things. So his take on the charismatic movement wasn't coming from, you know, a fifth grade educated person was coming from someone with some, you know, some knowledge and some grounding in scripture. And that resonated

not only with me, but obviously with a whole lot of other people. Dr. Freeman, by the way, had received the baptism of the Holy Spirit under the influence of a mentor of his, Dr. John Ray with whom I communicated before Dr. Ray passed away. But he was a professor at grace as well. And Hobart had learned some under Dr. Ray. And John had gotten the baptism of the Holy Spirit and had left. Hobart had already left the seminary, started a little church in his home in Claypool, Indiana. And they just were rattling around with a dozen people

and living room for a while. But eventually, when he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which he did in the spring of 1966 up at McCormick Theological Seminary, while attending, by the way, an FGBMFI meeting, a full gospel of businessmen's meeting up there. And it was under the influence of Dr. John Ray and his wife. Well, when he came back from Chicago to Claypool, Indiana, all of that is in northern Indiana, he was on fire. His little church began to grow. They moved out of that church into a three-car garage over on Barbie Lake, which belonged to Jerry Irvin, which was the

song leader and stayed with Dr. Freeman to the very end of his ministry. So again, I'm here in these names of people that I have never heard of. When I go away to college, my freshman semester, we didn't have cell phone, but didn't have computers in those days. So I had some big, long-distance phone bills.

I'm calling Miracle Valley Arizona, I'm trying, that's AA Allen, I'm trying to get the books and the documents by all of these people and I spent a lot of time doing that and that first semester also I find out that a professor of history in the neighboring state, the state of Alabama has written this book, all things are possible and if you see down here in the bottom left-hand corner, here is this famous picture from Houston from January of 1950 with this halo over William Branham's head. So I've heard what Hobart has said, Hobart said that Branham was a hunter but didn't

even need a gun that he would talk to the squirrels and they would fall off the side of the tree and fall down the ground then and you know who am I to say that didn't happen I'm just an 18 year old college freshman you know this guy has a doctor's degree in theology and after all William Branham's head 50,000 confirmed healing so who am I to say anything and as I said earlier I don't have the ability to critically analyze all this. Well I saw this book by by Dr. David Edwin Herall who was professor of history at University of Alabama Birmingham and

I thought well a percent of scholarly textbook you know is obviously right and I and I was just amazed by that but I got out of college I went into ministry myself and being responsible to actually teach and being responsible for a group of people's lives totally changed me you know I could repeat what someone else is saying I had to know it for myself and that was my journey from my early 20s to begin to gravitate away from Dr. Freeman I wrote him letters I've got a file full of responses from him we corresponded I met him personally I knew him but I began to gravitate

away and although I did not have the blessing of your podcast to document what was wrong with some of this stuff my mind just told me that if William Branham is teaching some forms of modalism of oneness in the Trinity of serpent seed of the seventh angel he's alive to the prophet I said I don't believe any of that I don't believe any of that is William Branham so consequently regardless of what people have said about him I don't believe these things and then thankfully you give documentation that there were lights in that room in Houston and this same quote unquote

halo appeared over many people's heads you know it's for me it's just mind boggling right because I consider myself to be an intelligent man. I ran my own business for years. I've, you know, in IT, I'm doing very intelligent things, but I believe some really silly thing just until I was 37 years old, right?

And we talked earlier about how as a teenager, you don't engage critical thought. Well, when you are in a destructive cult that is practicing mind control and group think, you also don't practice the same critical thought that you should as an adult when you become an adult.

So here I am 37 years old. I believed, as I'm 37 years old, old man, I'm gonna admit this to the public. I believe that the man spoke a squirrel into existence. And that was the claim.

He never claimed to have killed it by speaking to it, but he did claim that you could do things like that. And so as a child, he's, and as an adult, I'm a bearist to say, I would try to speak things and see if they would happen.

And you know how that works out. So not very well for me anyway, but you turn off the critical thought. And you mentioned the light, you know, every documentary, every books got this halo above the man's head.

Think of the masses of people that did not stop to critically think, well, doesn't every auditorium have lighting and doesn't that lighting look exactly like that on a black and white photograph? And I don't know if I can find it.

