When Faith Kills: The Reckless Doctrine of Faith Assembly

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host, minister and friend, 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 to talk all things Hobart. Last week we talked through the indictment and the sermon that followed the indictment and I was trying to picture myself in his shoes.

I don't know that I could have behaved as good as he did. I'll just say like that. I probably would have come unglued, but in the back of your head, whenever you're doing this kind of thing, you have to know that the government's going to be against you at some point.

So he may have been a little bit more mentally prepared than I would have been had I did this because I would have never done the thing in the first place. That said, I was in a movement that largely encouraged this kind of thing, so I kind of get it, I kind of understand it, but at the same time now comes the jail time.

So we're getting into the serious business in today's podcast. Yeah, and remember, John, it was in his first brush with the law. He had that civil lawsuit that had been filed against him earlier.

And by the way, I just noticed on one of the old tape lists, if anyone's interested in hearing his report of that, there was a tape entitled Avoiding and Unsettled Mind Part 2. We're going to play something from Part 1, hopefully later in this podcast, but the second part of that, Avoiding and Unsettled Mind Part 2, which was done in February of 1984, he talks about having just received a 104 page summons to court.

And that was this civil lawsuit where the couple in Illinois, they were trying to determine treatment and the ministry's net worth because they knew they didn't really have any criminal grounds to go against him at that time or to try to attack him.

So they were going to try to get into his pocket book, which really scares most people and hurts just about everybody. And in doing that, they found out that he was a millionaire, and that was a big increase over what he himself had said by himself.

Seminary Days, his annual salary as a seminary professory, gray theological seminary was $4,000. This was in 1963, though, so we're talking about a long time ago. 1963, his salary was for rent. He actually didn't teach that year.

He had been fired by the seminary, and they had to buy him out and had to pay out that last year of his contract. But yeah, he was used to lawsuits. At least by 1984, when they were really going to pile up on him, first of all, the civil one and the civil one, you know, determined he was worth about a million dollars.

I just heard from somebody here since we did that podcast, John, actually a woman who lives in another country, in another part of the world. And she was a member, a faithful member in attendee, and she was upset when she said, wow, I never realized the value and the worth of everything around there.

And you know, and you and I have talked about this before, especially in view of the fairly rampant poverty that everybody else was experiencing. So when you hear what 40 years literally, 40 years later, 41 years later, when you hear that this man up there preaching, I just live totally by faith, and God takes care of me and supplies all my needs.

And you need to live the way I do when you hear that he's a millionaire, that doesn't cross very well to people. We talked also about the person who was stealing out of the offering box.

She didn't know if I knew who it was, well, I knew exactly who it was, but I purposely have not given that person's name. I don't want to offend the children of the grandchildren of that family.

And I think he and his wife are still married and still alive today. She wanted to supply me with the name confidentially. And I said, I know the name. And she said they have remained friends of mine over all these years.

Whenever this woman I'm talking about, she and her husband did some ministry, the couple from faith assembly, where the man had stolen out of the offering box on multiple occasions, actually helped support them in their evangelistic endeavor.

And she said the situation was maybe among other things that, and here's the big point, that faith ministries and publications, faith assembly, Hobart Freeman, they didn't pay people a wage that you could live on.

That was the problem then. They just weren't paying the people enough money. Now that's no justification for stealing, obviously. You can't steal out of the offering box. But she said, I know. Oh, the person, you know, who's guilty of that, and they just weren't paid enough money to do what they were doing.

And so that reminded me of an old message of Hobart that I just thought I would pull out if anyone is interested. It's entitled The Importance of Faith and it was an evening message taught in 1981.

So it was taught in the new building and his lead in, this almost this entire hour-long message was about the secret that Hobart had kept hidden from everyone that was going to make him appear really good in their mind.

And that's why he was spending this entire message to talk about it. He said, it had come to light to him that there were people saying, well, the reason that you can say you're walking by faith and preach faith and say, I live on Matthew 6.33, since today I was converted in 1952.

The reason you can do that is because you've got all these tapes that are selling thousands of copies and you have these books that are gone into multiple printings. They're selling tens of thousands, if not a few hundred thousand copies.

You know, that's the reason that you can say, you're living by faith, but I'm on a fixed income. So he wanted to address that and say, look, this is a secret that I have kept from all of you up until right now and I'm gonna reveal this secret.

And his point was, I want to show you that I'm living by faith day-to-day, hand him out, just like you are on your job, because he said all of the proceeds from those tapes and books from faith publications and ministries and from faith radio ministries, all the proceeds go right back into that part of the ministry and not a dime of that comes into my own pocket.

And so that was a fairly decent revelation, I think to the people who had a misunderstanding, maybe he just pocketing all the profits from that, he actually wasn't. And so I think they were deceived by that because they didn't slow down to think, okay, that covers that, but what about the offering box in the back with a church between 2,000 and 2,500 people?

