Twisted Exegesis: The Dangerous Theology of Faith Assembly

Music 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, Chenel Ross, the pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Chenel D. Ross YouTube channel. Chenel, it's good to be back and today we're going to talk about something that is a little bit out of the realm of what I usually talk about on the historical research podcast because I usually stay focused on the historical research, but there is this weird bleed

between the flows of doctrine and theology and the flows of history that sometimes have to be told in order for people to understand exactly why the messes are created. Because these cults like to have unusual interpretations of the Bible, I'll just say it like that, unusual interpretations.

I don't claim to be an expert by no means on this year, the expert, so I'll probably be asking you a lot of questions, but we're going to talk about the hermeneutics and the faith assembly cult and how that relates to the Branham cult, which is it's kind of interesting history. You've shared some things with me, which we may get into in a later episode, but you could clearly tell that Hobart was at least reading through Branham sermons, if not taking ideas and trying to build upon them.

That's for sure, John. I don't think this will be nearly as difficult to talk about the hermeneutical approach as you think, because you've got plenty of experience listening to all of these different people, and their hermeneutical approach, which is simply their method of interpretation, comes out really early and loudly and clearly in their take on certain passages. So we have been talking a little preface before we get to that. We've been talking about the fall of 1984. These are the very last few months of faith assembly as it was known with Hobart Freeman as its leader.

There are a couple of court cases had sprung up, a civil one and now a criminal one, so the big dates were October 17 and 18 of 1984. I went to the end of Thursday.

On that first Wednesday afternoon, October the 17th, the grand jury had indicted Hobart Freeman and had charged him with three different counts, the worst of those being aiding and inducing reckless homicide of a young girl named Pamela Mini. I had pronounced her name men, but someone corrected me and said those ease are to be pronounced long. And so on that Wednesday night, John, he had gone to church after being indicted and preached a message entitled Comfort for Trouble Times, Part 1. And the next morning, Thursday, October the 18th, he was arrested and and booked and fingerprinted and went before the judge. And so we

have done a couple of podcasts detailing some of the events and some of Dr. Freeman's comments from that sermon. And after those aired, I've heard from a lot of people in a lot of places who were there at the time and it's so interesting to get their take on it. I've said before that I was long distance. I was learning all these things a week or two or more after they happened because I didn't know anyone of membership at Faith Assembly. I just knew some of the ministers and I primarily knew Hobart. He was one I had most of

my communication with. So by the time I'm hearing it, you know, it's old news, two or three weeks or maybe even a month, minimum of a week. And my take on it is an outsider who wasn't there to witness everything. But still I heard all 1157 tapes and I've read all of his books, all of his material. So I always felt that I did, regardless, have a pretty good feel for everything. But it's a little different being the person actually there who is witnessing these things and hearing these things. So there is one email in particular of several that I

wanted that I've received that I wanted to just share a few excerpts from anonymously. This woman and her family were happened to be good friends with James and I own Mini and with their children. And here's what she said. Pami was just the sweetest young woman you would have ever met. Shy and a very agreeable girl. Pami's death was so very sad. To me, the most sad of any that happened at Faith Assembly. Maybe one of the reasons is she was 15 years old. We're So many of the people were mothers who died in childbirth or particularly they were infants

born at childbirth or shortly thereafter. And given the testimony of this young lady and what her father said earlier, he was holding James was holding his adopted daughter, Pamela, in his arm as she died.

In the last three things she said were the blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus. And you know these ministers go back and always say well the reason that it didn't work is their faith failed or they had sin in their life.

I mean listen to the last words this young lady is saying, she only knew to do and say what her pastor had taught her. But I don't see any resignation, I don't see any unbelief, you know I don't see any issues in this girl's life, she was simply doing what she had been told to do.

And again coming from someone who knew her, she was just the most agreeable and sweetest young lady that you could ever meet. This woman goes on in the email to say because we were told not to read the newspapers and had no TV to watch the news, we didn't really know what was going on beyond what Freeman told us.

I was only 20 and didn't really know what a grand jury did or what an indictment was. There was no internet to look things up. So all the details you're sharing have been new to me.

Something very interesting happened when I was listening to the podcast though. The little clips of Freeman's voice in some of the episodes have caused all sorts of feels, which I haven't been able to describe her categorize.

I'm just going to re-verbate them what she says here, not pleasant though. When I heard the excerpt of Freeman from Comfort for Trouble Times, the most extraordinary flashback of sorts occurred. I distinctly had the thought, I hope it gets shut down, go through my head, almost more of a feeling triggered by hearing his voice.

I think that was my secret wish all those years that something would happen to close it all down. I never entertained the thoughts back then, but I believe that they were there. Now, listening to what he said, it was disgusting.

No condolences for the family. I can't believe we all sat there and listened to it week after week. I can always blame the fact that I was brought up hearing that. But then my dad is a- very smart guy, not at all gullible, practical.

