Our Stories: Escaping Faith Assembly - An Interview with Bill Selby

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 today I have my very special guest, Bill Selby, former member of Faith Assembly.

Bill, it's good to have you on here. We've exchanged a few emails and you were attracted to the podcast via the Faith Assembly, the Hobart Freeman episode that I did recently, and we're actually, it'll probably come out before this airs, but we're actually going a bit deeper with the Hobart Freeman information.

And we have, since putting that out, we had an onslaught of email and comments. Everybody wanted to hear more about Faith Assembly and more about Hobart Freeman, which is kind of funny when I consider he was so close to the Brannum Tabernacle, where my grandfather ran Brannum's church. And I knew nothing of this history, probably up until maybe, I want to say, five years ago, I came across the name and I'm like, well, who's this? This guy's exactly like William Brannum, because he was a clone.

Right, he was a clone and there's so many things about his ministry that, you know, it's just, you smack your head like, well, I had a people do this. Why do they copy such an nonsense? But maybe it'd be good if we start and have you just tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Okay, well, well, before I do that, I mean, you're to say, well, why do they do this?

Why does he have to copy? Well, the thing about it with all cults, all cults, borrow, steal, plagiarize from all other cults. I mean, even, you know, it was like some of some of what Freeman has done, or Jim Jones, other, you can find in like the source family.

You know, they all borrow and steal and there's nothing original about any of these religious fundamentalist cults. Anyway, my name is Bill. I grew up in a satellite location of Faith Assembly in Florida. My family started going there when I was four, like five, I guess.

And instantly everything changed. The TV was destroyed and put out by the street. I had to, you know, throw all of my Star Wars action figures away. Yeah, this is back in the 70s. I had to, you know, My mom and my sister started having to wear skirts that went all the way below the knees and cover their heads and all that stuff.

Speaking in tongues was new to me when, it was just a really big culture shock and all of a sudden it's just like, okay, I'm five years old at this point and growing up being really impressionable time in my life and here basically everything that I've been enjoyed previously is a sin.

But one thing that it gets to me the most is because my parents both had previous marriages and they both had children from those previous marriages and then they were divorced and then they got together.

Well, my dad did not like faith assembly. Our location wasn't called faith assembly all the satellites had to come up with their different names and I think that that's indicative of the fact that Hobart Freeman knew exactly what he was doing and if one of these other churches goes down for anything he doesn't want it being tied back to him.

Just just my theory of why there was only one church called faith assembly when they had locations all around the world. But my dad didn't like it and my mom was like, oh, I'll pray for you and stuff like that but my dad was still there at the churches and everything.

All of a sudden they pull my mom aside and this is according to my dad and they brought her into a meeting and then like a week later the sermon was how God does not recognize second marriages.

Your only true mate is your first husband or wife and basically me and my sister were the product of a sinful union. So my mom and dad had to get divorced so two wrongs make a right apparently.

Wow. And so my mom completely, I mean my mom bought into this look line and sinker my dad hated it. So my mom divorces my dad and the plan was for my mom actually I can remember my mom sitting my sister in me down.

Well, you know, I was a little bit older. My sister doesn't really remember too much about this stuff but the plan was she was going to track down this first husband of hers. They were going to get together and he would adopt me and my sister and we'd be a family.

And but faith assembly had basically eliminated the threat and the threat was my dad but my dad stayed there. My dad was more or less my rock. My, you know, the person that kind of kept me afloat and grounded, you know, and you know, through all of that because I was having a really difficult time with it and I wound up rebelling and, you know, I tell my story and, you know, it's like.

You know, detail on my podcast, which is crimes killers Colson beer. You can find it on YouTube as well as all other platforms, you know, Spotify and Apple and whatnot. That's episode 10 and 11.

And there was, you know, you know, your faith assembly is, you're talking about how you've gotten on slot of people, you know, wanting more information about who are Freeman. Well, the thing is, you know, the, you know, I'm writing a book about it. And I've, but the working title right now is growing up in faith assembly. The deadliest cult you've never heard of. Wow.

And it's, yeah, it's just so hard to believe that what you're describing are things that I grew up with, maybe not to the same extent because I wasn't directly involved, but I witnessed people who had been in a very bad marriage. Some of them were physically abusive or even, you know, beyond that.

And they would like normal people go find somebody that they love that's not going to mistreat them and get married. And I clearly remember people that were told that they had to go back to the abusive husband and live with the abusive spouse. And usually it was the female that was the one that they came out against. Sometimes the man, but it's just all of this comes from this lettering framework where this elite person creates the rules and everybody has to abide by.