And that doesn't count the satellite groups and that doesn't count the people out there like myself. I was not a part of a satellite group, but in my early years, even when I was a pastor and a teacher, I'm talking about in my early 20s, myself, I didn't have anywhere to send my offering or my support, I supported Dr. Freeman in my early 20s.

So there's no telling how much money. He was coming in just to him as an offering that had no part of faith ministries or publications. So then he goes on to tell them the details of what the offerings in the back of the church pay for.

And here's what he said. He said they pay for the utilities that's anywhere from $700 to $1,300 a month. They pay the custodians salary and that's an interesting one. I'm curious to hear if we get any feedback on that.

I did not know there was a custodian salary. I actually do know some of the people who said the men because they told me that we swept and cleaned after every service and organized the chairs.

So was there a salary involved? You know, I'm not privy to that. There were two associate pastors, Stan Hill and Jack Farrell. And he said their salaries come out of the offerings in the back.

I don't know, John, what their salaries were. But I do know that I've had multiple people tell me that those two associate pastors. Stan Hill was number one and Jack Farrell was number two.

They were older men. They had been pastors of other churches. So they were between Hobart's age and all of these underlings that were, you know, young like me. They were my age coming up under him.

And what he used them for, they didn't really get to preach much, but Hobart didn't want to do any counseling, no visitation, he didn't want to leave his study. You know, it was Mount Freeman.

He did not want to leave his cave. So they handle all of the peripheral matters that were he didn't want to dirty his hands. They were paid. I don't know how much, but multiple people have told me that their income was so tight that they couldn't even turn the heat on in the wintertime.

And we're talking about Northern Indiana. So I don't know what they were paid, but they weren't paid much. Then he said Jerry Salary, Jerry Irvin was the song leader. I've talked to Jerry. I don't know how much Jerry earned as the song leader there.

He said $500 a month went to guest speakers. He said every time I'm not in the pulpit, and he normally preached on Wednesday nights and Sunday nights. So if he wasn't preaching one of those nights, or if it was a Sunday morning, there would be a guest speaker, normally one of the other ministers in the church, they got paid $100.

And I'm laughing because it just does not sound like a lot of money coming from 2,500 people. They've got thrown a bone, wait, $100 to preach, a sermon. Now one of the ministers, Jim Brennan, told me himself, now when I preached, I got $200.

So I don't know if that's because he was a better preacher or Hobart-liking more. maybe inflation and they had raised the salary from 100 to 200. And then he said, finally, that he said there are gifts for the needy and he said within the last two weeks, $550 went out as gifts for the needy.

So that's where, and then the leftover, the leftover of that offering, then came to Hobart Freeman. So that was kind of the financial arrangement, if anybody wanted to know, the financial arrangement of Faith Assembly.

I hate to say my mind has been skewed, but anytime I hear a minister saying how he has no money and then describes all of the little places that it goes. My head is always doing the math and I'm like, no, there's something off here.

We've said it before, every 10 people makes a salary if you're a giving 10%. So 10 people is a full salary. You got 2,500 people. That's 250 salaries going somewhere. I'll never forget when my grandfather died, the surprise and shock that I had whenever I got my hands on the estate papers, because my grandfather was the same way he would often talk about how he just got a little meager salary from the church, just a little salary.

And there's not enough money to give out. And I was one of the fortunate ones because my family was allowed to celebrate Christmas. A lot of the families were preached at if you celebrated Christmas.

But I'll go to my grandfather's house and I'll never forget. It was like it was an every year thing. He pulled out this envelope and he would hand me $5 and $5 for my brother and say, now we'd like to give you more, but there's just not a lot of money to go around because I live on a little salary from the church.

So, you know, $10 for Christmas was it. Whenever I saw the millions of dollars that he had in his estate, I was shocked. And I was not just shocked. I felt stupid because I had been at his house when, you know, he's preaching these sermons about the meager salary he gets.

He never mentioned the quote unquote love offerings. By him saying that he had little money, people would show up at his house and give him money. That's how it works when you're minister. So, he never ever mentioned the, I guess it was millions.

He had millions of dollars when he died, but he had that much money coming in outside of the church. So, I have a hard time believing that Hobart was spending all of this money.

Yeah. Again, 2,500 people in that congregation and even if you're paying a meager salary to two assistant pastors in the song leader and guest speakers and what not, there's still money left over.

And as I said earlier, that doesn't count. You know, he had a big following around the country and in several foreign countries. And some of those people would obviously feel indebted to Dr. Freeman because he was their leader and their teacher.

and their pastor from afar, and so they would have sent him money. Anyway, Hobart was not living on rice and beans, and he was not living hand-to-mouth, but so many, many of the people there were.

