Breaking Free From the Shackles of Legalism - With Chino Ross

Music Hello, welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I have my co-host, minister, and friend, Chino Ross, pastor and the voice of the Understanding Scripture and Truth by Chino D. Ross, YouTube channel.

Chino, it's good to be back and talk about all things legalism. We had brief conversation before the podcast, but I grew up in a world where legalism was the code of conduct, but more than that, it was the way that you climbed the spiritual ladder to heaven. If you did not have the legalism, you could not take the first step up the wrong of the ladder to get to heaven.

You know, after you do this for, I did it for 37 years, it all goes back to exactly what the Bible says in summary in the New Testament. You cannot save yourself, but we tried. Unfortunately, and sadly, there's so many religions out there that call themselves Christianity, but they don't really look to Jesus for their salvation. They try to save themselves by the things that they do.

John, didn't you say in an earlier conversation we had that when you were growing up, you remember, and I would assume this would be at a tabernacle meeting or some kind of message meeting, hearing one old timer say to another old timer at the end of the service, yeah, the preacher man up there really beat us up today. He took us to the woodshed. He went to meddling in our private lives. Haven't I heard you make a statement like that? Yeah, I don't remember if it was on the record or off, but I clearly remember, in fact, there's very few memories that I have because of the

PTSD from the cult, but whenever I remember the building, I remember the color of the building, the doors, I remember walking out, and there's a group of men over here, and at this particular church, the men congregated in this area and the women in this other area. So I went over to, you know, be with the man, and one of them was saying, man, we sure got a good tongue lashing today, didn't we, brother? Well, I think it has to do with all of these legalisms.

Some of the folks actually thrived on that. I would hear people, not everyone, but I would hear the overcomer of the overcomers say, well, you can't be too hard on me, brother Freeman. You know, just bring it on.

Hit me as hard as you can hit me. I can take anything. Now that was not the response of everyone, but it was a response of, I think the ones who, as you said earlier, wanted to climb higher, faster.

It definitely gave you, it was a badge of honor to say I can receive anything that the pull but has to offer me. But when you listen to people saying that, I think that it, to me, and I'm no psychiatrist or psychologist, but it sounds like that's a statement made from some unbalanced people.

I suspect probably damaged from something in their background. You know, anyone who would encourage, give me more difficult things, you know? That's just not human nature. We tend to shy away from things that become too difficult for us.

So I just wonder, you know, some of these people was, was there not an experience of abuse? In there, I mean, or some kind of dysfunction or an authoritarian figure, it seems like women who have come out of an abusive relationship.

I mean, they will say themselves for some reason, you know, I gravitate toward that and they go back into that again. Some sweet soul that made a comment on one of our last podcasts together in the comment section.

I really liked what she said. I was given the example of, which has just been on YouTube of the pastor who was standing up front in his church live. Someone was recording this on a cell phone and he was trying to give his apology for an affair 20 years ago, but the young teenage girl that he'd actually raped was actually sitting there in the congregation 20 years later.

So this woman responded and said, I was in that service. That was my church. And she said, for some reason, I have been so unlucky to have been a member of four cults so far, you know, and thank God, I'm finally out of it now.

You know, it's very common. We call it revictimization. People who are in one cult, they become accustomed to the way in which the cult, not just the doctrine, but the way in which they manipulate the people.

And it becomes almost like, I don't know what it's called, but whenever a victim of abuse goes back to the abuser, it's almost like that scenario because they are under spiritual abuse. And once they leave it, they want to get under a different spiritual abuse.

It's very sad and disturbing all at the same time. But to your point, I have spent long hours trying to understand the mindset of a person who pretends to be a shepherd of Christian faith, but wants to abuse people.

Because it takes a special kind of person to want to do this. I could never do it. I want to help all people. But at the same time, I know many of the people who are doing this, and I know them personally.

I know that in fact many of them are good people, but they get behind a pulpit and they do this. And so I did a long hard study trying to understand the psyche of the people.

And I came to understand it's not so much the person or their personality. What happened over time? It became a learned method of religion. So there was a point in time in which the Pentecostal movement was just disbanding.

People were leaving it. It had kind of turned into a mess with the latarine. It splintered Pentecostalism basically in half. And then you had all of these people who were trying to just fight to keep their congregations because everybody's leaving.

And so it turned into a method of not really yet control at that time, but they were trying to place mental barriers between the outside world and their congregation because everybody's leaving. And what happened is there were children who were raised under that atmosphere.

So they were raised in a church where the church was very controlling, manipulative, very legalistic, set a bunch of boundaries and rules. Well then they began to understand that mistakenly as the Christian faith.

