Faith Assembly: Rules Based Salvation - With Chino Ross

Hello, welcome to another episode of the William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Branum.org, and with me I have my co-host, minister, and friend, Chino Ross, pastor, and the voice of the understanding, scripture, and truth by Chino D. Ross, YouTube channel. In Chino, last week we were getting into the irony of the year 1984 and the book 1984, and the comparison of the similarities between that dystopian world and future that was created for the cult, which I, you know, looking back, I see humor in many things that I probably shouldn't. I see the humor in the

irony of that, but what we're talking about today is the other side of that. While it can be humorous, the dystopian future is very bleak for the people who are living it. So what we're getting into today is the results of that dystopian future that was being created, and I have to say it not only does it match the world that I escaped, it also matches every single other cult as it progresses to the end of their destructive nature that I've examined so far. When it turns from cult of personality into destructive cult, bad things happen. Yes, John, you're

so right. You know, I have continued to hear from a lot of these wonderful ex-members of faith assembly, and I can't say that all the ex-members are wonderful, but I think that the ones I hear from are wonderful. That's probably just the people that want to reach out. I think our podcast are doing something and making a difference in people's lives. But one of the men told me a story from the tent days. The tent would have been in 1978 as they were leaving the glory barn and going to the new building. But Dr. Freeman had preached a message, I don't

remember what it was about, and had given his normal stories to back it up and biblical references. And afterwards, this man went up. He was excited about what Dr. Freeman had taught, because I think in his own personal life, he'd just been studying that. So he had this great passage he wanted to share with Dr.

Freeman, you know, kind of like a confirmation, you know, the Holy Spirit. It's working on both ends. He gave you this message and I've been studying this and here's the passage that would have been a great passage for you to use in your message, but of course Dr. Freeman didn't use it.

Dr. Freeman gave dressing for suggesting that he might have forgotten or left out a major text that would have been supportive of the message. And then in the next message when Hobart got behind the pulpit, then he used that guy as pulpit bait and said, now who out there really thinks that God would set up in this pulpit, a five-fold minister who's trained and anointed by the Holy Spirit and then send someone up afterwards out of the audience to correct him.

And I just thought, I mean, if anything, that would should have made a minister bless that you've got a member of the congregation listening to what you're saying. I mean, they're really following along and they've got a supportive text to contribute to the background of your whole story.

And rather than receive that in humility, he beat the guy down and then beating down again from the pulpit in the next message, which you know, you and I know what this does. This sends that warning signal to everyone out there.

There's a separation between you and I, touch not mind anointed and do my prophets no harm. And I just hear this over and over and over in the people that are corresponding with me regarding their past with faith assembly.

And it's not a new topic with Dr. Freeman. And it was with Brannum, it's with all of these groups that you were discussing, John, it's with every call. And it's just the bully pulpit, you know, they're, I'm in the pulpit.

And you know, the thing is because they own the platform, you know, then they own the audience. And as I said before, I give you this symbol right here, it should got to hit a bully in the mouth.

And I don't mean physically because Dr. Freeman was an elderly man and he had a handicap and you would have knocked the poor soul off the stage. Plus you'll get arrested for doing it.

Plus it's un-Christian to go hit somebody in the mouth. But you know, if you don't do this to these guys, they are just going to continue to do this. Am I right? Absolutely. But for me, the pen is truly my dear than the sword.

So I take a different strategy than the mouth. The problem is I have trouble verbalizing many of my thoughts, but I can type them out pretty accurately. And I just, you know, one of the things that I've learned in doing what I do is that there is power in what is called crap.

outsourcing. I don't know if you're familiar with this term, but crowdsourcing, you put an idea out there and your idea may be good, but it's even better when you bring in the collaboration of the ideas of others and in doing so, often you find flaws with your own idea.

So I put all the information out on my website and it's almost like it's crowdsourced because people will give me feedback where I'm right, where I'm wrong, and I correct it if it's a blatantly wrong erroneous statement.

Sometimes I will put and you can look through the blog and you can see these, but apology and correction I said such and such and it turns out that part was not true. The trouble I have is that the cults publish information that is not true.

So I often get trapped in that stumbling block because I only see the information as it's presented and half the time, maybe even more than half the time, the cults of portrayed a false version of their histories.

And as I try to understand it, it just leads me down wrong paths. But for these cults, it's the opposite of crowdsourcing. They do not want any feedback whatsoever, whenever they're wrong, they've projected the idea upon the members that they cannot be wrong because they're divinely inspired by God.

And if they say something wrong, then that must imply that God is wrong. So they have to suppress it, they cannot, they can't crowdsource it. And if you look at the model that's been created, it's just so flipped upside down that not only is anti-biblical, it's just for lack of a better way to say it, it's pretty stupid.

Yes, and I am not talking about physically hitting somebody. I don't think I've hit anybody in the mouth in 50 years, but I did hit somebody before I was a Christian, and maybe that's where my whole beginning to this bully.

You know, I think bullies inherently John are, they're insecure, and they're easily intimidated. And so they have to find some way to mask that. So I remember my story, maybe that's why I'm always giving you this symbol.