When I say that it's a deadliest cult you've never heard of, I mean that, you know, and your episodes, I happen to find your episode like within hours of when it was released on the day that it was released.

I ever, once every two months, I just check and see if there's a new one. I'm like, oh, there's a new one. What's, oh, holy crap. This was released an hour ago. But so I listened to it. And one thing that she says is she talked about the hundred people that died on in Warsaw.

If you, and this is just my, I don't have specific data to back this up. But if you total all of the people who died at faith assembly in Indiana, combined with all the other satellites all around the world of people that died of, you know, babies that were born in childbirth.

The mothers that were born in childbirth, people that died of diabetes complications or even gangrene or whatever, you know, if you add all of those up from every faith assembly establishment, you have a, you have a higher body count than Jones down.

Oh, yeah, I have no doubt. And I mean, myself, I mean, the faith healing thing, you know, I was bitten in my armpit by a brown recluse when I was a kid. And it swelled up to the size of a grapefruit and was like a putrid, purplish color. It smelled, it was gang, it turned gangreness.

And my mom never took me to the doctor. I have always had a very strong immune system, and after months, I mean, luckily the gang green didn't progress, and one night it just started draining, and about a month later it was pretty much gone, but I still have four huge scars from the drainage of my armpit.

This is 40-some-odd years later, and my mom would say, oh, I'll see God healed you. No, God didn't heal me. My immune system did. Yeah, and I'm lucky. I'm lucky to still have my arm. I'm lucky to be alive. I'm lucky that I survived that. In story after story, we hear some in the testimonies that we do on the podcast, but in our support groups, there are people who have lost loved ones because they were told to reject medicine, or they were manipulated and convinced that they should reject medicine, which is more often the case,

because of the legal issues for people like Hobart, Freeman, William Branum, all of the splinter groups. They will persuade you not to take the medicine so that you can have perfect faith, and God heals you through that faith. Well, then if the person dies, it's just overlooked, and they continue the same thing, and there really should be laws that enforce these type of faith healing cults. They need to somehow put a stop to that, because it is very deadly and dangerous. Yeah, it is. One thing I say on my two episodes, and this is going to

go on my book, too. The book is basically going to be my two episodes, times a thousand, because I'm one of these people that's cursed with a photographic memory. I can remember word-for-word conversations that I had when I was 12 years old. They picked the wrong person to mess with. But I say that if you would always have these testimonies and everything, it's like, oh, I prayed, and my car was started, because it wouldn't start, and I laid my hands on it and commanded it to start in the name of Jesus. It had started right up, but God told

me to drive right to the mechanics after it, and then I remember this. This happened. This happened. I commanded the car to start in Jesus' name. It started, and then God told me to go straight to the service station, and so I drove there, and when they got there, they opened the hood, and the battery had been stolen. Oh, my gosh. I grew up with similar stories, and they were like, what it is in the end? They want to give this persona a change, and they want to project the mind over.

matter. If you, because if they can get your head in that way where you're constantly trying to believe something that isn't there, well, they can hijack your mind in that case because you're, you've already entered into the fantasy world. So their fantasy just goes right alongside of it.

But the thing is when, you know, okay, God told me to drive straight to the service center. Okay, well, what, what is a mechanic? Basically a doctor for your car. So if, so therefore going to mechanics should be a sin too.

Well, in time and time again, you see, because there were, there wasn't a push by the legal system to stop these people from telling their congregations not to take medicine after John Alexander Dowey, you know, so many deaths were attributed to that. And then that began to spread this turn into a problem in the United States. If you go back and you can read through some of the newspapers there, there were laws passed where you can't do this.

And what where it ended up was the people that told the congregations this were held accountable legally. And so then it shifted. And we find in the laterane ministry, they, one of William Brandham's partners, I think it was FF Bosworth had this publication, why all people are not healed. And it was basically a legal disclaimer. If you didn't get healed, here's your legal disclaimer, which, oh, by the way, it's your fault because you didn't have it in faith.

Or you had sin or whatever. Yeah, whatever it was, right? When all the other people lost family members, it was, oh, well, they must have had unrepented sins and whatnot or they weren't right with God. When Freeman died of something preventable, oh, well, God called his son, you know, his brother home double standard, but it's just so wrong. I mean, think of the type of mental state that a person would have to be in to knowingly deceive people into thinking that you had this gift or this power and then watching them suffer. I mean, maybe he didn't see them all die, but he surely saw some suffer.

And he probably still saw some die. But think of the type of person you'd have to be to watch this. I, you know, I could. No, I mean, and to be telling people that, I mean, you know, I don't, you know, I, I don't know. My, my, I love, I love it when people tell me, well, who liked Freeman? You know, he really was a good thinker. His series on Deuteronomy was excellent.

