Birth Control and Misogyny - The Ultimate Cult Control

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

Well Chino, you brought me through the ringer last time with all of the different things, topics that I have pushed back and I've literally never talked about for what is it over a decade now.

So you opened me up a little bit and as we were talking and discussing just prior to recording you're going to open me up a bit more in an area that I'm not as familiar with but I'm going to do my best.

Last time we were talking about sex and the cult and all of the weird things that the cult did and I didn't go to, I was sort of reserved because right now you can see it on the news it's all over but there are a lot of predators and I'll just leave it at that I won't go too deep with it but there are a lot of predators that are in the Brannum main sect and some of the splinter groups and that's being broadcast all across the nation right now.

But I didn't want to go too far because there's a lot of people who are impacted and anyway there there also is a healthy side to this in just understanding what they did to the men and the women and why and today we're focusing on the women which maybe a little bit out of my expertise since me a man was not experiencing firsthand but I know the topic I know what it is we're talking about.

Well thankfully you're a married man so that helps you out a lot. I'm a male too John so this is out of my wheelhouse somewhat but I have felt all along that the heroes of faith assembly are the women and they were the ones most beaten down and you talk about some abuse.

Hopefully in our next interview I'd like to get to that more specific technical side of abuse quote unquote not that we haven't covered plenty that would fall under the category of abuse but I'm talking about full flesh outright gone all the way there sexual abuse of women.

end of children that by the way did take place in faith assembly. Hopefully that will be for next week. But for now the last thing we were talking about John was I brought up birth control.

And I just felt that I quickly rushed through it and I didn't really because it was at the end of our time together and we've had a couple of weeks off. You've been busy and I've been busy and we're back together finally again. But I didn't think that I just had enough time or gave the time there at the end of it to deal with the physical and the emotional and the financial toll that it took on these people. And especially on the women. I mean obviously it takes the husband and the wife for the wife to get pregnant but once the pregnancy happens guess what? 99.99%

of the rest of that experience falls on the shoulders of the woman and that's just the fact of the matter and I don't think at all that enough time enough air time enough sympathy enough research has been put into this and given to these women. And I am no marriage and family counseling experts. That's not my expertise either. I don't have any sexology training. I'm not certified. That's not my background either. I'm a Bible in theology teachers what I've always been.

But having said that look you know we're all grown adult married people married men and women. And so where we've been in the past John just dealing with some you know these petty legalisms of you can't do this you can't say that you can't celebrate this you can't go there you can't wear that just kind of silly petty legalisms. This business of birth control is a serious matter because it brings the possibility of pregnancy and another human being into the world and it brings the huge responsibility on the shoulders of both of the parents the father for the financial burden

of the family but I think even so much more on the shoulders of the woman for caring and for bearing this child. So I remember that there are a couple of places in the New Testament where Paul I think may be writing to the Corinthians or the Romans. I don't have the verses in front of me but on a couple of occasions he told the early church follow my example as I am following Christ.

And I remember that became a favorite catch statement of Dr. Freeman's. He would as he's in the middle of his teaching his gr- He would say, I don't think there's anybody here who has any more faith than I have.

You know, I don't think that's a stretch to say I have as much faith as anyone here. I think I have as much Christian experience as anyone here. So as Paul said to the Corinthians, follow me as I follow Christ.

So I'm saying to you, follow my example as I follow Christ. I remember when I first heard that and he said it often, I thought that seems to be rather arrogant to say that and couldn't be able to say, follow my example, I'm following Christ.

We might think that we're following Christ. We might think that we could or should be able to say that, but I just thought that's relatively arrogant to ask me to follow you as you're following Christ.

In other words, I always felt unlike the apostle Paul whom I would have followed whole heartedly because I totally trusted him, but I always felt in Hobart's use of that that it tended to get the people's eyes off of following the Lord and just follow him.

Just follow whatever he said and I thought that was a part of the persuasion and the manipulation. So if you want to take that statement, follow me as I follow Christ. How many children do you have, Hobart?

Very interesting. He had three daughters. He had three daughters and I don't know why they stopped with three. I could guess and people say, well, that's none of your business. That's the whole point.

You're right. It is none of my business. And so is it none of his business, what everybody else wants to do? Yeah, you're dead on saying it's none of my business. Why Hobart and June only had three?

But let's carry it further and say it's nobody's business. What anybody else in the church is doing. But by Hobart teaching on these things, he made it not only his business, but he made it everyone else's business or curiosity anyway.

So I would guess probably June had an operation or perhaps Hobart had an operation. You know, no one ever broached that subject, John. Why is it we're all having a dozen? They're cheaper by the dozen nowadays at Faith Assembly.

And why was it back in your day you were allowed to only, we'd have to say you were allowed to sin against God. You were allowed to sin. You and June were allowed to sin.

