Faith Assembly: Death Cult Exposed - With Chino Ross

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I have my special guest, Chinno Ross, pastor, Bible teacher, and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Chinno D. Ross, YouTube channel. Chinno is good to be back again and talk all things Hobart Freeman. We have up until this point pretty well covered his entire ministry. We started, you know, as he was rising to quick fame after William Brandham died and we can't say for certain, but it looks

very much like he was being set up to be the next William Brandham and that didn't pan out, evidently. So it turned into something entirely different. And we've went through his move into the glory barn, his move out of the glory barn. And I'm sad to say that today we're getting into a very serious side of the discussion and this is the part that we really have to get to, but it is a very serious topic and it saddens me. It deeply saddens me what happened to the people because I can relate to each and every person that went through it. I, you know, in a divine healing cult, you were going

to set yourself up for false hope in many cases. And in the case of what happened here, it's even so far worse than false hope. So glad we're getting to it, but I have to say that I am a little bit deeply sorrowed that we have to get to it. Yeah, John, I think you said that very well. I think one comment I might have made to you just in private conversation before is it's very interesting with regard to Dr. Freeman that unlike what we have seen so often with so many of these big ministers

and we just have seen it recently with this Robert Morris pastor of a big church down in, in Texas, but that there were no charges of immorality against Dr. Freeman. And that just seems to be what dominates the headlines today and what's also very interesting is that there were no charges, allegations of financial misappropriation or impropriety. So I want to say that about Hobart, about Dr. Freeman to be on honest with our audience. It's very interesting that it seems to me like most of these ministers have fallen in one of these two areas. Either they are molesting people or they are stealing

people blind. One of the other, and neither one of those was true with Dr. Freeman. There were no charges. None whatsoever. And granted he was kind of an old guy, but I still don't think there would have been any charges of immorality. And as you saw in the pictures that I had inside his home, he just lived in a very small and modest home.

Right. And you know, I grew up in the Brandham cult. So I can tell you each one of the key figures in Brandhamism that they also lived very humble lives. If you went to my grandfather's house, you would see this home that's smaller than mine. It was well furnished, but Brandham by all appearances, he did not have money now. After he died, we found out that it was quite a bit of money. More than I will have met on this podcast right now, but my job did drop when I found out how much. But these guys were trained to live very simple lives for the

public. Not all of them had money, but some of them did. But they, you know, they were good at hiding appearances. Now with Freeman, I don't, I don't, can't say that he really hit it. But these guys usually wanted one of three things, sex, money, or power. And there's another aspect of power that a lot of people sometimes miss, and that is control with power comes control. And towards the end of his life, I can say from my examination at least, it looked like Hobart Freeman got a little bit obsessed with the control. However, he didn't go as far as some of the ones we see today. They won all three. They want

to sex, the power, and the control. Yeah, you're so right. Actually, there was a wrongful death civil lawsuit that was filed after Hobart died by a couple up in Michigan to try to get to a determination of his assets. So all of that did go to court. And, you know, you have to produce all of the documentation there. And the documentation was that, you know, unlike your story of your relatives, even after his death, Dr. Freeman just didn't have a lot. I mean, he might have had a couple of hundred thousand dollars. But, you know,

that is nothing compared to what we see in these big time ministers today. So your, your third point of either money, sex, or power, power is definitely where he went. And that's what I said in our last interview, John, that I think what brought the downfall internally, what brought the downfall of faith assembly was when Hobart elevated himself to Pope Freeman.

He drew a tight circle around himself. You know, he not only didn't listen to any other ministers, he disallowed the people from reading any other books, from listening to any other tapes. I even have this quote from a message of his done in 1976 entitled Correcting Misconceptions about Faith, Deliverance, and Healing.

It was a long message, and you can find this on the one hour, 16-minute, and 57-second timestamp. Listen to this, John. We could say more, I'm quoting Dr. Freeman, but to say it would sound boastful. But I'm going to say one thing while we're on the subject. God recently gave a sister a revelation and spoke to her directly and said that he had revealed the full faith message for the end time to only one man.

I don't need to say anymore because the rest of the revelation is obvious. There are things God has told me that I haven't even told my wife. So can you imagine the level of arrogance needed to make a statement like that? I mean, it just absolutely takes my breath away even if you thought it or even if you hoped or even if you wished that it might be true to stand up before six or seven or eight hundred people say God's given the full end time faith message to one person.

And you know what's interesting is Hobart was crafty. He never said I'm the one. He never said I forbid any of my followers to go to doctors. He was very crafty. He couched it in terms where you knew that under no uncertain terms. He was the end time messenger and you were not allowed to go to doctors, but you couldn't quote him and say Hobart said that.

