Prosperity to Poverty: The True Cost of Freemanism - Faith Assembly - Chino Ross

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at www.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 this which is one of my favorite subjects to talk about continuing the prosperity gospel and the mess that it has created and how it all ties back to everything that Charles and I had been going through in our research. In fact, just as either yesterday or the day before yesterday, I got some email or a comment, I can't remember which from this guy who had just found the episode that Charles and I talk about the prosperity gospel emerging from Latter-Rain and he was just blown away. Why is not this information out there?

I get it from time to time, people who finally connect the dots back to this and to hear from your side of the story because now we have Hobart Freeman who's also somewhat of a spin-off quote from all of this and now he's connected to all the big players who were also connected to Brandham. This is just for me, it's just fascinating.

Good deal. Well, I was saying last time John that Hobart tried to clean up some of the craziness of the prosperity gospel in his mind by not teaching the real literal gift to get.

If you give, you will get. But he ended up I think really in the same place with his interpretation of Mark 10 by saying if you give up for my sake in the gospels, you'll receive back a hundred fold now in this life and then he goes on and gives the list of things that were involved in what you would receive in return. What we had talked about earlier, what he was so famous for is telling his testimony. I mean, it's like he just loved to hear himself talk. I think Hobart Freeman was Hobart Freeman's favorite topic. He talked about himself really more than

anything else, honestly. More than anything else I can think of, he talked about himself. And I'm a minister, I teach and I told a story about myself during a teaching before and I might have repeated it twice, but I'm talking about 1157 tapes. I'm hearing on I don't know, 20% of them, some reference to, yeah, God saved me in 1952 in St. Peter's birth, Florida.

Just like this is part of the, the, um, the cult legend. And you just, and, and I know when these leaders say this as often as they do and as easily as they do, as much as they do, it just becomes, I mean, ingrained in your mind and part of your personality.

So he would always say that God took this high school dropout and sent him through college and all the way through graduate school, never made less than an A and never worked at all.

That was the stress. I never worked at all. I just claimed Matthew 633 that if you will seek first the kingdom of God, then he will provide for you all of your daily needs.

But the problem, and when I first heard that, I thought, wow, I mean, I'm a junior in high school. So, you know, you're thinking, well, do I even need a summer job? Maybe I just need to trust God.

I mean, if you don't follow his example, you're obviously not as good as he is. And you obviously don't have as much faith as he has if you don't follow, follow his example. So I was mesmerized by that as I'm sure a lot of other people were as we'll see here as we get into this today.

But I'd like to give you a quote, this is on his testimony tape. It's just his playing testimony tape. It was actually done in 1972. Notice the date on that. This is early in his ministry.

He begins having to clarify and add stipulations to as they go along. But it was done at an FGBMFI meeting. I don't at a full gospel meeting. I don't know exactly where, but his testimony tape, which was on the tape list when he died was number F-111, 24-minute, and 52nd mark.

Are you ready to hear this now? Quote, I never worked one single hour all through college and seminary in the quote. I wish my college was like that. Yes. When people say, oh, Cheno, he didn't really make that claim.

Blah, blah, blah. No, there's a direct quote. I'll say it again. I never worked one single hour all through college and seminary in the quote that covers all of college, all of seminary, covers all of the hours during which he was in college and seminary, not one single hour.

And then he goes on on that same testimony to talk about the exams and how they were difficult and he says he, meaning God, another quote, he took the exams for me. This is just, um, that's great.

Crazy stuff, man. I wish God had taken my ex-hams for me too. I mean, I guess we maybe, John, could, and I'm willing to be gracious to people and ascribe that to what I call preacher talk.

You know, you're in the moment and you're feeling the anointing, quote unquote, and you're telling this great story of faith and you're seeing all of this audience out there eating it up. And so you embellish a little and you just say, I never work to single hour.

You know, I'm willing to, because I'd want people to be gracious to me. I'm sure I've exaggerated something in a message somewhere. But the problem with that interpretation is that wasn't the only time he said it.

He said it all the time on the tapes back in the early 90s, but it was very misleading because as I said in our last discussion, in the years following, he clarified that by saying, well, now wait a minute, I did have some jobs and I worked as a night washman and we were parents in the children's home and I cleaned latrines and I graded newspapers because what was happening, and I saw this, this was about the same time I was beginning to listen to Freeman in 76, in 1976.

There were young men who were taking him at his word and who were quitting their jobs, trying out this new faith walk and failing. And then rather than Hobart come along and say, look, I misled you, he compounded the problem by scolding them, saying the Bible says, if you don't work, you don't eat.

You're worse than an infidel. Well, wait a minute, which one is it? Do you have to work or do you not have to work? So you can trust Matthew 633 and live by faith.

I mean, as I've said before, Hobart was very skilled in speaking out of both sides of his mouth. It just depends on what day you caught him on, what the message was about, what it was he was trying to get across.