So that was a civil lawsuit, and then last time, John, we were talking about the criminal indictment, which came down on Wednesday afternoon, October the 17th of 1984. One woman, fifteen-year-old Pamela Men, had died of kidney failure, kidney disease, and both her parents and Dr. Freeman had been indicted by this six-member grand jury.

The prosecutor knew that we've got some laws now on the record on the books in Indiana, and maybe this is something we should use and can use successfully to go after not only the parents, which they were definitely doing on multiple occasions, but what they really wanted to do was go after the leadership of Faith and Simba Lee.

So they indicted Dr. Freeman on aiding and inducing reckless homicide that he had actually been influential in causing the death of this young girl. And I just want everyone to keep in mind because it's been quite a few months ago when we were looking at the death statistics there that this was nothing new at Faith and Simba Lee.

This was par for the course. The maternity mortality rate was a hundred times what it was anywhere else in Indiana. In other words, you did not want to get pregnant and be a member of Faith and Simba Lee.

You stood a high chance of dying, and the infant mortality rate was way up there as well. They had documented 80 to 100 in that general area, deaths, but it was way more than that that never made the news, newspapers, news reporters never could find out.

It didn't cover surrounding areas, didn't cover surrounding states, didn't cover other countries of the world, and didn't cover John down to our day, where I know of reports in the last few years of people who have died because they are still holding on to Dr. Freeman's teaching.

So it was just a really, really bad situation. So if I can insert one more firsthand recollection, I did receive a message from a woman who, by my estimation, she must be in her late 40s or around 50 right now.

In her parents, as well as her grandparents, especially, and I will not mention any names to protect the innocent, the innocent as her, were major players at Faith Assembly from way back when. I mean, major players there.

So she said... And in a message, she said, I just finished the fourth podcast of your YouTube series that you were doing with John Collins on Faith Assembly. This was relatively recently and I told her, good luck sister.

We've done it two dozen since then. Welcome to our nightmare. You have a long way to go. She said, this is just so much. And so she talks a little about her background. She says that her father and mother were college educated, they, you know, they went away to college, they got married, they came back to Faith Assembly, which is the church they had left.

Her grandfather was a major player there in the church. She was born in the late 70s. And so she said, you know, I grew up, my parents were here, my grandparents, at least on one side.

I grew up here in this church. And so we had so many family connections, cousins and aunts and uncles. And she said that part of it was really wonderful. And that part was a big blessing because there were large families.

You had nieces and nephews and cousins outside the church. I think it was a good situation because you had so many relatives there. However, she said, I still had some awful experiences because of the church.

She said, your compassion in sharing the timelines and acknowledging how hard some people had it brings tears to my eyes, thinking about it. We're talking about 40 years later when people hear the raw reality of all this, whether it's just me relating a story or especially when they hear Hobart's own voice on an old message, ranting about something, it brings back some heartache to these people.

She said, when you mention a certain woman dying of, we'll just say untreated cancer, she said, I have vivid memories of all of that because that was a relative of hers. She said, I have memories of stopping at the house when she was doing really badly.

And mom must have stopped by to help change a bandage on a Wednesday night. I'm not sure I am sure I was not supposed to peek around the corner, but I did. I was probably five or six years old at that time.

And little children should never have to be in those types of settings. But I'm sure lots of kids experienced hearing family members crying out in pain as they tried to plug their ears and fall asleep.

And she's telling it from away. that I can't tell her because I didn't experience that. She saw her grandmother dying of untreated cancer. My mom is stopping by on the way to going to hear Hobart preach about divine healing on a Wednesday night to change the bandages.

And my grandmother slowly died of untreated cancer. She said, I've erased my note three times already. I'm trying to keep it short. Just thank you for your history. I hope to keep going through the series.

I hope to get more healing, but it keeps getting where I feel like I might be sharing too much with you. Someone I don't even know, they're just saying, hey, I just can't believe that I'm hearing all of this.

So much of the John was just, so much of it was just put down and it wasn't something you could talk about. But they had this crazy idea of positive thinking and confession. So you can't even talk about anything negative.

You could not literally get a straight answer out of a person if you just walked up to them and said, hey, brother, how are you today? You could not get a straight answer. It had to be God's word is true.

God's trutus word. God is faithful. I've claimed the promise. I'm enduring. I mean, it was just this theological bag full of all kinds of terminology. You couldn't get a straight answer like you would get if you asked David in the Old Testament in the book of Psalms, how are you doing today?

Say, I'm not doing very well. My enemies have compassed me around about and I feel like I'm sinking down into she old. That's what I feel like today. Now, David would normally or the Psalmist would normally buy the end, say, but my hope is in the Lord.

Which would be fine. That's the way to say it. At least they lived in reality where these people did not live in reality. So my point is what you and I are talking about, what we are saying is covering suppressed memories from 40, 45, 50 years ago.

A little five or six year old girl told, stay right there. I got to go around the corner into nanny or grandma's bedroom and do something. And the little five or six year old girl peeks around the corner to see what's going on.

