Faith Assembly 2024 Update Part 1

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host, minister and friend, Chen O'Ross, pastor and the voice of understanding scripture and truth by Chen O'D Ross, YouTube channel.

And together we are discussing today the meeting that Chen O'Had between former members of the faith assembly and his visit there. So it's going to be an unusual episode but Chen O'Hugh and I've talked about this a bit before you win and after you came back. It's really interesting history and it puts things into a perspective that honestly you're not going to find too many examples of this out there. People who are engaging the critics and then the you know the aftermath of what happened. The interesting we have not talked about this yet but I also received an email and ended up having a hour-long

phone call not in the same exact way that you but also with a person who is skeptical of my information and I think the timing of those two come together pretty well. I'll share that with you as we get into this but tell us you know tell us a little bit about what happened whenever you went to have your visit with the people from faith assembly. Well you know John before I left I ask you and several other friends of mine completely ingest people have to understand my humor but I said if I don't return and they find a body floating

in the river will you please come and identify body parts that is nothing but humor on my part. I didn't suspect anything but generosity and hospitality from these men and that's exactly what I received but you know we're talking about something 40 years old so it's really nice when you can insert into this long historical dialogue you know something that is new and fresh something that is hot off the press and so how this came about was through obviously these podcasts of yours Sean and even the ones you had been doing long before you and I ever hooked up but after we had done a few of them I received a message on

messenger on June 28th of this year from an ex faith assembly minister. Let me say to preface everything the people at faith assembly the vast majority like 101% of them never heard my name and do not know who I am and did not know who I was back then. That is not true of the ministers.

Even the ministers that I had never met and they had never met me in person they all knew who I was and it was simply because from you know when I was in my 20s back in the 80s prior to Dr. Freeman's death and post his death I was an outside critic of faith assembly and Hobart Freeman in the message even though I had been a part of it you know I when I was in my teenage years if Dr. Freeman said it I believed it that's all it took because I believed everything he was

teaching was biblically based and I believed everything but I slowly grew away from what I've felt then and still feel today are the erroneous parts of his interpretation of the Bible and just came to a lot better view a scripture but I received this message on messenger from one of these ministers who said hey Cheno I really appreciated your last podcast with John Collins thanks for sharing all that so to get that from an ex faith assembly minister who was way up in the hierarchy there was you know a pretty big deal that let me know people out there were listening to it

so I just responded to him and said I appreciate the comment hope you'll continue to listen then on July the 5th I missed a call from him the same man and just had to listen to a voicemail that was all broken up I couldn't even make it out because he was in a bad reception area so I called him back he called me back we kept dropping the call but we ended up having an hour in 27 minute phone conversation on that day which was July the 5th and a couple of things came from that

one he had a question and this is only something that you can really answer but he had a question for me because our first podcast was making a connection between William Brannum and Hobart Freeman and he was just wondering what that connection really was you know I had explained I believe that he was heavily influenced by Brannum's teaching on just in so many different areas but was there anything else that anything else you Do you know of any kind of correspondence or back and forth or anything between the Brannum camp and Dr. Freeman?

You know, besides personal testimony that I'm not yet allowed to share, there's nothing that I can find documented.

Without giving the person's name, I think I can probably say this. Hobart Freeman had subscribed to a lot of materials that came from William Brannum's campaign team. And you probably, you know, being involved, you probably aware he had some sermons by William Brannum, et cetera, in his collection.

If you go to my website and you just type in Hobart Freeman in the search, you'll see the research that we are able to publish minus that testimony, which I, again, I cannot give that testimony now.

And outside of him teaching the same exact thing that William Brannum taught, using the same platform for divine healing and being connected to like the full gospel businessman, which is one of the last organizations that sponsored William Brannum's meetings after William Brannum was deemed a heretic by the whole rest of the evangelical community.

Hobart was a part of that group, which supported him. And Hobart's church was, I wanna say, it was like almost a bike ride's distance from the Brannum Tabernacle. It wasn't that far. It might be 10 miles, something like that.

So he's in the area. They're in the same evangelical communities. There are a lot of ways in which he could come in contact with Brannum's materials. Outside of the testimony, I cannot link them directly.

So I did publish the research that I am able to. But, you know, one of the things that I found is that whenever people are in these types of movements, they have a perspective and that perspective oddly may not even match the perspective of the person who's sitting in the seat next to them.

One of the examples that I give for this is, William Brannum had this sermon that he claimed, he was drawing on a chalkboard, the so-called church ages, and he claimed that God wrote on the board, which is an outlandish claim, if you think of this.

And I know people, my grandfather is the one who led the Brannum Tabernacle for 50 years. I know people who were there during the event. And I've talked to people who truly believe that God himself came down and he wrote on the chalkboard.