And so this calls the people there and you'll hear stories, older stories at faith assembly where a group of people would go out after a meeting in the glory barn, after hearing all of this faith and prosperity gospel.

And they're all headed, let's say a dozen of them, to a restaurant to eat. And 11 of them have money in their pockets and one of them doesn't. And the one that doesn't, what's he going to do?

He's just going to claim by faith, God will supernaturally provide the money. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard people tell me this same exact story. They say we get through with the meal, 11 of us pay up and one brother's sitting there waiting for God to giving the money to pay for his meal and we have to pay for his meal for him.

And that might be, he might. Well see, I claimed it and God provided it for me. No, no, no, no, no. That's not the way these things work. That's the same as Hobart saying that he had claimed all of his needs during college and people there around him seeing, oh, you have needs and providing clothes and food and housing money for him at the seminary of the college.

So it was just a very weird message of the way Hobart worked it out and for his own ministry in faith assembly created, I think, some recklessness and some, you know, just some bad decisions made by people there at faith assembly.

Where young men draw on and young women were claiming this that and the other and people were going out to dinner and they didn't have money to pay, I mean, sometimes they wouldn't have money to pay rent at the end of the month.

And rather than say, you know, look, I'm into the third week of this month, you know, I need to hustle up some money. These people did not build homes or buy homes. They were not allowed to borrow money.

Most of them, most of their time at faith assembly, I'm 90% of them were paying rent. They weren't even paying mortgage, a mortgage. They were paying rent on a place. You get to your third week, it's time to go grab a second or third job real quickly.

So you have enough money to make ends meet at the end of the month, but that's normally not what they would do. They would just go on through the end of the month and then they're always wrestling with trying to figure out, did I, it's one of two things, did I lack faith?

Did I just not have enough faith? Or did I have some sin in my life? Nobody even questioned, maybe this message is wrong. Maybe there is something that is fundamentally wrong in both the message of prosperity and Hobart's message of divine healing.

Because when one or the other of those things didn't happen, your knees being supplied or your body being healed, then the burden always fell back on the individual and Hobart made that known. And the message is also, well, why are you up here asking me why it didn't happen?

That never crossed my mind to ask God because it always happened for me. The burden fell back on the person and Hobart put it back on the person. For them to either question their faith or question whether they had sin in their life.

And what people should have been questioning is that neither one of those are the case. The case is you have simply misunderstood the Bible's teaching and you have listened to this false teaching on a false gospel from Hobart Freeman.

And that's why it didn't happen. I told the story whenever I ordered my link. can town car. I never thought there was anything wrong with the message. I thought there was something wrong with me. There had to be. Because they're quoting the Bible. The Bible says, my God will supply all your needs, according to His riches and glory. The Bible says, beloved, I wish above all things that you prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers. The Bible says, if you surrender, I'll give you back a hundredfold now in this life.

So they knew enough Bible verses to scissors and paste them out of the Bible, stitch them back together in their own way that they wanted this prosperity gospel to read, and then low and behold, they are right and you are wrong. But as we know, John, that's simply not the way that this happens. And if I can then say all of that to lead into, this is where it even becomes more damaging, lead into a quote that Hobard gave on one of his tapes back in the Book of Acts series. It was on the original tape list, number 619. It was entitled Christian Liberty,

chapters 14 to 16 in his Book of Acts study. And we've actually used a reference of this before, the same message where he's talking about his struggle with neck ties and beards and old order clothing. And I remember just a couple of days ago, we claimed a house over here on the lake, and we're trading the present house on it. That is, we're trading it in, not on that house. It's a long story and we've taken a step of faith. We don't have all the money, but I've already paid 2000 down. The Realtor can't get over the fact that we're paying cash for it

and already claiming it, you know, by faith. And anyway, he said on my property, he's taking that on trade, you see. He said, but do you have your fire insurance with? Well, I said, I don't have to tell most of you the answer that I gave you, but anyway, I said, and it really comes as a shock to most people, even Christians, and I'm sure he is. He gave no indication. He wasn't. I said, I don't have insurance. I have insurance. And then I got to telling these stories that I'm telling you today about how God has delivered me out of the mouth of the line,

out of the hand of Satan. Satan has tried to take the wheels off our cars. He hates the message of faith. He, more than once, he's tried to take my life with heart attack, strep throat, and well, something like an infection, you see. And God has always delivered us. Well, I told him about the fact that we had assurances and told him about Psalm 91 where for a believer, this is his assurance policy. And he said, what do you feel this way about all insurance? How about barrel insurance and blue cross and he started to that? So I just stopped him. I said

everything. Amen. So what we hear there is he's giving his testimony and everybody's so excited in their rejoicing and shouting, he's been in the past talking about stories about dad Hum Bard and AC Valdez and all kinds of supernatural stuff.

And then he says that, oh, I remember just a few days ago that we claimed a house over on the lake and we've taken a step by faith on it and we don't have all the money.