So they grew up, many of them became pastors and that's the way of the Christian faith to just beat your head in with the verbal abuse whenever they're behind the pulpit. Yeah, and it's counterproductive.

It's definitely not Christian based or New Testament oriented and it's nothing like Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep who just led by sacrifice, by example, by servanthood, by humility, by all the good traits that we look for.

And it's not only among the people, it's among some of the ministers too. I can think of several. This was not true of all of the quote unquote word ministers that came out from faith assembly, but there were a few.

Harry Albright can mention in these, they've all passed away. Harry Albright was one pretty well known one who was just known for, if Dr. Freeman said this, I'm gonna take it and say it a little harder.

Joe Brennan was another one, once a Hobart doctor, and they lost the building there. Joe continued to lead a little group of the Freemanites who were gonna tow the line over in the back right corner of the building.

They had a room. There was another minister that I have not mentioned his name yet, but I know his background in situation well. People will probably, when we ever get to this, will be surprised those who are from or who still live down in the deep south.

And his name was Tommy Freeman. And I'm sorry, his name was Bobby Freeman. Bobby Freeman, and he had no relationship by the way to Dr. Freeman. A Dr. Freeman's youngest daughter married a Dave Freeman, no relation until they're married.

And here's a Bobby Freeman, but I knew Bobby Freeman's pastor pretty well because the song leader from that group, which was down in the Auburn, Opalika, Alabama area, basically moved and came to a little church that I was a part of up in Tennessee at the time, became the song leader there.

So they're just all of these connections. Well, Bobby Freeman over these years, he's passed away as well, just some horrific stories of putting people in the worst kinds of bondage. And I've heard from people from Bobby Freeman's church because of these podcasts.

I think people every now and then, as I've said before, they hop online, they Google, Hobart Freeman or Faith Assembly, and they see what's new. And we're talking about 40 years later. And so I've had just some really long detail conversations, but I mean, that's just a couple of ministers, Perry Albright and Joe Brennan and Bobby Freeman, who were, I don't know their childhood, but I can only suspect that they just did not come from something that was balanced.

And I thank God, John, that I was just by God's grace, raised by two loving parents who were not in the message, who were not, who were just normal 1950s, 1960s Americans who went to work.

We were grounded, my siblings and I were just raised in a balanced, reasonable Christian home with a good mother and with a good father. And obviously had no say so in the matter, no choice over that, but I'm so thankful for that.

Part of it, I think, put me out in the world in a very naive condition because my parents didn't fight, they didn't argue, they didn't smoke, they didn't drink, they didn't do drugs, they weren't divorce and remarried.

I don't even, both my grandparents on both sides were in long, you know, time, long term forever relationships. I didn't even... know that things like drugs. I was saved early. I was converted to Christianity when I was 15.

I didn't even realize some of these things were out there. Didn't know anybody in our little neighborhood that was divorced and remarried. I mean, we're talking about the 1960s. It was just a different time in American society. I don't know the background of some of these other people and I don't blame them for their background. We're a product of wherever we came from. We're all cast in the mold of our parents, unfortunately or fortunately, as the case may be. But I've got a series of emails from someone who grew up at Faith Assembly and thought I'd read a little

excerpt here. I just listened yesterday. She said to the second episode, you did on Bruce Kenzie. And that short clip that you played where Dr. Freeman had a quote unquote prophecy that dealt with Bruce Kenzie publicly without naming him, I remember that prophecy. And it brought back memories of the fear that resulted from hearing it. I didn't know at the time who it was directed at. I was probably five years old. But I remember when Bruce left, however, I was too young to make sense of what was going on. There was a time I was older when I would listen to tape,

so I did hear many of them in my teenage years. But when it came to Dr. Freeman's teachings, I just knew that something was wrong. And I completely quit listening to any of them and got to where I never wanted to hear them again. There are too many people's lives that crashed and burned after their experience at Faith Assembly. And it seems like the people who did better, this is what we're talking about now, John, were the people who could think independently and went on to attend a more normal church and kind of left some of this stuff behind. But a lot of this generation of us

kids, she's talking about herself, who are now in our 40s and 50s. I don't think we did so well. I was 13 years old when my folks left it. And it was the time at Faith Assembly when the Kansas City prophets became the latest thing. I'm so glad that we did not get all into the deliverance ministry stuff and the prophecy stuff because it was hard enough just dealing with the faith assembly teachings. Being around this long, I've watched so many different groups that had their start from Faith Assembly teachings just implode. I cannot think of one that is truly thriving today.