I suppose it was appealing to be part of the only church in the world with the entire end time truth as we were told, but you were right, with Freeman it was all about him.

I wish I could understand the why of what he said and did. Narcissist, sociopath, on the spectrum, he had a defining lack of empathy and sympathy that could be explained by any of those things.

You know John when I read that and I've read so many similar things because people have the similar experience and when I read that what it tells me and I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but something very real is happening in these flashback experiences.

Here's someone who hasn't probably listened to a Freeman message in 30 or 40 years and so you're just going along in your life, you know, free from faith assembly and all of a sudden, you know, I drag you back into it and you hear that, you hear him, you hear his voice and you hear his cadence and you know the terminology and you know his tendency to link this phrase with this phrase and it's like there's something that is so real, psychological, mental, physiological, maybe even a physical reaction that these people have that if you had been a member of any other church 30 years ago had moved away and

all of a sudden heard a message from your old pastor, I mean it'd probably be like hearing a song that was popular in the 1970s and you hadn't heard it in 30 years and now you hear it and it just brings back mostly I would say good feelings of where you were or what was going on at that time, but here's what I'm trying to say by saying this John that it seems like every one of these people have the same reaction.

I would love for professional people to get a hold of all of this and maybe they have and I'm just not aware of their writings and literature and be able to explain how this is only an occurrence of someone who has been abused.

If you have happy memories and you hear something then you have happy thoughts, but why is it that all of these people, I mean to a man John that I hear from, when they hear a clip from Hallbart, they go, I mean it just crawls all over me and it tells me that I think that they are a survivor of some serious past abuse.

While it is definitely spiritual abuse, there's... no question of that. What's funny is when I added these clips, I never thought about it, but years ago, whenever I started all of this research and began publishing it, I was finding that we were lulled to sleep with the voice, and we were hearing things that were being planted in our minds that were completely against every fiber of our being, but because it was coming from a religious setting, we're in a church, we kind of turned off critical thinking and let those things be planted. And so, for a period of time, shortly after I left, I was

producing these little video clips of William Brannum saying the most horrific things. Some of them violate humanity in general. Some were just biblically errant, very errant, and some of it was prophetic and also biblically errant. So, you could tell there's this big mess of, you know, not even theology. It was like a scrambled brain that was producing sermons. That's how bad it was.

So, I started producing these little videos and I would talk about it a little bit, play a clip, or simply just play the clip. And what I found was the people who had left for years wouldn't listen for the same exact reason that you said. Because it was so painful for them to listen. They were bringing back all of their memories and feelings, and more than that, their life experience.

Because when you leave a cult, it is one of the most difficult things you'll ever do. So, not only did they hear the voice that abused them spiritually, they also had all of the memories of leaving, and all of this combined was too painful. So, this was back before they had all of these free royalty-free music and whatnot. So, I used my studio and I produced all of this obnoxious music. And I would play instead of just playing the voice, I would play the voice, and then have the music kind of in the background. And it was just loud enough that your brain was trying to

focus on the music, but also hearing the voice. And I found that that was the one way to overcome it. People were just snapping out of it and saying, oh my gosh, I can't believe that this man said these horrific things. And it helped them pass the emotions. And what's funny years later, people find these on YouTube and they play them. And I get all kinds of comments. Some people love the music because they like the bluegrass style. And some people tell me, if I hear another sound like this music, I will never come back to this channel. So, you get this wide variety of people.

But you're right, the people have been spiritually abused. And what they're feeling is the same thing that if they were a spouse and a physically abusive marriage, and they go try to date another man or a woman, and they've...

been through this horrific thing, every single thing that is said that reminds them of their pain and torture will cause them to just have a lot of emotions. And we're seeing the same thing spiritually that you had physically in the cases of the abuse spouse.

Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm seeing through all this. You know, when I hear Hobart now, I don't have those feelings because I distance myself a long time ago, but I'm trying to understand the feelings that these other people are having.

And it has to be a sign of abuse because I said before, if you hear another minister that had been a normal minister, you just have either neutral thoughts or good thoughts. You might just remember kind of where you were at that time.

Maybe you were in a youth group in some church back in the 70s or 80s and you had a youth speaker there. And if you heard him today, and he would just have been a normal teacher or speaker back then, I think your response would be, it would really translate you back to that period in your life and you'd have all kinds of good feelings of who your boyfriend was at the time or who your girlfriend was or what you were studying at school.

But it's just not the case with Dr. Freeman. And I don't think it is with a lot of these other people, but especially somebody like him, as you said earlier, John, you think the reason that you believe these things that are horrific is because they were coming from a minister and another reason is because they were just repeated, just over and over and over and over and over.

And that's obviously mind control when you have to say the same phrases over and over and over. And if your group is some type of elitist group and I think most cults do feel like they have the truth and they're the only ones who have it.