But I've already put $2,000 down. The realtor just can't believe we're paying cash and we're already claiming it by faith. Did you hear him slip in there? We don't have the money, but he said, but we've claimed my faith.

Busperity Gospel 101, is it? That's what he said. Yeah, you know, he mentioned earlier how he loved to hear himself talk. The irony in this, so Brannum loved to hear himself talk. All of these guys that we've researched, they all seem to have that same as a common theme.

And the irony is, you've probably seen it in the comment feeds, but whenever somebody gets angry at me, they will comment, John just loves to hear himself talk. And the irony of this, man, every time I see it, I laugh because we're talking about people who truly do love to hear themselves talk.

And if somebody just has the patience to line up everything that's said about a certain subject and watch how it progresses, you can watch these guys. They'll tell some joke sometimes. And the joke, people will laugh at it, you know, it's a joke, the people understand it's a joke.

And then they keep repeating the same joke, which is, you know, some of the best jokes are just simply exaggerations. Well, the exaggerations then, because of the group thing, enter into the mythology. And then the mythology enters into, this is how you worship.

And then that, the joke actually, in some cases, transitions into a doctrine. And it's just because of the repetitive nature of these guys. They love to hear themselves talk, keep saying the same thing over.

And they're not, they don't have enough, wherewithal to come up with new content. So they'll repeat the same jokes over and over if it's a good one, right? And the problem is not really limited, just simply to the cults.

You find this in all forms of society. And truly, some people love to hear themselves talk. But in the group thing, it's different, because everybody with the repetitive nature and then everybody who goes outside of the service, they all start talking among themselves.

Well, then some guy comes up with an idea of how the mythology matches some situation in his life. And so that's how it kind of enters into the worship through the group thing. And, you know, you can watch the progression gradually go in the wrong way.

We, after we left the cult, we went to a mainstream denomination, not gonna mention the name. and they said something that just really caught my ear and I thought about it and I thought something just don't sound right with that and I had to wear with all to start. I wanted to know where this church was headed and so I purposefully listened to a sermon, tuned out like three of them and just I'd show up in my suit and sit there and smile like I was listening. Listen to a fifth one or sixth one and then do it again until I could see which direction they were headed so they entered in this

little thing that was just slightly off base and then built upon it and I was watching it grow but instead of watching it grow gradually and missing it I was catching big leaps and strides and in the end where they were headed with it the I'm going to use the word hairbrained. The pastor came up with a hairbrained notion that anybody who has mental health issues and is on medication for that it's not because they need the medication or because of the chemical imbalance in their brain and the things that we know from medical science his claim was that it's because they have sin in

their lives and therefore that's why they have mental health issues and if they didn't have the sin in their lives they could get rid of their medicine and so he set up they actually set up this institution right next to the church where the people would come and he was very dangerous what he was doing he was getting people to leave off their meds and so because I had to wear with all to watch where this was headed I realized this this is not good and I got my family out of it.

Hope Mark set himself up well John to be able to have the disclaimer that if things fall apart in your life if they don't work it's your fault and that's just terrible to do as a pastor but he had it set up where he would he would teach that there are no exceptions to the promises of God only conditions and what those promises quote-unquote are you know he he um identified what all of those were there no exceptions only conditions if you pray ten times for the same thing you prayed nine times and unbelief you know his favorite verse was Mark 11 24 when you prayed believe

that you have received and you shall have it so he said how can you not have it if you receive the moment that you prayed so I mean it was just all of this psychological mumbo jumbo

if you had faith then the moment you prayed you received what it was you were praying for period into discussion now whether you saw it or not whether it manifested itself or not it's something entirely different but you did receive it then so when people did not get their healing when they died when the money did not come through hope Mark would just say well you obviously didn't believe you know because if you believe according to Mark 11 24 before, then you receive when you pray. So if you ended up never receiving, then it means

you never were believing. So I mean, he just had, he had a foolproof system where there was nothing wrong with the message. Everything was wrong with the individual who didn't get whatever it was they were praying for. And you know, that's just not the way the Bible is written and that's not the way things work. And but oh boy, is it a sign of a religious cult? You're never allowed to challenge your question anything. And everybody, myself, yourself, everybody, we all are continuing to learn more about the Bible. You don't ever arrive at the place where you know everything the Bible says and everything that it means.

And what I'm saying by that is we all always, always stand in a place of correction. That is we need to be ready to be corrected if our understanding of Scripture is demonstrated logically and by other things in the Bible to be, you know, incorrect. But for these types of people, they really do think they know it all. They really do. And none of us, if you're a normal human being, the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know as much as you thought you knew five years ago. And you actually do know more. The thing is you were

actually growing in knowledge, but because you're growing in knowledge, you're recognizing there because of how much you have grown in the last five years, then you can extrapolate that in the future and say, good Lord, I thought I was a genius. I thought I knew it all. And look how much I've learned in five years. That simply tells you what's out there that I still don't know.