So I'm so glad that you were able to actually play that clip and I've talked to so many people in the process of doing this. and although most of the time I can simply give a time stamp and actually give the quotation when they hear it in the context delivered by Dr. Freeman, this girl was five years old when she heard that. She's in her 40s or 50s now, she was five years old, said, I remember the fear. I mean, this is Moses standing up front. This is God's prophet who's the leader of this whole movement and

he's standing up there shaking his fists and threatening and prophesying thus say at the Lord, I'm going to remove your lampstand. That's terrifying for the young people that went through that, not even knowing who that was. Is that maybe me? Maybe he's seen some secret sin in my five-year-old heart and actually he's prophesying to Bruce to try to get Bruce out of there. This is a dangerous, dangerous situation. It is, I remember whenever I first began my YouTube site, I guess my website had been up for several months and then I had an original YouTube site which the cult had

has taken it down and so we've got the new leaving the message site. But when I first started my YouTube site, I was playing these clips of William Branham but because the people were so, like you said, they saw him as Moses or David or Elijah, there was this fear in actually concentrating enough to critically think about the words that are being spoken in the clips.

So I was finding clips of very, very critical information but it was his voice speaking and people were still afraid of it. One guy was out of the cult for, gosh, I think he said he was out for 20 years but he just lived in the state of limbo because of this fear. And one of the strategies that I had is if you go back and look at some of those old clips that I had, I would play this obnoxious music behind the voice. So your mind can't do both. It can't be in fear and think, well this is the

most ridiculous music I've ever heard. And so I was having like banjo tunes and all kinds of crazy comments you can imagine on that but it worked. And so this guy, he said, you know, I probably heard the tape that you're referring to a hundred times but I never really thought about what it was he said. And once he was able to snap out of that fear, then instantly the whole ball of yarn just completely unraveled. Now he can listen to the actual voice and he can understand it. It's just so far off from scripture but people who are in this, that's the other problem. Ministers who

were raised in this mess, they weren't able to critically think about the mess that they were being taught. So they're just regurg- Tating the same mess that was a good psychological ploy I guess you had john with the music to help snap them out of and wake them up I think I had I think I actually had two two separate people tell me that they Physically almost threw up when they heard that prophecy and it's probably people who had you know a long-time connection and you know to hear that and I mean it just brings everything back to you. It just brings

Exactly what the atmosphere was and as I've said before the walls were closing in on faith assembly at that time The courts were against them the media was against them the district attorney's office the the medical examiner the coroner You know everybody was against them. Hobart knew that and you know it was just creating this incredible sense of isolation and fear and you know you don't want to You know, you don't want to leave the call Because there's this huge Social component that goes along with that if you if you decide to criticize or question and end up leaving you know you've just lost all of your Christian friends

These are the people that you know these are the people that you have you know grown up with You're going to have a lot of your relatives your aunts and uncles and cousins that are there brothers and sisters and just the neighborhood and the family friends Because as we talked in our last podcast they had been so isolated They're not allowed to have any worldly associations. You can't join a club You can't Enter a baking competition. You can't do anything You know your life Begins and ends with faith assembly. So the social component of Ever challenging there were a lot of people who wondered who had some thoughts who had some questions but

They just had to zip their lip because the social component of it means you've lost all of your friendship Maybe you're working with some of these people. Maybe you're employed by one of them and I know because I've talked to enough of them And and I've seen that in some of the satellite churches as soon as as soon as you make the decision to jump ship There goes there go all of your friends and I don't think these people John would Call what they were in a works religion. I don't think they saw it as a works religion

But it was a works religion to its core I mean, it's a very thing that Paul Labored and worked against in the New Testament and he's the one who said it is not by works of righteousness Which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit So they would hear a verse like that and then their mind was taught to rationalize and reason, and rather than run to God's love and grace and mercy, they would run away from it and say, well, maybe we weren't saved by works, but we've got to keep our salvation by works.

Now that we are saved, it's totally up to us. And that is just so far into what the New Testament said. You know, the ethicists, people who teach Christian ethics, they have a phrase called Audiophora, which is a wonderful phrase. And I taught when I was a pastor of a church years ago, I taught a series. I think we had almost 300 messages in a series that I did on Christian ethics. And I never did get to what these things we're talking about right now. The whole time was spent on principles of ethics, different systems and philosophies of ethics,

looking more at what the Christian virtues are. There's a long list. It's not just the fruit of the spirit. There is a long list of Christian virtues. That's what the New Testament would major on.