Let's say that again, you and your wife were allowed to sin because you restricted your family to three and you're requiring this of us. I always had a big problem with him using that phrase and thinking of it.

in light of burst control. Yeah, what's good for the cult leader is not usually available to the people who aren't the cult leader. You know, growing up in the type of religion that it is, it's not uncommon. If you just take a step outside of the cults and just look at Pentecostalism in general, there are some weirdnesses and I'm not going to go deep with that because I don't want to offend all of the Pentecostal people listening, but it should come as no surprise that in a religion that is fully dictated by a majority of the men, that the men have it easier than the

women. Almost all of the rules, like the dress code, for example, we've talked about that. It's much more difficult for the women. They have to look and dress differently and they go to the store you can pick them out of a crowd and I'm psychologically it has an effect, whether they feel like it does or not. It has an effect, but the men, I remember being in place, if I didn't tell people that I was a member of this thing, they would have never known because I dress like them, I act like them, I didn't talk like them to the same extent, but it was difficult to pick me out

of a crowd because the rules were easier and it's no surprise that in a religion dictated by the men, that that is the case. But where it gets interesting, as we're talking about today, the birth control, etc., in these types of religion, sex education is taboo because what they have done and this goes much deeper than the cults, but they have taken the act of sex and they've turned it into something that is of disgust. And if you let your kids go to school, sometimes the parents would make them sign papers where they could not have sex education in school, large number of people

just weren't allowed to go to public schools. So they avoided all together. And those of us who, my parents weren't like that. I went to a public school and I'm fairly certain that I took sex education as just a brief subject, but mentally, I was blocking it because I was in this religion where it's so taboo, I thought, oh my gosh, what in the world are they teaching me in here? And so I'm blocking it. Now years later, that also has a psychological effect because there are things that I don't fully understand and should. And for example, I'm working with several men, women, and

low early teen people who have escaped the cult and they're going through an array of different issues. Some of the women weren't allowed to have birth control, yet They had conditions in their body where the birth control would have made life much much better for them In other words and I'm no doctor I this is out of my element if you can't tell but for a women's period for example They get much more difficult periods and less their own a birth control pill of some kind some women It actually becomes a health issue. They they really struggle because of it

So in a religion that's ruled by men that are limiting women from having birth control and telling them it's sinful if you do Well now you have another category of women who could have a healthy life if they would Be able to follow the doctor's advice and just take the birth control pill But that's in the brand of cult now. I'm sure it's levels worse in the Hobart Freeman cult where you're not a lot of medicine at all But what I'm trying to explain here is it's flowing down hill Brannum had the same type of doctrine and it wasn't original with Brannum because this whole

The whole foundation of this in my opinion had some huge flaws and If if those flaws are carried through Brannum and they're carried into Hobart Freeman now amplify that with Freeman's Anti-medicine doctrines. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, we've got to remember that Hobart Freeman his training was in Hebrew and Old Testament and and what I find is these cult leaders John think their experts about everything and they want to pontificate on Every subject they really think that God has given them some kind of special mantle and They have insight that Normal people don't have and you know, that's just as false as this summer day is long

Hobart was a good Old Testament scholar and Hobart knew his Hebrew Hobart couldn't find his way out of a wet bag when it came to marriage in the family You know, he didn't have a clue. He didn't have a clue how to race kids look at how you know look with his three daughters here Kathy we talked about Kathy and Bruce. She's dating this unsafe boy for two years She knew better than that her parents had talked in church better than that and I'm sure Hobart was clueless what was going on One of my biggest

Greatest concerns as I watched the train wreck unfold those last years at faith assembly was Hobart's own personal life And I'm no doctor Phil. I'm no doctor John Collins who likes his psychology and psychiatry But I could still sit back and look at Hobart's own life and he didn't live a normal life John Everybody else in that church the other men they heard an alarm clock go off at six in the morning They had to get their butts out of bed shower shave eat breakfast get their clothes on and head to a long day Probably in some mechanical job, you know field work farm work

construction work, maybe some office work, and the women were probably already up at 5 because they had children nursing and they had children to get ready and children to feed, and Hobart did not live a normal life. He was isolated by his own admission, by his own desire, that never sets well for the development of a human being's personality. He had no friends. I've already said before he's got three daughters. He was raised with five or six sisters. He did not have a relationship with his father. He had a leg two inches shorter than the other. He was not an athlete. He couldn't hunt,

couldn't fish, couldn't run, couldn't jump, couldn't play, couldn't hit a ball, couldn't do anything, except study. That's all he could do. In one sense, you say, my word, you know, you're making the guy sound pretty bad all. I feel sorry for him. In some sense, I feel sorry for him as well, but there are ways to deal with that rather than compound the matter by isolating yourself.

And he was proud of the fact. This was one of his favorite statements, Sean, he'd say, God took me through college and seminary. I never made less than an A, but I wasn't out goofing off.

I was studying 14 to 16 hours a day. Really? 16 hours a day. There's 24 in the day. You sleep eight, 16 hours. There's no time left. After you sleep, you're eight. When do you eat? When do you brush your teeth? When do you talk to your wife? When do you interact with your kids as they're growing up? I'm telling you, there's something seriously wrong with this picture. When Hobart would say that, he obviously, John thought this was a mark of praise that I am a student of the word that I am spending 14 to 16 hours a day in my study. And you know, what else was a byproduct of

that when the people under the sound of his voice heard that? What does that tell them? But there's no way you'll ever be as smart as me because you don't have the time I have to study.

So don't bother questioning me or challenging my opinion about anything. I just can't believe that people in this group didn't see what they were being set up for. This is a call from start to finish. And I know there are people out there who still are hesitant to call it a call doing these podcasts, John. I know because I've heard from so many of them has helped them take their, well, we were in a cultist church to, you're right. Let's just cut to the chase. Darn it, we were in a cult. I hate to admit it, but it's true.