But I don't think these people have any introspection. They don't have any intellectual integrity or honesty to them. And Dr. Freeman just repeated the same stories and the same quotations. Like you said, they not only like to talk, but Hobart especially liked to talk about himself. And I've often said to other people, I mean, not only is that arrogant. That's just plain arrogant if your favorite topic is yourself. Not only is that arrogant, but that is very demeaning to your congregation because you're telling the people out there that you people aren't smart enough to figure out, I told you this last week. And I told you this last month. I mean, I would be embarrassed

as a teacher. I stand up and teach all the time. And I will cover a little bit of what we went over in the last message just to bring everybody up to, but I'm not going to spend 20 minutes, you know, because that's an insult of their intelligence that I'm saying you don't Remember what we talked about last week.

And for Dr. Freeman, we're talking about the big cult time story legends. These are the things about himself that everybody knew. I mean, they, we can all tell the story as well as Dr. Freeman could tell the story because we heard it so many times.

And I think Kenneth Hagen was that way. I remember when I first heard some Kenneth Hagen messages, he would always say, well, in the year 1938, the Lord appeared to me beside my bed and he'd tell a story.

I heard that same story a thousand times, you idiot. You know, give me some credit for having a brain to remember, I've already heard that story before. And I think William Brandon probably did it.

I think all of these leaders do that just because they think they're so wonderful. And that somehow their life is more significant or more important than my life. I really, John, I don't know about you, but I don't like going to a service and listening to a minister.

I don't mind him saying a thing or two about himself. That's totally appropriate. But I don't like him spending the first 15 minutes telling me what he did that week and everything about his life.

Because what I say, I look to the person beside and say, I don't care about his life. You know, I have a life. My life is what's important to me. And if he would give me 15 minutes, I could stand up and tell you 15 minutes about my life.

And you could tell 15 minutes about your life. And I mean, they act as though the personal details of their life are somehow significant. And I think in a call they are because all these little ants that follow the leader, you know, we want to have something to hold on to.

Maybe we're living some poor, wretched, miserable life. And this guy's driving a big lead sled Cadillac or Lincoln town car. And you know, that's good just to somehow identify with that. But in any event, yeah, Hobart told stories all the time and he told them about himself.

I can even remember totally off the subject, but not really. When he was on an early take telling the story of when his oldest daughter, Pam, Pam Hill, Mary to Steve Hill, was giving, was in labor with their first child.

So this goes back early in the 70s and this natural childbirth and childbirth at home was relatively new for them. And, but here's the way he tells this story of Pam going through I think three days of labor.

Said he was at home and I think June you know, some other people may be a midwife or over at Pam and Steve's house and Pam is going through these contractions, labor pains and it's kind of becoming an extended ordeal.

And so. Either she calls her dad or somebody calls, you know, Hobart for some Spiritual back up and some prayer. So Hobart said he gets in his car and drives over to his daughter's house And he just sits in the living room and he said he's just he said I'm in there I'm just I have total faith God is God God's gonna protect her I'm in there just confessing the promises and Everybody's running in the room being a little concerned and running back out and he said I just sat there and Total peace and serenity and then he said and then sure enough, you know, God Pam delivered the baby and God was faithful and you know

I was glad I was there to pray he told the story like it was his presence in the house That brought that baby to birth. He did not I can absolutely guarantee you he did not give see a single shout out That That might be my cat that walked in front of the game

She's not getting enough attention He did not give a single bit of recognition Recognition to the woman who is experiencing the labor pains You know how that baby got born that baby got born. There goes the cat the baby got born by the labor pains of Pam Hill not by Dr. Freeman's presence in the house. So that's just one just you know odd story, but I'm telling you Any story he told he wanted to make sure he was a focal point of it and if things turned out well It was probably due to his presence in his faith and that's just not right

I think I've told the story on the podcast with you if not I know I did with Charles But I have a cousin who was my best friend growing up. He died of COVID a couple years ago But he had left the church and the cult and Part of the reason he left was because he started noticing that things weren't quite honest and this he was a very honest person And this just bothered him tremendously But he'd gone on a canoeing trip and my cousin was Extremely built tall. He was about a chest holler than my height and

He anyway he was out in some very rapid waters with a group of guys from the church and long story short They ran into some severe trouble and he ended up saving You know most of them and if not for him things could have been disastrous and then these guys get up at the church And they tell the testimonies and and turned it spun it into this fascinating They came near death and God intervened and God came down on the scene and which you know look my cousin was open, he said, you know, that may be God may have worked through me, but they never

mentioned what actually happened, what they did was they tried to spiritualize it. And the point, the reason I'm bringing up again, if I brought it up with you before, people who are in this type of group think, they watch the pastor doing this, many of them know the stories that the pastor's telling, he's not telling the whole story.