And if you would major on that, it answers most of your questions, it solves most of your problems. And it does so without ever getting into this area that's called Audiophora, which is a Greek word that simply means things indifferent. That they're neither right nor wrong. They're neither spiritual nor worldly. Such as joining a radio club or playing football for your high school team, it's neither right nor wrong. Ethicists who have studied this know that's one of those issues of Audiophora. Now there are plenty of things the New Testament says are definitely wrong.

You know, the works of the flesh, such as adultery and fornication and murder and hatred. There are lists of things that are definitely wrong. But the list in the New Testament, when you read them, are just so different than the list that you find at faith assembly.

So let's go to a new one here, John, talking about legalisms and lists. And that has to do with what we could call forbidden speech or words or terminology. And you don't find this on Dr.

Freeman's early tapes, but you find it on all of the later ones. And it's unfortunately the history of Christianity has a black mark on it because of this whole realm of legalism and works. And it's what has caused people so many problems. But in the area of speech, different things he began to bring forth from the pulpit, which were deeper insights. He had his deeper deliverance, deeper discernment, deeper revelation. And all of it was deeper than Paul and Peter and James and John. It was all deeper than the New Testament. And for some reason, that didn't bother Hobart. And for some reason,

it didn't bother the people. But I'll give you one word, the term pregnant, the term pregnant was outlawed. Hobart said, well, horses and cows get pregnant, but women are with child.

And the with child is a beautiful statement. I mean, it's a beautiful phrase. It's a wonderful phrase, but there's nothing wrong with saying pregnant. And the thing about it is, as I've said on some of these other issues with Dr. Freeman, is if you go and listen to earlier tapes, guess who uses the term pregnant? If you want to go listen to tape F-163 or one remedy for healing, Hobart Freeman used the term back then. So where was this in his life that he had the new revelation that pregnant was a term that you couldn't use? So what happens is people are almost

stumbling over themselves as they're trying to have a conversation with a fellow church member trying to remember in their mind from the last two messages Freeman delivered. Now what are those words we are no longer allowed to use? And it just stunted everybody's growth and it's stunted everybody's personality. You know, that's one of the other funny things, if you can call it funny about a quote, it changes so gradually over time that you don't really notice it as you're being changed, as you're being manipulated. I experienced it as a child because my family moved away from the Jeffersonville area and we, for a period of time, I want to say it was like five,

six years, we were away from the body of message believers. And so we were listening to, we had what we call the home church, rather than go to a local community church, we listened to these recordings from the 50s and 60s. And then we came back and the language had changed and the rules on the language had changed. And so I, I clearly remember this too. I was in the home of my grandparents. My grandfather was the pastor at the brand of tabernacle and my grandmother was talking to my mother and she was, she was helping, she was babysitting for some lady in the church.

I can't remember who, but she was talking to my mother as she was, as the little child had had an accident. And my grandmother looked at my mother and says, oh no, we've got to go get a D-I-A-P-E and she whispered it.

to like spelling out the name. She was not able to say the word diaper. And I was scratching my head as a kid. I was thinking, is that a bad word? I don't remember being a bad word, but you weren't apparently.

You weren't allowed to say diaper. And I started noticing other little words like this. And it was odd because in the community of the body of church members that were here, you had strong divisions.

You had the people who were solid with my grandfather and those who thought my grandfather was trying to take the church away from the random kids. And you had this big division. And not everybody, even in the same church, had the same language rules.

So if you were on my grandfather's side, apparently diaper was a bad word. But then I would go and I would hang out with some of the people who were a legend to the random family and they didn't care.

They said all kinds of words that I thought was cuss words. So the language sort of just evolved over time and it was so confusing to me. Yeah, I mean, there are forbidden words, like cuss words.

When you say, we're gonna talk about forbidden words and forbidden speech, well, there are some four-letter ones out there and we don't say those words, but diaper and pregnant faith assembly in the satellite group.

So unlike your background, we're very uniform because the people out in the satellite groups, most of them are on what they call the automatic tape mailing list, which was just a subscription service where you would regularly be sent the latest messages that Dr. Freeman had taught and or, if you were on another minister's auto tape mailing list, you would get those as well.

And I've had the people tell me, John, that they would literally, I mean, they're waiting by the mailbox to get the latest messages to hear what the latest thing is that's been forbidden. You know, it gone was this hunger for God's word and for the truth and what are we gonna learn and how are we gonna grow?

But it's, what is he going to take away from me now to that I would have never thought of on my own and never have seen in Scripture so that I can be more purged and better prepared to be an overcomer.

It was always, what is he gonna take away from me now? Yeah, and I should probably clarify, when Brandon was alive and he was passing out these tapes, I'm certain that the language was uniform throughout all of the body of churches, even among the splinter groups, because they're all getting the tapes.