Other people said that no, there was a light and it was the light was God and the light lit up the chalkboard. While other people there said that, you know, I was there, I didn't see anything unusual.

There was a, the building sits on the corner of two roads. He said, the person who spoke to me said, I did see that some headlights, you know, from a car passing by came in the window.

Another person was there and saw nothing, no disturbance in the crowd whatsoever. And then after the meeting, everybody wasn't talking about God coming down on the building and writing on the chalkboard, they were saying, well, where are we gonna go to eat, brother?

I'm hungry. So you've got all of these different perspectives. And when you're in this kind of movement, you try to separate your perspective, especially from other cults. That cult is different than our cult.

We're not the same. And so you build a wall of separation around your perspective. So what I'm trying to say is this, from a person who was never in that, who was in something similar, it looks, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's, you know, from somebody on the outside, they can see it clearly, but from somebody who may have been involved or was involved, there's this mental block from trying, from being able to understand that, no, this was a clone of many other things, and you can identify a hundred different clones

that are just like it. And I follow what you're saying. I think the question directed at me was probably, did I feel like there was, that there was a conscious effort or attempt on Hobart's part to be the next William Brannum.

And I said, I don't really think that. I didn't hear him say that. I have been able to trace a lot of his doctrines, his lateral reign, his end time army, so his teaching that denigrates women just so many things, and his view on the Trinity, do go back to William Brannum, and we know that William Brannum felt he was, if not a, probably we need the definite article, the end time messenger, whether he was Elijah or whether he was the seventh angel, he was the end time messenger, he obviously wasn't because he died, but I have given quotes and timestamps from Hobart's messages

where Hobart said, God has revealed to them, to him and other people about him, that he has revealed the full faith message to only one man. So, I mean, that's not saying Elijah or seventh angel, but it's, I mean, it's still saying the same thing, right?

That I am the last one. Well, and it matches a pattern too. I think another thing, people who come into this, they don't see the connection, so they really haven't dug deeply, but if you look at all of the groups that splintered from William Brannum, And even, not just William Brannum, go back before this time to Dauy, Frank Sanford, Parham, all of these guys, they were teaching this framework that could allow an in-time messenger. And they were, this Elijah ministry, for example, they were teaching that the Elijah was coming to restore the church to, you know, take the church, prepare the

for the rapture, etc. And so men became delusional and they saw themselves to be this figure, whether they used the term Elijah or not. They were a restore of some kind. Well, this happened over and over, and over. Brannum got caught up in the same hype.

After Brannum died, we have examined, you know, I lost count of the number, but many, many different splinter groups who taught everything you just mentioned, the divine healing manifested sons of God, literally everything Brannum taught. But they were the answer to the in-time church.

They were the central figure who was supposed to prepare the truth or whatever they, whatever is their platform. So it matches a pattern. And I think that's, that's the more important part than even, even if they had connected, had Hobart not match the pattern that Brannum was establishing and following, I would say the two are disconnected because they just met. And so, so they were in some sermons together. Who cares? But the fact that Hobart matched that pattern tells me that there's a lot more there than meets the eye. Yeah, I think you're right. And I think any, whoever

the new one is on the scene always feels like I'm here to purify the one that just came just before me, even though I hold a lot of the same tenets as my predecessor. I have a better view of it.

They quote, quote, got off. They got off. I'm not getting off. And I'm going to purify that. Well, anyway, that I think was a question asked me. That was one of the reasons for the phone call from one of the ex-menisters. But we had a fruitful conversation. And as a conversation progressed, I was very interested in seeing whether or not he and others would be willing to do a meeting. And they suggested a Zoom. And I said, how about a face-to-face? I love face-to-face meetings, although I don't mind zooming with you all the time. I love face-to-face meetings. And so he said,

well, yeah, let's set up one. And what's the point or what's the purpose? And I said, well, the first purpose is I would like to interview you. That was the stated goal. I would like, if you're willing, I'd like to interview you since you became one of, maybe not one of, the leader of faith assembly in its post-treaming days. I'd like to interview you about the transition.

And so I know, I think I know a lot of what happened. happened because I have other sources, but I'd like to interview you. And then he said, yes, let's do that. And I said, if anything's confidential, this confidential, you just tell me that.

And I'll keep it to myself. And then we also kind of tossed around the idea because I think he is as concerned and interested he and they as I am of helping the faith assembly survivors.

And by the way, let me just say that he has rejected these strange and odd and weird things that Dr. Freeman taught. And what those are, we could just give a list of them.

But the medical science stuff in particular, they have rejected the extreme view that he taught as well as just his whole elitist, cultish kind of approach that Hobart took to everything. So they recognize that there are people out there because these men have gone in other directions of good Christian ministry.

They are not as in touch with ex faith assembly people as I am or you are with ex-mess. So he was flabbergasted to realize how much hurt and how real it is 40 years later, how raw it is.