I'll try to pull it up for the podcast video, if I can. But back in the 30s in Jeffersonville, some investigative reporter was studying this thing called halation, which is the effect of a light on a black and white photograph.

So here's the newspaper that William Brandham is reading. Here's the effect that looks, you know, very much like a halo and did he read it? I don't know, but there's just so many things that you can think through.

And for me, the fact that so many people fell into this and just completely shut off critical thought, some of them Bible scholars. And the last point that I'll mention, you talked about the motelist debate, you know, William Brandham taught a motelist version.

I oddly enough, in the cult, would say that I was on this Pentecostal, because that's what William Brandham called his motelism. But I believed in the Trinity. And I can clearly remember having a debate with a coworker in a Western Sysland steakhouse and we were both washing dishes.

And he was saying, I believe the Trinity. And I said, you're going to hell because you believe the Trinity, because that's what I was taught. And then he would describe his view on God, and I would say, no, you're describing the oneness, because God sent the Holy Spirit.

But can't you see that's one and and it wasn't that I had escaped the brand of cult for gosh, I want to say was five, six years before I really stopped and critically thought about the reason why that I believed two things at once and I go back and look and sure enough, the man would preach trainitarian and pray to the pray directly to the persons of the Trinity in one sermon before one audience. Then he would go to another audience, another group of people and he would say anybody who does the thing that he just did is accepting

the mark of the beast. Yes, and I know that we have brand of view on the Godhead, really affected Dr. Freeman. I didn't realize it at the time. I did end up going away to seminary.

I went to Gordon Conwell, theological seminary. Dr. Roger Nicole was one of my professors up there. David Wells was another one I was living in Vermont at the time and went to seminary down outside of Boston on north side of Boston. But Dr. Freeman's favorite quote on the Godhead that he thought was so ingenious and so cute and so particular to him was this and anybody ever following him knows they could quote it before I do, that God is one divine spirit who eternally manifests himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He said that a hundred times if he said it once,

not only on some of his technical theology tapes, but just in passing that God is one divine and Spirit eternally manifested as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And when I found out, which I didn't know originally that William Brownam came from a oneness background, then it began to make sense that again, here's another area where Dr. Freeman was heavily influenced. He did not want to teach three gods. He somehow wanted to teach one god, but he somehow wanted to have three.

And he didn't he didn't know to say that God is one in one or more senses and he is three in one or more senses. He's not one and three in the same way, the same manner in the same time. That would be a contradiction. But the way he phrased it that God is one spirit, then he's wanting everyone to think numerically God is one. But yet as you just said, he believed Father and Holy Spirit, he believed in the Trinity. So then he had to qualify that by saying, who eternally manifest him.

So yeah, well, that is just a very weird way to say it in his definite, not orthodox Christian doctor. That actually answers the biggest question that I was hoping to get out of this podcast.

Because I have been trying to determine we, you've probably seen the research, William Brownam was one of the most influential figures of religious figures for Jim Jones who started People's Temple and went down to, you know, the history of John St. Guyana.

Well, Jim Jones was impacted most heavily by William Brannum's manifested sons of God theology. And I know that other people, historians have incorrectly credited other people with this theology, but Brannum's teaching of it predates those people and their writings that they have. So I'm certain it came either from William Brannum or they cross pollinated and they both developed it together.

Because of the timeline, I have been curious to know if Hobart Freeman was in the manifested sons of God sect or flavor of the latter reign. And there's just no information on this, similar to the way there was nothing about Jim Jones being in this.

But the way that you said that is how you would say that in the manifested sons of God sect. Yes, he was heavily, heavily, heavily into manifested sons. But he would always make this disclaimer that we believe in the manifestation of the sons of God because Romans eight teaches it.

But we're not like the extreme groups. And then he would explain that the extreme groups were teaching that there is no bodily return across. That he is returning in his saints. That he's not literally going to come to the earth.

That he's making his appearance in his saints. And when I first Hobart heard Hobart teach, the manifestation of the sons of God, he has many tapes on it. By the way, where did I hear his tape list?

And there are a thousand one hundred and thirteen tapes on it. All of which I have heard. And this was published a month after Dr. Freeman died. Although he had other ones prior to this.