And so then they start to mimic this, and then they do it too, and they get up and give testimonies about it. Well, if you're in the church and you know everything about everybody and you're watching it, you realize, okay, yeah, the pastor, he's spinning this tall tail, we realize that, but it's for the glory of God.

And the members who are doing it, they're spinning tall tails, which aren't quite true for the glory of God. But now an outsider comes into the church who doesn't know any of this stories, who suddenly hears the minister telling this outlandish, fictional story, parts of it true, thinking, oh my gosh, we're in the Bible days, and then they hear the members get up and do the same thing.

Oh my gosh, this is just like Daniel and the lion's den, you know, and they don't realize that it's a tall tail. Well then they join the church and they get sucked in and they get in the group thing, and well then they start doing it too.

And it's just so weird to watch it all repeat itself. I did not really think about that until my cousin told me, my cousin saved my life. I was going through some severe mental health issues, and if not for him, I'd probably be dead.

But I asked him, why, why don't you believe the prophet? And he says, well, John, I don't, I believe the cowboy religion, which I think I've told you this. I love your neighbor as yourself and be kind to animals with his philosophy.

But until it really, it really didn't click what he was telling me until years later after I'd left the cult, that the stories that we grew up and believed, the mythology that we believed, parts of it were true, you know, in his case, he true, you know, part of it was true.

They did cap size or whatever happened, you know, the guys were in the water. That part was true, but the way they spun it wasn't true. And like him, after I left this and started getting into a real church, what they didn't do this.

And, you know, in the same scenario, they would have said, God was faithful, God was there with us. And thankfully, God had, you know, provided us Marcus, who was there in the water and helped to save us.

They're just honest about it. And so you don't have an outsider come in and say, oh my gosh, we're living in the Bible days. And this is a fantastic story. 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?

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My problem, John, when I first began hearing, it kind of developed like that. I heard that, you know, I never worked an hour, single hour in college and seminary until that sounds like, wow, I mean, God just totally provided for all of your needs. But then, a couple of years later, he fills in the details and said, no, actually, I did work. And so that was the first clue to me that I don't know that I can totally entrust his stories. I think that there is an element of truth to them, but I don't think they happen the way that he said that they did. And I think

that's a warning to all of us. Honestly, that's a warning to all of us to be careful when we tell a story and make sure that we don't exaggerate. You know, I'm a professional charter boat captain.

Also, I'm a fishing guy and we'll go catch a fish that's this size. But as we tell the story, the fish just continues to grow and grow and grow. And I think that's what happens here. You might have just told the story a little bit off and man, he got a good response from that. So, next time, let's add a little more to it. And maybe they don't consciously go through that. I don't know. You know, I can't read someone else's mind so I can't make an accusation that I can't prove.

But I can prove that him saying I never worked a single hour. I can prove that's a lie or an exaggeration or preacher talk or whatever you want to call it because he went on to say that that's not exactly how it happened. So we all have to be careful. We all want to be smarter, more handsome, more beautiful, taller, richer than we really are. You know, all of us wish we were something that we are. And so you can, you know, elaborate and expand on yourself by telling these big grand tales and it's something that we shouldn't do. I heard from one person from

Faith Assembly. What mentioned his name because he asked me not to actually goes back to pre-Glory Barn days. Actually goes back to the church under the water tower in Claypool when they met in Dr. Freeman's home. And he comes from a very well-known family. I would love to talk about his parents. Maybe I will talk about his parents in other context because they were wonderful and I had nothing but high regards for his parents.

But anyway, he and his siblings who came from a really good set of parents there early in faith assembly, he said, you know, Cheno, he said, I went away to Bible school and got a Bible degree so that I could try to understand the stories that Hobart was telling all about the Bible. I just thought maybe I'm not seeing or reading the Bible clearly enough. So I went and got a Bible degree, then I went and got a psychology degree after that so I could understand the man who was telling the stories and that didn't help. So then I went, I got my CPA license and I've

done taxes for the rest of my life. He wanted to get a Bible degree, then he wanted to get a slight degree to understand this guy up there that he was kind of raised under and then, you know, neither one did any good so he went on and got a CPA degree. This type of message or a CPA license, this type of message really hurt the young ministers, what I call the underlings under Hobart because they took him at his word, the early ministers in their mid-70s took him at his word and you know, they they quit their jobs and start as a result of that. Now what I call the tier

one ministers, the sons-in-law, the Jeff Barnets and some others, the tier one ministers, they're sitting in butter because they have enough people under them that they can quit their jobs, claim Matthew 633 and God can provide through this large group of people sitting under their ministry all their needs being met. But it's like your story of the the drowning victims, we should give God credit, we should give God credit for everything but but make sure that we're clear. No, he did not physically with his voice, talk to me, I hear Hobart all the time say,

yeah, the Lord spoke to me last week and said such and such, when I say someone spoke to me, this is speaking to you, what I'm doing right now, this is called speaking. If this isn't what's happening, then it's not speaking. It's something else, it could be an impression, you had a feeling, then tell us what it was that you had. So if God literally came down from heaven and physically picked you up out of the river, I want to hear about it and I want to rejoice.