You have this kind of quote revelation that was given to this woman. And you've I'm sure heard plenty of that. I was about to say you're you're mentioning this in shock and I'm thinking well this sounds like a casual Sunday service when I was grown up man. Oh my word.

We had you know we listened to the tapes of William Brannum and he did what you describe which I'll get into in a minute. But then what happened is because in the cult mindset you take on the identity of the cult leader when you become fully programmed and many of the ministers not all but many of them are fully indoctrinated.

Some of them are just doing it for money I'm certain but some of them truly believe in are indoctrinated and what they're in and what they become is miniature voices of God. And so they'll spout off random nonsense like this and Fortunately my dad was very skeptical of men like this. Now he would give William Branham the full authority You know obviously, but we'd go listen to some minister who said he had some revelation and this and that and the other My dad would just that'd be the last time we went to his service So fortunately, I was raised with just a bit of skepticism

But now William Branham which you know Freeman would have learned from Branham Branham never outright said many of the things that we have attributed to him He would when he started his ministry He began proclaiming that this Elijah figure would come He never said he was the Elijah figure at least in the early days And then once the people began to believe it was him through all of the different Examples he gave of what Elijah would look like. I mean the man literally it would be For you in the video feed who can see it. It would be like if I told you now Elijah is gonna come and he's gonna arrange his room

Where there's a piano over here and guitars over here mandolin I'm not gonna tell you who that Elijah is my brother That's that's how it would be right well once he convinced all of the people that he's Elijah then he started attributing all of the You know the boisterous claims he would say now Elijah can do this and Elijah has this power and this power He's the voice of God to you and towards the end he said this Elijah is Jesus Christ God in the flesh So you know the Freeman learned it from I learned it from the best and

I look back at that part of my life. I'm a smart man. How did I fall for that nonsense? Well, you know, I look back on my life and I wasn't a smart man I was only a teenager. I was 17 years old when I first heard this so as we talked before I didn't have the critical thinking skills But I learned them pretty quickly and by my early 20s. I was beginning to question things You know, Hobart he never called himself Elijah, but in other In other messages he would talk about you know a

Time person and not in in exact terms of this revelation that this woman had given but yeah, it definitely progressed And I mean, it's just low level that is low class that is underhanded that is dishonest It's devious. It's manipulative. It's Anything and everything that a Christian minister should not be a Christian minister should value openness and forthrightness and honesty and transparency above everything and to have these little sneaky comments You know There's this so-called prophetic movement going on out there now the NAR maybe we can talk about this and some other connections later John

But what I have said about that in one of the classes I'm teaching down in Southern Kentucky Or some of these people will say, you know, it's a, you know, I have a prophetic anointing or I'm in a prophetic ministry, but they won't call themselves a prophet.

And I would say, come on. You know, the Old Testament prophets did not hesitate to say, I am Isaiah the prophet, I am Amus the prophet. They did not hesitate to say that. To me, it's cowardice.

It's as though they want the adulation and following of a prophet, but they don't want the burden of having to actually be a prophet. Yeah, you know, I'm not gonna give the guy's name, but a very famous individual who's in the NAR began contacting me and he wasn't quite on the up and up when he did.

I had, ironically, I had no clue who this guy was because my research kind of went until the 70s and only recently, if I switched to the NAR. Once I realized who this guy was, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is, if I were to mention the ministries that he's associated with, everybody would just, their jaw would drop, but he posed as a person who was truly inquisitive as to what identifies a false prophet so he can avoid them.

And I gave him the honest answer and he started asking about, you know, life experiences. You know, when you're in these things, you get caught up in it and especially as a child, you know, you were 17, you went through this.

You have, you see these examples of the way prophecies work in these groups. None of them, usually none of them will come out and say, I prophesied thus. Instead, what happens is they will predict with random predictions, just pull it out of the back pocket.

And if it comes true, then it was a prophecy. If not, well, I just said it. That was just me, that was a man saying that, right? Nonsense, right? So as a kid, you know, I had experiences that I thought were prophetic visions or whatever.

And I learned that, you know, when it didn't come true, well, no way that was a prophecy because God would know, he knows the beginning, he knows the end, he knows the right now, so that wasn't a prophecy.

I never considered myself a prophet, but I had these things because you're in these groups, right? And so I gave the guy that example that was the last I heard from. So I assume he wanted to find some kind of dirt or whatever, but then come to find out later, as I'm doing my research, this guy, this very, very famous guy, is blatantly copying random sermons, almost verbatim, giving them as his own and then spouting off random prophecies.

And I can, like I've put a few of them up now, some comparisons of the guy. And the moment it goes to my YouTube channel, he's yanked the video, and you can't, I had somebody write in, I want to watch that.