And you've got a woman dying of untreated cancer. And I've heard similar stories, John, from just so many different people that these are repressed memories. They do need to come out into the open and into the light, which they are doing.

And you know, when they do people have a chance to heal. I don't think you can heal until you can identify. wrong. It can't be fuzzy or hazy in your mind. One of these women I had just spoken to recently, she said, until the podcast, we were always willing to say we were a part of a church that had cultish tendencies. They just cannot go over the line and say, see you LT. It's cultish.

You know, it's apparent, it's different, it's odd, it's Christian, but other things were included as well, but they just can't say cult. And until you can say, whether you use that word or not, you know, is beside the point to me, but you had to be able to say that was dead wrong.

The teaching wasn't partially right, but he got all, it was dead wrong because look at all the dead people that came as a result of it. And because people haven't been able or willing to do that, then they're just living with these suppressed memories. You know, I work with a lot of people in private and I don't share what they send me. I usually keep it to myself, but I've had people tell me similar stories. In the Brannemism, there are two main churches that from which everything spread. And in one of the two main churches, there was a guy that contacted me and he watched

his mother die because they had convinced her that if she had enough faith, she wouldn't need that medicine, which, by the way, would have easily saved her life. So she, in essence, killed herself and he watched this happen and he became atheist because if God looks like this in this church, I won't know part of God is what he told me. And time and time again, you hear all these stories. What's interesting is you mention the Psalms and David and how David's just unloading them.

I think that's a part of the Psalms that I don't, I have yet to hear a minister mention this, but David is writing in a therapeutic way when he's writing this. He is unloading his burdens right there on the right on the paper as he's writing this. And when people bottle this up for decades and they contact us, I get it too. Sometimes people will just fully unload with things that had I met them in person they probably never would have, but it's therapeutic for them.

And all of this to say, if you go to a counselor or a psychotherapist, somebody who does this for living, that's what they do for you. They get you to talk, they get you to open up and they get you to unload all of your burdens and granted there are spiritual applications, you can go to pastor and there are parts of it that you do there, but these people in a medical way they help you heal your mind. So I highly recommend this if you are struggling and you're listening to this.

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Yes, amen to that. And yeah, I'm not qualified in that area. I'm a pastor and a Bible teacher. That's my expertise. But I think, you know, people just hear these things, like you said, and they'll reach out.

They'll reach out. So we have this indictment on Wednesday afternoon. As you let off this podcast with, Hobart had to pre-set night. He did a darn good job as far as, you know, holding his composure and saying what he wanted to say.

The message was entitled Comfort for Trouble Times, part one, was preached on a Wednesday evening, October the 17th, 1984. And because he had been, he had heard that he was going to be indicted or had been indicted, he got the news from whomever called him that Wednesday afternoon, then the services at Faith Assembly became close to anybody except for a member.

I think I sent you, John, a picture of this, but this was the newspaper article saying that, yeah, services are close, Faith Assembly sessions no longer open to anyone. They mean just anyone. They had to recognize you as a part of the fold or a part of the flaw.

And they actually had, and you read the article, you can see the, the, just, they're kind of humorous stories of the, of the young men who were guards, quote, unquote, no guns or badges or anything, but riding around the back of pickup trucks, you know, just around the parking lot, looking for anyone who doesn't look like they belong.

And if you're a newspaper reporter with a notebook and pen, you'll stand out in a hurry. And they found a few of those, found a few of them. They said that it made it into the service that night and went and tapped on their shoulders and said, I'm sorry, this is a closed private meeting, you'll need to get up and leave.

And so one of the reporters that made it into the service, he's the one, you actually, did this article. Well the next morning, Thursday morning, wow, October the 18th, 1984, who would have ever thought? But Hobart Freeman has to show up at the county jail where he was arrested and fingerprinted and booked at the county jail. Who would have ever thought that it was finally going to come to this? Now people had been clamoring for it. The health officials, the legal authorities had been clamoring for it. The police had been wanting this to happen. You know, they

needed something against Hobart in order to try to pull the plug on what was going on here. And they were finally able to get it in a grand jury indictment of a minister. And so he's arrested, he's fingerprinted, and he talks about it in a future message where he said, you know, I was just treated like a common criminal. He obviously did not see that he had done anything wrong at all.

He felt in his mind, I faithfully just preached the Bible. Well, no, you had not preached, you had preached your faith and healing version of the Bible, but you had obviously not preached what the Bible said. He felt that he had, so he thought I'm being unduly persecuted.

So after the fingerprinting and booking at the county jail, the way the process works is then he appears before Casiasco County Superior Court judge Robert Burns to ask, well, first of all, to be read the charges, he is there along with the parents of Pamela Men, who had been indicted on the exact same three charges, the worst of those being this business of homicide of not only neglected but depended and criminal recklessness, but aiding and inducing criminal reckless homicide.