So they're all elitist. So it is coming from God because it's a minister and you're privileged to have it because only your group has it and you're hearing it over and over and over.

I mean, you start combining all of these things and then if you add in there, as I was, I was 17 years old, a very young person or if you're older but still impressionable or I mean, there's so many things we can add in.

If you're a person who is sincerely hungry for God, you really do want to learn his word and know the truth. You're very into walking with him and studying the Bible and you've got this minister who tells you that he is superior to you and he can interpret the Bible and he has all of this background, all of these degrees and knowledge.

Wow, I mean, it's just all the recipes that you're going into the bowl to make a terrible mixture right here and that's what we see come out of it. I just, it's just hard for me to...

to get a hold of and process the psychological impact that that had on people and that it is still having to this day, not that they're caught up in it, but just by virtue of the fact they can hear his voice drawn on about some stupid issue or drawn on about boasting about himself that, as she said, it was just all disgusting, which brings me to what I'd like to talk about some today, John, and that is Hobart's method of interpretation.

If you go to seminary or if you check out a book from the library or buy something on a Bible interpretation, then it's in the field of hermeneutics, that's just a technical phrase that has to do with how a person reads and interprets the Bible, which then leads to your style of teaching.

If you are a teacher or pastor or preacher, then your method of interpretation or your hermeneutics will lead to your style of teaching. What I mean by that is, if anyone literally turns in on any Hobart sermon, what you will hear is what I call an anecdotal teacher, which means he tells stories.

There are a lot of anecdotes that Hobart shared in his messages, and he was a professional when it came to weeding all of these stories together. I think if people will go back in their mind and think of whether it's Brannum or any of the other charismatic Pentecostal leaders, those guys taught the same way.

They might go to a passage to start with. Hobart, I would say, I don't know, 75, maybe 80% of the time would say, open your Bibles and turn to Mark 10, whatever passage, Mark 16.

He would read a verse or maybe a few verses, but then rather than stay right there and really delve into what that verse in his context is saying, they just go off telling stories.

If he found a verse about healing, and it says, even uses the word healing in any way, then he will read the verse and then he'll say, well, now I remember when, or brother so and so back then, or I got a letter from a sister who said this, and it's all stories.

It's all anecdotal. But it is not, is exegetical and what we mean By that, again, it's another technical term in theology and biblical studies, but exegesis is simply trying to determine what is in the text, trying to get from the text, what the text actually says versus isegesis, which is reading something into the text.

And what I always, because those are technical terms, what I like to tell people, is when we read the Bible, we need to be looking for truth rather than proof. And what people do is they go through the Bible, trying to find proof for what they already believe.

Hobart was a master at that. He had his doctrines and views, and he simply looked for passages to back it up. And that is the wrong way to go about reading the Bible. We need to read the Bible and study the Bible more from a blank slate point of view.

What does this passage actually say? What is the truth of this passage rather than, can I find the belief that I want to find in this passage? That's the way everybody does it. So it's a historical, grammatical setting that we are after.

Who is the author? Who wrote this book? You know, it was written by an Old Testament prophet or a New Testament apostle. Who were they? When did they write it? Why did they write it?

What is the purpose? Who is their audience? They did not write it to us. Let's be honest and factual. We weren't on the scene, so they could not have written it to us. To whom was it written?

Once we began to go down this path, then we're going down the right path. Because we're looking at the actual historical setting of this book or chapter or passage or verse, and we're trying to understand the actual grammatical makeup of that sentence.

In Hebrew and in Greek, what do the words mean? What do the sentences mean now that we have the words? And then now, what does this sentence mean within this context where it's found?

So Hobart was just a master, John, of lifting all of these verses out of their context. Proverbs 1821, death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

Proverbs 6.2, a man is snared by the words of his mouth. Those are positive thinking and confession verses. Just lifted completely out of the context of the original author and the original readers of the book of Proverbs.

So if you look at Proverbs 1822, death and life are in the power of the tongue, they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. Hobart used that hundreds if not thousands of times by saying you can speak life into existence.

or you can speak death into existence. It's all up to you. It's all based on your confession. When that is not what that context of the verse is saying. And the same is going to be true with any air, any heresy. The same is going to be true with most of these teachers and their teachings.

So I have learned over the years that the proper way to study the Bible is to study it in his context. Who was the author and who were the original hears? And if you want to go and select a minister to listen to, listen to someone who's going to try to explain the passage within his context rather than tell you these stories.

Hobart's ministry was definitely based on many men before him, two of which were William Branham and Kenneth Hagen, and a challenge anyone to go listen to any message, anyone, anyone they want of those two men and what you'll hear is anecdotal preaching.

They'll say, well, we're going to turn to Mark 11, 22 to 24. And Kenneth Hagen will read that, have faith in God, you know, what things so happen. And then he will go on to say all of the stories connected to his life or other people's lives.