No, don't go hit anybody in the mouth, please. But I just know that pastors are, they're not going to check themselves into pastoral rehab. You're going to have to do it for them. The ministers, under them, the people, around them, the congregation in general, somebody is going to have to do something about it.

When I was in middle school, I know what this goes back to, and probably why I use this so often in middle school, I think I was in the seventh grade. And as in every school, there were bullies.

I was not one of them. I was just a normal kid, but there were bullies. And there was one particular bully. I remember his name was Leroy Cox, and he was always bullying me for...

reason and you know you just tolerated and that's what I don't want people under the sound of our voices to do. Don't tolerate this from these Christian religious ministers. I just tolerated it. But I remember one day walking down the hall the bell had rung school was out this was um middle school junior high school the seventh grade. I've got a friend beside me his name was David Parnell. I've got my book bag on my back and we're just walking down the hall going headed out the door to to um get picked up by parents. Parents are coming around the school parking lot

the pickup line to be picked up and this guy Lee Roy and his friends were behind me just pushing and pushing and pushing and that's that's an analogy of what I see these Christian ministers doing.

They're going to push these church leaders and see how far you'll let them bully you around and how much you'll let them get away with and you got to stop it. So I'd had enough of that you know and so as soon as we walked out the door and we're outside of the school premise and we're out on a we're actually out on a little patch of grass man I dropped my book bag and I turned around I said let's do it and I started slinging fist and um and they had to pull us apart you know

parents had to get it out of the cars and come up there and pull us apart but you know what I saw I saw a fascinating life lesson in that an absolutely lifelong lesson in that is that that boy and his friends never bullied me again because they knew they couldn't get away with it. I got in some good hits man I was pretty athletic and I was going after him like a wild cat and the life lesson is you stand up to someone because here's the thing if you don't abuse doesn't doesn't decline it doesn't follow a straight path that always accelerates you can look at child

abuse you can look at abuse and the marriage you got some woman showing up at work she's got a black eye it's her husband her boyfriend is not going to get better over time he's going to get worse so if left unchecked and the people around the ministers are the ones who need to check it but you check it no not by getting into a fist fight with them but you check it by recognizing that the normal boundaries of pastoral authority have been exceeded pastoral authority is there for love and for patience and gentleness to lead your people like a parent would lead a child

and the cult mentality always exceeds that boundary and like I said earlier they're not going to check themselves into pastoral rehab They're going to need the help of the people around them to bring that to their attention.

And as I looked at Faith Assembly just over, let's say the 10-year period, John, that we have looked at, say from Glory Barn in 1974 to Hobart's death in 1984, there was just an interesting evolution in the temperature of the church and of the people in the church.

It went from hot, from on fire, from hot, from warm to cool to cold. I remember when my wife and I went to Faith Assembly years and years ago, the people there were so warm and friendly and engaging.

I even remember a couple of young women, they were unmarried at the time. One's name was Ruth and I'm trying to think of the other one, Nancy. Nancy and Ruth, I wish they would be out there in YouTube land somewhere.

We're renting a house together up in Goshen. We just showed up at Faith Assembly, no place to stay. We were just there to visit, but the congregation, the people there, could be so warm and so loving.

The early days, they could spot an outsider, a regular attendee quickly, and they would just welcome you with open arms. You need a place to stay. We stayed up at their house with them in Goshen, had a wonderful time.

By the time we get to 1984, they can also spot an outsider. They can also spot someone who is not a regular member there and you're shunned and you're criticized and if not shunned and criticized, at least you're looked upon with suspicion.

Because are you a media member? Are you a critic? Do you agree with everything? Have you signed the faith assembly as the end time ministry of God document? Are you going to obey 1 Corinthians 1, 10?

Have you read the list of 10 requirements for fellowship with faith assembly? You know, who are you here? The whole climate of the church had changed over a 10-year period. What's that due to?

Who are you? It's not due to the people. It's due to that type message that is just constantly wanting to put people in bondage over all kinds of things that were just so unnecessary.

And I know it's difficult. You deal with this all the time, John. I deal with it some of the time. Let me just parenthetically say, as I was listing, do you give your introduction today?

How many hundreds of times have you given that introduction? Do you wake up in the middle of the night and that is just coming out of your mouth? How many times have you given that introduction?

So congratulations to you that you can just keep on doing this. But, you know, we deal with people in coming out of... these situations, and it's next impossible to get people in a call to be willing to listen to the facts. It takes a lot of love. It takes a lot of patience. It takes a command of the facts.

It takes the crowdsourcing, as you have just shared with us, because they are so afraid. They've been taught not only if they listen to something outside their group, if they even entertain the idea, the possibility that maybe they're leaders wrong, that maybe they are wrong, they even entertain that, that brings serious fear into their life.

And the people that I have talked to, I talked to someone in a message church on in Ohio. He said he's a still part of a message church, but the reason he had called me, he said, but we always used to also attend the Freeman satellite groups. So he said, there was a lot of back and forth between William Bran, a message church, at least where he was in Ohio, and Freeman groups, but he also told me he had lived in Louisville for a while. So I guess it's true in Kentucky as well.