What I was trying to explain is, it's awkward whenever you miss that uniform, that uniform projection of rules, because suddenly you realize that people are just making up rules as they go. That applies to the cult leader too, but whenever it's divided like this, you've got multiple- people making multiple rules, none of which go together, will take a step higher up the chain.

You've got Hobart Freeman making up his language rules, you've got the other splinter groups from Brandon making up their language rules, and they all think if they get in a conversation they might get in a fist fight because some guy just said diaper.

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On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. Well, as long as you've got Brannum still alive or Freeman still alive, then everything will stay uniform, but whenever that leader dies and you have these little splinter groups spring up, then you lose your uniformity.

Faith assembly, the mother building had all over the congregation area that had suspended microphones. They were on a wire, they hung down from the ceiling, and so you would go and stand under one of these and give a prophecy or speak in tongues or give an interpretation of tongues or give a testimony.

And so one of the favorite things to do was to talk about a newborn who want to praise the Lord for the healthy birth of their new son or daughter. And then they would give the weight and the length of the newborn.

Oh, that just drove Dr. Freeman under the rug. He could not stand that. So he got on this soap box and began having these messages where he would say, no, I think we should be able to give a testimony without telling us how much the thing weighed.

It's not like you're giving birth to a baby calf or something. This is a human being and and weighed as one thing and length like, well, mine was 17 and three quarter inches long.

Well, mine was 18 and a half inches long. I've got you beat. I mean, nobody was doing that. That's what he turned it into that it was some kind of competition. I'm sure it was just very young.

parents who were just overjoyed with the birth of a newborn and just doing what normal people do. And, you know, it's, it's audio for. I don't care whether you give the weight, the length, it makes no difference. There's neither, it's neither spiritual nor unspiritual, it's neither right nor wrong. But that became another thing. So every time you turned around, you literally found out there was something else that was being taken away from you.

Let me give you another example. I will give the, the message and the timestamp on this. It was in one of the teachings in his series on 2nd Corinthians entitled The Proof of Endurance Part 2, 33 Minute and 5 Second timestamp. He said this. And I quote, some things are unsophisticated and crude. Like when I hear a woman say, well, I just had a gut feeling about this or that.

And I've heard it in this church end of quote. As though that was a big deal. So you could no longer, especially if you were a woman. Maybe you could get away with it as a man to say that.

But as a woman, you couldn't say I had a gut feeling and all that means is the seat of your feelings is in your stomach. You know, when you hear bad news, someone died, it hits you where, it hits you in the pit of your stomach. So all someone is expressing as I had this feeling or an intuition that such and such was right or that such and such wasn't right. So again, we're just, it's layering thing upon thing word upon word, speech upon speech,

just ideas that are no longer allowed to be said. For men, you might be allowed to say gut or gut feeling, but you could not use the word thrilled or excited because that showed your feminist side and you were leaning towards feminism and no man would ever use the term excited or thrilled. So and I'm just giving, you know, very, very partial list here, John, you've got to add all of these up and then keep a record of them and then be able to memorize all this like, oh, no.

Am I going to say the wrong word? And I, you know, it did. I think it really hurt people's development. They all became little clones of Dr. Freeman. You got to say this, you got to do this, you can't eat fake peanut butter with any sugar in it. It's got to be old-fashioned peanut butter that tastes horrible. You can't drink out of a plastic cup. It has to be a glass cup. He had all of these rules.

And people just became, I mean, like mummified, and they're just going through life, like little robots just copying what he said. And I can remember visiting, and you just look at everybody, and everybody, they turn their head the same way. They say praise the Lord, they say the same way. It's like, you know, express who you are as a human being. Please, break free. Please, someone stop the madness.

After we left the cult, you know this about me by now, I'm sure, but I study everything to the minute detail way further to the extreme than anybody else will study anything. That's just my nature. And after we left the cult, see, I'm in the IT world. And in the IT world, you have different cultures coming together to work on software products. And different cultures have varying techniques of language. And what's a cuss word to one culture isn't to another and vice versa.

But even, even stranger to me is that we also had collaboration between different parts of the country. So even in the same culture, what's a cuss word to one part of the country isn't always the cuss word to the other part. And so I was confused by this because for me, saying a cuss word was one of the lowest forms of evil known to man because of these rules. And we invite it over.