And it's just, you know, pages of tapes in here. And there are a lot of them on the manifestation of the sons of God. Well, what he said. And this was typical ladder rain.

The early rain was any simple McPherson, a zoos of street, 1900. The ladder rain is this neo-pentecostal, charismatic movement here in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. And Hobart said that the manifestation of the sons of God would be when God manifests them, and they are an exclusive small group.

They're Joel's army. They're Dian's army. It's not the whole of Christendom. They're the ones who've gone deeper, sold out. They're the manchild. They're the overcomers. When God manifests them, what that means is, they are going to go, they're going to be caught up to heaven prior to the tribulation.

Come back. And as He said minister to this dead denominational institutional church minister by means of healing the sick, emptying the hospital beds, going to the insane asylums and emptying them. He taught this greater works ministry doctrine from John 1412 that you'll not only do the works that I've done, but greater works, Jesus said.

So they took that to mean that they, the overcomers of the man child, would be doing the greater works of Jesus. So we see that along with an issue of blood touched to him of Jesus' garment.

Well, Mark said, that's nothing compared to what we're going to do. And the Apostle Paul had some anointed handkerchiefs and cloth sent out from his body and evil spirits departed from people were told in Acts 19 and people were healed.

He said, that's not even the tip of the iceberg of what God is going to do through his manifested sons. And the first few years in my early 20s, you know, I believe that till I slow down to read Romans 8 and it never says any such thing.

It never says that we are going to deliver the groaning creation. It says God is going to deliver us and the groaning creation. We're all going to be delivered together, but the offer of it is God and not some manchild group of people.

Yeah, that's he is teaching William Brandham's manifested sons to the letter. The second point I'm curious about is within the manifested sons of God framework, there were towards the end of William Brandham's ministry.

He started introducing the notion that some people may have a better manifestation than others. Did Hobart ever go to those extremes? I never heard that, John. I heard a famous sermon called Gideon's Army where Gideon, one of the early judges in the book of judges, starts with a large quantity of men getting ready to go to war against the Midianites and God reduces them and reduces them down to the 300 and Hobart had received a message by prophecy and revelation that this is a type of the overcomers in the last days.

I know all of this came out of Brandham, George Warnock, Feast of Tabernacles, Bill Britton. There's a whole host of people prior to Dr. Freeman who were teaching as one thing I might want to back up.

I don't know whether you realize or not in the spring of 1966 when Dr. Freeman received the Holy Spirit up at McCormick Seminary, Chicago. Two months later, he traveled to Christ for the Nation's Institute.

He went down to Gordon Lindsay's place. William Brandham had died just prior to that, right in December. of 1965, we're talking not even six months later, and the early summer of 1966, Hobart, whose train theologian, but a newbie when it comes to the charismatic movement, is down there on the front row with his tape player, hearing whoever was speaking there and just absorbing everything.

But one of the people there was a prophetess quote-unquote by the name of Anna Schrader. An Anna Schrader gave this prophecy that Hobart referred to the rest of his life, that he was going to have a prison ministry, and he thought, I'm really not into going to jails and ministering to inmates, but the prophecy from Anna went on to say, it's not those in jails, it's those who are in the jails of the churches.

And Hobart liked that, because he had come out of the brethren church when he left the seminary up there, he went on a lake, that he would just have a great influence on a large number of people.

Hobart had polio when he was a child. He walked with a pretty severe limb, and that prophecy included that he would be healed of that polio limb at a well, a literal physical well where Jesus one day would meet him, talk to him about his future ministry, and that when he received this healing from polio, then the whole body of Christ would enter into that healing as well.

So that was very significant to the rest of Hobart's ministry. He died in December of 1984, so for the next 18 years, he's carrying that in his memory. And because he was so heavily influenced by the William Brannum's and the Gordon Lenzese and the W.B. Brantz and the Kenneth Hagen's of the world at that time, T. L. Osberg, who talked about T. L. Osberg all the time, because he was influenced by those people, and some of them had, at least with her, had prophesied over him.

Let's face it, he was in a bind, he couldn't give up on that. He couldn't look back at these people and say, what cooks these people were, because his ministry was founded on that as well.

