Stockholm Saints: Defense of an Authoritarian Cult

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I have my co-host, minister and friend, Channel Ross, pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Channel D Ross YouTube channel. Channel it's good to be back and to talk all things Hobart Freeman, and today I'm a little bit excited for today because as I've mentioned several times I really get fascinated with the psychology of all of this.

I'm one of these people that I have to know what makes things work, what makes people tick, what makes situations evolve in the way that they do, and I apply that not only to Hobart Freeman or William Brandham, but just culture and society in general. You can see the way that things shift based off of its histories, which is why I'm absolutely fascinated with history too because you watch things evolve and you watch things change and you don't realize it at the time, but looking back in hindsight you can see how things turned the way that they did.

And here we have Hobart Freeman, the cult leader who's telling everybody that they can't have medicine, they can't go to a doctor, and he himself is struggling with issues that are really chronic, you know, painful issues with his own body, and it's hard not to imagine that affecting his psyche. Yes, I think you will be interested today, John, because I do want to talk some of the psychology of Hobart Freeman for what that's worth. I think if people go back in their memory and those who were a part of faith assembly for a long time, remember the early to mid 1970s,

so we're talking about 10 years earlier from this time period that we are discussing right now. And even though you definitely see there, the very seeds to what is going to become a big problem in the future, there was still a lot of enthusiasm at that time in Hobart's life. He had only become charismatic, you know, that happened in 1966, so five to 10 years earlier, depending on whether we're talking 1970 or 1975 or six. So he was still learning a lot of stuff. He was still excited himself, and there was a lot of of enthusiasm and joy and love in the glory barn

and the people that were attending there. And so people today talking about evolution of things, looking back all these years later, the people who are still somewhat hesitant to criticize Dr. Freeman because they say, I still remember, I remember the early days and I remember all the good times when we were on fire for God and it was so exciting to go to church.

You know, we'd get there two and a half hours early just to try to get a seat up on the main floor of the glory barn or at least get close to the front of the church where they could be right there in front of the podium when Dr. Freeman was teaching.

But you know what I think people remember what they have good memories of and they should is that the Christian community and fellowship that they experience there. And I don't know that that's any different than any other church or religious group or denomination.

So you know, for instance, if you are anti-Roman Catholic just to give you an example, if you're anti-Roman Catholic and you know, you're trying to witness to your Roman Catholic relative or friend and you're finding it difficult to get them away from their church, you know, it's very well possible.

They don't even know what the priest is saying, you know, during every mass, they're not connected to that. What are they connected to? They're connected to the Friday night fish fry, you know, they're connected to all of the people there and they have great connections and love and memories of that.

If you're a Baptist trying to win a Pentecostal or vice versa, it's the same thing in their church. So I think that's what people are remembering. But if they will concentrate more on what was actually being said by Dr. Freeman from the pulpit, not the great feelings that they had in the church because I'm sure that was good and real and valid.

If you look at what he's saying by the end of his life, now we're into the early to mid 1980s, the people at faith assembly just lived in a bubble of fear. The more Hobart could press down on the people and take things away from them, the worse it got.

And the people weren't recognizing that because it was too late. It's really too late. It's one in a hundred who were sitting there processing it and being a part of it that could have recognized we've really taken a turn for the worst.

One of the things that helped me was I wasn't a member at faith assembly and I was in and out of contact with them. So I might go six months a year, maybe two years, and not have any association with...

faith assembly or with Dr. Freeman's teaching and then I would buy some tapes or someone would give me some tapes and I would listen to them and it was pretty noticeable whenever you had taken a year or two vacation from hearing what he said.

And I was just hearing new infacies and this meanness. This guy was just mad at everyone. He was very negative. He felt like, you know, chicken little that the world is falling apart and caving in on me and he just, he became just very controlling of the people.

So I'm just going to read a quote from a message entitled our one remedy for healing. This was taught in the early 1980s or a couple of years prior to Dr. Freeman's death and at the 20 minute and 43 second mark, here's what he said.

That's what this ministry is all about to restore apostolic faith. That's the message in a nutshell and I'm skipping a couple of sentences. He went on to say, you have no right and he's hollering.