It's like, I don't, you know, when I was doing my research, the research that I found for my episodes 10 and 11, he was, he was a hustler from day one. And that never changed.

You know, he wasn't this righteous man. He wasn't this, you know, just great person and whatnot. I'll tell you something else. I, um, there was another podcast, um, called, what is it? They're from Indiana. It's called Blood on Blood in the Cornfield. I think they're podcast, and they did an episode on Faith Assembly. And they were talking, they actually played a tape, you know, a cut of one of Freeman's tapes, and I'm listening to it, and that's not the voice that I remember. This is a Mandela effect type of thing, because I remember him as being very articulate, very well spoken, deep, you know, he sounds like a Southern

Hick. Part of that is, like you said, the Mandela effect, but part of that is this mental state, once you've become under the mind control, you begin to think things that are being said, as they're said, which is sounds really weird, but that's how it works here. The reason why all of this goes into so many different splinter groups is people project things into what they hear, because it's a faith thing. And so you'll find these leaders who are wanting some certain agenda, well, they'll look for that agenda in what they're hearing, and in doing so, they create a different conversation that's even being said from

the platform. At the end of episode two parts, part 10 is the story of Faith Assembly, as best as I could put it together, and then episode 11 is my personal story. There are still churches out there that are preaching this doctrine. I know of one where, where the pastor all he does is play Hobart Freeman tapes. So I basically said, you know what, you know, it's podcasts like mine. There's a couple others out there that have covered Faith Assembly. I said, you know, we're going to find out who you people that are currently doing

this are, and we're going to out you. I said, basically said, the podcasts are coming for you, you know, and it's happening, because since then, since I said that, and I got a little flack about that, all the podcasts are coming for you. Well, I got some flack about that, but since then, there's that blood in the cornfield episode I told you about.

There is the, there's yours. And I'm glad I'm going to dig into some of your Barnum history too, because that fascinated me. And then, you know, last year, this young lady approached me, and she contacted me, you know, because she said she's putting together like a, like a eight to 10 part standalone podcast series about Faith Assembly, because you know, she was like 20, 20 years old at the time, you know, like last year. And she said that her mom had grown up in Faith Assembly and finally had told her about it. And she just decided, you know, she just went on a rabbit hole, consuming everything that she could

find about it, found my, my two episodes. And I'm just, she wanted to do that, maybe interview me. She wanted to use clips from it, and then maybe interview me too. I said, I'll do, I'll do you one better. I said, I'll get you other people to interview you as well. So that's coming out sometime this year. You know, and then there's, you know, the, the more that you're putting out on it. So, so maybe I wasn't beating my chest.

You know, I made a prediction and it's happening. There's a wealth of information that exists now and all of these guys and Some of these guys like you mentioned Hobart Freemann being that way from the beginning a lot of these guys were scoundrels from the very beginning Some of them weren't I've discovered some that it appears they had some good intent and they Well, Jim Jones was a decent guy in the beginning. Yeah, exactly and I think that was a really good guy at the very beginning Yeah, that was that was one of the examples although one of the books I read describes some of the very morbid things that he did as a child and in his earlier

So he he had some issues, but there were people that genuinely tried to do good and it does appear that Jones for a period of time tried to do good Try it sure. Yeah, yeah, but then they got my then they got in the wrong crowd right just like going to school and you get with all the bullies Well, that's what these movements are they're they're the bullies and you get with the wrong crowd and You know, it turns very bad. So you're working with all these people with You know the former faith assembly Hobart Freemann people have you thought about establishing some sort of a support network to

Get all the people together and There's so much information that could be shared between each other that you could build an entire You know a library of information on Hobart Freemann. Well, I am I'm not like like a like a leader of anything or anything like that What it happened is after that like lots of you know lots of people lots of survivors reached out to me You know to talk to me. They've you know, thank thanking me for doing that You know, it's just like one one person said I played this for my I played this for my kids and they have a better understanding of what I went through

And stuff like that, but there is a Facebook group called Children of FA Faith assembly and there's about 600 people on there and I'm part of that. I don't run it. I found it. Um, probably I don't know about four or five years ago and Going through that was what Was what you know, basically, it's like all right I mean, I told some people about about it and but but what I did my my two episodes that was the first time I had like really sat down and told the story So I didn't come forward you know, go public with this until much later in life

You know like about two years ago and I um But but there's that group you have to you know, you have to ask permission to join and the criteria as you have to have been a member of a member or a family member of somebody who was was in that church and And there's a lot of good there's a lot of good information on that that that's where I pull you know pulled People from to get to this young lady who's putting together that podcast series. That's where I got the people from But survivors of other cults have reached out to me too

Oh, not just faith assembly. And, you know, it's just like, I don't mind. I don't mind it at all. I mean, in fact, you know, if I can do anything to help these people, you know, come to terms with it, because it could take years.