It's actually helped people do that, but there are plenty of people out there now who are afraid to say that. And I know exactly why. We're all afraid that it says something about us negative.

It doesn't say anything about you. We all, everybody has their own hang up. Someone got caught up in something in life. You just got caught up in a bad church and a bad religious situation.

And that's no mark against you. It's a mark against the predator, the abuser, who set out to find people to prey on and to abuse. That's who it's against. I never took it as against me, you know, and you've been so humble, John, in telling your whole story.

You said, I'm a 30-something-year-old man, a cult member. And you just laugh about it now. What else can we do? It's no big deal. We're still here today. And guess who's not here today?

So far, Freeman's dead and rotted in the grave. And that's not being blasphemous to him. I'm going to die and rot in the grave one day because that's what human beings do. The only people who won't experience that are the people who are alive at the second event, and their body will be changed.

But we're all people. There's no difference between any of us. Some of us are a little smarter, some are a little dumber, some have a better voice, like your voice, some have a worse one like mine, some are pretty, some are ugly.

Who cares? That's what makes the world go around. But what I had a problem with was Hobart isolating himself, making himself out to be something that he wasn't. And in those biblical qualifications, I just want to stress this again, John.

I know we've got to get to birth control. You know, it's hard to real me in sometimes. You can always do this because no one can see this except me when we're talking. First Timothy 3.7, after it tells us he needs to be apt to teach, a pastor, a shepherd, your local minister, your teacher, and he gives these spiritual moral qualifications.

It says in verse 6, not a novice. It says in verse 7, something that is never touched upon. It's never addressed. Hobart wasn't going to address it because he failed this qualification for a pastor.

And that is, he must have a good report of those who are without. That means outside of the church, outside of the Christian family. And I'll tell you, Paul was a wise man. The Holy Spirit has a reason for this.

When you have to be able to live your life, not just at your study, where you're spending 14 to 16 hours a day, not just in the church, you hop in your Cadillac or Lincoln, you drive to your church.

You come in. and a secret back entrance because you don't want to contaminate yourself with any of the common folk out there. You slip in the door when it's time to speak. Jerry Irvin stops playing his guitar and turns the pulpit over to you. You lecture everybody. You go back out the door, back in your car and back home. That is not healthy for any human being to live that way.

And how is it this group of people let this guy get away with this year after year after year? You have to have the ability to do more 16 hours a day to be qualified to lead God's people.

If there's one thing Hobart was not as he was not a pastor. He was a seminary professor and he was probably a decent seminary professor. But those guys are not the same necessarily, not the same kind of people cut out to be the pastor of a local church. But from the very beginning, Hobart said everything up where I'm the leader, there will be no board, there will be no voting.

He even did this in his pre-carrismatic, his non-carrismatic days when they had the church in Claypool. He said it up where I will be the final authority and just trust me. I spend 14 to 16 hours a day in my study. Just trust me. But what I'm saying is when you have to live your life among everyone outside the church, you and I John, it's just reality. We know what this does. It just strips down everything. It just strips everything down. It takes away the mystique, the Moses mystique, the Moses Elijah motif. It just takes all of that away. None of us are Moses. None of us

are Elijah. We're just John and Channel and Hobart. That's all we are. We're not going to be any better, any bigger than that. And we shouldn't desire to be anything other than that. But let me give you an example, John. I missed last week because I was on this epic fishing trip.

You know, I'm a Charger boat captain. I'm a professional fishing guide. And I get a group of guys together. They're almost a dozen of us. And I put it out there on Facebook. I'm going to go fish below Niagara Falls, from the Falls and the River out to the bar on Lake Ontario. And I do it all the time. I've done it for years and years. Who wants to go with me? And so I'll get a good group of men. But guess what? It's a mixed group of men. It's it's people that I know. These are

friends of mine. I have a lot of friends and a lot of places from a lot of walks of life. They know that I'm a Christian man, that I'm a Christian minister, that I'm but I'm also a very good fisherman. So we enjoy doing things together. I've got a couple of men on the trip.

John who are outspoken Christian men, they want to pray over their meal, they want to share Jesus with the other men in the group, I have some other men who are not outspoken Christians, I have one dear friend of mine who is, this is probably going to be shocking to a lot of people to hear this, but they need to hear it because it's not just in the Freeman group, this is the cult mentality out there and it may even just be the church mentality out there, I have one of them who's an avowed atheist, he does not believe there is a God, you should hear his upbringing,