So those charges are then read to Hobart Freeman before the judge, and what is interesting is if I can find in one of these articles, the response that he gives, you know, if you listen to that message comfort for troubled times, Hobart is loud and proud. He's boastful, he's arrogant, he's saying, you know, I'm being unduly persecuted, but the Lord is on my side. Whenever he goes before the judge, and I don't know if you have any knowledge of this or experience, because I don't know if there was any criminal activity with the Brandon people, but

Here's what one of the newspaper reporters said. He said after hearing Freeman talked with a couple of people there in the courtroom, when he was asked by the judge, what did he have to say?

His words were barely audible. So he's just sitting there in this little crumple form, and I don't know if he really was intimidated, he may have been, I don't know if he was intimidated or if he's just trying to give this air of, you know, I'm just an elderly, polio stricken crippled old man, be merciful to me, I'm harmless.

I don't know, but I just know it was a completely different demeanor than what he had the night before and preaching. When he's up there preaching, he's just, you know, he's in control. He's got the congregation wrapped around his little finger.

That's where he excelled, was behind the pulpit, you know, not in any one-on-one conversations, but not with a group of people, when he was up there and had it to himself, you know, when you can't challenge your question, you know, I'm a Bible teacher, as you know, John now, I teach weekly, and my teachings are always open to questions, and I tell the people, there's only two, I won't answer, number one, the ones I don't know the answer to, and there are plenty of those.

And number two, the ones I'm going to get to recently, so don't spoil the surprise. Other than that, you know, everything's fair game, because, you know, if you're teaching people, let's hope that these are not morons and emisils, they're intelligent people who have their own minds and brains, and they're going to be thinking of things that maybe you didn't cover, or maybe you glossed over, or maybe you kind of got sidetracked and missed it or something, you know, the questions are very healthy for everybody's sake, but not if you're Hobart Freeman, where, you know, you didn't want any question, I don't want

to be challenged, it's just, it's my way or the highway. So I know every time he appeared before a judge, that wasn't the first time I had seen that in the newspaper reports, every time he's there, he's in this hushed, barely audible tone, where one time they had to ask him, will you speak up and repeat what you just said?

And it's not like he doesn't have a voice, I mean, when you hear him teach, he has a totally capable voice, it's some kind of other weird persona or message that he's trying to communicate of how frail he is, and he'll do that, and then the next time he's in the pulpit, he's all wearing to go, and I told him, and God gonna protect me, and it's like, wait a minute, that was a different person before the judge than what I'm seeing up.

Here, you know, it just doesn't, it just doesn't compute to me. This is the part of the story with Hobart Freeman that fascinates me. I've mentioned to you offline, but if I had, if I had it to do my life over, I probably would have become my counselor or a psychiatrist, because the mind just fascinates me how it works.

Why not a preacher? Why not a preacher job? I'm not called to be a preacher. That's, that's the opposite of my personality. But anyway, this fascinates me because what happens with these guys? And it's not just Hobart, it's every single one of them.

They begin with many of them, Hobart probably included. They begin with really good intentions. And then they build a cult following. And there's a point in time in which it shifts from good intentions to stage persona.

And when it gets to the stage persona, now that's bring, laying down the doctrine that's building the cult that's making the authoritarian control work. That's setting up all the foundation foundation for what became the faith assembly cult, right?

Well, after this, now you settle in to this repetition. So the stage persona, Sunday for Sunday, Wednesday night, however many meetings they go, they go through this repetition. And it's very easy to repeat because you have created a stage persona.

You go to service, you step on stage, you step into it and you start preaching. Some of it they believe, but some of it is just repetition, right? So whenever the indictments come down and he's on the stage, that's the stage persona speaking.

And he can speak loudly with authority with the security. It's like a security blanket for these guys. Yes, but then once they get out of the stage, now you start to see the real human being and you recognize that this is not the cult.

This is not everything that the stage persona has put forward for us to believe when you see this. You see the real person because now they're dealing with reality. You know, and I've said that all along when these people got before the long arm of the law, I mean, it's one thing to either preach or sit in the congregation, faith assembly and have him, you know, cast a gate, the legal authorities in the court system and all of this stuff.

It's another thing to actually be there and realize, wow, these people actually have power. This is a judge, you know, this is a jury. This is a grand jury six member panel. Wow, those things really exist.

Wow, and those people have power. Yes, that's the way our country is set up. That's the way it's governed and it's so fascinating to me also, John, to see this that I hope aren't on so many occasions would just tear the United States of America down.

As this is the, this is worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. He said, this is the worst country on the face of the earth, because God has been good to us and look at all of the sin and the homosexuality and the abortion and the murders and the crimes. He said, this is the worst country on the face of the earth.

And I would think when he would say that, well, wait a minute. What about those, you know, regimes, totalitarian regimes in Africa or what about the Soviet Union or Iran or communist China? You know, what about those countries that strip all rights from their citizens?