I get on these, I talk to these people and I read their post or they send me messages on messenger or emails or they call or text me. And when you have been, it's just so powerful, John.

When you have been locked in this institutional control of a religious cult where they have dictated not only your doctrines, but how you think and how you process things, how you view the world around you and they have this coded language that they all use.

You can't talk about deviled eggs. They have to be stuffed eggs.

They have manipulated all of your language. As soon as you put the brakes on hard to avoid an accident, the blood of Jesus is the first thing out of your mouth. And they still, these people have affinity to that, have complex problems with things like that 40 years later.

That's not normal. When you leave a Baptist church and decide to go to another Baptist church or you leave a Methodist church and decide to join a Presbyterian church, you don't carry weird baggage like that with you.

There's some doctrinal distinctions that you're gonna surrender and adopt, but you don't carry this schizophrenic split personality with you. Unless you have come out of one of these movements, one of these calls, and I just say that's what has been such a huge problem with face assembly.

I've been away from it so long that I don't deal with that, but people who are fresh out of it, or people who haven't purge themselves thoroughly enough, even if they've been out of it for several decades, I just think continue to struggle with things like that.

I just heard from a friend of yours this weekend who was a minister. This was so interesting to me, and I think you might have told me this before, but it just didn't register, and then I'll leave the brand of subject alone here.

But he was a minister in a church whose name was faith assembly. He said that was the main name, and that was the name of our churches was faith assembly. Listen people out there.

This is no coincidence that Hobart named his church faith assembly. No, it's not. You know, you talk about leaving, I'll never forget, we actually left a Baptist church. When we left the message, one of the things that we just started trying out churches, and one of the ones that we stayed at for a length of time was a Baptist church.

When we decided that it wasn't for us, I'll never forget the fear. We had this fear of leaving because we had been indoctrinated to fear leaving, and we thought everybody's going to snap out at it, lash out at us, and they were going to rebuke us from the platform like they do in these cult churches.

We left, and everybody's, well, you know, I'm really sad to see you go, I hope you like your new church, John. I was floored, man, that's not normal, that's not at least in my world, that wasn't normal.

And I'm still friends, I still go out, you know, have lunch or dinner with friends that I'm at there, and it's just so different. And that caused me to reflect on what we left, and what we left was so odd.

I started to, I'm a big sci-fi fan, I think I've told you this, I love these recurring themes of time travel and, you know, anything to do with time. And it's like the, there's a recurring theme in the sci-fi slash horror, where people are stuck in a certain era, and you probably, I don't know if you've seen movies like this, but it's as though we were stuck in the 1960s, in the cult that we were in.

We dress like, we act like, we talk like it. You mention, you can't say devil eggs, well, the language of the 60s, if you vary from that, and you enter modern things, that people commonly say in language, it's rebuked, you know, and worse than that, stuck in the 60s, back in the 60s, people had a concept of history.

They would, you know, history... is what makes people reflect and change for the better, hopefully for the better. And without history, you're doomed to make the same mistakes. Will these cults erase their history?

And then they try to ignore that it even exists. And so you end up being stuck in that time frame. And it really shapes the way that people think about the cult and the way that they reflect.

And back to the point we were making earlier, it also builds this isolation of the invisible cult walls around your mind where you can't recognize other cults and the similarities between yours and theirs because you're literally isolated in your head.

Wow, John, there's just so much. I mean, we don't, you and I could talk forever. We could bore people silly or we could educate them incredibly about all of this. Yeah, it's not just the doctrines at faith assembly.

It was that spirit and atmosphere. Yeah, whenever you leave faith assembly, it doesn't matter why you leave. You're on bad terms. You're on bad terms as soon as you leave. I remember reading a post of a woman and her husband who had been a follower of Dr. Freeman.

They lived in New York State and decided like a lot of people did. Yeah, I think the Lord's calling us to move there. We don't want to just get tapes on the automatic tape mailing list.

We want to be there at the church. That the gory barn or this was at Wilman at the new building. And so they packed up and moved. Move to faith assembly as a whole lot of people did.

They stayed for six months and just decided, we really don't think we love faith assembly, but we really think we don't need to be here. They decided they were gonna return to Indiana. She said after a service, she and her husband went up to tell Dr. Freeman because people would stand in line and you'd have a few minutes to converse with him before he'd go through a door behind the pulpit back into his office, down some steps into his Lincoln or Cadillac and out the garage door, out the back of the church.

She said, we went up to share that with him. And she said, we just feel like, you know, we love you. We love the word, the pure, uncompromising word that's being preached here, but we just feel like the Lord wants us to go back to New York.

And she said when they shared that with Hobart, he did this.