So let me just share, I have one quote here to show you what he said about William Brannum. This is on Tate No. 277, it's under his series entitled The Restoration of the Ministry and Guests, and it's a word of knowledge, part one.

I'm paraphrasing, and then I'll give you his one quote, but he's talking about William Brannum, and he said that he passed her to church close enough to William Brannum's church that he could throw a rock and hit it.

And then he said at the 58 minute. 21 second part of that message. As far as I'm concerned, he was God's prophet. And you know, I'm not easily convinced into quotation. So he was not going to give up on William Branham the way he justified any of his references to William Branham is the same way that he justified his references to any of these people by saying, well, later in life, they got off. That way, whenever I was listening to them and believing in them, everything was kosher. Everything was good. So you can't fault me for

referring to them because that's when they were good. But then later, they got off. Hobart did that with everybody. That answers the second follow-up question to the manifested sons of God because people like T. L. Osborne believed that William Branham was, and I'm paraphrasing too, but at his funeral, T. L. Osborne said basically that William Branham was God manifested in human flesh.

And in my grandfather's resignation speech, he said, we saw God tabernacled in human flesh. That was the manifested sons of God theme that William Branham was this character that was truly God manifested in the flesh. So I was curious if he continued the belief that William Branham was the prophet, because that actually answers the previous question as to the different levels of manifestation.

Towards the end of his life, right before he died, William Branham said that after convincing everyone that he was the return of Elijah the prophet, which all of these guys in the manifested sons believed, he said God in the last days comes as Elijah the prophet, not a man, but God, but he'll come through a human basically. So that affected deeply. My grandfather, T. L. Osborne, I'm certain that there are others who now deny it, but there's this big movement of people that really, truly believe that God had come down in the form of William Branham, and then he died. And so now

the next question, which you've semi-answered was whether or not Hobart Freeman saw himself as an opportunist. Once Branham was off the scene, did he come to feel devoid? Which it sounds like you said, maybe he did. He never said that in so many words, but here's what people who heard Hobart in the last six or seven or eight years of his life would say. He started fellowshiping early with full gospel businessmen. He was a popular speaker there.

They would have him frequently. As I said, the last year that he traveled was in 1976. The reason that he stopped traveling was he had partnered up with Mel and Mary Beth Grider in 1972. They had started a little drug rehab place on an old barn that they had on their property that they had called the glory barn.

By the way, I don't know if you can see, but that blue rock on the back on that bookcase that actually came from the chimney of the glory barn. So Hobart partnered up with Mel and Mary Beth in 1972 and I attended, I actually grew from Mississippi on August 15th in 1976.

That's the first and the only time that I ever went to the glory barn while it was still standing. But Hobart called there from 72 to the late 70s, but in 74 he started what they called the charismatic school and that's where he was going to teach Old Testament survey, New Testament survey, he taught biblical Hebrew, they did it on a Saturday morning.

Hobart became very, very invested in his local congregation, which in 1972 was probably two or three hundred people by the time I visited in August of 1976, which was the first time I actually had met Dr. Freeman face to face.

They were probably around 500 people and by the end of the 70s and around 1980, they were at 2,000 people. So he was really focusing on teaching his own group of people. He traveled each year once a month through 1976 and that was it.

He never went out and traveled and so what was happening is Hobart was becoming more and more exclusive. He was more and more critical. There was more authoritarianism that was being exerted. It got to the place where earlier, if you wanted to listen to some Kenneth Hagen tapes or TL, Osborne message or Catherine Coolman, he even talks about being in Pittsburgh at a teaching that he was doing and he stopped by a Catherine Coolman service and then came back to Indiana.

He was fine hanging out with those people and mixing with those people, but as the 70s progressed and when you hear his messages in the end of the 1970s, no one has the truth but faith assembly.

We are the hub of the wheel and the spokes that go out from it are the 40 word, what they call word ministers that always had to be back on Sunday morning to hear Hobart, but they would travel to different states and basically preach faith assembly doctrine.