I feel so sorry for him, he said my dad was a Bible-thumping hypocrite and it's so similar to what some of these poor people that faith assembly have experienced, he said, chin on the way to church, my dad would be cussing and yelling and blaspheming God but as soon as we got to church, he's one of the deacons, he's one of the important people, what do you think that does in a person's mind as a 12-year-old and you grow up that way? But back to my point, this guy, he's a friend of mine, he is a good friend

of mine and here's something that I have told several people in conversations recently that over my entire, I'm just thinking about this, I think over my entire adulthood, I've been a Christian since I was 15 years old, over my entire adult life, I have always trusted the sheep way more than I trusted the shepherd. I have not been able to blend in with these ministers because I don't trust them, I've seen things behind closed doors because I've been a minister, I've heard their take on things, I've heard things where to me it sounds like you're saying one thing to the people in church

and now you're saying something behind their back, I don't know about you John but I just always trusted the sheep, I mean they don't have anything to gain or to lose, they're just trying to come and hear a word from God, the guy up front, he's got a lot to gain, he's got money, he's got fame, he's got power, anybody in a position like that, anybody in any kind of position, a leadership, they have a lot to gain, the people that are just showing up there, they're just wanting to love the Lord and learn about His Word. I trust, if you take their temperature, I trust them, I trust

what they say more than what I trust coming out of the mouth of the minister, so to my friend who's an atheist, this man that I've known for years, we're fishing buddies, he is loyal to me, the people who have hurt me and who have tried to hurt but have failed. Both have always come from where? From church. The biggest problems I have had in life have come from church people. They haven't come from people I know out in the world because people I know out in the world have been taught manners in church. You're taught shortcuts to

everything that you can cheat and lie and then get away with it because you're a Christian. You know you can hire someone but you know a fellow believer but not pay them for the work because well after all you know we're brothers right you know we're brothers you know you can't get away with that out there in the world there's real business performed by real people but you come into this church setting and all of a sudden everything is so shady and underhanded and back door that you don't know who you can trust so yeah I have a very I have several friends who are not

believers and they know what I believe and I share the gospel with them and they and they listen and that's all I can do but I'm not going to say well you can't be my friend anymore because you're not a Christian who am I who in the world do you think you are to tell somebody well you can't be my friend anymore and that's exactly that's what Hobart tried to do to me that's what the other ministers under him tried to do to me but you don't agree with that so you can't play in our sandbox anymore don't give a flip about your sandbox you care about that I only care about

God's word in my life and my approach to him and my approach to other people and my doing things the way I should be if I'm not then yes I want to be humble I want to be corrected I'm open for you're it by but I'm not open for any of this cult nonsense so is that makes sense to you John Hobart said you can't even have friends who are not Christians I have friends who are non believers have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the latter reign charismatic and other fringe movements

into the new apostolic reformation you can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research his website William-Brannum.org on the book's page of the website you can find the compiled research of John Collins Charles Paisley Steven 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. I had a person who was on the podcast that they mentioned that they had struggled with homosexuality in the past, and I want to stress that in the past. Yet they had escaped occult by a cult leader who not going to give his name, but he, let's just say that he had some of the same sins, and he was exposed for it later. And then, you know, he's a big name in the NAR. Well, so I had this interview,

and I really liked the guy. I have a lot of friends who, like you, are atheists. I have some friends who are homosexual. And, you know, I don't understand it, but that's their life. And, you know, they're still my friend. I'm not going to unfriend you because of this.

I had a famous podcaster who had been in talks with me. They wanted to have me on their program to talk through William Brannum's history. And this was a big name podcast, and it kept getting pushed back because I just simply didn't have time to do it. But then that interview came out, where I'm interviewing this guy who had a sin in the past. And suddenly, I get this phone call, and the guy with the podcast, he says, John, we're not going to have you on the show. And I said, really, what happened? And he said, you should have strongly condemned this guy for his sin in

the past. And he just went off on the phone. And my last words to him were something to the effect that, you know, I really wouldn't want to be on your podcast anyway. But it is everything that you've just described. I have so many emotions that are hitting me because of not just the cult journey, but my post cult journey. As a consultant, I learned a long time ago, I knew as, let me take a step back as a person who was in the inner close to the inner circles of the people in the cult. I knew how manipulation worked, but I didn't, I did not realize at the time that it was

manipulation. I just simply knew how it worked. And I don't, I don't understand that, but I knew as a businessman, when I would enter into a, the initial arrangement where you're determining, are you a good fit to work together with business? If a person were to suddenly start love bombing me with Christian stuff, I would actually turn them down as a client because every time without fail, they're going to want to either not pay you or they just simply won't pay you or they want a discount. And I got to the point, it was so repetitive, it just kept happening over and over and

over. If they did that to me, if they, if our initial meeting, which had nothing to do with Christianity, whatsoever, if they kept bringing... up Christianity, I would walk away because they're going to do me wrong every single time.

And like you said, I like all people. I'm not a person that you can tell me, no, John, you can't be friends with this person over here. And one of the problems that I see is it goes back to what you said even before that, the way in which the leadership was modeled in the laterane movement and beyond. It flowed over in the mainstream Christianity, so it got a little bit worse. But ministers of the gospel who have a church and have a church body, their role is more of a servant than it is a authoritarian figure. They are there to help the people train the

people. If the person falls down, help pick them back up. If the person is a sinner, help them don't sin. I mean, they are there to be literally a servant to help you. But the model that was created was one that you can't question if the person's wrong. You can't go to with your deepest sin or he's going to blast it from behind the pulpit and everybody in the church is going to know. Well, we left the cult thinking that it would be different outside of the cult.

Not going to mention the denominations name, but we saw the same exact thing. You couldn't question them. You could not treat them as though they were a person to help you. They were there to govern you, basically. You mentioned my humor. I can't stop the humor. It's just always there.