You'll laugh at this too. For 37 years, I never even thought a cuss word because they were named till you were. Well, they manipulate your head to where if you think it, it's as bad as doing it. So therefore you're sending. So I would try to keep my thoughts, you know, quote, unquote, clean. But anyway, I remember after leaving the cult, we had a dinner. We invited the pastor over and it was just plaguing my mind. I wanted to know, you know, is it right or is it wrong? I don't understand it. And after dinner, he was, we're all sitting in the living room and

my wife is sitting there. I'm sure she was embarrassed after death, but I asked him. So is it wrong to say a cuss word? And he, he looked at me strange and he's thought for a minute and he said, well, hell, John, I don't know, which, which ironically to me, that was a cuss word, but to him, apparently it wasn't. And so I did a deep dive on just studying language. I wanted to know.

And the idea, the Americanized idea of a cuss word is only like 200, 250 years old. If you go back in time, you go look at the way that Martin Luther spoke. It's a different language. So when you first read it, you think, well, that must not be a cuss word because he is the father of the Protestant Reformation. But nope. They, they used language as it was intended.

Sometimes you use words, or shock value to get their attention. And Martin Luther used it pretty well to his attention. And I went back as far back as I could go through time, all the way back to Ezekiel.

And if you, I'm not gonna say what it is, if you wanna, if you're listening, you wanna look it up, but go look up Ezekiel 2320. And tell me he's not saying something that every single church member in the world would blush to say.

It's pretty out there. And this is God prophesying through his Ezekiel, getting the attention of Jerusalem saying, you are the one who's lusting after your lovers and not gonna say the rest of it, but it is getting the attention and it is using it in what we today would call a cuss word.

And so the conclusion that I came up with, if God can use language as a tool to get somebody's attention, and we call it a cuss word, can I say that God is sinning?

And I just, you know, I never answered that. There's no answer to that question, but I don't think God would sin.

No, I just think what you're bringing out, John, is just people or people. And we have to keep even our this divine gift and life that we have from Jesus, we have to, we have to live in reality.

And not only were there, you know, these kind of particular words he would bring up, you know, this whole business of positive thinking and confession, which we probably just need to devote an entire interview to that.

Again, prevented the people from living in reality. You could never ask someone, how are you doing today? If, and if they felt that they were not doing well, they were never allowed to say that.

But one reading of the book of Psalms, one reading of any of your Old Testament prophets, where you see these were holy men of God, some of whom wrote scripture, but they could have some terrible days and terrible experiences, and they're simply expressing the reality of the situation.

Doesn't mean that they have no faith in God, and it definitely doesn't mean God is going to strike them from heaven and punish them for what they are saying, but it's coming out of the depth of their being, they feel abandoned, they feel horrible, they feel like everything is against them.

Now, sooner or later, they get a grip on their faith and their hope in God again, and we see some positive things at the end, but I mean, all the negative expressions that they say are just left right there for us to see, and the reason they're just left their plane and obvious and visible is because that's reality.

This faith formula theology that Hobart Freeman taught and that all these other people have, taught, it is not reality. And the people that are in that are not living in reality. When you look at what happened to the Patriarch Job, and we are told in the beginning of his book that Job was a man who feared God, who gestured evil, that there was none like him upon the earth. The end of chapter one, once everything was God allowed it, temporarily everything was taken away from him, then Job has this, what would be in a faith church,

or in faith circles, a really negative confession, because he says, you know, I came out of my mother's womb naked, I'm going to return naked, the Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord. That sounds like a terrible confession, but the very next verse says, in all these things, Job did not sin with his lips. That was not a sin. It was just reality. I came into the world with nothing, I'll leave the world with nothing, but God is good and God is right. And what's wrong with that? Obviously nothing is wrong because it made

it into Scripture, and God had divine approval upon the man Job. So it's just terrible. You and I, we always have fun with these things, but lurking underneath the surface in the background, as you are well aware, and as I am well aware, have just been lives and faiths and families that are wrecked, shipwrecked, because of the bondages of these legalisms that they've been brought into.

And I've had not a few people ask me, well, Chino, it seems to come so easily to you to understand this, and you're saying that you talked about this 40 years ago. How were you able to see it 40 years ago? Well, it's not because I'm any smarter than anybody else because my wife just walked in from out of town. Hey, darling, it's not because I'm any smarter than anybody else. We're all from our same parents, Adam and Eve. And you know, John, I really don't think that my original question, this is a really good point I'd like to make. I don't think my original questions spring from

a difference of opinion that I had with Hobart Freeman on interpreting Scripture on any particular verses. And the reason why is what I knew about Scripture, I had learned from Dr. Freeman. In my late teens and early 20s, I was a freemanite. I mean, I was as true a freemanite as there could be anything that he said, I believe. Now, I didn't to myself.