You have no right to sit in our seats, our seats, except you've sold out to the Word of God and you're willing, whatever it calls to receive the faith message. You have no other reason for being here.

We don't give you a seat. You may take one, but some have sat in those seats and then fail their trials and they're all somewhere. I don't know where now we didn't invite them here to fail their trial and to quote our one remedy of healing.

Just telling the people, those seats only belong to people that completely agree with everything I'm teaching. That's what he said in a nutshell. You have to be sold out to what I'm teaching, what I'm preaching.

That's why those seats are there and we do not provide a seat for anyone else except a complete follower of mine. He cast it in, you got to be a follower of God, totally follow the Word of God, but we know what he meant by that because we saw it in the fact you could not disagree with anything he had to say.

You've got to be in complete agreement with me and if you're not, that's our seat that belongs to us and that seat does not belong to you. I would agree with everything that you said and you almost beat me to my punchline for this segment, but add to what you said, the people are indoctrinated to have a hypersensitive nature to opposing thought.

So while he's saying that it's these views are for you, they're not for the outsiders, how long with that comes with the outsiders. think differently, act differently, dress differently. It's us versus them. They want to instill that into the people's minds.

So when people leave these kind of groups or they implode, what I have seen with working with ex-Branamites and now ex-ihop people, a variety of different people, they miss the feelings more than they do the doctrine or the cult leader.

They miss the community, like you said, but it's worse because when they go try to integrate into a normal church, which does, like you said, has a healthy community and they could have many of the same things.

The moment in which somebody in that community says something that they've been programmed to be against, suddenly all hell breaks loose and they just come and glued. And also with this unhealthy level of closeness, everybody's in everybody's business.

So part of the reason why they come and glued is, in the back of their minds, they're thinking, did somebody else see me not pounce on them for that opposing thought? Because everybody is trained to do that.

They want to pounce on people. And after a person leaves one of these groups, it's very difficult not to pounce on people. You can look at the comment feeds on my videos and you can see this.

That's just, unfortunately, how it is. But they, people were manipulated, myself included. And it makes it very difficult to reestablish yourself into another community. And I'll say it like this, it takes a lot of work.

And it is very much worth the work if you can do it. Yeah, a lot of patients for those outside trying to work with people, a lot of love, a lot of tolerance. And for those who are part of it and now out of it, just remember where you were at one time.

We played a clip, I don't know, John, it's been a few segments ago where he was coming down really hard. We know what his belief was against medicine and medical science for anyone in the church to go to a doctor.

It doesn't matter whether you've got need a two-filled or you've got a broken bone. But he took it to a new extreme by saying, you can't even provide medicine for other people. And then he talks about sick and elderly parents and relatives.

He said, basically, and we played the quote, if they need medicine, you need to send them onto the nursing home. Because if you bring them into your home and provide, you're not taking medicine yourself, but you're providing that for them, then you're just opening doors for them to be demon-possessed through the names of the demons behind the names of all the drugs.

So we played that clip and that's bizarre enough. But I would like for people just to continue to hear, this isn't our opinion about Dr. Freeman. This is what he actually said, believed, taught himself.

So he had a series, which I nicknamed Psychovable. because it was just the craziest stuff. And Hobart did not have any advanced training to qualify him to talk in these areas, but it was his series, so called of deeper discernment and deliverance.

And he had all kinds of messages in this that are so bizarre and make no use of scripture at all. And he had one entitled, Deserning and Dealing with multiple personalities. Part one and part two.

Well, I'll tell you friends, God is giving you a lot of long, suffering time to deal with the question of whether or not you're going to make the right decision about that garbage dump that you've got in your house.

Some of you are just not going to deal with it until maybe you lose a baby or a husband or a wife or something. And I said, serious. That isn't the only evidence of that.

There are others that have noticed the connection between problems and television and so forth. That isn't the only evidence of that. There are others that have noticed the connection between problems and television and so forth.

I don't like to say that maybe some of you suffered some losses because you've not heated the warning. You see, it's not a thing we can do. We don't stand at the door and say, do you have a television?