They're ruled by a handful of people and God is not in that country at all. I mean, at least in our country, and I really believe this, we have thousands upon thousands of God-fearing people.

They may not practice their Christianity exactly the same way I do mine. They may not understand their Bible exactly the way I understand my Bible, but there are plenty. Trust me. Thankfully, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of God-fearing people out there. So what was interesting to me, I got off track for a moment. Hobart would tear down the United States. But then in a sermon, after he had been arrested, he would say things like, well, now wait a minute, I thought we had rights in this country. You know, I thought you had to be guilty. That's what he said in that

comfort for trouble times. I thought you had to be guilty of a crime before they could arrest you for a crime. So it's like, you're wanting to have your cake and eat it too. You're wanting to criticize United States, but you want to use United States laws if you think they were working your favor. You know, they were big on it. If any of those laws would work in our favor, oh, I love the United States of America because you don't have those laws in China or the Soviet Union. So, you know, I just saw all kinds of inconsistency in the way he treated

the United States and his relationship to it. So he goes before this judge, the charges are red. He's asked, how do you, what do you plead? He enters a non-guilty plea. He's asked about his attorney.

And of course, he has no attorney in a barely audible hushed tone. He just said that Jesus, the Lord Jesus, would be his defense, which means his defense attorney. We talked about this, I think last time. John is just ridiculous. He never got to this trial. He died before this trial happened, but Jesus would not have been his defense. And I told everyone last time who would have been his defense, he would have been. He would have defended himself. He would have used arguments. He would have, you know, used some of the arguments I just said, you know, doesn't think-

Constitution give me rights here. He would have tried to defend himself. What's the difference in that and hiring someone who does that for living? You know, there is no difference except it's going to cost you money and they're going to do a way better job and anytime these people try to go to court and most of them started down this path because they had been taught by a whole bar. You can't defend yourself in court. No legal representation. The judges would say, let me just forewarn you that the process of court is very tedious and very complicated

and it has to be done a certain way and if he's the judge, just going to be done the judge's way, not anybody else's way, guess what? He's the boss. I mean, that's the way it is. He's the judge, he's the boss. Whether you like it or not is immaterial. You're going to file everything, any motions, any discoveries, all of this stuff. It's all going to be done according to court laws and if you slip up, you know, it's too bad for you, you should have hired an attorney who would not have made that mistake. So again, just an indefensible position for Hobart to say,

I'm not going to hire an attorney. Jesus is going to be my counsel. The Lord is going to defend me. It was just such a super spiritual, mystical approach to this. Maybe they really thought that possibly God would just appear and deliver them. I know they were always looking for some kind of miraculous intervention, but it did not happen in a single solitary court case. Did an angel of the Lord appear? Did an angel appear and let anybody out of jail as we find out happening in the book of Acts? You know, John, which brings up a point, if you don't mind me just saying for a

moment, people should read Acts, chapters three, four, and five. And I've talked about Acts three before because here is a case of divine healing. This is what this has all been about with faith assembly. It's a message of faith and healing. We believe in faith. We believe in healing.

Okay, we'll grant you that. And we and the Bible teaches faith and healing. Yes, it does, and we'll grant you that. But if people will read in Acts three, the Man at the Gate Beautiful, who had been there since birth, we're told in the next chapter he was above the age of 40.

I think Luke the historian writing the book of Acts is giving us that information so that we understand this man did not have a bum ankle from flag football. You know, he had not tripped over trying to settle up with a donkey and what was falling off the donkey's back. This man was lame from birth. And every he won and knew him and what happened the Apostle said in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk and he got up leaping and walking and praising God went into the temple.

That's the healing and then what happens in the next two chapters is the court case. Now in chapter four it's a religious court, it's not civil court but it was still a very powerful court in that day. The religious court, the religious Jewish leaders got the apostles and brought them in and said, what are you doing? We do not want this kind of message being spread because everything you're doing, you're doing in the name of Jesus and he's the one who we killed and we don't want this name being preached. Everything they did was in the name

of Jesus and this man had been healed in the name of Jesus and they did not want that to happen. They did not want that name to be spread. However, they couldn't deny the miracle that had been done and it even says in chapter four whenever they're trying the apostles it said the man, it's funny the man that had been healed was standing there beside him and said they couldn't say anything about it. Had Pamela man been healed, well we wouldn't be dealing with this, right? Or if she had died and had been raised from the dead by the Lord, then we wouldn't

be dealing with any of this. The reason that they're going to court being indicted and going to eventually go to trial, those that were alive whenever this trial happened was because it was not working for them. So to make claims on scripture that I believe in divine healing and this is just all based on the Bible, we should believe in divine healing. Divine healing is in the Bible. God does heal people, but faith as soon as message was not the biblical message because it simply didn't work. And so consequently you just have this media frenzy over Hobart Freeman is there.