But you know, you don't have to leave these groups yesterday. You don't even have to leave today. All we're asking is that people just listen to the history and listen to the facts. And if you're happy, where you are, more power to you. You know, no one's twisting anybody's arm to do anything, to believe anything, but the people in these groups, whenever they hear what we're saying, they go down this list. I've watched this happen, John. They go down this list and they say, well, that's not what Hobart really said. So we give, you know, time stamps. Yes, or you play

the clip. Yeah, that is exactly what he said. Well, that's not what he meant. Again, the time stamp, you can hear it in its context. Well, you took him, you took him out of context. Again, there's, you know, they're always looking for, well, he didn't really say that the other ministers under him.

They're the ones who taught that. Or none of them really said that it's a people in the church took the message that Hobart was trying to give. They took it too far. You just hear this never end of excuses. Instead of saying, why not just throw up your hands and just pause for a moment and say that actually is what he taught. That actually is what he believes. Now, what do you believe?

What do you have to say about that? It's fair enough. What do you? You are a human being. You're going to have to stand before God Almighty like all of us will and answer for your own beliefs, not for Chenot's beliefs or John's beliefs or Hobart's beliefs.

you're going to have to answer for your own. And that should give some kind of freedom to the people. Let's at least listen to what's being said. And guess what? At the end of the day, you can always reject it. After you've heard the facts, you can always say, I choose to stay where I am, but at least you've had an honest intellectual approach to what it is we're talking about.

I had this conversation just this morning with the guy. The problem is that whenever you're in one of these destructive groups, the leader always has some claim that they have an edge on doctrine and scripture that others do not have. And they will often brand other people who are doing the same thing as heretics because they have a slightly different view of interpretation of these extra biblical doctrines. And the funny part is, in many cases, they're the same, but they're different variations or different levels of the same heresies. And so you have one leader who's literally saying the same thing as another leader, but it comes out in a different set of

rules or doctrines, etc. And so they brand themselves as being different than the other heretic. But to the people who are indoctrinated by one specific leader, they see it as a dividing line in the sand. No, we're different than the other cult group. And it's, it gets kind of funny because I've had, you've probably seen it, but mostly positive feedback about the Hobart Freeman episodes, except for the casual person who comes on and says, but you're comparing it to Brannum. And this isn't Brannumism. And the framework that was laid by Brannum in the latter-ane movements that

enabled all of this, yes, they had slightly different variations on doctrine, but if you take a step back, it, it gives me the mental image of, you know, five or 10 guys that are standing in this big bed of mud. And one's holding up a twig, one's holding up a knife, one's holding up a, I don't know, a wallet. And they're all saying, no, I'm different than that other guy because I'm holding up my badge, my wallet. And they're all standing in the same mud. They don't recognize that they're all in the same mud. But when you're indoctrinated in these groups, you can't see the

difference because you have been manipulated to think that your heresy is much better than the other heresy. I saw several things in the fall of 1984. This time period that we're talking about, John, that we're concerning for me back then. And I think that they were part and parcel of the calls of Dr. Freeman's downfall. So I thought maybe today we'd just address one or two of these. We'll see how far we can get. But just a couple of things if people are wondering, what actually happened? Because they're what was a lot of good, and I'll be the first to say that.

There was a lot of good at the beginning of the history of faith assembly and the glory barn. Now, I'll just hasten to say they had erroneous doctrine. They had manifested sons. They had Gideon's army.

They had first fruit rapture. They had all kinds of things, but I mean, there's no minister or church or ministry that has everything perfectly nailed down and perfectly right. It a lot has to do with the attitude that the people have that you just must remain humble and honest and hungry, and then God can bring you past some of those things and bring you into more light.

But one of the things that I would say that I witnessed in the years leading up to 1984, but especially the summer and most definitely the fall of 1984 was that Hobart began to slip, but I would say slip mentally.

I'm not talking about Alzheimer's. He wasn't crazy or anything like that, but I definitely saw a slip mentally. He sincerely believed that the end was just around the corner.

He was teaching in a series in Exodus, and the thrust of that message in his series on Exodus was as God delivered Israel from Egypt, so he is getting ready to deliver faith assembly from all of our persecution.

And he just had gotten to the place that he was believing all of his own rhetoric too much. And because he had gone unchecked and unchallenged, he felt he could continue down this path.

I think he thought his time to speak was growing shorter and look at all that the congregation had let him get away with so far. That's my point that I was mentioning earlier. These pastors, these ministers are not going to check themselves into rehab.

It's going to have to come from some kind of outside source. You know, there's going to be sin on their part that gets discovered and that brings her downfall or it's going to be peeped and that normally, if we look at the last what, 12 months, 24 months, that normally is how it happens.

Sin is uncovered and that brings the downfall. But why do we have to get to that point? Why can't some intelligence and what can a group of people prevail prior to that? So I saw Hobart slipping mentally, just going down this rabbit trail, almost like he had run out of different things to say, run out of things that were interesting to him to say and just coming up with new things to say.