One of the tools of, it's not manipulation, but it's a conversational technique. When I approach a subject that's very difficult for people to hear, I always start it with humor because it catches them off guard and then they don't get angry with you. So I'm sitting here with I'd taken out the pastor, the assistant pastor for launch and I was, they were heavily Calvinist and I was not yet. So I'm studying this. What is Calvinism? Why Calvinism? So I started out and I'll sit down. I'll never forget it. We sat down. I'm sitting my plate down. I said,

is it true that Calvinism is a cult and God am off guard and the looks on their face and then when I laughed and said I was joking, just catch them off guard, it changed the course of the conversation because then we could laugh about it and then they could open up and explain and I could ask very serious questions because some of the things I had some huge problems with. But if I had not approached it in that way, those same men would have tried to govern me and force that belief on me instead of openly discussing why they believe it like a normal human being would.

Not everybody goes to the same strategy. that I do, some people would just open up and ask and whenever a minister who is of that mindset sees a person who is receptive to learning, they want to govern them and push them in their direction in such a way that is I'm not going to use the word forcible but where there's almost no other option if that makes any sense.

Now that's one, that's an example on the bad extreme. We have tried many other churches, I've actually had some on the other extreme where I could actually approach them and I could just open up and say, hey, you're preaching this thing that I don't understand and I didn't come from the same background, explain it to me.

And on the other end of the spectrum, they were very open, they would help me, I mean, it was really good, good, healthy conversations. All this to say, the trouble that we're talking about with Hobart Freeman, with William Branham, with the cults, it's not just in the cults, it has flowed out and it's largely due to ministers who want to be an authoritarian figure, maybe they've not gone destructive.

And what that does is it changes the perspective of the people who are in those churches. They suddenly feel like they can't go to the person for help, they can't go to ask a question.

If the minister says something that's incorrect, which all ministers do, they can't go with correction and say, hey, look, you're wrong here, the Bible says this, you said this other thing. And that's literally that's not the way life should be, we're all humans, right?

That's right. I think there's a lot of wisdom in Paul saying that he needs to have a good report of those without, and Hobart didn't, my point in saying that he didn't, he wasn't without, he didn't know anybody, he didn't have any friends.

Because when you're living your Christian life out there in the world as well, people get to see every aspect of you, you know, they see you, when you first get up in the morning, they see you all day on the boat, they see you at dinner in the evening.

But my point in that is, you know, these men that are willing that want to go with me on these trips, you know, they believe in me, doesn't have anything to do with what my views of the Bible are.

They just trust, hey, Chino set this up, Chino is the responsible person, Chino will take care of us, I trust being on his boat, he's not going to put me in danger, you know, in all our business relationships.

And I'm sure Paul had this with all kinds of men and look at the people in the Bible, look at Joseph, second in command in Egypt. You better believe he had good report of those without.

Look at Daniel, second in command to Old Wicked King Nebuchadnezzar. This was a smart guy, Daniel wasn't just some religious nutcase, Daniel was a godly man, but he was a very intelligent man. had all of his ducks in a row.

And there's no way Hobart could even function outside of his own home or church. You couldn't even challenge anything you had to say. He, in other words, John did not know how to relate to other people.

He was a social misfit. There was something intellectually, emotionally, not there. Something had happened. I don't know what it was, but it's just been shocking over the years to watch how strongly people have sworn by his teaching.

And I'm talking about to this day, 40 years after the man died sick, he said he was healed, he lied, because his leg was still short. So if you say that it's not short and it is, that's called a lie in any normal person's book.

So he lied, he died sick, and 40 years later, people are terrified to say anything bad about him. Serious problems here. Well, let's forget about that. If we can for a moment and go to these wonderful lovely women, birth control, where in the world did that come from?

There's a 127th Psalm, a Psalm written by King Solomon that talks about what a blessing children are to their parents. And he goes a little further and says, they're like the arrows in the quiver of an archer.

And then he goes a little further and says, the happier blessed is a man who has his quiver full of them. So there became a quiver full movement. And literally that was the name of the movement.

That was actually after Hobart's death and after Faith Assembly. But this whole business that we're talking about of marriage in the family is not unique to Brandon's group or to Hobart's. It's in broader evangelicalism out there.

It's in broader Western Christianity of how are we to interact as men and women and as husbands and wives and as parents and children. You know, Hobart scored an F on the report card for anything connected to the family.

Other people don't score as poorly as that. But it's a question in everybody's mind. And so the quiver full movement began. But let's think about this passage in Psalm 127. It's definitely true, John, that children are a gift from God.

And there are very specific examples in the Bible of just what a gift they are. Look at Abraham and Sarah and the birth of their son Isaac. He was truly a gift from God.

And look at Samuel who was born to Hannah when she was born and look at John the Baptist. There are examples of children who were truly gifts. And even if you weren't one of those biblical characters.

I think we all say that, yes, you know, my children are a gift from God. When I have had this conversation, John, with these other people who have 9, 10, 12, 13, I think that might be the highest that I have heard of, children, you know, the first thing they want to say is, now I'm not saying that I don't love all my children.

Well, of course, you're not saying that. We know that, you know, none of us except on a rare occasion on a bad day would ever have wanted to trade a child in up for a refund.

All of us have felt that somewhere. But by and large, no, of course, we love all of our children. We're just saying in hindsight, if you hadn't been forced down this path, my guess is, my guess is you wouldn't have a dozen children.