Whenever he was, that would have been Thursday morning, October the 18th, whenever he got out of the courtroom, this is an article from Christianity Today magazine. You'll see a picture, Dr. Freeman. You've got some of law enforcement behind him. You actually actually have Mark Yotter, who worked for faith ministries and publications in the forefront. Everybody will know exactly who Mark was. Here's a big article in Christianity Today. There were 50 countum 50 photographers waiting outside. ABC, CBS from New York City had teams of photographers and reporters there. The police actually had to barricade off Indiana Street. They're in Warsaw

between Lake Street and Washington Street. They had to barricade off the street to get Hobart out of the courtroom and into his waiting car because you have this mob of photographers around. What I see in all of that, John, in looking back and I saw it back then. Because remember, we haven't gotten totally to where we'll get to in the future, but I was writing Hobart letters at this time asking him what's going on with this media circus. This is an embarrassment for the church and for Christianity. And then I was being used as pulpit bait because he didn't like

the letters that I was sending him. But what I saw then and what I see now, and I hope everyone can see in looking back, compare this with Acts 3 to 5. The apostles were in trouble. They were in serious trouble. And what had they done? They had healed a man. That's why they had all this publicity. These false fake faith healers get all this publicity. They go to court. They're in trouble. Why? They haven't healed anybody. They haven't raised anybody from the dead. You know, if you raise somebody from the dead, if you've healed somebody, I'll be there in your support. I

will be there to support you. But that's not while they're there. They're there because they kill somebody. They're there for aiding and inducing criminal reckless homicide. The apostles weren't on trial for that. Paul was in trouble later in chapter 14 in another city because another man who had not walked since birth. He was lame from his mother's womb. Paul looked at him, perceiving that he had faith to be healed. Paul just said, stand up right on your feet. And the man did not have to wait for the manifestation of his healing. He didn't wait a week or a month or two years or

10 years. You know, I'm believing for my healing. When Paul said, get up on your feet. He got up on his feet because the Lord supernaturally healed him. Later in that chapter in Acts 14, Paul gets stoned because people are so mad at what he's doing. That's not the reason Hobart and most healers and preachers were getting in trouble. They're in trouble because their message simply didn't work. So this part of the story fascinates me as well because after the initial trial and his demeanor is down and low, the way that these people think, and there are criminal trials,

you mentioned in the Branemism, there are some that I've reviewed. What happens is the ministers who are in this type of stage persona, they Recognize the power of looking like a martyr. And so in the back of their mind, they're thinking, well, what if I step into that stage persona again and act like the cult guy and see if I can play the martyr card?

Will that get me out of this? Which doesn't work in the United States courts of law. Not at all. But there's this weird aspect to it. It makes them look more powerful to their faithful following.

So even while they're looking like a fool to the rest of the world, they can regain some of that confidence by looking as though they're a martyr to their cult following. I watch the same thing.

I watch the trial of like Warren Jeffs and different cult leaders as they're going through their criminal trials. And they all do the same thing. They all try to play the martyr card, especially in the apocalyptic cults.

And what's odd is, I suspect had he lived, this would have blown into a massive trial by attorney. And he would have eventually got one. I mentioned in the, I think it was the previous episode, I mentioned the Dowee trials, John Alexander Dowee.

It was the same way. I'm going to let God represent me. I can't remember his exact words, but it was very similar to that. Over the same exact thing, he was killing people with his doctrine.

And then towards, as the flurry of trial starts coming in, newspaper reporters are reporting things like, and Dr. Dowee came into court today, and he did not even lift his eye above his newspaper.

He was reading, as his attorneys took his defense. So it was that big of a shift, man. So I suspect that he probably would have gotten an attorney when he recognized that no, my stage persona is not going to fly with the United States government.

Well, here's something I'd really like to, to end this podcast with, John, because people have asked me, whenever Hobart was before that judge where any other thing said, and actually there were, the judge, you know, read the charges, asked him what plea he wanted to enter.

He wanted to enter, not guilty plea, which he did. But then the judge had further questions for him. He had read, obviously, he knew the media, what they had said. He was familiar with Faith Assembly and Hobart's teaching in the doctrine of that church.

But he wanted to hear from Hobart himself, what he actually had taught, concerning healing, medicine, doctors, and the congregation. And you know what Hobart said? He said, I preach the Bible the way I see it.

I have my own beliefs, but I have not told the people

what to do or what not to do. Every man and woman they have to make up their own mind, which is 100% false. He didn't just at all preach divine healing and I choose not to go to a doctor, but you're free to do what you want.

Or even I choose not to use any medicine and I would recommend that you don't go to a doctor or not use any medicine, but I'm not going to say that to you. You really need to make up your own mind.

That is not at all what Hobart taught. So had this gone to trial, his messages would have been front and center evidence and the attorneys, the district attorney would have been able to find quotes like a couple that I want to give you now.