And I've also heard this, I've heard it, yeah, 40 years ago, but I heard it from people recently. I heard it from some of the people that were in the satellite group up in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area, where Jim Brennan was the circuit minister that went there. One of the people there said, you know, Chenot by the end, by 1994, or I'm sorry, 1984, by the end, those of us who were on what they call the automatic tape mailing list, as soon as Hobart's tapes were ready, they were just sent out automatically.

Those people didn't have to specifically order them. They were on the list that whenever, whenever a new batch of tapes from Dr. Freeman were ready, you'd be getting them because you're already signed up on the list. We'll bill you for them. He said that it got to the place that we're sitting on the edge of our couch waiting for the new group of tapes to come in.

And I know this is true because I heard people saying this and living this lifestyle back then, he said, we'd race through the tapes looking for what the new sin that we need to get rid of out of our life was. You know, it's just like we've already heard everything. This is all old news.

It's same faith message, same healing message. But oh, now you can, you have to go back in your childhood days from your parents, find out what the name of the medication was. You were given after you had your tonsils removed because that name represents a demon that gained entrance into your life. And now you've got to get rid of this demon. So yeah, they would sit around race through the messages and try to find what's the new thing we have to give up.

And it's like a badge of honor. He had trained them to think in order to go deeper, in order to keep going deeper with the Lord, we've got to uncover more sin in your life. Things that you have never thought of, things that's never crossed your mind. And I, as God's prophet, will help you do this. We've got to uncover those deep, deep sins in your life, sins that go back years ago. Things you have never even thought about. And what do we have on our hands is pathetic, pathetic works religion, where everything is just works generated. I guess everybody

really is a little Catholic at heart. If we could just have a rosary to pray, if I had X number of steps I could crawl up on my knees, if I could just beat myself enough times, I can get sin out of my life. And, you know, I'll be ready for the rapture. And I'll tell you what, Dr.

Freeman was pretty good at this coming up with things that nobody else had thought of. I've often said, you couldn't outfair us. Dr. Freeman. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. You could not out Pharisee him. Some of the other ministers would try to come up with a little twist on something, but couldn't out Pharisee him. Dr.

Freeman was Pharisee of the Pharisees. And I've often wondered too, John, why? There were so many things left untalled and left unsaid. There's so much in the Bible and 66 books of the Bible.

There is such a depth and richness there that we have not plumbed yet. Why? Except you just think you already know it all and you're just bored and you've run out of things to say. He literally to me at the end of his life, he's slipping mentally because he really, in his own mind, thinks that I have, he thinks I have run out of things to say. And so let's let's look for deeper deliverance and discernment. Those were messages he taught that were just some of the most helter, sculptor, harem, scarom, hairbrained things where he was trying to be a professional

psychiatrist, psychologist with no professional training to back that up. Yeah. You know, sometime ago I was out on a business trip in California and I was in, I think it was San Jose. And they had the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts in San Jose.

And I'm fascinated with Egyptian history and mythology. So I had to make a detour and go see it. And I got there and it was a Rosa Crucian Museum. And so I got in there and it's the Egyptian artifacts, but it's with the Rosa Crucian themes. And I knew nothing about Rosa Crucians or anything like this.

So I was, I believe at that time I had just recently escaped the message. But as I'm in there and I'm learning about this secret society that's got all these Egyptian artifacts and why they have them, I suddenly realized, I'm at home, man, this is just like the cult I escaped, but as much, it's a different branding, you know, and I know people will see it as different than that, but that's what was going through my head. But it drove me down the path of studying the influence of pagan religions and Christianity, which led me down the path we've talked before about

the mystery cults and how all that formed. And what happens is you get some guy who has a convert to Christianity, doesn't have sound theology, brings in pagan ideas and says, I have the way, and it's better than all those other people who call themselves Christians. They're, they're just casual Christians who don't care, but I care, brother. And so they join in and with boisterous claims that they can bring you closer to God by their extras.

stuff. And what happens is the people don't get closer to God. So they bring new extra stuff. And this turns into a never-ending cycle. I wish I could remember the name, but there's one nostic group that history has spared us from them, because it escalated to the point where they actually taught that sex and procreation was evil. And they needed to stop that if they wanted to ascend into the heavens. So this group died out and they don't exist anymore.

But it's that way in these mystery cults. And make no mistake, Hobart Freeman, William Brannum, many of the laterane and its plenary groups, they're all mystery cults. They believe that they had a special edge that you're not going to get just simply by reading your Bible.

It's your Bible and. So if you're in the Hobart Freeman cult, it's the Bible and what Hobart Freeman says or the Brannum cult same thing. You can literally go down every single cult known to man. And that's what they're doing. And you know, like I said, the really stupid example of the man standing in the mud until you realize that it's all the same framework and they're all doing the same thing with just slight variations of the same thing. You're still going to be stuck in it. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern

Pentecostalism, transition through the laterane, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website www.William-Brannum.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. So you hear of groups that have their list of do's and don'ts. Faith Assembly just had a list of don'ts. You know, they just did not have very many do's at all. They had their list of don'ts.