But if God provided some means by which, whether a limb sticking out from the bank or a burly man who could swim better than me, if God provided some means, I'd like to know that means too, just because.

I have the whole story, it's honest, it's accurate, it's fair, and it's in context. I mean, I don't think that's too much to ask for. If it's an absolute Daniel in the line to stand miracle, but all means, tell it, you know, and if it's not, then tell it the way it is.

I mean, I'm sitting here, John, we got this big, beautiful new house. I'm just looking around at my office is twice as big as any room in the entire house, because this is where I live and do everything is in my office.

And I want to give God all the credit for our house, for our farm. But I want to give him, I mean, I don't want to say I've got this by my own power and by my own might, and just eliminate God from the picture, but also want to tell the story faithfully though, you know, it's from many years of hard work, me and my wife, and we can say God bless us with good jobs, God bless us with intelligence, God bless us with good health, you know, and not everybody has those things.

And I'm not going to say I just have all those things naturally. I want to thank God for how he has brought me in my life, how he has brought my wife and her life.

My wife quit her, she retired from her job, and she was 48 years old. She already had 27 years in with state government, she's a lot smarter than I was. I'm still working to this day.

She retired when she was 48 years old, but we still give God credit for all of our blessings. But we want to give him credit, you know, in a reasonable way that it's just simply true to the facts of the story.

And that's hard to find in these cult narratives. It's just really difficult to find. And it's discouraging because when you're young, as you and I were, I was way younger than you. And I, no, I was it, you were way younger than me.

You were born into all this, no, you were one day old when you got into it, I should be better than you, John, and I'm not, I was 17 before I started believing this stuff.

You were one day old, right? Yeah. Not let my balding head fool you. Well, you know, when we get into this, you just, you believe everything and you want to believe everything and who doesn't want to be living in Bible days?

I mean, it's just, it's not an evil thing to want to live in Bible days. It's not an evil thing to want to see the dead raised and everybody healed around you. It's not evil to have that desire, but what is evil is to mislead people.

It's terribly evil to people. That's what Hobart has done with this prosperity. message. So the young ministers just quit their jobs. The tier ones are okay because they have people following them. But let me raise some of the stuff going on behind the scenes.

So here is a, here is a message that I received from someone who has been following all of these podcasts. They just want you to see what's going on. She writes and I don't think she wants me to give her name. She says back to Faith Assembly. She said I was in Faith Assembly from late 1977 to 87. Thankfully, I only had four kids. They were separated by a number of years, which I always thought was God's grace on me. And let me just clarify when she said she was in Faith Assembly, she was actually not a part of the main body in Wilman. She

was a part of a group south of Indianapolis, Jeff Barnett, who was one of the top ministers at Faith Assembly, had a meeting down in the whiteland, new whiteland area in Indiana. South of Indianapolis just off I-65. Had a meeting there for a long time and that was the meeting she was a part of. And she said my husband had a good job because he had a degree in something.

So she said we were one of the fortunate ones in the church where we didn't have a dozen kids. My husband had a good paying job so we were doing okay financially. But she said but so many did not do so well. I remember taking extra snacks to church so that while in the nursery I could give food to the other children and it started out like this. I was giving one of my kids cheerios or something and a little girl kept coming over for some.

And I said to her mom, I think she's hungry and her mom said she probably is. One chicken doesn't go very far. This was a family of seven or eight at the time. Some people really struggled financially and some women were not really strong enough to have a baby every year for years even though quote our bodies are made to have babies end to quote. This is just a small story of the side effects of some of the teachings of faith assembly. So the reason I read that story is you know my heart goes out to all of the people that supported

Hobart and supported all of these other ministers. It wasn't so much that God gave you that Lincoln town car or that Cadillac. It was at a whole lot. a poor people put money in the offering and that's what just disturbs me to no end.

Here's a minister who's riding high and sitting in butter and he's got people in his own congregation who have a bird, a chicken among seven or eight family members and that's all they had to eat.

Now I'm telling you what, that kind of stuff, as you know from my last talk with you about homelessness, that stuff grates on my nerves, that would get all over me for a celebrity, a minister, a celebrity minister to be just, you know, sitting high, eating high on the hogs, sitting high in the saddle and there's just no telling how many people out there are suffering.

Your prosperity message has said, give to the Lord and He'll give back a hundredfold and it's working for you because you have a hundred people to give to you. It's not working for this poor family in the church, not because they don't have faith, not because they're sin in their life, but because they don't have a following.

The guy has a job and the job, if he has a job, the job is what's supplying his needs. So the people are really suffering. It already been taught, no higher education, no white collar job, no barring money, huge families, no birth control, certain career paths are wrong.