Do you wear pants at home? Well, we can ask you the mail-arphine with that one. Do you wear the pants at home?

Do you watch television? Do you speak in tongues every day and all in all? We don't ask questions like that. We just have some basic areas of unity, but you see, one day, God may just quit fooling with some people, time will run out.

And you'll have to lose a child before you wake up. Maybe you already have. I'm not saying, I'm just saying, think about it, because that's what the Lord showed here.

And those who've gotten rid of that trashy vision have had good testimonies about it changes things and they feel clean inside and so forth. Now, you know, I don't like to say this like sarcasm, but I couldn't care less what somebody might think about.

Faith assembly doesn't believe in having a television. Well, I'll tell you something else. We don't believe in smoking and social drinking and going to Hollywood movies and a lot of other things, but we don't have any rules on the wall that we check you out before you come in.

We just assume if you mean business with God. So, you know, as we hear through that, not only is it wrong, not only are they trying to trace their problems back to taking some medicine, but what he just said here, because they had a big rule.

against watching or owning a television set, he had nicknamed it Trashy Vision from TV and railed against it all the time. And if again, if I could just remind people of the fact, if you will go back 10 years earlier, hope Bart owned a television set because he talked about different, you know, in a message, he would talk about something he had just seen on TV the night before.

Or that as he was eating lunch, he and June, his wife were listening to the radio, a radio program, you know, he was a member of a shortwave amateur radio club. But later in life, you know, he outlawed all these things and never told people the reason that he was sinning earlier in his life by having a television, you know, he always pretended like I've always believed this way, this has always been true of me.

He always acted as though I don't have anything and never have had anything wrong in my life. But actually, he owned a television set, but he said here, some of you are just not going to deal with it until you lose a baby.

And he says, or a spouse, a husband or wife, he says now it's just that serious, we don't stand at the door and say, do you have a television, do you wear pants at home?

Remember, he's outlawed women to wear pants and he wants to make sure they're not sneaking behind his back and wearing pants at home, as though he has any jurisdiction in their home and in their home life.

But oh, my word, haven't we seen that he wanted to be behind your clothes bedroom doors? He wanted to be in how you raise your children, he wanted to be involved in everything. So he said, now we don't stand at the door and say, do you have a television, do you wear pants at home?

But one day, God may just quit fooling with some people, time will run out and you'll have to lose a child. Faith assembly, here's a quote, doesn't believe in having a television, but we don't have any rules on the wall.

I mean, I hate to say this about Freeman, but in those instances, he is just, I mean, he's almost an idiot. Because anybody can hear, when you say, and I hate to call anybody an idiot, that's really demeaning to say that, but when you say in one sentence, Faith assembly has this policy and we do not believe in television, then you say, but we don't have a rule on the wall.

In other words, don't blame us for the legalism. It's just all psycho-bable to say, I don't believe in this and this is wrong and it's contrary to God's word, but we don't have any rules on that.

every time he got to dress he would say now we're going to talk about the christian way to dress but we don't have any rules or laws here at faith assembly and then he would go right on and legislate a half a dozen of them and i you know i don't know what else to say i probably shouldn't use a word idiot maybe you can help me and give me a better word john well i've come to the point of my life where i no longer call free moon or branham or any of these guys idiots but i will say

that they had constipation of the brain and diarrhea of the mouth and i think that's about the nicest way i can put what these guys had but you know the double speak is something that i noticed early in my leaving the message code but i didn't know how to frame it in my head because branham did the same thing and i'm certain if you study all of the latter-ane people who turned out to be cult leaders they all kind of went down the same route where it was how do i say it in the old bananza show

the indian would come up and he would say white man speak with forked tongue and what he's saying is he's talking out of both sides of his mouth and that's what these guys were doing their experts at it and it wasn't until you know i'm fascinated with documentaries and i'm studying many different psychopaths and i realize how their brains work the way that they think you can see anybody's watching these documentaries can see it and they all kind of do the same thing they'll say one thing but their brain there's something wrong in their head where the left and right halves aren't