Well, okay, that's what you feel the Lord wants you to do. She said, he just turned his face away from us and just said, okay, and she said, that was the weirdest thing. You know, you would expect from your pastor, thank you so much for being here and we're gonna miss you and we're gonna pray for you and God bless you and we don't want all the truth and all the good people living right here in Indiana.

We want them scattered out everywhere. We'll pray for, you know, you'd expect... something normal. And it's when you leave that group, I'm telling you, it was not normal at all. As you described earlier, you leave a normal church and go somewhere else. Your friends, you know, they follow you, you know, with phone calls, but not this group. And you leave this group. You have rejected salvation. You have rejected God's message and his messenger. And, you know, it's like they don't even care what happened to what happens to you from then on out. If for no other reason, even if you don't see all the doctrinal

problems, something like that, just normal Christian hospitality, just normal human hospitality and friendliness. When you see that lacking, that's a serious, that is as serious in my mind as any kind of doctrinal thing, because the early church was known for their love and for their generosity and for their hospitality. So it's very demonic. That's my, that's my conclusion. Whenever they treat people like that, it is a demonic influence. I'll keep the names of the ministers confidential. And by the way, they didn't ask for that, but I guess I will do that for now and we'll see what comes of it. They shared various things

with me. I asked them, we sat around the table in the conference room. I asked them if anything is confidential. Tell me and I will keep it close to my heart. And there was nothing confidential.

Now, there were a few stories they told. Maybe I'll relate one of these where the minister who told me said, I don't mind you telling this story. Just don't use my name as a source of it. And, and so I guess in sharing this story, the other, if there are other ex faith assembly ministers listening, then they will know the validity of all this because the only people who would know this would be ministers. But as I said in just a few moments ago, Hobart was up on the platform behind the podium. When he got through, there was a door behind the podium that led into just a

little, um, enter room where he had a couch and a chair and a table and a bathroom. And then he would leave, when it was time for him to leave, then this, when he came and when he left, he didn't have to see anybody. He didn't have to walk among all of us schmucks out there. He could pull in his Cadillac. It was a garage door. He came right in the back of the big metal, um, new building building.

He had to get out of his car, walk up some steps, go in his office, no one saw him. He saw no one, no one saw him. He stayed in that little room until it was his time to preach. And then he had opened.

on the door behind the podium and come out Jerry Irvin or whoever was leading worship would finish up a song or two and then Dr. Freeman would speak. And then the reverse of that is true when he was so speaking.

So that little room behind the pulpit in podium was a little meeting room if he needed to have a meeting with a couple of congregants or with some ministers. So on one occasion, and he had meetings all the time back there, but on this particular occasion, a lot of the ministers and this was late.

This was probably 1984. The top tier ministers who had bigger followings, bigger meetings and therefore bigger income were taking all of these hunting and fishing trips and it was just fun, you know, they were rock stars.

They'd get to go hunting elk here and bear there and on this fishing trip and that fishing trip. And what was what was funny and you can hear it on their sermons, you know, they had copied their mentor when Hobart just, he would pick a verse and then he'd just talk about his life for 20 minutes after that.

Like, let's get back to the verse we were supposed to talk about. He would just tell stories. They had learned that Hobart wasn't a hunter, but they were. So they'd tell the hunting story that I shot him at 233 yards and it was not a double lung shot and but there was blood and so we blood trailed him and he went over this ravine and through this thicket and there was a lot of that going on in the messages Hobart called ministers meeting and got those ministers back there and said, you got to stop all this

stuff. Preach the preacher message and leave all of these bloody and gory details out. So I just share that to let people know that this was a minister at this meeting who also was in that meeting with Dr. Freeman when he relayed all this to them.

The funny part of what you just said for all of the people who were in the William Brandham cult who heard what you just said, if you take Hobart Freeman's name out, you're describing the Brandham churches to the letter and it goes, again, it goes back to our earlier point.

If it looks like a duck, blacks like a duck, it smells like a duck. My grandfather also copied that pattern from William Brandham and when Grandpa drove up to the church, he had his escorts take him into that little room where he could hold his meetings with the businessman and that's where he stayed.

You could not approach my grandfather when he was entering the building or when he was leaving. The difference is Grandpa did not drive a Cadillac. He did for a period of time have a Jaguar but after a while he realized that people were going to realize that this makes him look like he's got a lot of money and so to a Void that he sold it and got an OSMobile, which was a nice OSMobile, but they had the same exact pattern.

They would escort you into this little room, and if you had any private conversations with outside ministers or whatever, it occurred in that room where nobody could hear them. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition 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.

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The similarities are just fascinating, John. You know, and I only know Freeman and Faith Assembly. I don't know, Brandham and Message, and your grandfather. The similarities are just amazing. I think I will share a text, however, of that I sent to another high, high-ranking ex-faith assembly minister, because his name's going to come up.