We have no idea what was before verse 22, what was after verse 24. We don't know who Jesus said that to, why it was said, just three verses, scissors and paste, cut out of its context, lifted out and made to say whatever they want to say.

Luther was the one who made famous the statement that the Catholics treated the Bible as though it was a wax nose. And that is exactly what people do today is, what all of these ministers, it's a wax nose, you can twist it, bend it, shape it, form it, to make it say whatever you want to say.

One of the things that you just mentioned a few minutes ago, and I want to bring back and emphasize, because here's where the convergence of doctrine and the history becomes fascinating for me. I think I mentioned on this show a few times, if you listen to the podcast that Charles and I are doing, we go through it a bit more.

But there was a man named Prairie von Blumberg, who was the adopted cousin of Hitler's minister of defense, Warner von Blumberg. He was one of the, he was on the board of directors of Bob Jones University. He was a director in the, what's it called, the Fellowship Foundation.

Before it became known as the Fellowship Foundation, the cult that has the Prairie breakfasts, and you can watch on Netflix that story. It's crazy, interesting history. But he was the adopted cousin of Hitler.

And he had tours in Germany. He visited Hitler himself. He was very big in the full gospel businessmen. And was not a Christian, was not, I've got FBI documents or CIA, I think is FBI documents, declassified now that's talking about his sexual escapades with other men while working on these boards of directors.

And they asked him outright, is this a Christian organization? He said, no, this is not a Christian organization. But we use religious religion as a means to bring everybody together. That's how he phrased it.

And you can read that in the documents. But anyway, he became William Brannum's campaign manager. So I knew none of this history. You can read it in my latest book. It's a document, a lot of it.

All I knew is that when we left, my son said, I'm so glad we left this cult. I started tuning it out because this man screaming on these tapes from the 50s and 60s sounded like Adolf Hitler.

And so I stopped and thought about it. And good Lord, my son was right. How did I miss that, right? So I did this deep study on the psychological effects of the way that these people, Brannum, Hobart Freeman, you can almost go down the line.

Everybody who was connected to this movement was doing the same exact things. And what I found from Hitler fascinated me and scared me at the same time. Hitler, as you know, brainwashed an entire nation to the extent that many of those people who were subjected to this manipulation and became programmed, they wanted to create cultural genocide against the Jews, just wipe them out.

Hitler used anecdotal stories as part of his speeches to brainwash the nation. He used, he often would tell stories that were describing self-victimization, but he would say it in a way that's relatable so that other people would feel victimized too.

So he's creating a problem through his speeches. And now everybody listening becomes part of the people who's affected by this problem. And he heavily used the emotional manipulation while doing this. He would toy with their emotions while they're saying it, but he would instead of addressing them as, you know, a bleeding heart, he would say, and this, this victimization is just tearing me apart.

And, you know, in German words, obviously. He created himself as like a Messiah messionic image to solve this problem, which is what all of these guys do, Brian, I'm hope I're free men, et cetera.

And he would, he would basically, he would create these simple solutions for, very complex problems. And after he has manipulated the people into this state where they're receptive to it, he would say the most simplest of solutions that everybody would go, oh yeah, well, that's easy.

I can understand that solution, but it's for this vast complex problem of humanity that nobody can solve. And he would implant it in their minds through repetition and myth making. He would just repeat it over and over and over again and create mythology surrounding it.

And people, you know, they had their own loaded language. So as they're being manipulated with all of this stuff, they have a language that they can communicate with each other. And now everybody can talk to each other and help further establish this brainwashing that happened in the nation of Germany.

After I learned this and went back and realized what they did to my head in this cult, it's scared to be Jesus out of me because they could have done anything that they wanted with my mind at that point.

They have fully brainwashed me and sad to say, I listened to the tapes myself because I was indoctrinated to do so. I further brainwashed myself. And so I got to thinking of all of the different nations of people and religions that do this.

You've got the suicide bombers. These are very, very good people who will go blow themselves up on a city block because they've been programmed with a trigger word that can set them off. They could have done the same thing to my head.

Thankfully that they didn't and anybody's head. But it is just as unethical for what they did to my head to Hobart Freeman's victims' heads. It's just as unethical as what they do to the suicide bomber.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org.

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I'm headed toward a series at Hobart was teaching at the very end of his life to give a good example of his method of interpretation, his style of teaching. But I can go back a little earlier and just mention a couple of- other things that he taught on. One thing he taught on was a very famous sermon, which we're going to save this for later because this is a big thing in the latter-ring movement that we need to talk about in more detail later. But he has a very famous message entitled Gideon's Army. And it's from Judges 7. And Judges 7 is talking about Gideon and his

small band of men going against the Midianites in ancient Israel. So Hobart will read that and and he does not deny the historicity of what happened there. But Hobart's always looking for some allegorical spiritual meaning to pull out of that. And because he used a chapter in the Bible because he starts there, then wherever he ends up, people have already bought into it that must be correct. Like I said, we are going to save that for later. Let me give you a second example.