working correctly together and they'll say one thing and then they'll immediately just say the opposite thing and you don't know which path way to go right and you're in your mind and it throws people off balance and in reading doctor steven hasen's book combating cult mind control that is one of the key manipulation tools for brainwashing if you can throw their mind off balance then everything you say thereafter they're still thinking trying to wrap their brain on which direction do i take and you're planting whatever you want in their head right after that and it's a it's a mind control technique

i can't say that these guys studied mind control and they learned this but i can't say that they're all doing it and you can you know you can go study freeman you can study brannum's tapes you can study a lot of these guys and you can see this happening yeah that's for sure and as you say the people are confused after they hear that statement i think some of us that think and reason more logically when i would hear a statement like that those are those that doesn't compute in my mind something has to give either you have a law or you don't have a

law it can't be both and hobart was real good at saying it both ways now this is an absolute law faith assembly does not believe in television sets and then he'd say but we don't have any rules on the wall And I would go well that is your rule and it's it's definitely on the wall It may be invisible but it's definitely nailed right to the wall and everybody knows that it's nailed to the wall Even if it's invisible because you just said it with your mouth and yet for people that don't seem to think reasonably

They would leave that place because I had discussions with them John and they would say you know Oh, no, we don't believe in televisions, but we don't have any laws You know, Dr. Freeman didn't set any laws and I would say how can you say that?

But you know, they just weren't paying attention that what he had said was definitely contradictory and And what's happening with at the end of this time period in Freeman's life and ministry With him now Prohibiting you even working in a medical supply field like making making in a company that makes rubber gloves That may be used in a medical facility What I call they were just living in a wilderness of mirrors And what I mean by that is there were so many mirrors around them that they were directed to look into To see if you can see what the problem is why you don't have your healing why your loved ones aren't

Say why you don't drive the new car yet why your husband hasn't gotten promoted Why the wife is still barren, you know, whatever it is you have claimed by faith You look in this mirror and then it's Directed you over here and then you look over here and there's another mirror Oh, it wasn't because of that it was and then you now you look over here It's just a wilderness of mirrors Trying to figure out why Hobart was still having a heart attack during one a couple of his Sermons he was actually under a heart attack why his polio short leg never grew out

Why his vision got worse and he couldn't read and had a giant print Bible You know why why why why don't we have these things Rather than saying maybe our theology is Deficient maybe there's something wrong in the way we have gone about reading and interpreting scripture Maybe our hermeneutical system needs some work rather than do that They wander out into this wilderness of mirrors just looking around trying desperately to figure out What stone is still left?

Unturned and if I could just turn over the right stone Then all of a sudden my healing will be manifested or my loved one would be saved or this would happen And so in this series of deeper discernment and deliverance this is deeper You know, this is deeper than the average Christian gets to have this is deeper This is a path he began to go down and I as you know John have all of Hobart Freeman's notes.

And at the end of his life, he would, and I have given you this, if you want to put that up, he would type up his notes or in a very abbreviated form. And I've read enough of them that I know exactly, and you can tell they're not difficult to understand what his abbreviations stand for.

But here he has something called closing doors opened through heredity. And I'm just going to read some of this, and if you put it on the screen, people can study it for themselves. But so, and I'm not going to read all of it, but just to show you how desperate they were in this wilderness of mirrors to find what is going wrong in our life.

He says, every Christian who takes deeper, deliverance seriously needs to consider such a possibility. It may explain why some things are not yet free. And then he says, parents, grandparents, relatives, remember he's talking about heredity, maybe they were involved.

These are his actual notes. If you find the messages and deeper deliverance and discernment and just listen through them, you will find where this is exactly what he does. He uses this and he preaches from that.

And it's so strange that people fault that he's speaking under some immediate direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And I've said before, he has all of his jokes, all of his stories, and I'm not saying that's wrong.

You need to probably have some notes to teach from rather than just teach from an empty head. But he's pretending like this is all coming directly from the Lord and it's not. It's coming from his notes.

So he said, you need to investigate your parents, your grandparents, your relatives. They might have been involved in the occult, adultery, false religion. And he has an example, JW, and that of course is Jehovah's Witnesses.