It took me a long time to get to the point to where I was, you know, ready to talk about it like that. And it was that children of faith assembly Facebook group that really got me, you know, that really got me ready to just basically get up on, you know, get up on a pedestal and, or sit down behind a microphone and tell my story.

But I wasn't expecting, I wasn't expecting to be somebody that, you know, people contact, but it happened. Yeah, you know, that's it. You know, you put the information out there and what I've learned over the years is that these cults are so similar to each other that if you put the information out that you don't even think it's crazy at the time, you know, as you're going through the process of deep programming, you put out, this is what we believed.

And, you know, years later, I look back at some of the stuff I put out early and I'm like, man, I can't believe I said that I believe this nonsense. Yeah, but what you find is you'll find other groups that believe the same nonsense or very similar nonsense.

And they all have their sets of problems. And when you get to support a group where people are expressing their beliefs and expressing their problems that they had with these nonsensical beliefs, well then they start opening up and they talk and then more people and it spreads like a virus, man.

Everybody wants to leave these things. Yeah, but it really is. I mean, there was another, you know, the first time I actually spoke about it publicly, I went onto a different podcast. They've made a Facebook post on their podcast group.

Have you, did you experience anything traumatic as a childhood? I'm like, well, I was raised in a cult. And he's like, well, I wasn't expecting anything of it, but he's like, well, can I interview you?

And I said, yeah, I can do one better than that. So I'll bring two more people with me. So I brought, so that episode went out and it was two, it was me along with two other people being, you know, just talking about it.

And the way it worked out is, you know, I was the oldest one. I think I was like 47 when that happened. And then the, there was a guy younger than me and he's the guy that put together that children in faith in assembly page Joshua Wilson.

You may have heard that name, but it was him. He's 10 years younger than me. And then there was Evanna Safiya. She's 10 years younger than him. So you got three generations right there that are all like affected by this thing.

And, you know, and that was what made me decide that I wanted to start my own podcast. And like six months later, Crimes Killer Schools in beer was launched and that podcast that I listened to or that I was on was human monsters.

So you mentioned that your family came in and you were, you already had someone. of a normal life and then suddenly you had to change what was that like beyond the Star Wars toys and your mother's dress? What was it like were you isolated from your friends or did you did your dynamics change in school? What are some other changes that happened in your life? There were rumors going around, you know, once we had joined that there were rumors going around in school that there was incest going on and that family specifically my family there were you know it had to do you know it's like you were you were

weird and you were kind of ostracized and what not some people felt sorry for you some people made fun of you and it was you know I got you know I got a little I got a little or a lot of both

because we weren't allowed to celebrate Christmas we weren't allowed to wear you know stylist shoes we weren't allowed to you know I mean yeah like when they would have a Christmas party we'd have to go sit in the library at school you know and it's just so yeah there's there's I mean I could I could go on and on trying you know saying about things that that I went through it's just like okay well are you you know are you Jehovah's Witnesses? No Jehovah's Witnesses are centers are going to hell the other cults are always condemned well any other religion was condemned the

only people that on the planet on planet earth from the from the time it was created to the present that we're going to heaven are people that were members of faith assembly everybody else with prior to the Hobart Freeman going to hell yeah I experienced that to some extent I went to well I counted one time I think it was 13 different schools I grew up in and I have to do the math again but I grew up you know churches from Arizona South Carolina everywhere between and I was going to all these different schools and sometimes you would in the smaller schools sometimes they were

really nice to you and looking back it was probably in areas that had a deeper cultish presence where there were a lot of people of similar backgrounds and they just were accepting but you get into bigger cities they're like man that's weird why are you like that if you listen to the two episodes of mine my co-host on the time that he had never heard the story before when we started the podcast I'm yeah I've done the I've done that guy for 35 years he's not my co-host anymore he quit but yeah but still I had told him like yeah if we're going to be covering cults you know

he'd cover my story he's like what I'm like yeah I was raised at a college like why is this the first I'm hearing about this as if it never came up it's like Yeah, I didn't meet him until I was like, well, you know, like, you know, out of it, it folded when I was around 13 or 14, and I think I met him when I was like 16. And by that time, it took, it probably wasn't another, you know, five years or so before I even realized that, hey, this whole thing was a cult.