It even had the same title that Brandon used in his sermon. And he said, I want to see it, and I, said, well, I got it right here, and I click on it, boom, it's made private.

Yeah, I'm not going to say any names either, John, because you obviously don't want any names, but I might could guess who that is. And you know, this is a future topic for sure. I hope whenever Hobart died, which maybe is what we can talk about the next time you and I get together, it's very interesting the direction that the church faith assembly went. They went straight to Kansas City. They went straight to Paul Cain and Mike Bickle. It is very interesting, which it was just shocking to me because that type of stuff is actually stuff that Dr. Freeman preached

against. You know, we're the one who had the message. And as soon as they lost their figure head, you know, he was the stabilizing, intelligent, articulate foundation for that church. And once he was gone, I mean, it was just like dust in the wind. There was nobody there that could emulate him.

Nobody had the teaching ability, the communication skills. They didn't have the intelligence. They didn't have anything, you know, which is remarkable that someone would have taught as much as he did. And you end up, I mean, we're looking at fruit. We're looking for fruit, right? Yeah.

You're like, I mean, if you trained all these ministers or 40, what they called word ministers, there's not one of them who could fight their way out of a wet theological bag. No, and I'm so glad you didn't mention any names. You know what's funny is these guys, they claim they're apostles and they love to take, I was talking about this with a guy yesterday.

They love to take Greek words and make it sound like this infinite mystery because they have, they've got the strong concordance or whatever. You know, I've got a copy of that too. I should do that and make money. But they love to do this thing, right? But the basic concepts of Christianity, like what is an apostle? It's a person who sent out to spread the gospel. You couldn't get these guys out of their plush homes and mansions. But they call themselves a apostle. They have no idea what the word even means. No, no, no, you're totally right. The people under Dr. Freeman would use

an occasional Hebrew or Greek word. I mean, I studied languages when I was in college, when I was in secular college. My freshman year, I was taking biblical Greek at a secular university. But these guys, they just had memorized a few things. They have strong concordance. You know, they know how to say Ecclesias. Oh, wow, that's a Greek word. That means assembly. That means assembly.

So it's faith assembly. And it made them feel important. And they just snowed people under, you know, as what they did. Now, Dr. Freeman, let's be fair. He did have a doctor's degree in Hebrew.

So he taught Hebrew at the graduate level. So he knew what he was talking about. But the other guys didn't. But you know, John, I'm sure you found the same thing to be true with us doing these podcast We're hearing from all kinds of people and I heard from and I won't give any names And I won't even be specific so that we can hide everybody's identity, but I heard from one. I'll just say young person Dead That they've been listening to these podcasts and they are revelatory to them revelatory in the good sense of the word not anything mystical. They're actually learning some facts and not just a bunch of

Bologna nonsense and that's why I try to give some dates and quotes, you know, this isn't my what I remembered when I was 23 years Oh, you can go online find the message find the time stamp and there it is But this person said, you know, I've gone back in recent years and this is a second generation Faith assembly person this person was not even alive or born or present at faith assembly parents were and In laws were but not this person and they said I've gone back recently and listened to a bunch of Dr. Freeman's tapes and they said I swear

60% conservative estimate 60% of air time is devoted to the Sathil Lord visions dreams revelations personal stories stories from William Brannum Jack co a a l and T. L. Osborne or Roberts 60% of the air time and you know when I you know here is here is my Bible and I look at this and think I've got You know, there's 66 books. There's about a thousand pages in here. That's a lot of material There's not enough time in my life and I wish there was enough time There's not enough time in my life to teach what's in here

There is so much in here. It is so rich and so deep. I don't have enough time in my life to teach that Why would I want to spend half of every hour lecture or teaching Talking about personal stories and dreams and vision. It doesn't make any sense You know when we began our research my wife helped me a lot with the early website putting it all together and One of the exercises we did I wanted to I just came to the understanding that when a person says thus say at the Lord It means that it's not his voice that speaking it means that God is speaking through him

In other words, this is not the human being Whatever comes next after thus say at the Lord is God Almighty speaking to you And so we did this exercise. I just simply wanted to know how many there were and so she was putting together the spreadsheet Well Once it got to about 4500ish or I can't remember how high it was in the thousands Once I got that high, I realized it's completely useless because unless we have details and categories of what these are We just have this massive number and so it actually never got published, but

Some of the things man were like thus say if the Lord it's like Pinto beans and cornbread Well, no God is not telling you that this sermon is like Pinto beans and cornbread