To your point, he never said, I am the new William Brannum, but he said that Anna Schrader and Claire Grace, these two prophetesses in his ministry was based on. He said in one of his messages, and I've got all this document that I can find which one. Hey, I was talking to her on the phone the other day. Hobart said, and she said, let's face it, Hobart, not everybody's hundredfold like you are. So he became very exclusive to the point that everyone else was wrong. And even people like me who formally was counted as part of the fold, even though I never attended, never was a member faith assembly. I was

used as fodder from the pulpit if I would write a letter and ask a question. And I started writing letters when I found out there were many as a hundred people that the news media had documented, had died from treatable illnesses in the early 1980s following Hobart's ministry and message.

And I was just saying, what in the world is going on? Well, whenever I wrote those letters and I became pulpit fodder from the afterwards. You know, it's interesting because people often ask me how I do what I do. How do I, how do I find all this critical information about somebody? How do I know to even look? And I always look at the fruits of what happened. And from that, you can usually tell the source and it's biblical, right? By the fruit you'll know them. Whenever I, when I saw what happened towards the end of his life and how they became isolationist and just, just the way

that it happened, it so closely resembled what I was seeing across all of the different manifests in sons of God splinter groups. They all go into this elitist mindset. They're exclusive. Nobody else has the truth. It, it essentially, if you study narcissism and go back to the study of how Christianity mixed with the mystery cults. That's what this was. This was a mystery cult.

He was called manifested sun. It was called laterane, but it was amplified by the manifested sons of God, mystery. And that mystery, the fruits of it just matched the same pattern all throughout time.

Yeah. And that word, which I did a lot of teaching on years ago in my ministry, mystery, there is, it comes from a Greek word and it's moosterion. And so mystery is basically a transliteration of that. And but what the word moosterion men in the Greek is something that was a mystery that has now been revealed in the pages of scripture. And it, it's not something esoteric that has only reserved for the 1970s or the 1940s. It was revealed in the pages of scripture. And as I said earlier here, John, when I began in my own ministry and became responsible for people's

lives, the phrases that I had grown up with as a, in my late teens and my early 20s, that, you know, this is the laterane and the last days, the last days were always spoken of.

but as though somehow they started around 1901 in Azusa Street. But the New Testament is clear that the last days began at the day of Pentecost, and throughout the New Testament, the authors are writing as though they felt, and I trust them, they felt they were living in the last days.

But when I'm hearing last days, and the emphasis is so dire, and so there's always, there was an urgency with Hobart in the 70s that these are the last days. You don't know he even related a vision someone had of a calendar, and this was done in 1972.

So you got eight years to go for this, where the pages are just kind of sluttering, and by the end of the 70s, the calendar disappears. Well, good Lord, you know what that tells all of us?

If I knew that Jesus was coming back, I knew, in 1978, I probably quit my job, who needs a college degree, it would lead to all kinds of ramifications in your life, and guess what, that's exactly what it did to so many of these people, you know, to their chagrin.

There was so much of an emphasis put on urgency that the 70s are just gonna about wrap this up. He has a series called The Sermon on the Mount. The second tape, he relates that vision.

He said the 70s are pretty much gonna wrap things up, but as long as you're saying that in 72, you know, you've got eight years of grace period here. Guess what, the 70s didn't wrap it up.

We passed into another millennium now, and I thought that, as you had mentioned, you called it a cult of personality is exactly what it is. It is all of these groups have a certain figure head over them, who in one way or another is dynamic, either in their ability to communicate, their speaking ability, their presence, their recitation of how many miracles are behind them that they've done in their lifetime.

There is something by which they are corralling people around them, and once you do that, then it leads to exclusivity. You know, we're the only ones. Not only do we have the truth, and they have the truth.

We have the truth, and we're the only ones who have the truth, and it leads to authority. Periodism, it leads to circling the wagons where everyone that is not a part of your group you count as an outsider, and if anybody were to ever leave faith assembly, you know, on good grounds, like on some doctrinal ground, they are disfellowshipped, and the people in the church know, because of what the pulpit has said, no communication with those people at all.

And the way that Hobart always pounded in his authoritarianism was... As with everything with some Bible verse, touch not mind-annoyed and do my prophets no harm. You cannot speak against God's anointed by default.

I'm God's anointed, he would say. And you're going to incur some kind of wrath of God upon you. Whenever Dr. John Davis, who actually got his training under Dr. Freeman and who then became a professor of Hebrew at Grace Theological Seminary, a year before Hobart died, the local newspaper wanted Dr. John Davis to interview Hobart and this stuff is all online, you can find it.