His name, as well as another former high-ranked ministers that did meet. We all discussed, should we try to contact these two men? These two, probably above any of the others, have not come out and publicly repudiate it and what everyone also wants, apologize for their role in the past.

One of them has definitely drifted far away. Both have drifted far away. One will admit it and one won't. Anyway, when you and I began our podcast, once we had done a few of them, I have been friends with Jeff Barnett for a long time.

Jeff Barnett actually came to my church one time years ago. I had him in as a speaker, because I wanted this was post-Hobart Freeman's death. Now everybody who knows Faith Assembly, John knows exactly who Jeff Barnett is.

Jeff Barnett goes back to the very beginning. Hobart reached over a podium like in a home meeting and prophesied to Jeff Barnett, gave him his ministry with the famous... Razor's edge prophecy that you will cut a line so fine.

It'll be like a razor's edge. You'll be able to separate truth from error. And that is so far from truth. Let me just say, let me just say, and I may be hated by some people.

I hope I'm not hated by Jeff, but let me just say that that is a false prophecy as false as a summer day is long because Jeff has not been able to do that.

When you and I began in these podcasts, I sent a text message to Jeff and I said this. I sent this on June the 29th. I just wanted to let you know that I'm in a series of podcasts concerning Hobart Freeman, Faith Assembly, and its other ministries.

It is all a part of John Collins' historical research into the cult of William Brannum. John Collins' grandfather was the pastor of the Brannum Tabernacle. And his podcast can be found on his YouTube channel.

These interviews are receiving a lot of attention on the various Faith Assembly and Hobart Freeman social media platforms. If there are any items you would like to share with me or discuss, I would be happy to talk with you.

The last time I talked with Jeff was last year, we had a conversation about things in the past and about the breakup of Faith Assembly. And Jeff has gone his own way. And I love Jeff.

I don't hold anything against Jeff. But I didn't get any response from that. I really didn't think that I would, but I wanted to give him the opportunity. He was one of the ranking ministers, what I call tier one.

The tier one ministers were Hobart's sons-in-law and Jeff Barnett and a couple of other guys. Those were tier one ministers. After Hobart died and things got a little shaky at Faith Assembly, Jeff started a church down in Acton, which is outside Indianapolis.

And I mean, they built their own building. This wasn't a little home church or meeting in the basement of the bank building up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a meeting years ago did or the room underneath or above the fish door, the exotic fish door.

This was their own building. And he had quite a following now. He's lost all of that following. And he has, I think, become maybe an assemblies of God minister now. He's gone his own path.

But he still feels just like Hobart would say, I still believe God, William Brannem is God's prophet, because if you cut Brannem out, you're cutting a lot of your own stuff out. Barnett has said to this day, well, yeah, brother Freeman this, he might have, but he was still God's prophet.

He absolutely, because, you know, since you've got your ministry from that man, since Hobart got his ministry through Brannem and through... and a schrader. You know, you can't go back and cut these people out because, you know, you cut your own mooring, you cut the beginning to your own ministry. So before I walked into this meeting with these ministers, I sent Jeff another text and said, I'm going into a meeting shortly with ex-faith assembly ministers. He didn't know that this, you know, that we had actually come upon a meeting together. I'm going to interview them about

their experiences from the past. We love for you to be a part of it. Join us. Let me know if you would be open to any Frank and honest conversations. And I noticed as I sent the text, you know, you can look on your text message and it immediately said, or EAD read, he read it immediately, but I did not get any response from him. And I was disappointed. I would like to have, I would like to have as many people there as possible, but, you know, we just, that just didn't happen. The other one that I would like to have there is one

of his, his Hobart son-in-law, Steve Hill. Steve Hill goes back to the very beginning. Steve Hill was preaching in the little coffee shop at the glory barn, the Friday night meeting, before they ever moved the church from its previous location to the glory barn. Steve was, Steve goes way, way, way back. And I feel, I feel some sympathy for Steve. I'm trying to be sympathetic, but I just want to be, but I want to be totally upfront, no holes barred. I mean, these are people's lives, not only as Steve and his wife Pam, who was

Hobart's daughter and their sons, Jonathan and Lance, not only are these people's lives, you know, involved, but so are hundreds and thousands of other people. And so sometimes I might get criticized for, well, you're not sympathetic towards Steve Hill. And I want to be sympathetic, but there's thousands, there's hundreds and literally thousands of other people that you have to be sympathetic to also. And the ministers, we ministers, I was one of them, but I wasn't there. And I definitely wasn't a tier one. I'm like a, a tier one import is what I was when it comes to those guys there. They had everything going for them.

They had big followings, big audiences, big incomes. And so to have been a part, I mean, here's where we, here's where we have to lay down the law to have been a part of that important leadership and to have paraded what Hobart said and every single one of them did, there's no exception. And they can't deny that. If they do, they're not being honest.