It's almost like Faith Assembly survival kit that as long as you don't do these things, just as you just explained, John, as long as you don't do these things, then you have a pretty good chance of getting into heaven. And no, of course, Hobart never presented it that way. But it's said between the lines. And before I go over, I'm just going to give a little brief list of don'ts because the people who followed Faith Assembly's ministry will...

recognize and appreciate and hopefully smile at and laugh at a lot of this. But I had a conversation, it's been about a week ago, John, with a woman who is a daughter of a pastor. It was a faith assembly, satellite group, and she was the daughter of that pastor. And we had a great conversation. She was wonderful. But somewhere towards the end of that conversation, she stopped me and said, Cheno, I've got a question to ask you. I was shocked by the question, but oh, did it hit home as to all the things that I have been saying since you and I first began this with these podcasts.

She said, I have a question. Do you think, Cheno, that we were ever preached the gospel?

And I said, you know what? And I won't say her name. You know, these people still have family connections all over the place. You don't want to cause anybody any more trouble or grief than they already have. But I said, look, sister, as far as the orthodox doctrines of Christianity, Hobart Wu, he was in the tradition of the virgin birth from the substitutionary atonement and the inerrancy of scripture, salvation by grace through faith alone. Jesus is the only way to the father, John 14. As far as those doctrines are concerned, he was most definitely traditional,

conservative, and orthodox. But go back to your question to preach the gospel. I said, you heard the gospel of Hobart frame in most of the time and not the gospel of Jesus Christ. And what Hobart would say, and I've talked about this before, those are just John 3, 16 people.

You know, those are just people who have gotten saved. We're going to go further. You can't go any further than being a child of God. There's nothing greater that you can ever have, no gift in your life that's any greater than the new birth, right? I mean, there's nothing greater than that. So these lists of things that people are given, that's not going to help you any at all. So I told her, I said, no, no, you probably have not been raised on a regular diet of the good news. And that's all gospel. The word translated gospel is you on Gleon in the Greek and that what that really

means, it's translated gospel, but the meaning of it is the good news. And it's what Christ has done for us. It's from his birth to his life, to his death, to his burial, to his resurrection, to his ascension. It's what he has done for us. And if people say, well, I'm already saved. Well, to whom do you think most of Paul's epithets...

were written to, but Christian churches. They're written to Christian churches all over the Mediterranean world. And what is Paul sharing with them in the Pauline epistles, but the gospel of Jesus Christ, because you can never hear that often enough of what God has done. And it is a work of God and a work of his sovereign grace that he has done on our behalf. Do we have responsibilities to make our calling an election sure, to walk out our salvation with fear and trembling? Of course, we do. But it is God who works in us, both to will and to do of his good pleasure. God has to be the

one behind that all along. So I thought it was a very revealing, honest question. I was brought up in church. Have I ever even heard the gospel? What I heard was no media and no doctors and know this and know that it was a list of don'ts. And it was definitely not a list of do. So here's just a little brief list, John, of some of the of some of the major don'ts. I'll start with Christmas. And then Christmas became Easter, became how it became all of the holidays. And then it actually went on from that that I couldn't believe and became birthdays. And I don't know what the

connection except birthdays. You're just you're glorifying your child too much. It's going to create the child centered home. You're putting too much emphasis on your child. You're spoiling your child. So it actually worked from Christmas all the way down to birthdays. Now look, I'll say I don't celebrate Christmas. I haven't celebrated Christmas in 50 years because I do think it's a pagan holiday.

But I don't ever measure on that. If I if I wondered has not celebrating Christmas made me better than a fellow believer who does celebrate Christmas, all I've got to do, John, is take one look at my life. That's all I've got to do. That's all any honest person has to do.

You really saying I don't celebrate Christmas and haven't my entire life. But do I think that has made me better than someone else? All I've got to do is look at my own life and say, nope, nope, that did not make me better. Nope. So it was it was one of their main don'ts and it's what they became known for. And that's what I'm saying. One sign of a cult is you will become known for the things that you don't do. You will become known for the things that make you a weirdo.

Yeah, I'm a little weird for not celebrating Christmas and I have good reasons. I do think it's a pagan holiday. But if somebody else wants to celebrate, it's not going to keep them out of the kingdom of God.

And me not celebrating it hasn't given me an extra life in eternity or an extra year in eternity, it's just something that I have chosen to do. And I can remember John in the early, maybe even in the late 70s, definitely the early 80s.

Christmas had become a big no-no, and I'm okay if you don't want to celebrate Christmas. I've just said 10 times, I don't celebrate Christmas. But what I didn't, what I, the path I never went down, never, ever, ever, I saw them.

Okay, you don't celebrate Christmas then. What about those delicious desserts that come out around Christmas time? The Santa Claus cookies and the reindeer cupcakes. Oh no, you can't have any of that. You eat one of those, you'll pick up a demon.