Oh my well um I guess I better get into what I wanted to talk about today I think you and I could talk about these type of topics forever But what brought about the downfall of faith assembly externally was definitely when the State and local News officials legal officials health department got a hold of what was going on inside the church Internally, I think Hobart had already set the course by setting himself up and something like that is is not You know for you to be the Pope and the final authority that's not sustainable And if you don't have a successor, which he didn't

It doesn't seem like William Brandon really had a successor You know on the same level and of the same on the same um of the same degree It's not sustainable But the downfall was just the increasing media attention in spotlight and the legal system shining their A big spotlight on faith assembly big calls of all of the preventable deaths So back in the 1970s, you know the church was small The larger the number of people you're increasing your odds of people dying in the church You have 10 people maybe not no one dies. You have a thousand some people are gonna die

So there were a couple of deaths in the 1970s that I'll just mention real quickly The first one that we were aware of was in 1973 on Christmas Eve So this is way back They've only been in the glory barn Two months by that when this happens a seven-month-old died Who had liver a liver ailment And this child died of the liver ailment and pneumonia that was associated with that Didn't make any headlines at all. It's hard to find any details about it It does seem to be however that the family the parents kept the body for 36 hours before

Contacting the funeral home So that was probably due to their attempts at a resurrection from the dead The next one was in 1976 April the fourth which was Sally Birkett And I won't go over that again because We discussed that last time the only thing that I would say um Just in in to remind everyone regarding Sally Birkett. She did bleed to death. She had a baby Uh, the placenta you know you delivered a baby. I have delivered a couple of my children, so I know exactly what it's like. You deliver the baby and the placenta is delivered afterwards. She could not deliver the placenta. She was

bleeding critically. Betty Nye, who was the wife of Don Nye, and that was the couple that had donated land for the new building and will meant to be built on. She was there. She was a registered nurse, still had her nursing license because of the death of Sally.

She had to surrender her nursing license over that, but Sally had been bleeding for several days and they couldn't stop the bleeding. I don't know. I'm not a doctor. My daughter-in-law is a doctor and my son is a critical care paramedic. They would know more about this than me, but I don't know what it would be like to bleed to death. To bleed to death, I mean, that's a slow agonizing death. To bleed to death, not on an isolated highway where there's no one around to help you, but in a town where you can get to a doctor or hospital

and stop that. What made Sally significant was she was the wife of one of the important ministers there. The minister who later came up to visit me in Minnesota where I had a church and I didn't even know that something like that was in his background, that that was one of the things that he had to deal with in his background. Thirdly, John, the same year, just a couple of months later, 1976, on July 2, which was a Friday. This was a big deal. The woman's name was Alice Rogers. She was 23 years old. She was in the process

of childbirth and both she and the infant died. She had been bleeding critically for hours prior to that. The news media got a hold of this one. It's the 4th of July weekend. July the 2nd in 1976 was a Friday. You probably don't remember this because I'm so much older than you are, but I'll tell you something that was big on the 4th of July weekend in 1976 that I've never forgotten. That was that the Israeli commandos raided the Antebi airport in Uganda and freed all of those hostages. If you remember just four years before at the

Munich Games in 1972, the Palestinians had gotten into a Olympic village and had murdered some Israeli athletes. Well, the Israeli people weren't going to have that happen again, so that happened on Sunday, the 4th of July in 1976. This woman's death happened on July the 2nd of Friday and then two Sundays later, Dr. Freeman preached a message. He was going through the Book of Romans and he preached a message entitled Adoption. It was message number 725.

And he talks about the death in detail from the 40-minute and 48-second mark through 46-minute and 46-second mark time stamp there. And here's where you can really see what I would call Dr. Freeman's diversionary skills become apparent and legendary.

He doesn't address the death of two people, members of his church, a 23 young woman, barely passed adolescence herself. He does not mourn the death of this woman in her child. He does not address the death in the way that I would think a normal Christian minister or pastor should do it.

Feeling sorry for this husband who is the survivor. I don't know if this woman had any other children. Surely she had parents, surely she had friends. But here's what he did. Yeah, someone died in the news media got a hold of that.

But how about all of the successful births that have happened here at the glory barn? Why don't we get any headlines over that? In other words, it was his effort to shift attention onto their enemies, the media, who had exposed this death and take it off of this sad, sad affair of this woman losing her life in childbirth.

So, you know, when I heard that, and there's a whole newspaper article of a newspaper reporter who made it into the service around that time and is hearing that message. But then I was, this was back in 1976.

I was receiving the tapes from the glory barn then. Of course, I'm hearing this, but I don't know the circumstances. I can figure out, I can deduce that someone has died in the church, but I don't know an age.