Yeah. So, well, and after you realize that, people go down these different pathways, right? Because you want to seem normal, quote, unquote, normal. And how can you be normal if you were raised in a cult? That's what goes through your head. It's incorrect. But that's what goes through your head. And, you know, to some extent, I wanted to be like that. But as you see, my life, you know, it didn't allow for doing what I do. But part of me want to just run away, you know, move to another state, put all this behind me and say, I never heard of this

again. And the problem is, you, when you do that, you bottle it up. And eventually it's going to come out in a pretty big explosion. But there are people that do that. And they saw, they end up having to go through therapy. And so in some ways, it's good to talk about it. But the other people who openly talk about it and process it, they begin to realize that people are people. People have people problems. And yeah, I was an occult. Well, this other guy was in an alcoholic family and his father was abusive, you know, I have friends who

have people problems because we're all people. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

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

On behalf of William-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. If somebody were to, you know, have maybe had an encounter with a serial killer, that would probably be the worst thing that ever happened to them in their life, you know, or the scariest thing, whether they knew the person was a serial killer or not, like later on when they found out, it was like, oh, a heart attack. Well, I kind of resemble that remark because I had an encounter with a serial killer. But as far as, you know, when I- I've made the connections, like, oh, that's who that guy was.

It's like, oh, the crap. It was Ron Dominique killed 23 people in Louisiana. Tried to kill, you know, he ran his, he ran his MO on me. This was back in 2000. And, um, well, if you look at the deaths in faith assembly, you were in and countered too.

True. That's where I was going with it. But to me, you know, I didn't, I didn't make the connection that I had actually met. One of America's worst until just a few years ago when I was listening to a podcast and this, this podcast was, you know, I, I'd heard a couple podcasts on this guy.

They, but they were, they weren't really detailed. Well, this guy went into this, like, serious detail. I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. This sounds familiar, but based on the conversations that the encounter that I had with him.

So I googled the, the, what do you look like? That's him. Holy. Whoa. You know, well, you know, I wasn't attacked. I could have been, but I wasn't. You know, if I had been, it would have been an entirely different story.

You know, because I might not, I might not even be here right now. Right. So tell us a little bit about, so you were, you were brought into it and, you know, you were the different kid in school.

Then whenever faith assembly collapsed, what was that like? You know, I, I was in a cult where the cult leader died long before I was even born. So we went through miniature collapses, but nothing major like that.

I'm picturing an implosion, but what was it like for your family after he died? After that, after it folded, my, my mom was so lost. She was trying to find another cult's join, and I'm not even kidding when I say that.

She was trying to find another cult to join. She was trying to, you know, it's like dragging me to these weird churches and stuff like that. Finally, I got to the point, mom, I'm not going to another one of these churches.

There's a, there was a big church near me called the tabernacle. It was a non-denominational, like, it was not a mega church, but not like a small, you know, one building, you know, it was a, you know, it was a big church.

But I said, you want to go to the tabernacle? Let's go to the tabernacle. I'll go to the tabernacle with you. But, um, but I'm not going to any more of these stupid little weird churches that you, that you insist on going, but well, I didn't go to church again after that.

And before too long, I moved in with my dad, but, um, because it was just getting worse. But, but my, but my mom, you know, I mean, I can remember when Hobart Friedman died.

Everybody, everybody in the church, everybody in our, in our location was crying when the news was broken. Um, I don't remember if they prayed for his resurrection or not. That I don't, I don't know, although I do know they cried.

And then, you know, but I, which, you know, that, that's a, that's self pity, which is a sin. Uh, you know, but I love pointing out like things that they, do things that they did that were sins, you know, when they're like, oh, everything that you do is a sin, you know, the ever changing rulebook, moving the goalposts and whatnot.

But my mom, you know, she, she was just so brainwashed into that and it took years for her to be deprogrammed and the person that deprogrammed her was the next man that she married, my stepfather, who is a pastor of a non-denominational church. And he basically deprogrammed her and then, you know, she admitted that she had a regret that it was that that church made me and my sister turn away from God. That was the first, he told me that and then later on, he told me, because my mom, my mom is no longer with us. My stepdad is the only parental type person that I have. I mean,

I'm 50, I don't, but, you know, my step, my stepfather was like 70 or something like that. But I have a really good relationship with him and my dad did too. But then he told me that before she died, she basically prayed with my stepfather and renounced, you know, she admitted that she had been deceived and she renounced that teaching. And, you know, she admitted that she had been doomed, basically. And, you know, that made me happy when my stepdad told me that.