They took what he said and they paraded that and they had their little followings. which was really underneath Hobart's overarching following and the damage was done to all. And people want accountability. They don't even want you to apologize at the end of the day. What they want you to do is say, this is what I taught and I was wrong. That's all you have to do. It's just basic Christian integrity and transparency. But people change your address and change your tune and change the clothes that they wear and change their message, but they haven't dealt with the past. And that's what critically lacking here. These

ministers have to deal with the past. And you and I taught before going on the air of someone you know who is who is dealing with, you know, just their own some personal guilt involved. And, you know, we all have, if we've ever been a public speaker, you've taught something wrong. You can't teach more than three messages and not have said something wrong. And you look at someone like me, John, I've got over 2000 messages. I've got more than twice as many messages online as Hobart had. And most of those were done in my 20s. You think you can

find something wrong somewhere in those 2000 messages. Oh, Lord have mercy. Lord please forgive me, you know, but what my claim is Lord, you know, help me grow. And where I was wrong, I will willingly and freely admit it. But I'm not, I can't go back and scrub 2300. That's what would required. What I'm hoping is that people will hear sincerity through it all and they'll hear something off the wall when they listen to go man, that's crazy. I sure hope that guy doesn't believe that kind of stuff anymore. And there are some shame will probably be

right. I don't believe it anymore. You know, I've made more mistakes, I think than I've got things right. One of the problems that I have is I'm trying to piece together history that everybody has tried to cover up. And when you do that, you're going to get more wrong than you do right until you get all the pieces of history. And, you know, I've come to the conclusion that these guys, and I'm not saying that the ones that you spoke to are like this, maybe they are, I don't know. But like in the churches that I grew up in, these people liked

their favorite passages of scripture that had their agenda. But the ones that might have questioned that agenda, they completely not just ignored, but swept under the rug, they would never mention it. For example, you know, you've got in these Pentecostal style churches, they love Corinthians, first Corinthians 11 because it talks about woman having long hair. It's a glory for her. And I've heard, I literally can quote that entire passage start to finish from age 10. We heard it so many times. But then ever went to the next verse that says, but we have no such custom, neither do the churches of God.

The very next sentence says this. And it leads you down pathways, once you figure out they've covered up that verse, you want to know why, at least I do. So that got me into studying the cults of Dionysus and what this passage was actually referring to, the women, I think they called them the main ads, that had the long hair and they pulled the bobby pins out and then go rip the flesh off of animals and sculptures it.

Paul's writing too, it's crazy stuff, right? But they do not like where I was heading with this is they do not like to engage the scripture of iron, sharpening iron, because it's uncomfortable. When you come in contact with somebody who disagrees with you, being able to handle that disagreement in a Christian way is difficult and it takes a real, I know it's not politically correct to say this anymore, but I'll say it anyway, it takes a real man to stand up and do an iron, sharpened iron debate with a Christian, in a Christian way.

And if you're female, I'll say it takes a real woman so that I'm semi politically correct. It's hard, it's not easy and they do not like it. So that leads me up to, I told you at the beginning, I was going to share a story with you.

My podcast, because William Brannum was the central hub to all of these different cults, not just the Freeman cult, I mean right now I'm working with people from IHOP, I'm working with people from various different groups that they all can tie back to Brannum in one way or another.

And I've been in contact with some very unbelievable people and organizations. One of them is a laterane organization that if I mention the name, their jaws would drop, you mean you're communicating with them in a positive way.

And the person I'm in contact with at that organization, they too, like the men that you described, have moved in the right direction and they're abandoning all of the false nonsense and heretical teachings that they had in the past.

And I see that as a good process, they embrace their history. They don't cover it up, they embrace it and they say, that was wrong. Yes, we did this and now we're moving on.

We had probably two one-hour phone calls about that. And then just, I wanna say it was Saturday, sometime last week, I got this phone call from a person. He had found some mistakes that I made years ago in my research and he called me in.

He was a little surprised because I got excited that he found it. And he was like, man, I really didn't expect this reaction. I thought you're gonna be angry with me. And I'm like, no, man.

In fact, I'm going to invite him to the podcast. I think he's accepted, but I'm going to invite him as an example, this is how you embrace the things that you got wrong and move in the right direction.

So I'm gonna invite him on. He's gonna, I don't even know what they are yet, but he's gonna tell the world the things that I got wrong about a historical timeline. It's interesting stuff, but the point I'm trying to make is when you make a mistake, you correct it and you move on.

And the problem is I get a lot of people who try to push me in that direction with whatever cult programming they've had, and they've not critically thought enough to even find the facts to support their wrong way of thinking.

They just want to argue, they want to halt the critical thinking. They do not like the iron, sharpened iron scripture that's in the Bible. John, we're not going to get anywhere on this one today.