I don't know a gender. I don't know that it's a mother and a child, but you can clearly see his diversionary tactic kicking into place here. Let's don't talk about anything that's negative. Let's don't talk about a death, a preventable death, probably, you know, you get them to the hospital.

This is a preventable death. Let's don't talk about that. Let's talk about that terrible news media that's out there hounding us and that won't be fair. They won't come in here and do a report of the 10 good births that have happened in the last week terrible, I think, just terrible.

Yeah, it is. And it's a bit ironic too because one of the sudden deaths that happened in the brand, I'm called. happened during the preaching of a sermon called adoption. There was a minister, there was an evangelist. Yeah, and then there's an Indiana evangelist. He was semi-famous and you can go look it up. I think it's 1966, May of 1960. Brandon preaches the sermon called adoption at the very end. He says, while I was preaching this, this, he doesn't give the name, but this semi-famous evangelist just dropped it in the pulpit. And you know, then he goes on and it's a series of

sermon. So it starts into the prayer line and you know, it goes with that. But the people who are in a divine healing cult and something like this happens when their entire, their faith has so wrapped up in being healthy. It's a weird gospel, right? Your faith has wrapped up on whether or not you can remain healthy. And then here's a preacher who just falls dead on the platform while he's preaching. Well, what does that say about your gospel? And so you've got a kind of, you know, bring it all back together, which he did. He held healing

lines and like Hobart did, he said, look at all these great healings that happened in the past, not focusing on the guy who's preaching who just falls dead. But the irony is just, it's really significant. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Branum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper,

audio and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

Yeah, and one of the other tactics that he also used, and I don't know if you heard this or not in your circles, but he would point out the fact that he said people die in churches all the time. You know, there are people that die in the Baptist church, the Pentecostal church, the Catholic church. But you know, that wasn't the point. The point wasn't that someone had died, but how they died. I'm sure the people that died in those other churches died of cancer, died of, you know, kidney failure or died in the car accident or something. Not something that

can be prevented, right? Yes, exactly. Something that can be prevented. You know, he was skilled and it's what's frightening. When you look back on this, he was skilled in this diversionary tactic of Getting people's attention off the fact, hey, we just had 14 deaths here in our church in the last, maybe 10 of them, 11 of them preventable.

Maybe all of them preventable. I don't know, I don't have all those facts, but to say that people are dying in churches everywhere and you should hear the congregation, amen, that's right brother. Like yeah, preach it, there's nothing wrong with us.

There's just something wrong with the media for calling attention. You know, Hobart actually did a message, it was entitled Raising the Dead and Natural Childbirth. It was also done during this same time frame in 1976 and I remember calling it the no comment message because the media had gotten a hold of Alice Rogers' death and had contacted Hobart, sent him a certified letter even showed up at his house on shoe lake trying to interview him.

And you know, his comment, he didn't see them, he actually wasn't there when they showed up but he came back to the church to tell the people, look, the church policy is no comment.

So your comment is no comment. And what is just, it just grates on me when I think of that message John in 1976, they were having people die and they were having members trying to raise the dead when Sally died, Hobart was called and Hobart came over to the house and Hobart said, I think you need to call the funeral director.

Other people were trying to raise all of these people that had died and the message that he taught with regard to raising the dead was I would say fairly good because he does point out the fact that people died in the Bible, people died in the early church, nobody tried to raise the dead.

You know, that is a rare, special circumstance where someone is gonna be raised from the dead. I thought that part of the message was fairly biblical and accurate. The part that I didn't like was the no comment because of the passages he used.

He went to Jesus' trial before Pontius Pilate where Pilate is saying, don't you know I can release you, I can kill you and it said Jesus made no comment. And I thought, this is our Lord at his passion before his crucifixion and death that has nothing to do with news media.

That has nothing to do with these preventable deaths in your own church. I just thought that was very suspect to try to use a passage like that and teach your people no comment to the media.

Yeah, it's so wrong. And it's a pattern, it's a history that repeats itself. If you go back to John Alexander Dowey who is literally the prototype for all of these divine healing con artists, there were people dying left and right in his...