Yeah, that's a big step. There are a lot of people who leave and they get re-victimized because you're in that mindset where it's like, I don't know if you're a Star Trek fan, I am, but the board. Yeah, so the board concept was made after the Jehovah's Witness cult. I was on a trip with a cult expert and he said, I have a story to tell you and he said, I couldn't at that time share it, I can now, but he said, I got called to create a concept for the most evil villain that Star Trek

has ever encountered for the next generation cast. And so I modeled it. I can't give the name of the person who requested it, but this person who's working on the Star Trek crew, his wife, was got sucked into the Jehovah's Witness cult. And he said, this is the most evil thing known to man, this cult mentality. Can you make a concept that is that evil for the show? And it's the greatest villain that Star Trek has ever had, right? But in the board concept for those that aren't familiar, You've been assimilated, you've been connected to this high of mentality.

And when you break away from the high of mentality, you keep trying to get back to it. And if you can't find it, you try to plug into something else, and that's part of the cult mentality.

So when you escape these things, you try to find something similar because if that Hobart Freeman's dead, you can't go back and plug into this. And now you find something else that's similar to plug into.

You know, I never, I never met Hobart Freeman. They would always pray every week that he would come down and do a seminar, but, you know, he didn't like to do that anymore, but, but they, it seems like if the cult, if they call these satellite locations and everything throughout the world or whatever, if not all of them, but the majority of them folded like the one that I was in dead.

Does that mean they were getting sermons from from Indiana, like sermon notes from Indiana and basically, like was it all like a one network or everybody's basically saying the same thing? Possibly. There is a large networking strategy behind a lot of these groups and the leaders will communicate with other leaders and see the problem is when you have an authoritarian level of control, they're these, I'll try to throw one up on the video feed, but they're these pyramid diagrams of how a cult exists.

And at the very top is the central figure or figures at the top of the pyramid. Below this is a level of, there's different names for them, but enforcers basically, these are the upper echelons of the cult and very bottom you got the rank and file members.

Well in between the leader and the people, there has to be some sort of a strategy to keep the people indoctrinated. If each person in the middle of the tier is going a different direction, the indoctrination can't work.

It breaks because you've got all of these internal conflicts, which is ironically in the random cult, the central figure is dead, it splintered into all of these numerous groups that are different and they, I grew up in cities where there would be two or three different Brannemite church groups, none of which would fellowship with each other.

Some of them hated each other's gods, not all, but so what's interesting about that is they've lost control of this. So if there was to be some, you know, here in Jeffersonville, they try to put some level of control over and it'll never be controlled because the indoctrination differs from sect to sect to sect.

So while Freeman was alive, there's a very good chance that he was trying to manipulate and control the flow of information. It's what I suspected. I mean, I don't think that he got like, you know, like a script.

I don't think he'd like distribute his scripts to everybody, but maybe he's just like, all right, this week I'm talking about faith healing, this week I'm talking about JDS, this week I'm talking about...

What kind of underwear your daughter can wear? Um, they didn't do one of my recent podcasts. I can't remember which episode, but they actually had this topic. There are two ladies that were talking and they were dictating the underwear they could wear.

I had to be quite cotton. White cotton underwear. It's just unbelievable, man. Otherwise, you're inviting a spirit of rape if you're wearing anything else. How so if it's cup, it's under. Sure. Yeah, the rules, you know, I've got a page on my website.

You go to my website and just type in rules. You can see a scattering of not all of the rules. There are too many to count, but some of the major weird ones. And some of them just really make no sense in today's context.

At the time, you know, for a rule to be accepted by the group, there has to be some level of sense of it when it was first created. And because Brannum was popular in the 40s and 50s and 60s, many of those rules may have been popular back in the 40s and 50s and 60s.

But you take, you know, one of the rules is you're not allowed to wear blue suede shoes. Now, who's going to even try to wear blue suede shoes today, man? It just makes no sense.

It looks like shoes today. But they changed that to Adidas. Yeah. Adidas. Adidas was, I still don't understand what the big deal was for Adidas. You know, Adidas shoes were some, it had something to do with gay people.

That's all I know. I don't remember the reasoning, the rhyme or reason behind it. I just, well, it's because of lobbying. See, these groups organize together, even though they pretend to hate each other's gods.

There's a common agenda because if two cults can persuade politics in such a way that their cult can survive and they push the cult agenda through the politics, they will go directly to senators and congressmen and there's a, there's a Netflix documentary called The Family and you can go see some of that going on.

That's right. Well, and then on the other hand, on the flip side, they will try to boycott big companies that are doing things that might hurt their agenda or be, you know, against the cult rules or whatever.