I always said you could really only be a painter and drywall, that's about all that was left. By the time Hobart went through all of his rants on what you could do and couldn't do and where and not where and eat and not eat and choose, you couldn't wear and close, you couldn't wear places you couldn't go and relatives you couldn't visit and TVs you couldn't own and music you couldn't listen to, it was no, no, no, can't, can't, can't, don't, don't, don't.

So you've got this terrible mentality created of these suffering people who were just looking up to their savior, aka the minister, they're just looking up to him. And they're almost living vicariously through him because it seems like everything's working for him, you know, he's walking in divine health, of course we find out later that's really not true.

His marriage is perfect, we find out later that's really not true, his kids are perfect, we find out later that's really not true. He has all of his needs met, that probably is true because that's just coming through the offerings of the people and this was just not right.

This same person that I read this story about, she had another interesting story if I could tell this story in the context of the one I just told, she's bringing Cheerios, extra food to church.

to help with some of the poor people in the nursery. Her husband had a physical situation where his appendix burst and I don't know if people medically know what that is if you don't Google it. That's not something that you play around with. That's not something that you just hang out around the house for a couple months waiting for the manifestation of your healing. It's life or death. And so of course they didn't go to the hospital immediately. You're not supposed to but the pain was just unbearable. They went to the hospital. She told me she

said I had to withstand a yelling and screaming at me by the doctors, ER doctors, and she said I write rightfully so because you know my husband's life is at stake. Life death is on the line here. It's one thing for Hobart to sit up there and you know talk about ingrown toenails and people believing for their eyes to be healed. This is someone whose appendix has burst. So she said you know I deserve the tongue threatening that I got from the ER surgeon like what in the world are you folks doing? You know what rock did you crawl out from underneath?

You've got to get to the hospital with this kind of pain. Anyway he was there for 21 days. That's a long stay in the hospital. His whole insides were filled with this fluid that shouldn't have been there. That was extremely septic and extremely dangerous. And she said while that's going on with my husband she's believing for her eyes quote unquote that means she can't drive because she can't see because she's not allowed to wear glasses. The husband's a bread winner got a pretty good paying job. He's in the hospital for 21 days. She has no income. She can't drive. She's dependent on relatives, neighbors, church

friends to take her and pick her up. She said so during this time period I just want to show you what's going on in these kinds of churches. During this time period she's having to endure sermon after sermon by the minister who is saying now some of you people have failed your faith test and you are leaning to the arm of the flesh. That's their favorite friends. They went to the arm of the flesh instead of trusting God. They went to the arm of the flesh referencing the fact that they had gone to the hospital. You know it's just I just don't know

what to say about these stories and these could be duplicated a hundredfold John. This is nothing isolated as soon as someone had something serious. Some people obviously just said, I'm going to trust God and they did literally end up dying. We've given stories of that.

Some people decided, no, you know, the pain is too great, or the situation is too dire. I'm going to go to the hospital. So they went to the hospital. And when they did, it's, well, you have fallen back to trusting in the arm of the flesh. And she said, I had to endure all of these sermons constantly talking about how I had missed God. What I can understand is how these people would ever want to go back to church, go back to that church, but they all did, though. Every one of them, because that is what you're a part of, you know,

you just, you just can hardly leave it. And so this was new to me. I had never heard this kind of story before, but she said we actually had to get a third party individual to broker a deal with the leader of that group to allow us back into the church. So I already just raked them over the coals for going to arm of the flesh. You know, it's really time to leave that church, but you and I know that that's not going to happen. You are so wed to that. If you leave that, you pretty much, you know, lost your salvation. So you can't really do that. I mean, you're,

you're literally and truly between a rock and a hard place. And so they had to get a, another person to broker the deal, you know, like we're, we're going to repent. We're so sorry.

I mean, all it was with my husband's life that was at stake, but we obviously sinned by going to the doctor. The doctor saved his life. And thankfully, the doctor saved his life. But now we've got to, now we've got to have someone else come and intercede for us just so that we can be a member of the church again. And she went on to tell me, I don't know, it was some years later, at either a funeral or a wedding. I'm going to say she said it was 10 years later at a funeral or a wedding

that they are out of the church by this time, not going anymore. And at that funeral or wedding, that minister was there. Do you think that minister even recognized who she was? No. No, did not even recognize who she was. And what's interesting about that minister, and maybe this is the point that I'm really trying to make here, all of these ministers simply paired in what Hobart said, trust God, don't lean to the arm of the flesh. As soon as someone, quote, lean to the arm of the flesh, they were disciplined, they were scorned, they were avoided,

and they became pulpit sermon material. Let's fast forward a few years. And that same minister who said you can't wear glasses, he's wearing glasses. asses. You can find him online. That same minister who said, you know, even if it's serious, you got to trust God had a serious situation in his own immediate family where kidney failure was involved. And so he donated the kidney. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Someone needs to come clean. I think that the two comments in the hundreds of responses, John, that I have heard most often in these interviews that you and I have done

would be these two and maybe not in this order, but these two. Number one, people say, I can't believe it's been 40 years and no one has said what I've wanted to be said. Just tell the truth. Tell the background. Give me the actual story of everything connected to Hobart Freeman, which you and I are diligently trying to do. They said, we've wanted to hear these things for 40 years and never heard them. The second thing, the second comment of all the comments, the second most frequent one is, why won't these ministers own it? Some ministers are dead. They can on it. They've already died. Some

died trying to trust God. Most didn't. You know, they gave up the message, lived a number of years and died from some illness or injury like Bruce Kinsey. We talked about who died from leukemia.