And I was always glad they wouldn't eat them because they just left more for me. Because it didn't bother me one bit. And I had read my New Testament. Paul could literally eat meat that had just been sacrificed to Aphrodite.

Had just been sacrificed to an idol. Because Paul said an idol is nothing, there's one God. And that's it. An idol is nothing, it's a stone statue. If Aphrodite is not hungry enough to eat that piece of meat, I mean, I am, I'll eat it.

That is true freedom and Christianity. It's something that faith assembly just didn't have. Because they were tall, this cult mentality, Christmas is bad. Okay, maybe Christmas is bad, you know, maybe it is. But what are you going to do with that now that you think Christmas is bad?

What are you going to do with that? See, for me, I'm the opposite example. We celebrate Christmas. And I have yet to find an instance where celebrating Christmas has made me a bad person.

And see, you went to the food example. I always go back to the rest of that verse. It says, and don't let them stop you from a new moon or a festival. Well, if you understand the history of how the pagan holiday did merge with the Christian religion, et cetera, if you understand why and how that happened, Paul is saying there, don't, you know, it's okay if you don't celebrate, but don't stop Christians from celebrating the new moons and the festivals and the things that the pagan's worship, we can, we can celebrate too.

There's nothing that stops our celebration. But there are things that, there are things that cults do that go above and beyond that that should be mentioned because the brand of cult was the same way.

Don't celebrate Christmas. We had a grand, a grand celebration of holiday lights when we left the brand of cult just because of their anti-Christmas doctrine. And what goes with that doctrine is they will tell you falsely what those who aren't in the cult.

perceive as their celebration, they will tell you that they know that they're worshipping the demon, they know it is not a Christian holiday, and they go into all of these rants against people who are truly Christian people who are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, right?

But they'll tell you falsely that these people are, they're like a mystery cult that's worshipping the devil. That's basically what it comes down to. And it goes so far above and beyond that, when you extend that into it, many of the other things that a cult will do to create an us versus them mentality. It's just one attribute of the us versus them mentality. So you and I, John, are good opposite examples of the same principle. So what you have just told everyone is you don't know how celebrating Christmas has made you a worse Christian. And I have said, I don't know how

not celebrating Christmas has made me a better Christian. I mean, we're saying the same thing, right? But I mean, it's just, I mean, look, the original Brannum tabernacle from which all of this that we're talking about developed had the pentagram above the door. In my opinion, the pentagram above the door of your church is worse than celebrating Christmas. Oh, man, you know, I wish it was part of me. I really don't part of me wishes it was is that getting to heaven and being approved by God was as easy as the cults make it out to be just you got a dozen things don't do. I can get rid of those

if I can be go to heaven forever. Yeah. I mean, part of me wishes it was as easy, but that's just not the way it is. This is this is not Christianity. Paul said to celebrate a day, not celebrate a day to eat him. He said to his own master, he stands or falls. So who were you to judge another? Some people celebrate a day, some people don't. Some people cannot eat a Christmas cookie and some of us, some of us can. So that was one of the big things. Television, you know, you can own a television

said it's called trashy vision TV trashy vision. And, you know, Hobart, at least, and they're good points on not owning or not watching a television, but there's plenty that you can see on it. Hobart at least owed them the explanation of why and I could pull the references on his earlier messages why he had a television earlier. He at least owes them an explanation of that.

Barring money, you weren't allowed to borrow money. Romans 13, 8, oh no man anything. And so that put people in just such a, because people would say, well, how can I buy a decent car?

Definitely, how can I buy a home? Hobart said Romans 13, 8 says you can't do it, oh no man, anything but to love him, but that's not the context of that passage and we're not going to sat down. That's just a ridiculous interpretation of that. The whole context of Romans 13, Hobart though would gladly say and boastfully say, you know, just trust God like me. And that's why I have a home.

No, Hobart. The reason you have a home is you have thousands of followers who contribute to your ministry and the rest of us don't. That nothing do with God blessing you. It has to do with the sheer science of mathematics. The sheer science of mathematics with the number of people you have and the offerings going into the box. That's why you can afford a home. But it kept people in, you know, financial straits, insurance. You need Psalm 91 asherance, no insurance because insurance is a confession of doubt. It's a preparation for what might happen wrong. You know, the only people

that buy insurance are the ones who are afraid of what might happen. So you're not allowed to have insurance. You can see me bubbling over. I've got to stop you there. So you're reading the rules from Brannum's playbook. Every single thing that you've mentioned was core message theology, but especially the insurance. Brannum went on and on about how some insurance salesman came to him and he says, but I have assurance. I don't need insurance. And that was a core Brannum doctrine that you're talking about. And and Psalm 91 was just a favorite passage of faith assembly.

Hobart always boasted about the fact that every morning he gets up and claims Psalm 91 and he claims Psalm 103 that God would renew his youth like the eagle and take all sickness away from him.