I hadn't, I've got all these. You tell me when we need to stop and we'll have to do another one. We'll have part two. We'll have part two. You're exactly right. What I'm hearing from some people is, well, what purpose does it serve to keep reliving our past?

That's past serves a huge purpose. If you haven't identified and cleaned up the mess from the past, that's why we're still here. Had everyone identified, had all the ministers clearly identified, cleared up the mess.

Yeah, we aren't needing to move forward, but you can actually do both simultaneously. You can move forward and you should. You cannot just live in the past, but while you're moving forward, you have to find all these mistakes and all of this weird stuff that Hobart Freeman taught.

You've got to identify that, say that was wrong. I'm not going to try to repackage it. I'm not going to do what everyone does. Well, he didn't really mean that. Look, Hobart was an excellent communicator.

He knew how to communicate exactly what he meant, but what he also was, in addition to being an excellent communicator, is he had a forked tongue. He was slippery. He knew how to say something, so you knew that is what he meant without being able to quote him.

He did it on divorce and remarriage. He did it on all kinds of topics, where you couldn't then come back and quote him and say, well, you said that, because technically, he didn't say that, but he danced around it in so many ways and said, I'm sure you understand what I'm saying.

Now, it should be clear without me having to say. He would say things like that all the time. So that's what I mean. Hobart was, he was a skill communicator, John. So don't give me that.

Well, people misinterpreted him. You could not misinterpret him. He was very clear. He knew what he wanted to say. He knew what he wanted you to believe. He knew how to say what needed to be said, to get you to believe what he wanted you to believe.

So there was not any possibility of misunderstanding. That is just, that is the old smoke screen, the straw man argument that people are bringing up to protect Hobart. No, we need to go back and label one, two, three, four.

And it'll be a long list. Let's label the items and let's deal with these. Let's uncover what Hobart was saying. Let's recover the biblical teaching on it. Let's all say, we're good now. And then we can move forward.

But until then, it's just going to be this cycle of, yes, you're just going to have to, you're just going to have to relive the past. And so unfortunately, Jeff Barnett, it's not willing to go back and do that.

His wife Cindy wrote a really cool book about their life together from pre-Faith Assembly to post. And she has a few statements in there where they left Aith Assembly. But, and I can't blame Cindy because Jeff is the minister.

He's the husband. He's the pastor. He's the minister in that family. And I don't know what Cindy's personal private thoughts and beliefs are unless they are the same as her husbands. But you can't go against that.

And Jeff's not going to distance himself. Say, Hobart, if he claimed and he did to be a prophet, he's a false prophet. And no, that doesn't mean everything he taught was wrong. Absolutely not.

There are some wonderful things you get from Hobart's teaching and a wonderful spirit. You get a love of scripture and a wanting to know the Bible and read the Bible and study the Bible and practice the Bible.

I mean, you get that from his teachings, especially his early ones. And let's don't just be a Christian. Let's be the best Christian we can be. Let's pray, let's fast. Let's look for the second advent.

I mean, he did not want to be just a stick in the mud, boring Christian or Christian minister. Neither do I want to be that. Neither should any of us want to be that.

That kind of message is wonderful to hear, but it's those particular points. And then when you codify that into your own, well, now here, this is our denomination. Now, we don't believe in denominationism, but we are our own denomination system.

We don't believe in a final authority beyond scripture, right? But we have Dr. Freeman. And if he ever said anything, like he outlawed hunting in one of his last messages, if he ever says anything that...

is above and beyond scripture, we're going to follow what? Scripture? No. No. We're going to follow the Pope, the Pope of faith assembly. So all these little things we don't believe in, they brought it into their own church. Whenever they he was very opposed to the church being an organization and I understand that and I appreciate that. In the New Testament, the analogy Paul gives, the basic one is a body, a human body, that we are the body of Christ. So we are an organism, we are not an organization and he stressed that and part of that is healthy and part of that

is valid, that we're not a business corporation organization. We should be a living body where all of the members in our body are all in loving support and relationship to one another. That's all good. But as they practiced it, they had a list of 10 requirements to be in fellowship with faith assembly. That's your doctrinal statement. You can say we don't have any doctrinal statement, we don't have membership here because membership to them was you're on a church role and that's filed in an office somewhere. We don't believe in church membership. We're a living organism here,

but we have our list of 10 requirements to be in fellowship with faith assembly and you have to agree with these 10 requirements and it would be things like pray for the ministry, support the ministry financially, listen to the two tapes on the restoration of the biblical roles of husband and wife, read the charismatic body ministry book, they had their own list and one of the things on the list, you can't criticize the ministry. Touch not mind anointed and do my prophets no harm.