You'd have one or two or three or four or five. You'd have something under a dozen. But just because children are a gift from God, well, a wife is a gift from God. Proverbs said that if you found a good wife, you found a gift from God.

Does that mean you want a half a dozen of them? Of course not. You get a half a dozen mother. You get a half a dozen mothers-in-law if that happens, man. Yes. No. So a wife is a gift from God.

Does that mean can we just use that lodging, say, yeah, I would like two or three or four more or also, Lord? No. We want one wife. We want however many children, but that's not for the cult to determine.

That's my whole issue here. It's not for the cult to determine that's for you and for your wife or you and your husband. And it's not for your mother-in-law to determine. Speaking of mother-in-laws, mother-in-laws bless their hearts.

Let's, I have a wonderful one, by the way, and I'm truly blessed. I say that in all honesty. But back in the day when the no birth control was prevalent at faith assembly, and you got these young 26-year-old women who had two children, and the youngest child is three years old now.

Oh, no. What is that telling us? You have mother-in-laws, no Z, mother-in-laws, and other people in the church who begin asking, well, so what's going on? Like, it's none of your darn business. What my husband and I do when we close our bedroom door, it is none of your business.

But here we go back to the person who had zero manners, John, in my opinion, and that was Hobart Freeman. He was trained in theology. He was trained in Hebrew. He had never taken one class from this manners.

If you go to a manners school, you learn manners, and one of the thing about manners is you stay the heck out of... other people's lives. I've always felt I have enough to deal with in my own sinful life and I can barely get through a day by myself dealing with my own flesh and temptation.

Who do I think I am to have time to tell everybody else where they're going wrong, especially when it comes to area of children and especially when I only have three myself? Yeah. You know, I have a good mother-in-law too. I should clarify that, but it's a common joke among men, so that's why I brought it. You know, I studied everything out to unbelievable depths of information, as you already know, but one of the things that I became curious about was birth control. In the Pentecostal circles, the cults that deny the people from using birth control,

many of the men, and usually it's a man who preaches this way, isn't really educated enough to understand what he's saying in the first place. And if you apply just a little bit of critical thinking along with just a little bit of common knowledge about history and ancient history, none of what they say makes sense anyway. I grew up listening to argument after argument how birth control was a modern invention because this is a sinful world that's far more sinful than it was in the ancient world and God's about to destroy it because it's so sinful. And so he would

connect those two things together. He would connect birth control to sin. And so the people would obviously, you know, deny themselves from using birth control for this. I was watching documentary one time and it was going through the way of life for the ancients as compared to today and everything from medical science to physical science to all kinds of different comparisons. And it was fascinating because like cataract surgery for instance, which uses this little tiny needle into the eyeball, you think this is a modern invention that we could only do in today's world.

And they have uncovered devices from ancient Rome that are made of brass where the doctor doesn't have a vacuum. He literally had to suck it with his mouth, but they were performing cataract surgeries back in ancient Rome. And one of the things that they showed in the documentary, which just suddenly I was a little shocked and I had to dig deeper, they showed an ancient condom.

And way back then, and even predating Rome by, I don't know how many centuries, they made them out of lambskin. So this was not a modern invention. People were controlling birth back then. But more than that, there was natural birth control. If you look at the world today, everybody lives into a good old age of 70 or 80 or sometimes 90 or 100.

Well, back then, the death rate was incredible. You could have 10 children and maybe one of them would survive. You had wars, you had famines, you had catastrophes, you had all kinds of nice sicknesses.

One, I can't remember the exact statistic, but I heard somewhere it was like one in 10 of your children might survive. And on top of that, if they did survive, their life expectancy was something like 20 or 30 years.

So by the time they're 10 years old, they've lived half their life. And so people want to survive as a human race. They had to have a lot of kids. But the natural selection was the birth control before they invented the lambskin condom or whatever it was.

So if you think in terms of history and you think in terms of controlling the population, this already existed. It was not because of modern sin. But that opened the door for me to suddenly recognize that they had wrongfully connected literally the way in which the human race survives.

They had connected that to sin. And they were trying to preach against it. And I suddenly realized that the whole thing was a manipulation scheme. Because if you can control, if you can try to get the people to believe that something they cannot help is sinful, something that everybody wants, take it away from them, you can control them.

And I recognized that it was just the whole thing was wrong. So that led me down the path of studying not just, it's a weird transition. But I went from studying birth control to how and why cults govern the people by taking things away from them.

And then I suddenly realized that it's all connected. Whether they're taking away your right to wear certain clothes or to marry certain people or all of it, it's all connected as a mechanism that they can use to control you psychologically.

And keep this in mind too, John, with regard to birth control. When groups like faith assembly became as weird as they became and everybody knows, the glory bar in 1974 was a wonderful place to show up in a tent and it was free, it was lovely.

The new building in 1984 was terrible and no one wanted to go. So with no true conversions coming from without the church can't grow by any other method but by within. And so you prohibit birth control to keep the cult going.

Here's a text I got just this past week from somebody. He said, you know, toward the end of my time in our Freeman influence cult, I remember not even... even wanting to invite anyone to church.

What with the head coverings and children being wailed on in the back rooms and the sit trying to confess their way out of illness and death and people competing for the highest overcomer position.

I remember thinking, those people outside my church are way better off to me. Yeah, it was just too embarrassing to invite anybody to church. This guy goes on to say, it's so interesting to see how the Lord is using you and John to bring all this out into the light.