I didn't say I believe it because he said it. I believed it because I thought that he had shown me that's what the Bible said. So my point is my objections really didn't come over differences in the scriptural reading or interpretation because everything I knew came from him.

So I couldn't object, where my objections, where my first questions began to arise had to do with inconsistencies. And they were relatively small things to start with. We've talked about this one five-fold ministry.

And I was aware that Ephesians 4.11 is in the Bible that when Christ ascended, he gave gifts unto man, he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. I knew that verse was there and without getting into a discussion of the relative nature of that verse for today, again, it was just inconsistencies.

I always heard him talking about five-fold ministry this. People were five-fold ministry that. The satellite groups, we've got a five-fold being sent to us. You know, a five-fold, like is that a way to play cards or is that mismanners?

How you fold napkins at the table, you know? If you're not a part of the cult, you don't even know what five-fold. It's just terminology that is in the cult itself. But my point is, they talked about five-fold.

Why are there no apostles at faith assembly? There are no prophets, there are no evangelists, there are no pastors, there's just a teacher. So even though I couldn't explain it, it was an inconsistency.

And just other things, Hobart would always talk about, we don't take up an offering here. You never heard me ask for money, I trust God. I live by faith, Matthew 6.33. I seek first the kingdom, God will take care of all of my needs.

If he had any worries, and he doesn't, Hobart would say the least of his worries would be to provide for my financial needs. And we don't take up an offering, but I drive a Cadillac all the time, boasting of what he had, but he never took up an offering.

And then my mind is saying, well, isn't the very fact that you are constantly talking about you don't take up an offering? Isn't that a reminder to people to make sure they give? I mean, if you really just want to totally trust the Lord for your finances, don't ever mention it.

Just pray in secret, fast in secret, and trust God in secret. Close your closet doors, Matthew 6 said, and trust God in secret. And if you trust him in secret, he will reward you.

I didn't like the constant. reference to the fact that we don't take up offerings, we don't ask for money because I thought that is simply coming in the back door asking for money and reminding people that you need to give. So it was just inconsistencies that I was hearing in the messages and eventually you know it led me down the path of of other questions. A favorite we're talking about things you couldn't say John one of the things you could and must and had to say was always plead the blood out the car was skidding on ice we just played the blood of Jesus. You know the

baby was coughing uncontrollably we're we're going to go plead the blood of Jesus. Everything was plead the blood, plead the blood and you know what my mind said at first you know I have no problem I plead the blood when my car is skidding on ice too because that's what I had been taught but then my mind says if that is so important and so significant why isn't ever in the New Testament why didn't anybody ever plead the blood when Paul was almost shipwrecked in Acts 27 why didn't he plead the blood you know whenever one of

the Apostles why didn't why didn't anybody do that you know you talk about these words that you can't say you know then we have these words that you must say which are almost couched in the form of of an incantation or a chant you know they didn't believe in curses but they do believe in incantations and I and you know I am in I love and we all all Christians love the blood of Jesus it is his sacrifice on Calvary which has redeemed us and saved us and purified us and cleansed us but to use that to take that out of an atonement context which

is where it's always found in the New Testament and then put it in the context of well I'm trying to cast out a demon so I'm going to plead the blood against that demon or this this accident is about ready to occur so I'm going to plead the blood against that to try to get it to stop that to me is some kind of magical incantation that just doesn't have any foundation in the New Testament so it was these inconsistencies that really gave me a lot of problems yeah after I left the message it really bothered me the way that we looked at the

words that were spoken and we were taught that the words had power and I'm certain that Hobart Freeman got this from William Brannum but not even just Brannum the laterane movement had this phrase called the spoken word yeah it was given power it became word of faith you know if you know the history it transitioned into the word of faith.

But these guys believed in incantations. And worse, they were teaching the people that incantations was a holy Christian thing. And after I separated from the movement and started studying everything, I realized that that's not what the good guys do in the Bible.

I came from the other side. And so then I began to think about just my way of thinking because I did this. You'd go into an office building and you get into some presentation, you're trying to convince the people of whatever it is that you're trying to show them in a project or whatever.

Well, you would, I would say things and say it in such a way that I was like commanding them. You will accept this. And I was doing it very subtly. So nobody really could tell what I was doing, but I was doing incantations.

And I was doing this because this is how we were taught. If you speak it, it will come to pass. Brandham had this whole theme called speak to the rock and people would go and I remember speak, actually literally speaking to rocks.

I was trying to, as a kid, you do all kinds of crazy things. I remember one time I tried to speak my keys into existence whenever I lost them. And it doesn't work, man.