Communion and he was it was the same way no comment to the media and he would vilify the media because if they published the deaths then They're the bad guys not him and you know many of those were preventable as well But on raising the dead so Dowie made the claim that he raised the dead and there would be people in his cult They would proclaim that Dowie has raised the dead well. There's there was never any solid Provable evidence that the dead was raised, but what happened was because so many cult members Could testify that yes, I saw this person dead whether he was pronounced medically dead or not

I saw it so therefore it's true Well, that's spread and so all of these divine healing cults be they you know, they copied the same pattern and Early in William Brannum's ministry He was bragging about bogus Raisings of the dead in Canada. He was saying that I he said basically I rescued a guy who was in the morgue dead And he was already dead and he came back to life and so news media there they realized well wait That's a verifiable statement. Let's see if it's true and they wrote back to Jeffersonville I've got all the newspapers on this

Completely bogus completely false and so then the news media starts contacting the Brannum tabernacle and The cult members defend the false claim which is you know, very much like what you're saying But I don't know if you have been in a meeting where the claim was made that they raised the dead. It's very very Suspect the way that it happens because These people stand for hours on in and a lot of times they'll up and down and up and down Sing with us and stand sit, you know some of the older people especially those who are on

Blood pressure medications, etc. They get light-headed as they rise to their you know, rise up really quickly and Some of them have very faint pulses anyway because they're taking blood pressure meds so Sometimes they'll even have a Somebody who's a nurse or somebody's in the medical profession come and say well, I can't feel a pulse They must be dead and they count that as a death even though that is not medically dead You know, there's a series of steps. You have to go to prove somebody's dead But I've been in sermons where people were raised from the dead man and looking back

I just again. I was a smart man. I can't believe I fell for some of that nonsense Well, you're you know, you're religious upbringing had had blinded parts of your brain. I don't have experience with raising the dead But now that you mentioned that the only thing that I can remember I have never raised the dead The only thing that I can remember is when our church when I when God sent me from Mississippi to Minnesota and I Established a church and we had a wonderful Just an awesome group of people there But early early on you know

I was teaching some on faith and healing, and there was an older couple who had, when I say older, I'm in my 20s, they're in their late 40s or early 50s, probably early 50s by that time.

So that was old, that was old, really old. That was over the hill for me back then. They had 10 children, and I can remember two things about them. One is their youngest child, and I won't mention any names, but I remember getting a phone call from them early.

This would be early in the 1980, saying that he had fallen from a second level in their house all the way down, hit the floor, and had died, and they had raised him from the dead.

And they wanted me to, I was their minister, they wanted me to come over to their house. So I did, and the young man was alive and fine, but I never, I don't think you could ever find a single message, and I've got over 2,000 of them online.

I bet you can't find a single message where I ever referenced that as anybody being raised from the dead in our church, because I didn't feel like I had facts. I had the parents' word, and I wouldn't say they didn't.

I wasn't there. Maybe they're raising from the dead, maybe they didn't. That's all I could say. But I think so many of these ministers are anxious for another notch in their gun that they'll grab anything, even if it's a suspect story or even if it's one that's not provable.

And so no, we never had anyone to my knowledge that was raised from the dead in our church and whether that, and that young boy is still alive. He's a grown man. He's still alive to this day.

And if he died and they raised him from the dead, all glory to God for that. And I wouldn't say that it didn't happen, because who am I to say that it didn't happen?

But I definitely, I just would feel, I would feel shady. I'd feel very shady. It takes the focus off of Jesus, right? Because if you're telling people somebody raised from the dead in our church, well, what you're doing is you're saying that God values our church over this other church in the city where somebody died in it.

I, now that I've left this thing, I see how wrong this is. And it's just, it's awful. Right, right, right. So those were the deaths in the 70s. If I can wrap up here with you, John, if we have enough time left for 1983.

1983 was a critical year for faith assembly. Because a series of newspaper articles came out. First of all, in May of that year, by two young reporters who worked for it. for the Fort Wayne Indiana new Sentinel.

This was a four-part series. This was just the first of the four-part series where you can see 52 deaths tied to the set. And then they tell you how many in each state and relative to the state in what county these were.

So this was an exposé, of course, when Dr. Freeman saw that, found out about it. I mean, the wagons really circle the camp, tighter and tighter and tighter. And then you have not armed guards, but you have guards, they called them parking lot attendance, but they had walkie talkies.

And their responsibility was to sniff out someone who doesn't belong at faith assembly. And you could generally tell who belonged at faith assembly and who didn't. And someone with a big camera on his shoulder and a big pack with all kinds of equipment probably doesn't belong.

So they would find those guys in the parking lot and just run them out. Because this series of articles expose a high number of preventable deaths among Freeman's followers, not only at faith assembly.

I guess that number circled here is 30, somewhere in that general area of Warsaw, Northwestern, Wilma, Indiana, not only in the immediate vicinity, but his followers in the surrounding state. So it set off alarm bells for state officials and for health, the health department and for the legal officials.

Because up until that time, Indiana had a law that protected parents from any kind of prosecution.

As long as they're rendering, I can't remember how it's worded, but rendering a certain type of service for their child, then that was legal. Because of these articles, and again, let's be clear here, the articles aren't the problem.