You know, you got to look back 40 years later. He didn't renew his youth and he didn't take all sickness. So something's not working right right there. But they always use the word assurance instead of insurance. I don't need insurance because I have insurance. So no insurance on the vehicles. Then that then you have to take the next step. Got to cut the seat belts out of the car which they did. You couldn't wear seatbelt because that's saying if I'm in an accident, which I'm not going to be in because I've claimed Psalm 91. But if I am in an accident,

this seatbelt is going to protect me from going through the windshield. So now we need to cut the seat belts out. And then it would go to the next step of what you can't lock your doors to your car or then. And then you can't lock the doors to your house. What are you saying when you lock?

I mean, Hobart taught these very things. Now he was inconsistent. I remember a message on this locking door business. And I even thought they're pretty inconsistent there because he said that one time he had a valuable camera laying on the front seat of the car. So he locked the door because he did want to make it easy for a thief. Well, you're confessing that a thief is going to come along and see it and try to steal it. So I thought that was inconsistent on his part. But if you're going to start with this assurance, where are you ever going to stop? Well, you know, where are you going

to draw the line? So a lot of them didn't, John. No insurance on anything. They lost cars. I know someone that said that they had been given a new car. No insurance, a week later wrecked it.

So there goes that car. No insurance on your house. Well, of course, you can't have a house because you can't borrow money and you don't have money to buy a house and pay cash for it. One type, I remember Hobart saying when someone raised that objection, what about a house? He said, well, you know, you can, there are other ways about it, dear friends. There are other ways around this.

You can always build a house one room at a time. Well, I've been in the building industry my whole life. That's not how you build a house. You have to pour a foundation. You have to frame the house. You have to put a roof on it. You have to put shingles on. Then you have to either wrap it with house wrap with tie vac or whatever kind of siding and put windows indoors in. Now you can borrow and stop a money. But no, you can't build one room at a time. I mean, that's, I mean,

what idiot would say, well, yeah, you can build one room at a time. No, that's, that's just not the way these things work. And, um, and, and another thing on the insurance, what about life insurance?

Well, Hobart was really against that. He said that only protects the survivors. That doesn't keep you alive. Okay. Are you not good with protecting the survivors? How about your wife, June Freeman? Guess what? You know, Hobart died. No life insurance. That woman's got nothing. That woman has nothing.

And I did talk to one of the ministers and they said, well, once brother Freeman passed, it was discussed. And by the way, this was definitely the right thing to do. I mean, she had been the pastor's wife for all these years. She's an elder widow. She needs to be taken care of.

But they said, you know, the, the ministry of, of the church will take care of the needs of, of sister Freeman, of June Freeman. And that's the right thing to do. But here's Hobart shirking his own personal responsibility to provide for your wife after you're gone. Well, he said, I'm never going to be gone. Well, guess what, buddy? You're gone. And you were gone. You've been gone 40 years.

And you were gone. I think June died in 1999. June was a widow for 15 years. So while Hobart was up front, bragging and boasting. And that's what he was doing. Bragging. in boasting how I won't die and I'm going to be healed, then God's going to deliver me while he's up there bragging and boasting on that, he's not making any preparation for his wife.

So I find that to be a big sign of self-centeredness and of selfishness and of not taking care of the people around you. I know why he did it because I'm not going to die.

Well, that's not good enough. That is just not good enough. All of that has proven to be false. Someone that I just talked to also this past week, John, said that her, let me just make this anonymous enough that her father who was a follower, by the way, she was born and raised in faith assembly, her follower, her father who was an ardent follower of Dr. Freeman's, a Freemanite, and a Freemanite up to the end and who has been for many, many years, a pastor of a satellite group, has been, past tense up until very, very recent times,

is bad off in physical, with physical conditions in his physical life, he is bad off because he has refused all doctors, all medication, all everything. And she shared with me the story. And after I got off the phone, we traded some text messages since then.

And I think one of the things I said to her, I said, I am so sorry to hear, first of all, just from a human perspective, I'm so sorry to hear how bad off your dad is because I don't want to see anybody suffer.

He was just, he's misguided. I mean, to this day, he's misguided. And he was deceived by Hobart Edward Freeman. So I said, I'm really sorry that he is suffering. I mean, some pretty severe physical pain that this man is in.

But I said, here's my point to you, sister, is just to show you, although she sees the light of this, to show you how this message does not work. Here's your father who's been a loyal follower for decades.

And he is dying because he's so ill. And now, listen to this, listen to this. Who is having to take care of him? So that's the problem with this message. It is an irresponsible faith in healing message.

Who is having to take, it's one thing, if you want to claim your healing and get healed so that everything is hunky-dory and everything's fine. That's great. It's also one thing, if you want to say, I believe in this healing message, I'm going to stand on it, and I will do it alone.

But guess what, it's another matter. When you want... don't let your relatives get you help because that would be leaning to the arm of the flesh. And God forbid I do that. You won't let your relatives get you help, but who is all of this burden falling on to take care of you in your declining, it's all your relatives.

It's your relative. So it's back to my same example with June having low life insurance provided by her husband for her after Hobart's death. It's the same situation of irresponsible people holding on to their cult view.