So you just find just this ridiculous absurd contradictions and inconsistencies throughout Dr. Freeman's ministry that were unnecessary. If he would have just stayed with this loving presentation, a general presentation of the church is an organism in the New Testament. It is not a business, financial organization. That would have been acceptable and wonderful and fine. But when you harp on these saying so harshly and you do it in such an exclusive way, we don't have any of this crap if I can use that word. We don't have any of this in our church. We're pure church.

We're an undefiled church. We're not like the other churches out there and then you have the exact same things. You just call them something different. Then I'll play the card hypocrite. That's hypocrisy to do that. You know, let's don't criticize.

whose people for doing that, and become a Pharisee of all Pharisees, and find ways we can bring it into our own midst. And I don't mean it in an unloving spirit at all, but you could not out Pharisee, Dr. Freeman.

He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and you could not out Pharisee him. He would have rules in some of which were pretty good rules, but then he would invent ways around them, such as the healing, you know, you can't wear eyeglasses, you can't use insulin, you can't go to the dentist, even a broken bone.

You don't use medical science, you don't use crutches. If you're sick, get up out of the bed, act your faith and be healed. That's what he taught, but what did he practice? He had a short right leg called Bipolio when he was 16 months old.

And so rather than limp like this, he's got a shoe with a lift in it where he only has a slight limp. Now you tell me, an honest Christian person, you tell me the difference between wearing that shoe with a lift in it for his limp, while he's waiting for the healing of his polio to be manifested, you tell me the difference between that and someone putting on a pair of eyeglasses while they're waiting for their poor vision, healing to be manifested.

Those are the problems, John, that we've got in our background with Hobart and Faith Assembly that have made just some of the common people out there who aren't ministers, who don't have all this fancy education, but who have some streak sense, who've made them hopping mad as they look back on this mess they came from saying, why did I ever believe all of this mess?

Because not only was it in these regards, number one, wrong, but number two, it was filled with contradictions and inconsistencies. You know, it's really odd because it's not really just William Brannum that Hobart apparently copied for the framework of his cult.

Brannum was indoctrinated in the way of John Alexander Dowey. He was trained by Gordon Lindsay, who was born in Dowey's cult and he was trained doctrineally by FF Bosworth, who was a strong leader in Dowey's cult.

And the interesting part here is that Dowey had the same exact doctrines towards medicine. No medicine, you're not allowed it. No, all medical sciences of the devil, he would say. You can go, you can find newspaper articles and even his own writings that declare this.

And then when FF Bosworth taught it to Brannum, the government had kind of stepped in, you can't really deny people their help, even in religion. And so Brannum had to tame it down and then Hobart, decided to challenge that rule, and he carried Dowie's torch, really is what he did.

But you know, you're talking about the men who were in it and the way they defended. I actually feel a little bit sorry for them, including Hobart Freeman, because when you examine these types of personality cults, the cult leader usually has some sort of a mental health disorder. At minimum, they have narcissistic personality disorder, but sometimes there's other complications with this. And whenever people are assimilated into this, and they adopt the cult identity, sometimes they take on those personality traits, and you can go look this up on the internet, it's called cult personality disorder. There are different

medical terms for what you get whenever you're in these types of cults. And it's very similar if you're talking to a person who has the cult personality disorder or somebody who has a severe mental health issue, rational thought does not engage. And I encounter time and time again when people write into me, I usually respond to everyone who writes, and they'll start with a boisterous claim by their cult leader, often it's William Brannum, because that's my website. But they'll give the claim without the proof of the claim, because these cult leaders, Hobart Freeman included, they often wanted to make claims such that you

had to prove it didn't happen, which is much, much harder than proving that it did. And so they would say, well, here's the claim prove that it didn't happen. And then whenever you supply all of that evidence, I'll just use a generic example. Brannum claimed that Enoch lived 500 years on earth and walked with Noah, and therefore Enoch represented the elite church of Brannum's cult that got raptured away to the sky, while Noah was doomed to suffer the tribulation, because he was an imperfect vessel. Even though the Bible said that Noah was the most righteous person on the face of the planet, well, prove it didn't

happen. It's really hard. You can't go back and prove, but as you supply the evidence that really suggests that's not true. In this case, the Bible clearly says Enoch lived only 365 years on earth. Well, when you give that response, they go back in a circle back to, yes, but the prophet said this, prove it didn't happen. And they've just totally ignored the whole rest of your conversation. So you enter this loop that never ends. And I've learned, in my engaging with people who have the cult personality disorder, I'll go two times through the loop. And that's it. I'll just say, well, it's nice talking to you and

you move on. I mean, what else can you do? They've disengage rational thought. And I feel sorry for them because in many cases, is they really can't help it. They're not even aware that they have this disorder, but it is a disorder.

But anyway, we're a, we're an hour into this and we're probably not even halfway through the stuff that you have. So let's end it here and let's go to, let's come back again next time and we'll go through part two. So much more to tell and I'm so interested to get to it. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org.

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 and his message. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.