You don't blame the media. Let's blame the 52 deaths. The articles came about because of the 52 deaths. And by the next year, it was over 100 that they had documented. So let's talk about the articles.

Let's talk about the 100 deaths. All faith assembly wanted to talk about was the news media and these terrible people, Hobart in a famous sermon, describe the news media as a couple of blind men searching for a black cat in a completely dark basement and finding it.

That was the news media to him. And so, yeah, I mean, he's getting the focus off of what's really going on. and good grief, John, we as Christians should care about human life at least as much as secular society around us, right? If not more. We are Christians. We should care about and value human life at least as much as the news media around us who's reporting the deaths in our church.

And convincing somebody not to take medication, the 52 doesn't tell the complete story, right? Those are just the 52 that died there. I mentioned blood pressure meds. We'll think about diabetic medications, blood pressure medications, kidney medications, all these different things.

If you're avoiding that, well, 10 years from now, you may die, whereas you may have lived, had you taken your medication. And we've seen, you know, in the random cult, I will say that's the ministers, at least the ones that I have attended, not all of them, but the ones that I attended, they would tell you to take your medication. But then you would listen to these sermons by William Brannum and he's blasting the medication. You know, all of the doctors in medication, he will make these random statements that say, and look, these people are taking this medication for

whatever's the health and they don't even know what's in it, the doctors. They may die because they took it. Well, in doing that kind of thing, you're convincing people that it's a bad idea to take medication and try the faith thing instead. That's what essentially boils down to. But people, you know, 52 isn't the whole story. It's the point I'm making.

Yeah, you're right. So I guess there was probably more consistency with faith assembly. They would preach against it and they would also in private never, never tell anyone, never advise anyone that you should take your medicine. You know, you would see people and I saw it happen pulling up in the parking lot and taking their eyeglasses off and sicking them in the glove compartment because they knew if I go inside, I'm not a faith follower. And, you know, I'll be ostracized. So if not ostracized, at least I will be recognized as one of the lower level people in the church. You

know, there was a tremendous amount of, I'd walk into the door jam when I was walking in. I would try that. I think some people probably did. There was a tremendous amount of peer pressure there. So, but what was interesting about these stories, I can tie this into myself. It's, I am, I am flabbergasted that 40 and 50 years later, I have so many connections to faith assembly. Never having gone there, never having lived there. I visited, but never having been a member, never having been sent out by faith assembly, never having been approved of Hobart. I'm just shocked at all of the connections.

I was pastoring our little church in Minnesota and Wakonia, Minnesota when this article came out. One of those periods, you know, we were up and down in our relationship with faith assembly and we were on the down.

We were, they didn't like us. Back up and I'll tell you why, Jerry Burkett, you know, had been traveling up there and teaching in someone's home, their name was Chuck and Allison Dotseth. They lived in Southern Minnesota and we were in Wakonia, which is due west of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

That's where our church was, where I was a pastor and teacher. When the Dotseth found out that there was another Freeman-like, some connection to faith assembly church, somewhere in that state, guess what? They decided they started coming to our meetings and I can remember they were a nice little family, husband and wife and just a gaggle of kids behind them and they started coming to our meetings but that only lasted so long.

I wish to this day I could remember what I said and I don't remember, but I know it was small and insignificant. I might have spelled a word differently than Hobart did. It was so small, but I said something that was different than what Dr. Freeman ever came back again.

So that was my connection to them and some more to Jerry Burkett. But so we were on the outside. I'm sure they might have reported, well, Cheno's not in agreement with Hobart. Cheno differs with Hobart.

His church does not agree with faith assembly. So we were on the outside. So I didn't have any way of knowing what was going on at faith assembly. So I did not know. I was a hundred percent unaware of all of these deaths.

So these articles came out in the newspaper and I got these papers later, by the way. I'll tell you how that came about. And as soon, I mean like a day after these hit the Fort Wayne paper, a television station from the Twin Cities was knocking on my door.

Somebody, a relative of somebody in our church had tipped them off that, hey, this guy and this group may be similar to faith assembly and you need to go out there and talk to them.

And so they came to interview me and they told me about these art. And you know, like why would a television station in Minneapolis St. Paul even know I exist? Why would they care anything about me?

It's because of how explosive these articles had been. They're finding something in their neck of the woods that may be a similar. So let's go snoop around out there. So it was actually from the news media that I found out what was going on at faith assembly.

I quickly got a hold of the newspaper down there and was able to get these are back issues, you know, was able to get copies of all of those articles. So, and then I began subscribing.

Once I found that out, I thought, wow, there's a lot of stuff that unless you are at faith assembly, you don't know anything about. And here I am in Central Southern Minnesota. I don't know anything at all going on down there.