There is real healing in it for me. And that's why we do it. Do I have an axe to grind with Hobart technically no because Hobart's not here anymore, but do I have an axe to grind with the message absolutely because it's just destroyed people's lives.

And I've never been hesitant to be quiet about it. I just didn't have such a wonderful platform as I have with you because of all the work that you had done here in the background with all of these cults.

And still to birth control that the next step with Dr. Freeman, you hate to even go here, but I'm going to, it is the step. All of these things that you have just pointed out, John, they have a logical connection.

It's not just random ideas and thoughts someone created in their own mind. They all are somehow connected. So here's the next step and that is this, that the act of marriage, the marital relation between the husband and the wife is for procreation only.

And that's exactly where they ended up that will just say it the way it needs to be said that sex and marriage is not intended for pleasure. That sex and marriage is intended for the conception of a human being and procreation.

Ah, and no, I have no degrees in marriage and therapy and sex counseling and don't want any degrees in that. And no, that's not my expertise. And yes, there are people out there way smarter than I am who can address all of these, who really can truly address these areas way more professionally than I ever possibly could.

But I'll go back to what I said way earlier, John, in this interview, we're all adult men and women. So you don't have to have any degrees and your mind just works because you have a mind and you go, wait a minute, sex is for procreation only, that can't possibly be true.

You know, that can't possibly be true. That's what we know about the experience tells us that can't... possibly be true. God must have intended other things by this, but we've got this 60 plus year old old guy up there who hadn't had kids in years pontificating on how people should behave. I've never done that as a minister. I would be terrified. I would feel like I have no manners to tell other people what they should be doing in their marriage behind closed doors in the marital bed. The writer Hebrew says in Hebrew 13, marriage is honorable in all

and the bed undefiled. Then he goes on to say, but Hormongers, God will judge. Let's stay with the first part. Marriage is honorable in all and the bed, the marital bed, the marital bed is undefiled.

That's what the Bible says. That is what the Bible says. That's not what Hobart Freeman said, but I always tell people you always have the choice. You can follow the Bible or you can follow Hobart. Those are two different paths. Those are two different options. Following Hobart is not following the Bible and following the Bible is not following Hobart. Hobart had the whole marital relationship solid. It was dirty. It was complicated. There were problems. You've got men balking their wives around. A couple of women told me in the past, I'm going to say 10 days to

this day. They're not involved, but they're relatives who are not free of the call. Well, such and such will just say my friend had to ask her husband if she could turn on the furnace yet because she and the kids are getting cold. I've got blue a gasket, man. I'm like this. She said, I've seen you do this and that's what I need to be more like. I said, yeah. She asked her husband, could she turn on the furnace? What country are we living in? What is wrong with these people? That woman is a human being. If she's cold, you go turn the thermos on it and the thermostat, rather, you go turn

the thermostat up. If the husband says we can't afford it, who was it that helped create those 10 children? I'm sorry, but he was part of that too, and I'm sorry that he has to work all these long, hard hours. I'm sorry, but I mean, we all bear responsibility for whatever choices that we have made in light, and although I much prefer being gentle with these people, because it all goes back to the leadership, John. It all goes back. Some of these men would not have had 12 children, and they would have gone on and finished their college degree, and they'd be sitting in an office

instead of swinging a hammer out in zero temperatures, and my heart goes out to them. It's not their fault, in one sense, that they're li- is where it is, it's because of the leadership. And that's why I continue to have this burden and to speak in no uncertain terms. I don't think anyone ever would wonder. I wonder what channel thinks about Omar Freeman? I want to speak in no uncertain terms whether it's Freeman or a random or any of these other leaders out there. The Kansas City people, the IHOT people, they all have the same techniques that we are up on the stage, we are we are shepherds, you are

just dumb sheep and you need a shepherd to lead you in the right direction. And it's all money, it's all power, it's all fame, it's all position, it all goes to their head. And we all end up with the same mess that we are still dealing with this today. So I say all hail to the women of faith assembly. You want to talk about, and yeah, I'm a male, you're a male, it's hard for me, it's not hard, it's impossible for me to even understand what the women have gone through.

It takes two to get pregnant and after the pregnancy happens, one of them passes off the scene and one of them is carrying that growing child and all of the uncomfortable trying to sleep at night and being too hot in the summer. I mean, I watch my wife go through this, but still there's no way I can even imagine. And then you are going to deliver from your little small body that big old thing right there, you're going to deliver that thing somehow and then you're going to nurse that and feed that and change the diapers, all hail to the women of faith assembly.

It takes two to get pregnant, but it takes a strong woman to carry that child, birth that child, nurse that child, develop that child, feed that child, change that child, respond to all of the crying, all hail to the women of faith assembly. And Hobart Freeman was the one who said, well, in any church I've ever pastured, the women were always the problems. That's a bunch of malarkey. The problem that any church at Hobart Freeman ever pastored was Hobart Freeman.

That was the main problem in any church that he ever pastored. And as far as who else were problems there, who was the man, who wasn't the women, women don't cause problems. Why is it that we want to talk about a spirit of Jezebel all the time? Jezebel had a husband whose name was Ahab. He was the king of Israel. He's the one who did everything wrong and allowed all this in.