And if you want to hold on to it and die in a cave by yourself, knock yourself out. That's your life, that's your choice, that's your decision. But when you bring in other people and now you're making your whole family have to jump through hoops and rearrange schedules so that, well, I got to watch Dad today and then you gotta watch Dad tomorrow and then they've got it and then she's got to and then we've got to, you know, and the whole time the person saying, I'm gonna hold on to the healing message, look buddy,

the healing message is not working. And I know it looks like you're gonna go to your grave saying I'm holding on to the healing message, but that's what Christian science and what Freeman is, I'm teaches you, just ignore the facts, just ignore the reality.

So today is Monday, say it's Thursday, today's Sunday, say it's Tuesday, who cares? Just ignore whatever the facts are and just go on down this path but look at the people that are suffering while this is happening.

For me, it all comes down to this. This is the thing that hit me the hardest after I left the message because I had to do a lot of self-reflection afterwards. If you read the New Testament, there's a lot of don'ts that are listed and we came from a religion of don'ts and it's hard to read the New Testament from that mindset and not see it that way.

But if you really read closely, the sin that is listed the most in the New Testament is the sin of pride. And whenever you are in one of these divine healing cults and you are clinging to this false statement that you're healed, this positive confession, which is, in other words, it's a lie.

I'm not really healed, but I'm gonna say that I am. A lot of people hold on to it because there's an element of pride involved. If you admit that no, I was lying about this positive confession thing, I really do have cancer and I'm getting worse and worse.

Well, there's pride there and it's really sad because the people who have that pride are the victims of something even worse than what the minister has projected upon them, like especially the cancer cases.

But it's difficult to give up that pride. And when you do, you have to realize that the framework of the... Framework of this whole divine healing faith is built upon pride, which is, in effect, it's sinful.

And for me, when I came to that realization and came to understand that not only was I prideful in my hardcore position against even having a head cold, or having a headache, but look at the way that I treated other Christians.

I was better than them because I had the esoteric knowledge of William Branum, or, you know, if you're in the Freeman cult, it's the esoteric knowledge of Hobart Freeman. And the list goes on and on.

You can apply that to any cult. You're prideful against the other humans because you're better than them. You have the secret knowledge, or the noses, the gnostic noses. So the whole thing, for me, when I came to understand that pride was a sin in the same way of all of the other don'ts that we had, and that many of the don'ts were invented.

They weren't even biblical. Like, the television did not even exist in the days of the Bible. Now, you can find scripture about the television. It talks about, do not overindulge this kind of thing.

That applies to television. But choosing what you watch, we've talked about this. I'm a Scooby-Doo fan more than anything. I'd rather watch Hannah Barbaric cartoons than an actual human. And I remember sitting at, I was an adult liking these cartoons, right?

I remember sitting in a service and the minister was harping on those who watch television. And again, it's an us versus them mentality where they're projecting the false notion of the outsiders. And they say those other people who have the televisions, they do it because they secretly want to watch all of the naked women, or whatever it was, was their agenda.

And whenever you come back to it, I'm sitting here, I clearly remember this scene, and everybody can laugh at me if you want, but my mother-in-law sitting in the living room on the couch, my wife over here, I had a son who was, I guess he was probably two, he's in my arms.

And we're all sitting here quiet watching the television. And my mother-in-law suddenly looks over at me and says, John, I said, yeah, I can't believe. Here we are, three adults watching Winnie the Pooh.

And the irony of listening to a minister who's just harping on people who are watching television. And if I remember correctly, this was a minister who was, let's just say he liked to eat, I'll just say it like that.

And gluttony is one of the sins listed in the New Testament. So you've got all of these internal contradictions with even the people themselves that are saying it. And in the end, where I came to is much like what you said with Paul, don't let anybody tell you what you can or can't drink or what you can or can't celebrate.

It's everything within reason and look at what you're doing to see am I bettering myself or am I making myself worse. And if you're continually having a process where you make yourself better, then you're probably on the right track. So I take all things in balance and that's really where I ended up. But thank you for doing this. This was entertaining for me because it's like you're re-listing all of the rules that we had in the Brandham cults. Well, I only got through a handful. I have more so we can laugh again next time. But I'm reminded of a story of a woman this summer who called me. John,

you talked about pride. You talked a lot about pride right there. She goes way back to pre-Glory Barn Days. And here was how she got out. It's an amazing story. She said, I was in a shopping center.

She's part of Faith Assembly. She said, I'm walking along and I see this kind of homeless looking person. I don't know if they were really homeless, but not very well-dressed, just really down on their luck as it were in the world. And she said, as I walk past that person, I looked at them and thought, I'm so glad I am me and not you. And she said, I got home and got thinking about that.

Thought I just had and thought that is the most horrible fault a Christian could ever had. She said, she left Faith Assembly that week. Over her own fault that she had. And obviously, it was a thought of pride. I am glad that I am way better than you. And she was convicted of that and left Faith Assembly over that. So thank God for that. Wow, that's amazing.

This is fun. I can't wait for next time. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org.

For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponize Religion from Christian identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon, Horrible.