So first of all, John, on a message entitled avoiding an unsettled line, part one, which was done in early 1984. Well, let's start to say another died because in this case she was unsettled in her mind asked to what was required to remove the chastisement that she was under.

She was unsettled in her mind as to what was required to move the chastisement that she was under from God and receive her healing. Now let me tell you what brought on her condition, a cancer, which was the chastisement for her disobeying the light that she had by her own mission friends, by her own admission.

She said it's chastisement because she took a job administering drugs to an elderly woman and she said when I began to administer those drugs. I knew I was sending against the light I'd received.

So what he's talking about right there is a woman who now has cancer and ends up dying from the cancer and she says the reason that she got the cancer and died from the cancer is because she was dispensing medicine, not even taking it herself, but she was dispensing medicine for someone else.

You hear in the quote, you know, Hover said once you have the light from the Word of God and from faith assembly, he said, you can't get it just from the Word of God.

Once you have light from the Word of God and from faith assembly and you know that you cannot be involved in the medical field, medical practice, taking pills, giving pills, dispensing pills, pharmacy, nothing to do with that.

Once you have the light, you can't go against that light or God just may kill you by putting cancer on you. In that statement, that quote could be multiplied. a hundred times over and then there is another one if we could play it came from a message entitled this was actually in and not one of the normal you know preaching messages this was from when he was teaching on theology to the church and New Testament theology was entitled preliminary events to the eternal state part one don't go to sleep don't go back to your pills

hey wake up out there faith assembly the time is short you'd better go meet the Lord because you can't endure a physical trial and just let your body go on to the grave and you could go on to be with the Lord but go at least saying he's faithful his word is true and I refuse to trust in the arm of the flesh oh my sit here two years and take a baby to the health department I don't want to know who it is I didn't ask the person to tell me I don't want to know who you are

I don't want to be ashamed of you for Jesus sake and I would be I'm ashamed of you but I don't want to know who my shame dog and it also helps me to teach the word without worrying about hurting your feelings I see you setting out there popping your pills somebody said there's one individual around here puts his medicine out on the chair beside him and takes his medicine until he got rebuked for that I trust he's not doing that anymore so as we just heard from that second clip that you played John he actually said that it would be better for someone to die than to return

to the arm of the flesh and and that's exactly what happened with Pamela man Pamela didn't go to the doctor she did not take any treatment for her kidney problems and she died as a result of that and that's what brought us to the indictment into Hobart you know being arrested and fingerprinted and that same quote you hear that he also went on to skull someone else who they said you've been sitting here for two years and this is what he's heard second hand from someone else because everybody was a spy you know in that church you know everybody's a spy and you kind of go higher

up in the hierarchy if you tattle on anybody who's not towing the line full scale of Hobart doctrine and he said someone has taken their baby to the health department so he was against that and then he even it was amazing that he talks about some gentleman who was laying out his pills on his seat beside him before he took them at faith assembly and I thought that was a brave man I would like to know who that was but someone had caught him doing it and had reported to Dr. Freeman and at the very end of that quote he said you know I

that trust that he's not doing that anymore. So my point is, when the judge asks him, what do you teach? Oh, Bart, line to it. Yeah. Oh, Bart said, I believe these things, but I tell everyone, you have to make up your own mind.

That is not what he taught, and that is not true. I mean, that would have been a totally different scenario for a minister to say, this is what I believe, and you do what's best for you and your family.

There would be a whole lot of people still alive today had Hobart taught that way, but he didn't. And so it was just very not disappointing to me, because I already did not have any faith in Hobart Freeman anymore, but it was pretty shocking when I heard that the judge had asked him, point blank, is this your teaching, and he had lied right to a judge and said, no, that's not my teaching.

I tell everybody, you do what you want, but I have never put any pressure on anyone not to go to the doctor or not to take medicine. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I remember when I read the trial of Dauy, and Dauy did the same thing. I was, the thought that went through my head at that time was, well, how did he still have a cult after this?

Because he actually lasted several years after that trial. And I came to understand that the way in which the authoritarian control messes with your mind, the people just kind of put it on the shelf through cognitive dissonance, and they say, I'll think about that later, but right now I have to support my leader because he's under this trial.

And so they don't think about it, and they don't process it. And sadly, it isn't until the cults employed, and years later, they start thinking through those things, and looking back, I can't imagine what people who are hearing this now, who are in this, are thinking because at some level, they had to, those who were aware that he denied and rejected his own doctrine, at some level, they had to have thought, you know, that's kind of odd, that's not quite right.

But sadly, the way it works, you don't really process it until after you escape and deprogram. So hopefully, somebody who's listening, if you're going through this, you can now process it and think through it and think, yeah, that was messed up.

Now I can move on and get into a church that's a lot healthier than that one. Amen to that. If you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.William-brandom.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.