Nobody ever has a spirit of Ahab cast out of them. It's always a spirit of Jezebel. We always want to blame the women for everything. I just don't think that's the way that it really is, John.

The physical and emotional and psych- logical calls to these women, and I talk to them. I talk to them on the phone, emails, texts, letters, messages every single week. And you know what I tell them? I'm amazed by you ladies. Oh my goodness. You are amazing Christian women. I just, you know, my hat is off to you. And my praise is high for you. And for their husbands as well as long as their husbands have been a partner with them in all this. But I know, I know, I know the kind of abuse where the husbands got what they wanted at night when the doors were closed

and then they're all off to work the rest of their week and month and year in life. And the women are the ones who are having to deal with the depression, the hormones that change.

I don't have hormones. You know, you don't have a women have hormones. I don't think I even own any hormones. Women own all of them. I don't even know how they do what they do, John, with the depression. They were, they were so ill equipped. As I think back on these early days at Faith Assembly, it was a glorious time. We're all here praising Jesus. And now I got pregnant. And now it's the third time we had three beautiful children and everyone is so excited, but the husbands couldn't hold any good, high-paying jobs. Everything's been outlawed. As you talked about, the women have to wear certain clothes. As soon as they

go to a store, they're identified immediately. They say, well, that didn't bother me at all. I don't know about that sister. I don't know about that. I just think that there are, there are scars that the Lord has healed and will definitely continue to heal and that only he can heal. But there has been physical and emotional and psychological calls to all of these women. The women were not the problem. The men, the ministers were the problem. John, you just did a great interview with Garrett Richardson. And I've gotten to know Garrett and his wife, Maria. I just heard that, that aired today. And that was a, I mean, wasn't that

a wonderful Garrett is, and I've spoken with him a lot on the phone. They're good Christian people. It was such a raw and real and humble and completely honest story that he told. He was under Jim Brennan's group up in Grand Rapids. And look at what happened. The first minister there had some kind of kidney problem. And so he went to the doctor because he was really ill and didn't want to die. And then he gets bashed for that by the ministry up there who should be taken out behind the building and whipped for how they treated people. They

caused people their lives. And so he feels guilty. So now... I've repented. The brother said who was the original minister up there. I've repented and I'm just going to trust the Lord and the brother died. And then the song leader, his wife, tries to have a baby at home, the harassing Garrett and Marie within the first weeks they were there. Now you are going to have your baby at home, right? It's none of your business. You stupid, stupid Christian ministers, bothering in people's lives like that. You should be ashamed of yourself. You need to go back to those people and ask their forgiveness for being

such a monster. And that's the problem that still exists in this faith assembly movement, John, is these ministers. Some of them have owned up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. For those of you who have owned up, but some of them, some of the big names, some of the big names, Steve Hill, Jeff Barnett, two of the biggest names, they just go underground hide and then they pop up somewhere else, a minister chasing some other dream. The very people who ruin people's lives, who cost the life. So that man is dead. That man died. Have you ever

apologized to his wife and children for being part of the reason by brow beating him into not going to the doctor? You caused his death. You were a pardon parcel of that. Have you ever gone to his wife and said, I am so sorry, but in my blindness, in my ignorance, in my foolishness, I gave wrong counsel. I mean, we've all given wrong counsel. I've given wrong counsel in my life. But what do we do? We go back and we make it right. And then the song leader's wife has a baby stuck in her birth canal and she ends up paralyzed over it. And so now

he is removed as a song leader. You not only have calls this woman this tragedy in her life. You won't let her get in a wheelchair because that looks like you're leaning to the arm of the flesh. You put her in a cushion chair. I mean, this is like third world stuff. This is like Neanderthal behavior, John. You put her in a cushion chair at the back of the church. And then because it doesn't look right for you to continue to be our song leader since your wife is paralyzed in the back of the church. Not only are you going to paralyze them, but now you're going

to punish them as well. You should be ashamed of yourself. You should have been taken out and whipped behind the building by the other men in the church. That's what should have happened. And John, this isn't just stuff in the past. This is still going on in these splintered groups out there today. So I'm not going to be quiet about it. I want to say again in my conclusion today, and there's many things in my notes and thoughts that I missed, but all hail to you women of faith assembly. You know, I'm thankful for all of you and I'm proud of all of

you. And if no one else will tell you that, I definitely will. Yeah, my heart goes out to them in the same way. I wasn't there. I didn't see the level that it went to, but I can tell you where it came from.

I saw some of the foundations that developed into that doctrine. And even at its foundation, it was horrific for the women. So I can't even imagine what it developed to in faith assembly. But this has been a little bit difficult for me because it's a very touchy subject.

And it's painful to listen to how badly people were treated. I joke an awful lot, and it's usually, the joking is usually it myself because I believe some things that I recognize now were absurd.

And I laugh, I can laugh at myself for this, but this is me too. What they did to the women, I can't laugh at. It's just, it rips your heart out to think how badly they treated the women in this call.

But anyway, we'll move on and we'll hopefully get into something that's a little bit less painful next week. We've got so many different topics we could go to. So thank you for doing this with me.

Thanks for allowing me to talk about this, John, I'm hoping I'm not causing emotional problems in the back of your mind. Well, it's always there, but I counterbalance that with the humor and it makes me okay.

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-Brandom.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Soon, Audible.