And he did, which was surprising because Hobart did not call to any members of the media at all. But I think because Dr. Davis was from Grace Seminary was still a professor at Grace Seminary and had been a student of Dr. Freeman's when Hobart was still teaching there.

He granted this three or four-part interview and then it was published in the newspaper. And on John, Dr. Davis's departure from his last meeting with Hobart, Hobart warned him, said, I don't know if you're going to write anything bad or negative, but I just want you to know that other people who've done that recently have suffered terrible debts.

That's the way that these people would talk and John said, I assume that would say to my benefit, and what made me smile was within two years, Hobart was dead and John Davis lived for the next 40 years.

You know, you know them by their fruits and if you give a word and it doesn't come to pass, that's a false prophecy, plain and simple. And it's the tactics of organized crime, right?

You don't come out and make the threat, you lead them to the assumption of the threat. That's how it works. In fact, that's the way my grandfather used to do it, I can clearly remember.

I think we mentioned this in our phone conversation weeks ago before this podcast, but there are certain phrases that you use that are very triggering because it was the same loaded language. And that's what's fascinating to me and I think for the listeners who came out of the Brannemism cults or the Latter-Rain, even to some extent, probably the NAR, they're going to recognize some of the phrases that you've mentioned, touch not the annoy to do the profits, no harm.

All of those were veiled in threats. That's the way that they conducted themselves. You can't critically think, you can't question. If you do, these consequences are going to happen to you and avoid the consequences by not engaging in critical thought.

Another point that you mentioned that honestly, it didn't click until you just now said it. You were talking about the timeline of his becoming isolationist in the 70s. That was about the time of William Brannem's most famous 1970s.

of the Seven Doomsday Prophecy, prediction. So he's leading up to that timeline that also I did a study on this on Jim Jones, right, who was also in the manifested sons of God. He became more isolationist towards the 70s.

So it makes you wonder, you know, Jones had long left brannemism and laterane, but it makes you wonder in the back of his mind was he still thinking through these things. I don't know.

Yeah, I had a difficult time in the late 70s and early 80s because, you know, this was my spiritual heritage. And even though I had given up on most of it, if not all of it, I still desperately wanted to try to convince these people of the era of their way.

And, you know, early in Hobart's ministry, he would, when he was of a more generous spirit, he was not nearly as arrogant. He became extremely arrogant to the point that he could not be wrong by the end of his life.

But he would point everyone to the Bereans and say, don't be like the Thessalonians, be like the Bereans in Acts 17. They received the word that they heard with all readiness of mind. In other words, they didn't receive it critically.

They listened to what Paul said. They said, we accept that in our mind, but time out, we wanna go search the scriptures daily and see if these things be so. That's fair enough. You know, that's all I ask of any of my audiences.

At least listen to what I have to say, but because I said it, don't believe it. Don't believe anything, anybody says because they said, be willing to listen to it. I can accept that for the moment, but now time out, let's go search the scriptures daily and see if these things be so.

And that's the tactic I tried to use on Hobart and this file of letters. I'd say, listen, Dr. Freeman, you're the one who said this and it's actually in the Bible. You're wanting us to go and then as soon as we go and search the scriptures and come to the conclusion that's not so.

Now all of a sudden, it's touching up my anointing and doing my prophets no harm. The other famous phrase of his was, God doesn't set dummies in the pulpit. And I would say, well, I agree.

But number one, who's to say God sets you in the pulpit and number two, who's to say you're not a dummy? So he would make these statements that were memorable and would put a smile on your face.

God then said dummies in the pulpit, but in saying that, you haven't said anything at all back to his definition of the Godhead. And before he would ever give his definition, he would say, let me just say this, God is not who we say he is.

He is who scriptures reveal him to be. And I would say, well, you haven't said anything when you said that. We all know that. God isn't a God of the figment of our mad nation.

He is whoever scripture. has revealed him to be, but he thought that was so important to say, God's not who I say is or who he and then he would go on and give his semi-wondest definition for the Trinity.