It's not as powerful as you think. But we lived in a fantasy world where you tried to do these things because that's what they taught you. And they taught you that it was a Christian thing.

Once you understand the concepts of the Bible, of what the prophets of Baal and all of the occult, I guess it wasn't a cult back then, it was the other cults of different pagan religions.

When you realize that their practices were what Israel was separating themselves from and that it was an abomination to do those practices, then suddenly you realize, wait a minute, I, I was in the wrong religion, man.

Can I even call it Christianity? And for me, there's no way I can call it Christianity when you're pretending that you're a sorcerer. It can't be Christianity. Yeah, I said to someone just this past weekend, John, to remind them and it was an ex minister from Faith Assembly who has a real humble approach to everything now, which I really appreciate.

But I said, brother, what you've got to remember is that every heresy, every error, every false doctrine, which has ever been taught is based on the scriptures, every single one, it is based on a verse somewhere.

So you have to do more than quote verses. And that's what Hobart was all about. He was a proof texting preacher, as long as you had a verse that said something along that line, you just hop skipped and jump and you scissors and paste and needle and thread, cut everything up.

stapled it, sewed it, glued it all back together and, you know, but you don't know the context. They would talk about, well, the way to get faith is by hearing the word, faith come with by hearing and hearing by the word of God, Romans 10, 17, that later came to mean the more you would listen to Hobart's tapes, the more faith you could get.

But that's not the context, you don't get more faith by the longer you sit and listen to someone preach, then in quantity, your faith grows greater. That's not the context at all of Romans 10, 17.

So because you have a verse that says something that you think is the right doctrine, you doesn't mean anything. As I said, there aren't any false doctrines or errors or heresies that are not based on Scripture.

It's the same as Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. Satan brought to him with Scripture. But you can bring a verse and it's out of his context or it is misapplied or it is contrary to other parts of Scripture or it is contrary to the entire revelation of God.

It's still Scripture. What Satan quoted to Jesus, it's still in the, it's in Deuteronomy. It's still the Bible. It's part of the law, but it was in applicable at that moment in that time.

Even though it was the Word of God, you can't use it that way. So that's what I'm saying with so many of these things that it might be a pretty significant or important Bible verse.

But it's just used out of place and it's just used out of context. It was more like a demon scavenger hunt that everybody was on to try to find what we can say and what we can't say and people just running around like chickens with their heads cut off, not knowing which way is up and which way is down.

You know, I used to use the analogy chickens with their heads cut off because after you leave it and you understand how crazy it is, that's the visualization you get. But to somebody who's in it, it's highly offensive.

I've learned when you tell them this, but the problem is they're so wrapped up in it, they think that this rule is based Christianity is in fact Christianity and don't understand that, you know, while giving them the benefit of the doubt, maybe it was Christianity.

They had so much built on top of it that wasn't Christianity and they have merged the two in their minds. It doesn't matter if you want to have all of these rules, but imposing them on somebody else and telling them that it's Christianity is wrong because you're putting them under bondage that they don't need to be.

People like to live a holy life and there are some of the rules that are good. I'll say, you know, I won't go as far as saying diaper is evil, but if... Diaper were to offend somebody say another culture comes over. I mentioned I work with other cultures Maybe that's offensive to that culture. Well, it might be wrong for me to use that word but I have the critical analysis The power to critically think enough to know am I saying something that is offending them?

Well, let's don't do that again because it offends them That's Christianity Christianity is showing love showing respect the problem with these rules-based religion types is that They see themselves as the elite and in doing so they don't show respect to others So in effect it becomes quite frankly It becomes the opposite of Christianity. So I'm glad I left this. I'd no longer have to be that way I no longer have to think that way and The burdens are quite lighter if you don't have all of these rules on your shoulders And I think what we discussed John does help people out there even people who have been away from

Faith assembly for a long time and have gone on to other churches because I hear from them every week That in the in the recesses of their mind they still struggle with some of these things So as we've said before I don't celebrate Christmas, but I don't push that on anybody You do celebrate Christmas. You don't push that on anybody if you have a belief have it unto yourself Because we're talking about audio for a matter things that are literally indifferent and What the Apostle Paul said in Romans 14 and I think it is verse

17 the Kingdom of God is not in meat nor in drink but in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit It's not in all of these laws and legalisms It's in things that are a lot deeper and eternal and that's what we need to focus on Absolutely Well, hopefully somebody has heard this and they realize that there's a few weights that they can take off their shoulders and just put on the shelf

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-branam.org From more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation You can read weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR available on Amazon Kindle and soon audible

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