There are still some out there today who are not teaching this message at all, but they won't own it. They just changed their address. They changed their clothes. They changed their address. And in the process, they changed their message. And it's like you slide off to another part of the country. Hope that nobody finds out that you have a connection to faith assembly.

Maybe instead of going by your name, you go by your initials now because that will help create a hidden aspect for you. And what people have said is, we want these ministers some have apologized and said, I taught wrong things and I'm so sorry for it. And that's acceptable.

We want these other ministers to own the fact you were not some little small fry. Like me, I'm just a small fry. Always have been, always will be. We want these top ranked ministers who were under Hobart, who had all of the meetings, who had all the following and who had all the offerings and who taught dogmatically, you can't go to the arm of the flesh. You don't borrow money and don't do this and don't do it. Well, heck, they're doing every bit of that themselves today.

And they have not owned the fact all you people wrong in the first place. These young ministers, and they were all young, except, you know, Stan Hill and Jack Farrell and Bill Garner, a couple of the older ones, and those have all passed away just because of their age.

These young ministers did not deserve the income that they got because they weren't professionals. They weren't professionally trained to teach anything, or at least to teach anything connected to the Bible. They were not professionally trained. They deceived the people and teaching tons of false doctrine because it was freemanism is all that it was.

And then thirdly, and worst of all, they went back on all of the deception they told and never owned it. So that's what people have said. Why can't these ministers who got rich off of our backs? That's exactly what happened.

You know, they just accumulated money. They were able to buy fancy cars, drive fancy cars, build big homes, without being in debt, which Hobart said, Roman 13, 8, you can't be in debt. They were able to skirt being in debt, a mortgage, bond, money, finance, company, banks. They were able to skirt that.

I swear to the fact they had a large following. And I just think all of this is just utterly tragic for the people who followed. It's like I've said to you, John, and I've said to them, I said, all of you want a refund, don't you?

You would love to just put in a refund for, I don't know, hundreds, thousands of dollars that were given to support these guys. You know, that's the real problem that I have with this. When people evaluate and critically think about prosperity gospel, they often miss people like Hobart Freeman and say it's not part of this because he didn't live this luxurious life.

They say the same thing about William Brannum. He lived in this humble little home, you know, regardless of the money that he did spend, which was a heck of a lot. By all appearances, he's not driving, you know, elite fancy cars and own private jets and all of this. So they say he wasn't part of this.

But if people would instead look at the suffering that happens to the people because of the doctrine, I think you can start to line up and see where the prosperity gospel falls. Because like Hobart Freeman, he's making these wild claims, God did this blessing for me, gave me this house, whatever it is. They all do it.

All these people who are in the prosperity gospel, but it's off of the backs of the people who are literally the ones paying for them. And I don't have so much a problem with that. I would love for somebody to buy me a house, man. That would be incredible.

And I'm not saying go buy me a house to the listeners, but I understand the want to have something better. That's part of human. nature. But whenever somebody gives it to you, at least be honest enough to say, God blessed me with this house. And it was all thanks to you people who threw your blood, sweat and tears and your day jobs gave me the money. If they could just be honest about it, I would have no issue with it other than, you know, it seems wrong to do. I personally couldn't stand up and say, Hey, give me a house. It seems wrong to do. But I understand it. There

are people who just always have to have something better. But to the listeners who were impacted by something like this, don't look at the signs of prosperity gospel as we see it on television.

Look at the doctrine instead. Is this person claiming that God is blessing them beyond what is natural, what is honest like my cousin? Is this a fictional story that they're throwing out there and making into this great spiritual instance of God, you know, acting above and beyond what is natural or are there natural causes? The reason why that they have the things that they have. And I think if you do that, just take a step back and look, I think you'll see this is far more widespread than just Hobart Freeman and William Brannum.

And it's time I think for people just to be honest, not only as a minister to the congregation, but the congregation to themselves, did God really give them this great house or did my ties and my offerings give them this great house or car or whatever it was? And I think if you do that, I think life gets much, much simpler. So this has been fun. Thanks for doing this. Yes, you're welcome, John. Enjoy doing it with you again.

Well, 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-brannum.org. For more about the dark side of the new Papastolic Reformation, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available in Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.