And probably the only way I'm going to find out is I'm going to have to ask the media. And the media was going to do a pretty good job. So, I began subscribing to the Warsaw Times Union paper and the Fort Wayne News Sentinel paper just to be able to stay up with what was going on.

And sure enough, that was in May of 83 in September of 1983. This huge four part series came out in the Warsaw Times Union. And it was done, John. This is just amazing. It was done by Dr. John Davis, who was a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Gracialogical Seminary and who had been one of Hobart's students.

Wow. He had actually done his doctoral work under Hobart's supervision before Hobart was fired from Gracialogical Seminary. And so the newspaper in Warsaw contacted Dr. Davis

to get him to write a series of articles on his mentor and his former professor, Hobart Freeman. And so here it is. This is called Faith Assembly Haven of Rest or House of Fear.

And what was interesting was he was a part of the media. He listened so many of Hobart's tapes. He read all of his books. He attended the service, interview Dr. Freeman after one of the services and then went to his home for a follow-up interview.

The next one entitled Inspiration for Living or Inventation to Death. And he told Hobart what he was doing. He told him all along, I'm gonna write a newspaper series of articles about you. I always thought that was contradictory that Hobart had said, no comment.

You don't ever talk to the media. Your comment about anything is no comment. And if they wanna comment on your no comment then it's no comment. And then he gives a four part, he gives this interview and ends up being a four part series.

I don't know if he was just, I don't really know what his motive was, but that was done in 1983. free. To my knowledge, Dr. Davis is still alive today, and Hobart was going to be dead within a year. Now, Dr. Davis may have died in the last couple of years, but he was a long time well-known, conservative, evangelical, respected, theologian, and professor there in Gray Seminary. But he said in his last interview of Hobart there at Hobart's house, he said, as I turned to leave, Hobart said, I just want you to know that other people

who recently have written negative things against me in this church have suffered car accidents and deaths. And John's, Dr. Davis said, I assumed he meant that for my benefit as I walked out the door. And I find it interesting that within a year, Hobart Freeman was dead, and here we are 40 years later, and John Davis is still alive, like those apples.

Yeah, I've heard those type of idle threats, and it's, you know, I told my wife, I received one of those threats whenever we left the Colton. I told my wife, it's no greater, no more powerful than if they were standing in our front lawn with the water hose and spraying our windows. Yeah, it kind of annoys me that they're doing it, but it really doesn't affect me that much. But it's, you know, I think probably what happened was Hobart definitely was affected by the control, the level of control that he could have. And once the news,

once these things hit the news for any cult, I don't care. Even if they're doing everything, you know, somewhat right, but yet destructive, the destructive aspect is going to make the news because that's the way the news media works. So once this starts to come out, then I think Hobart probably realized that he was about to lose that control. So can I control the media? And that's probably why he changed his mind. But it's so sad, all of the deaths and even Hobart dying, you know, even though he was a victimizer and a victim in my opinion, he was part of this brand of movement. He was probably indoctrinated

himself, you know, I can't say to what extent, but I know very good people who have entered the ministry and have done very bad things. I'll just say it like that. Hobart might be in that category. I don't know him. I never knew him, but he might be in that category. And the whole thing makes me sad because it doesn't have to be this way. If you take all of this mystery, this divine healing nonsense, all of these things away and just focus on the gospel, it's so much better and it's so much more healthy and people can grow and become

better people. But when you focus on these things, there's death. That's really what it comes down to. Yeah, absolutely, John, you know, and I didn't know how much you knew about Hobart. I knew I knew I probably knew a lot more.

than you did, but I hoped in sharing all of this in chronological order and succession, I think you've got a great appreciation and you, with your background, you're seeing all of the connections, you're seeing where things came from that I would not be as aware of because I was not a random follower at all.

For me, this was just how Mark Freeman, this is what Hobart's like, but hopefully in sharing this with you, you and your followers who know more about the message and I know can go, oh my goodness.

I, this, this man and some of his teachings and some of his tendencies are just a reflection of what they have seen at an earlier time in their life. Yeah, it took me a while to grasp it, but you've got all of these different ministries, movements, sects, splinter groups and random is like the zipper pull that just as you pull it together, they all just kind of fit like a zipper.

It's really crazy, but so glad you did this with me today and we'll have to get together and do some more there. This is just the beginning of the story. There's so much more that we can tell.

So if you've enjoyed our story and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. For an overview of the historical research of William-Branum and the Healing Revivals, read preacher behind the white hoods, a critical examination of William-Branum in his message, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

You can find us at www. William-Branum.org. You can find us at www. William-Branum.org.

You can find us at www. William-Branum.org.