And yet all of those guys would speak out against what they called watered down theology. Branham did the same thing. He did a lot of statements that meant absolutely nothing, but the way he would emphasize his words as you're listening to it, your mind would actually go back and think that he made some powerful statement. And I think for me that was the biggest thing escaping all of this was learning that that was actually a technique of mind control.

If you can get the brain to play tug of war with itself internally, give them something that's confusing, make it sound like something it's not, your brain kind of has this shutdown moment where you're thinking about the thing that was just said and you disengage critical thought while you're thinking about it. And I started recognizing that pattern, especially in Branham's ministry, he would say the most absurd things and emphasize it like it was important and then inject the most horrific theology right behind that. So as your mind is thinking about the absurd thing, you've accepted without even thinking it, whatever is the agenda that he was pushing.

So all of this to say, I'm crazy interested to hear that Hobart Freeman was not only matching the theology of the manifestant sons of God, but it sounds like he picked up a lot of the speaking patterns of William Branham, which if you trace that all the way back to where Branham learned it from, this becomes even more fascinating. So you've opened doors for new research for me.

I'm glad that I have. I've not heard all the Branham stuff that you've heard and I did not know there were all of these connections that you can make because of your research, but I know Dr.

Freeman pretty well. I've heard every one of his messages. I had a lot of interaction with him and with the other ministers. You know, he had three sons-in-law all of who were married to daughters and they were ministers. The men were ministers. And so I've had a lot of interaction with him over the years. Made different trips over the years to faith assembly, but none of the other ministers could match Hobart. Hobart was a skilled communicator, and it seems like that the few tapes that I've heard of William Branham, that William Branham was not a good communicator. William Branham,

it seemed to me and I could be wrong on this job. He seemed like he more besides his miracles and the gifts of healing and word of knowledge and the angelic visitation and birth and all of that stuff.

He almost was opposite of Hobart that he held sway because, you know, I'm just a simple country uneducated boy. And he said the opposite- end of the spectrum. You know, Dr. Freeman, you're going to listen to him because he's highly trained, you're going to listen to William Brown because he has no training, so it has to all be from the Holy Spirit, whatever he knows. You know, it's interesting that people gravitate to two extremes of an educational spectrum for two different reasons there. William Brown's education is something that I have studied to know in and I wish that I could find what I'm looking for. I'll probably

never find it because he is so dishonest about his past that his timelines don't match the people that's in his timelines do not match his conversion doesn't match. You mentioned him being one is Pentecostal coming out of this and and he was, but prior to that, you know, he was working with Roy Davis as they were setting up a Davis was trying to set up a new white supremacy group and a new Pentecostal sect that was Pentecostal Baptist Church of God, basically a Heinz 57 religion is what they were creating, but the education is fascinating because early on in my

research when I started back in the beginning of of his ministry, I started noticing that his speech patterns were entirely different. There was no Kentucky hillbilly country bumpkin talking. This was a man who spoke more clearly than I speak. I wish I had the gift of speaking clearly like some of these men and only I want to say it was three years ago, two years or three years ago.

I finally came across they were trying to build this Pentecostal sect to merge it in as the Pentecostal denominations were uniting under what would eventually become the UPCI. Branham and Davis were trying to create a Pentecostal sect establish it and connect it to the leaders who were forming the UPCI and he was an editor and a publicist for the one of the primary organs for the PCI under W.E. Kids and I think his name was. Is it Herodotruth? I can't remember the name of his magazine but Branham had a column called The Voice of Healing and that's how he was spreading

his propaganda and they were the what became the UPCI they were inviting Branham to their primary functions. It looks like if you look at the trail of this right and then what happened was his fame apparently spread very quickly and he realized that he could be bigger and better than kids and so then he started The Voice of Healing and you know the rest of the story so so much here. I was just thinking as we were talking that we've not even skimmed the surface on all part freeman and we've talked about an hour now so

Let's do this. Let's cut this one off and we'll have you back on again. I know there's I can probably think of three or four episodes that I want to do and I'm certain you have some more. So if you're willing, maybe we could get together again and do this again.

Let's do it, my friend. Awesome. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org and Channel Ross's YouTube channel, Understanding, Scripture, and Truth. For more information about the historical research of William-Branum and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William-Branum and his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.