So likely what happened is something that Adidas did. Like you said, the gay, maybe they had a person who was homosexual who was advertising a shoe, I don't know, but they'll, they'll boycott. I can think of the most famous person that I can think of that wore Adidas shoes was not a gay man.

It was Richard Ramirez. Yeah. He wasn't gay. So you got all of these rules that are, what's in the end, they are designed also strategically because if you create a rule and you get people beaten down enough to follow that rule, then they're under your submission.

So sometimes the rules are created just simply for the sake of having a rule. Oh, yeah. I mean, and basically with the faith assembly, the way it was, like I said before, their rule book was a living, breathing document, they've moving the goalpost, whatever metaphor you want to use.

But they were, you know, but just basically, if one of the pastors decided that something was a sin, it was a sin. One of the funny ones, I think I've mentioned this in the podcast, but the other thing that they'll do is they'll invent sins and we were in this one church where one rather attractive lady was in the church and the preacher who was preaching and somehow got off on a tangent of how she had a seductive spirit.

And obviously the guy, you know, he's just, it's so unbelievable that they, but the people are so beaten into submission that they don't critically think, no, wait a minute, why is he saying that it's about this girl?

And there were people who knew the girl and they're like, wait a minute, no, she's a nice girl. I know this girl. So it's, he was having impure thoughts about her, exactly. She wasn't wearing the cotton underwear out there, she, yeah, who knows, yeah, I don't know of any.

I mean, I've heard that in some of the various satellites and, you know, that there was sexual abuse of children, I don't, that did not happen as far as I know in the location that I was in, but I have heard that it did happen.

Yeah, I've heard similar and those things I take with a grain of salt, unless there's a court case, I put documentation on the documentation on the website. So it's hard for me to put it up, but I have heard it.

But more to the point, you can find documentation if you just look at all of these splinter groups of Laterane, which Hobart Freeman was, and you find similar things just flowing all throughout. And, you know, it's not that the leaders got together and said, hey, let's molest children.

You know, it's not the way it works, but they put all of these rules in place that make them so different from the outside world that if you're a male and you have hormones, which every man does, and you've got all of these women who address a certain way, well, when you're around normal women who aren't dressed that way, and you've been told, I grew up, for example, we were told that any woman who wore blue jeans was a harlot, and anybody, you know, if they're not wearing the dress code or the Pentecostal style, they're a harlot.

Well, what does that do to the mind of a kid, man? The kid goes into the mall and the mall is his warehouse because you've got all these quote unquote, harlots running around. It does something to the heads of the people and it's a framework for creating disaster.

My mom was so, I mean, everything was the demons were everywhere. And I can remember one time we were in a grocery store and we turned the corner, we turned the corner to go down a different aisle and this guy comes the opposite way at the exact same time almost runs into me with his basket.

One paying attention, didn't do it on purpose, it was an accident, he's like, oh I'm sorry, I'm sorry, no problem. He was wearing an iron maiden t-shirt. My mom panicked, gathered me and my sister up like right next to each other, you're like right there in the middle of the store and prayed that we'd be delivered and protected from the evil that was on that shirt.

And I'll share this with you because it's funny, I've actually never listened to iron maiden, I have no idea if this song, one of our rules, it's probably the same rule for you. We weren't allowed to listen to rock and roll, which is why your mother was like this.

I have tried to experience music after leaving and I've experienced a lot, but that's one group I've not yet listened to. You should. They're very skilled. They do have a lot of scary imagery, but so does a horror movie.

They do a lot of history, the very intelligent band, very gifted band musically. My biggest, one of the biggest things that I took issue with, because I mentioned to you earlier that the one good thing that came out of Faith Assembly was that I became a musician as a result of going, because they'd be up there with their little acoustic guitars, singing, you know, singing, you know, putting like Christian words to like, hey, Jude or whatever.

And I was like, oh, these guitars, I had never seen that before. I mean, I knew what a guitar was, but I had never seen anybody play one before. I was like, whoa, this is cool.

I want to do this. I start learning how to play guitar and, you know, but I wanted to do, I was a little kid that was wanting to learn everything. I start experimenting before too long.

I'm putting little fills into the songs, you know, leading from one's verse to another. And I was macked down for that because all those fills, that's too much like rock and roll. You can't, yeah, that's a sin.

The truth is, is I was actually becoming a better guitar player than they were. And I was a kid, but then, you know, it was the minor chords, the songs that used like E minor and A minor and D minor, it's like, you know, that really, that I really liked because I just liked that dark, the dark, scary spooky sound to it and everything.