He has another very famous message entitled Four Realms of Spiritual Experience. Four Realms of Spiritual Experience. Where did he get that? Ezekiel chapter 47, which is a millennial prophecy, a millennial vision that Ezekiel sees of a river, a real, literal river that is flowing out from the throne of God. And Ezekiel sees four different stages of depth, the ankle depth, knee depth, waist deep, and then a river so wide and flowing so strong, you know, you couldn't even pass over it.

So Hobart will, Hobart took that passage without denying the fact that it historically will be fulfilled in the millennium with a real river of life. He took that passage and then he says, God's given him a message, really the message for the hour on that. And he's talking about four different levels of Christianity. So the ankle deep is just if you only get saved, saved only.

You're an ankle deep person with ankle deep religion. And then if you're knee deep, that means you've gone to Acts 2. You have the baptism of the Holy Spirit. So now you're a knee deep Christian.

If you go out to your waist, well, now you've accepted the end time message of faith and healing. And then if you go in over your head, that is the deeper life in the Spirit.

Well, where does that passage say any of that? You know, it says none of that whatsoever that there are four realms of experience which he really went on to show or to teach. There are four types of Christians. Just your only saved people.

then your spirit fill, then your faith people, then your end time overcomers going the deeper life way. That was his whole ministry and message setting up all these lines of demarcation between Christians not as good as us as we are and you need to come further along.

So he got all of that from Ezekiel 47. Then one other one I wanna give you is the Book of Ruth. This wonderful historical story, four little chapters in the Book of Ruth. We know the story that Alemilek and his wife were Jewish people, a famine hit the land, there wasn't enough food.

They went to the country of Moab, Alemilek died, but he had two sons, both of his sons, took a Moabiteist woman to wife and eventually to make a long story short, God visits his people in Israel, they have food again.

And so Naomi says, I'm going back home and one of her daughters-in-law who has lost her husband by now, Ruth, decides to go with her. So that's the setting of the story. And so Hobart tells you that and you're thinking, what kind of message are you gonna get out of the Book of Ruth?

And by the way, the real message out of the Book of Ruth is the genealogy at the very end. The writer is trying to connect the Davidic line with the tribe of Judah. That's what he is trying to do.

And he has to tell this story to get to the genealogy in the very end of chapter four. So what Hobart gets out of this, John, believe it or not? I mean, I was 17 years old when I heard this and I was amazed at his depth of Bible knowledge because I would have never seen this in the Book of Ruth.

What he gets out of that, he entitled the message the Mard inheritance from a phrase over in the last chapter, the Mard inheritance, whenever Ruth comes back, she ends up marrying Boaz. But before that transaction happens, there was a relative closer than Boaz to Ruth and it was his right to marry her if he wanted to.

He however declined, lest I mar my inheritance, hence the name of the message by marrying a moa by this woman. And so Boaz ends up marrying her and she produces King David and through the line of King David comes the word Jesus Christ.

So what Hobart saw from that was this complex allegory of the Pentecostal movement beginning in 1901.

You know, you just laugh when you look back on this, John, but I was 17 years old and I had nothing to combat this. with. Nothing at all. I just would think, as I thought when I heard the teaching on the four rounds of spiritual experience, wow, there must be so much depth in the Bible that I'm just unaware of and I'm really going to have to study to ever, you know, be able to see these things that Dr. Freeman is saying. And it's a way all of these guys do. There is nothing in the book of Ruth about the 1901

Pentecostal outpouring. His whole story there was the denominational church is closed to the outpouring of the spirit, lest they mar their inheritance. They are closed to that. They don't want to be tainted by Pentecostalism. So Pentecostalism has to be outside of the mainline denomination.

And I'm like, you know, back then, I thought, oh, that is just wonderful and beautiful. And now I'm just screaming going, I just can't believe someone can get away with teaching there.

You know how at the beginning of this, you were saying how that they were hearing Hobart's voice and it was triggering for them. Hearing you describe the doctrines, I'm feeling the same effects, man. Let me read you this quote from Branum, 1953. He said, and Boaz was her kinsman and she was and he was harvesting great fields, the Lord of the Harvest and Ruth, the young Gleaner, without a field to glean a type of the Gentile church, Glean. Picking up just what they could, the Gleaners went forward and they say, oh, you haven't got the Pentecostal blessing.

And in Branumism, there were four levels and the way he described it was through dispensationalism, but he would tie it to different people he picked and chose as the quote unquote messenger of the day, but you had justification and sanctification. The Pentecostal movement was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now, brothers and sisters, we must go on to the next level, which is perfection.