I started experimenting that and that is when I became a metalhead. Not yet. It didn't happen. It didn't happen immediately because, you know, I wasn't allowed to listen to anything like that. But then once I got into junior high school, like shortly, you know, like within a couple of years before the church folded, I start, hey, can I borrow your bottle?

crewtaper. I'd take it home in secret. I'd make a copy of it and I would write praise and worship on the tape.

It's quite common. You know, their interviews, I think I've got one on my website. They're interviews with Axel Rose from Guns and Roses and he grew up in this flattering thing that we escaped. Yeah, so you grew up and you grew up and you're so oppressed and your creativity is suppressed. And so after you leave, you explode and you become, you know, you become way more than a lot of people who weren't in that environment. So in some ways it helps you. But yeah, I had some of the same thing. What's funny, you mentioned the minors. Well, also in the groups, they have like a specific style of playing. And you can, you can

literally pick three chords and you can play every song in the church in most cases. But then once you experiment, you learn, wow, that minor sounds really good there. Well, they, there's this mentality where they suddenly think, well, he's got evil spirits in his music because he's using a minor chord. My one of the song, one of my newer songs, it's on the album that I'm working on right now. But it's called Mystery Rider. And it's a cover song. It was written by the serial killer Danny Rolling, except it was with his.

It was just like it was just like a recorded with him seeing with a guitar and a tape recorder. You know, but he's, but that's his version is basically very similar to House of the Rising Sun. But I took it and I turned it into a really banger of a metal song.

And the way I justified it was, you know, he's down there in hell. If he heard my version of it because he was on the country and folk, he would hate it. But, but the beginning, the opening of that song just sounds really dark and ominous. And it's just like, you know, I was probably like, well, the creepiest song I've ever, I can't say I've wrote that song because I didn't. But that's probably the creepiest song I've ever recorded. So you have come a long way and you sounds like you've helped a lot of people. And, you know, there are a lot of people

contacting me right now with Hobart Freeman questions because of doing that podcast. So the floor is yours. If, if any of these people are listening to this right now and need some encouragement, what would you say to them to talk them through having grown up in this very deadly dangerous cult? One of the first things that I would tell people is, you know, if you want to go public with it, do it.

Because, because, you know, is it going to be, is it going to be scary for some, you know, for some people? Yeah, not for all people, but for some people it will be. Some people they've never talked about it at all.

other people maybe they they've talked to about it and it was um you know they've tried to talk about it and their families you know their family's kind of shunned them they didn't they don't want to hear about it or whatever. So it's gonna they're there's the possibility of blowback is there but if you know what I have to say to these people you know who want to talk about it we want to get it off their chest is I you know if somebody's going to you know gonna gonna judge you for wanting to talk about that you don't need them you don't need that person

and that's that that sounds harsh but it's the truth because you know I mean would you you know the way I look at it is I don't take this approach with everybody but um but the the way I personally look at it is if you had a person who was sexually abused as a child you know for years and it never never told anybody all of a sudden he wants to tell you about it are you gonna look are you gonna shun him because you know because you don't want to hear about it because it's uncomfortable to talk about you're not and if you

do I don't need you and as part of the indoctrination right we I think I mentioned this recently you're you're so indoctrinated not to speak out and you're so indoctrinated to be to accept whatever is your situation and after people leave like the women for example when they leave if their family were to come over and visit they will enforce that the female who has escaped and is no longer in this belief system they will say you have to wear this you have to wear the long dress while your mother's around because that's the way it is

my brother but normal people don't do this right and my question my question is always okay well when you go to their house do they have to wear the pants because that's what you wear when you're in your house but it's part of the programming right you're indoctrinated to just blindly accept whatever is your punishment that they're going to issue out to you yeah and but it's as far as you know people that want to talk about it or whatever I mean if you know you said they're messaging you they can message me too that's CKCB podcast at G-Mill

and my website is for the podcast is ckcbpodcast.com I'll put it in the description and I'll put links to your website your you know your podcast etc so if anybody who has escaped faith assembly wants to reach out to you they can do it in the description of this video or the Spotify the Apple podcast etc well thank you very much for doing this it's been crazy interesting and I'm sure listeners find it just as interesting as I did I enjoy talking called with somebody that knows what you know knows about it so you

know so I yeah I don't know I just just enjoy it it's to me it's like talking about you know when you play baseball as a kid or what you know except not nearly as fun. Baseball games if it was written by Stephen King.

Yeah, but baseball is a sin because Steve Hill said dining in games are a sin and they promote a spirit of competition. Oh yeah, I agree. Not all, but some of the random calls for that way too. There's just so many rules, but well thanks again for doing this and 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-Brandom.org. For more information of the historical research of William Brandom and the healing revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods a critical examination of

William Brandom and his message available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.