Yes, yes, that's exactly. I mean, Hobart got all this John from Branum. Branum got it from other people, this whole ladder rain stuff, but these four realms of spiritual experience, trying to find Pentecostalism and four chapters of Ruth. Yeah, it's just amazing. And so if people would say, so what's the real harm in that? Let me, let me really explain. I'm, I'm going to explain what the real harm and there is a lot of harm in that. That is not proper Bible hermeneutics, that is not acceptable Bible teaching. We have to teach what the text says, not what we want

it to say or what we wish it would say or what we're going to allegorize it and make it say, if we're going to be a faithful minister, we have to be faithful to the text. It's just like if you are English lit professor and you're going to teach Shakespeare, Hemingway or your Russian professor on Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or something, you have to teach what the author said, what they wrote, not your views of what he wrote but what he actually wrote.

Here's the damage that it does, that people should never minimize. When you are young or even if you're older and you have an impressionable mind and you hear garbage like what I just described from Ruth or from Ezekiel 47, you never can totally purge that out of your mind.

That shapes the way, you read that book the next time you go back to it and the next time you go back to it and the next time you go back to it and that is what is so heretical and erroneous about that is a huge disservice to do to teach something like that and even though I know and I definitely know now 45 years later that Ruth isn't talking about that.

I love that little book and I have studied it and I have studied it for the author's meaning. What's the authorial intent? What was the intent of the author whenever he wrote that book?

That's what it means. I'm sorry if that's not good enough for people but that is what it means, whatever the author meant it to mean, that's what it means and however the original readers, listeners of the book, how they heard it, that's what it, that's also what it means.

It's not our allegories of it today so you know I walked away from Ezekiel 47 even though Hobart to his credit did say historically this is what it means and historically this is when it will happen that's all just shoved aside and under the rug because they really want to get to their allegorization of it and their spiritualizing of it and it's that spiritualizing of it and you think of ankle deep and knee deep and waist deep religion and all these different levels of Christianity you know it does, it does damage to the listener and it creates an impression in your mind that you know I'm sorry to say 45 years later

when I read Ezekiel 47 I can't help but think that because that was in at a very impressionable time in my life. So now let's come to the summer and fall of 1984. This was the last series I'm going to show you Hobart is up to his old tricks again you know Hobart was always an anecdotal teacher, he never taught the text, he knew some Hebrew, he said he knew a little Greek, he would throw in Greek and Hebrew words but that's not the same as exegetically teaching the text.

So he was teaching a series entitled exhortations from Exodus. He was teaching this in the summer of 84 in the fall of 1984. He only got through eight of these because he ended up having these indictments, then he ended up being really sick and then he ended up dead. So we only got to chapter 12. But exhortations from Exodus is an absolutely horrendous series of messages that if anyone looks to hear Hobart at his worst at the end of his life, which is no different than he taught the rest of his life, pick any of these or pick the first one and listen to all eight of them and exhortations from Exodus.

He is so deluded and so desperate by this time that he is taking the book of Exodus, at least the first 12 chapters as far as he got. And he is trying to show its parallels with what's happening at Faith Assembly in the second half of 1984. And again, I cannot overemphasize what a horrific injustice that does to the teaching of the Word of God. We all know what Exodus is talking about.

We know how Joseph and his relatives end up down in Egypt. God spares them because there's again a famine that happens in Israel. There's plenty of food because of Joseph being there ahead of his family. They go down there. There are 70 men that go down there. They begin to multiply.

We know that according to Exodus 1, there arose a king in Egypt that knew not Joseph. So now we don't have this good relationship that Joseph and his relatives had had with Pharaoh all those early years. So now we have one group of people at odds with another. And so what does Hobart do?

He says, well, Israel's persecution at the hands of the Egyptians is just what we are experiencing now. Persecution by the media, by the courts, the judicial system, law enforcement, the newspapers, the educational system, by the community at large, we are experiencing persecution. And then he took it a little further. And this was just, it made me so mad. It made me so mad. I had to contact Hobart and say, what are you doing? Do you remember John? I know you will. The end of chapter 1 in Exodus, Pharaoh in Egypt had come up with a plan to deal with these Israelites. They're just two

numerous. And he said to the Israelite midwives, if a man child is born, kill him, but you can save the females. And so what he was going to do was kill him. Bill, all of the male children being born in order to stop this exponential growth of the nation of Israel down there.

You can already tell where I'm headed with Hobart Freeman. He said, what is faith assemblies, number one reason or cause for persecution? Our belief in natural childbirth. Our belief in natural childbirth. He said, we are exactly like the Egyptians, just like they were being persecuted regarding their belief in natural childbirth.

We are being persecuted for our belief in natural childbirth. And John, because he used the Bible and Hobart was a good weaver of stories, he wove this story together and, you know, by the end of the message, everybody is saying, hey, man, that's right.

We hate those Egyptians. We hate the court system. Yeah, they're persecuting us. And what I was saying was, wait a minute, all of the children being born down there in Egypt to the Israelites, they all lived.

You are being persecuted, not for children living, but for children dying. You have actually taken this passage and completely flipped it on its head. And I said, you're misspelling or mispronouncing the word. The word for you, Dr. Freeman, is not persecution, it's prosecution.

What you're going through is not persecution. What you're going through is prosecution for your crimes. Why can't you see that? There is no comparison between all of these lively bursts of the Jewish boys down there in Egypt and the deaths of the children that faith assembly and then getting in trouble over.

There's no comparison at all. And I was just shocked. And that's why I said earlier in this little excerpt that I said, Hobart was so deluded and so desperate. I mean, he was a man who was not thinking very clearly at all.

He was so deluded to think, I can keep this movement going. I can keep these people believing me. If I can tie our experience with childbirth and what's happening in our persecution over that with what was happening in Egypt.

And it just wasn't true at all. As I said then, and I say now, it was prosecution, not persecution, and he went on in the last few teachings of this series and to talk about the deliverance, the night of the Lord, the angel of the Lord is going to go through and kill all the firstborn of every man, every family, every beast in Egypt, but the nation of Israel is going to be delivered.

And you could just feel in those eight messages there, in exhortations and exodus, this ominous, heavy, dark cloud that's over faith assembly. They, Hobart, and they through him are desperate for deliverance. They're desperate for salvation.

And somewhere in the back of Hobart's mind, I think that he was probably thinking that somehow they were going to be delivered. Everybody end up in jail, then the angels of God come and set everybody free.

But it was simply not going to happen. Something else that you'll hear if you listen to those messages versus Hobart Freeman and any messages leading up to this, he completely changed his pronunciation of the nation of Israel.

Before then, on any tape, Hobart would say, Israel, this, Israel, that. When he got to this series, and I laugh because I'm a careful listener and thinker of minister. When I hear them get cutesy with their pronunciation, I'm going, oh no, he's going into ministerial tone now.

He's going into pastoral mode now. Now, John, if you listen to those, it is Israel, Israel, you know, I need to be more Charles and Heston or the Ten Commandments or something. This is Israel instead of Israel.

And when I would hear that, the first time I heard him say that, oh, Hobart, what are you doing? Why not just say Israel, like you've always said? There is no need to change the pronunciation to Israel, you know, it's a, it's a, it's that pastoral, priestly mode that he went into that I think you have heard and witnessed before yourself.

Haven't you? Absolutely. And that's part of the manipulation and abuse because I'd hear that trigger word and I'd know, oh my gosh, he's going to go into the deep stuff. And what's weird is while you're in it, you don't really feel it.

You're thinking some fabulous divine mystery is coming. And then in hindsight, now that I've analyzed these quote unquote divine mysteries, what comes is so vague that you could literally mean, you could take it to interpret anything you wanted to with how vague it is.

And then at the end of this vague thing that is supposed to be this divine mystery, which literally can mean anything. You would hear these voices, you'd hear that ministers would do it, Brandon would do it.

I'm sure Hobart did it. Did you catch that? And what was there to catch, man? But while you're in it, oh yes, I caught it, brother. And then after the service, you'd go fellowship with the man, did you hear what he said?

And then everybody's like this, you know, this great thing came and I'm just, I'm shocked and appalled that they did this to our heads. Yeah, John, it really just infuriates me, you know, my, my, my typical phrase is these are idiots that do that and that treat people like that.

But in this series of messages, the one entitled Believers Before the Burning Bush. That's the one where he prophesied to his son-in-law Bruce Kinsey, which we've already played that before. And what we have not played before, John, is his taking me to task on the message entitled the conflict between Christ and Satan.

It's not happened that often, but I've had bookstores, religious bookstores that sell our literature, and people who are supposed to be sympathetic with faith assembly when they read the media, which I don't do, and we've said, if you do, you're going to have problems like them.

I want to know, are these things true? I never answer mail like that, because if they've read the literature, heard the tapes and don't already know why that's appearing in the media, what could you say to enlighten them?

You could just tell them what they say is a lie, but why they're saying it is true that we practice divine healing. We walk by faith. A man who got the faith message from faith assembly, before he ever went into ministry, and has written me at least three times, and I think the last letter, especially three critical letters, the last one asking questions, why is the media reporting this or that and the other?

Well, obviously, they are not in the papers for their practices. I could have written and told him that if he'll just do what the Bible says, live a godly life in Christ Jesus, you'll suffer persecution.

So that's where he takes me to task by saying this man who got the faith message from faith assembly, which is true, before he ever went out in ministry, I've gotten a series of three letters, three critical letters, the last one, especially critical, asking me, why is the media reporting all this and what's going on there, faith assembly, and why is this happening?

And that's true. I had just written him over that year a series of letters, at least three. I do remember the three. I thought I had written more, but he remembered three that I had written him, because I had heard learned from the media, couldn't learn it any other way, what was going on there, and I was really concerned that I had no idea.

You know, I thought maybe a person or two had died, but hundreds of people had died, not only that hundreds of people had died, but that Hobart and faith assembly, we're going to do anything about it.

They were going to re-evaluate their theology and try to figure out what is going on here. They couldn't care less. Lives didn't mean anything to them. The only thing that meant anything to them was their doctrine, and their doctrine was above God, above the Bible, above love, above concern for human life.

Their doctrine is more important to them than anything. They just weren't going to make any changes, and so, yes, I did write some letters. I don't recall that I would have called them critical, and that's...

Possibly he said they were critical, but I know the thing with Hobart if you said anything that wasn't in full support He called that criticism and you know this really put me in arms. I was pretty upset over being used as as a sermon illustration Because any other time I had written to him You know, I received positive response because I was saying positive things and I thought now this is interesting when someone Who had been a loyal follower and a loyal supporter is now asking a very valid question Challenging you maybe yes, but definitely at least their minimum asking a very valid question

What is this that I'm hearing from the media and he's not man enough to respond Except to do it publicly, you know to try to shame me in front of everyone didn't shame me because he didn't name me Nobody knows me anyway, so it didn't bring any shame to me, but What he says in the end of that quote that people just heard is that He said I could have said to that man meaning me if You were living a godly life in Christ Jesus and you'd be suffering persecution and your church would just like us

And see that was the very point I was trying to make what you are experiencing Hobart is not persecution That verse that he's quoting in second Timothy 312 Yeah, all that will live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution is wholeheartedly true But were they suffering persecution? I don't think so. I think it's called prosecution and By the way talking about hermeneutics John and things in their context Go to the verse just prior to that one second Timothy 311 and Paul talks about the exact Persecutions he has referenced to he even identifies it happened in Antioch

Iconium and Listera and if you go back and read Acts 14 Luke describes the persecutions and guess what one of them worked Paul Lifted a man up who was lame from his mother's womb who had never walked What have I said on so many of these podcasts in the Bible people got healed and because of that the ministers received persecution Hobart and Branum and or Roberts and a Allen and Jack Coe and all the rest of these guys did not heal anybody He actually hurt people killed some people and Then they call that persecution that they received. It's actually just flip flop. It's turned on its head

It's not what the Bible says. It's not the account in Acts 14 It's not the account in 2nd Timothy 3 so for Hobart to say yeah, if this man in his church Would live a godly life then they would experience the same persecution works experiencing. You know, it was like bailing the ocean out with the spin for me to try to talk to Hobart. You know, he just wouldn't listen. He couldn't, he couldn't make an A, mean A or a B, B.

He couldn't see, uh, Cheno, you're right. We're being prosecuted and not persecuted. He just simply couldn't see it. But I hope our listeners out there today can see it. So what's really interesting about this? And I had to look it up. You told me about this right before we started recording. So I had to go look it up to confirm it. Some of this I knew, some of it I didn't.

The title of the sermon that Hobart used as we discussed was straight out of Brannum's list of sermons. Uh, Brannum had the sermon. I think it was the year, if I'm looking at the correct one, I think it's the year 1962. It was preached in the satellite church of the Brannum cult in Clark's ville. That's right. Jeffersonville was the main church. The satellite church was there. The satellite church's name was faith assembly. So Hobart is preaching a sermon that he was likely in attendance because he was in Charlestown. If I, if I have the dates correct, I think he might

have been in Charlestown at that time. And if not, he could have easily came to hear it. But Brannum's preaching the sermon right there near Hobart, where Hobart was in those years, around that year time. And it's, it's the same exact thing that we talked about earlier.

Brannum is using personal allegories about opposition and he's using these far stretches to claim that it ties to the way, the persecution of the ancient biblical figures. And it's all concentrated in the here and now, same exact thing. So, so when Hobart's preaching at you, he's preaching using Brannum's strategy. Yeah, John, let me just be real precise. Brannum, William Brannum, taught a message in Clark'sville, Indiana on May the 31st, 1962. The title of the message was the conflict between God and Satan. The title of Hobart's message, the conflict between Christ and Satan. He changed one word in it, got the title exactly from a William Brannum message. May

31st, 1962. Absolutely fascinating stuff, man. And I'm going to have to share this with Charles, because Charles is, as you know, from the faith assembly sect that was there in Clark'sville, the one that we're talking about, it ended up moving I think a few times. But anyway, this is incredibly interesting things. And you're right, I did not feel as out of places as I thought I would be talking about the biblical exegesis. But history's fascinating, the manipulation is scary.

And I'm thankful that people are starting to wake up. and find healing, some of the people who were, I guess you'd call them in limbo. I meet a lot of people in Brannum sects who are of the same thing, they were manipulated, they were brainwashed in this thing.

And then years later, they're kind of just wandering around in limbo, they haven't really processed it. And many people are just now starting to do so. So this is a good thing. Very, very glad that we're able to help people.

And thank you for sharing the notes from the people that had sent you information. Yeah, you're welcome, John. 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-Branum.org. From more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.