And remember, you're not supposed to use abbreviations according to Hobart. He outlawed abbreviations earlier, but he always used them. Criminal acts, rape, infidelity. He says, parents, RC, that means parents in the Roman Catholic Church.

And then he goes on in the next heading to talk about parents RC. So he said, maybe you were delivered in a Roman Catholic hospital. He said, those are temples of demons because they have religious air in them.

You know, Baptist denominations and Methodists, they have Baptist church and our Baptist hospital and Methodist hospital. And Roman Catholics have hospitals as well. So if you are born into a denominational, not church, hospital, you might have picked up a demon there.

If you are baptized as an infant into a false religion, your mind is saturated with... religious air in Catholic schools. You need to break such connection and renounce the strong spirits. Simply leaving Roman Catholicism is not enough. You have to go through deeper deliverance to set yourself free. Talks about confirmation rights. And he talks about because he's been talking about your parents, the heredity involved in your family.

Um, maybe your parents were involved in fornication or adultery. Maybe they were. What does that have to do with me? Well, according to Hobart, you inherit demons of fornication and adultery through your parents or through your grandparents. Yeah, this is Hobart Freeman faith assembly Bible teaching. This is what you go to church to learn. He said, maybe your illegitimate, either your illegitimate or your brother or sister is illegitimate. So what people had to go do, they had to go ask their mom and dad was, I'm born within or without wedlock pops. You know, I need

to know how is when and where and with whom and under what conditions was I conceived? Uh, fornication, adultery, uh, prostitution. Maybe your mother was a prostitute and she got pregnant as a prostitute. Um, so he said, if you know any of these things are true, then you could pick up a spirit of lust or fornication or adultery can pass to the child at birth. So if you later in your life battle lust or fornication or unclean thoughts, then you need to break the hereditary bondages.

And then he talks about a girl who has problems with lust, then maybe her mother was a fornicator or maybe she was an illegitimate child before her birth. All of this is in his notes. I'm not making any of this up. And he just goes on and on and on. Um, there's something seriously wrong here.

There's something really bad. 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. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking to contribute button at the top and as always be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research we want to thank you for your support. One of the studies that I've been doing as you know I've been digging into the Jesus movement and how the Shepherding movement was involved in the Jesus

and you know according to the timeline you've got many of the Shepherding guys were you know operating at the same time as Hobart Freeman so there's a little bit of cross-pollination there and one of the ideas that emerged from all of this laterane mess was the idea of generational curses and what you're describing was your mother prostitute was all of this nonsense was based off of this generational curse idea and Brannum also taught the same thing but he very insidiously tied it to racist doctrines he would he he produced this serpent seed doctrine which was essentially

the doctrine that Eve made it with the serpent and they produced Cain and Cain's offspring were all evil but he carefully omitted the words black and Jew from his doctrine and then later followed up with the high breeding doctrine and in the high breeding doctrine you cannot mix a black race with a white race and if you did it created a generational curse and Brannum pulled the old law from what is it the Deuteronomy Leviticus talking about the 14 generations you can't enter into the congregation well he implied and suggested that for 14 generations you're doomed to hell

you had this generational curse and this stuck I don't know why these guys picked it up but it's stuck and it is one of the real barriers to escaping because in the back of your mind you're thinking that this whole world is filled with demons and you might have accidentally caught one of them yeah and some of this John does go back obviously to Bible verses you know no call has ever been started on anything but a Bible verse where I think even with the 10 commandments God said he'll visit the eniquity the third and fourth generation of you know that parent but you

got to take the whole there's a better way to interpret that because you have to take the whole of revelation if you go over to Ezekiel's prophecy Ezekiel clearly says the son will not die for the father or the father for the son but everyone will die for their own sin Ezekiel very clearly says that so what is Moses saying whenever well that's a whole theological issue but I don't think that there's any such thing as a generational curse I definitely believe God deals with people individually however let's say that your grandfather was a notorious

bank robber, and your father was a notorious bank robber, you're going to probably have some of the consequences around you in your life because of what your relatives have done. It doesn't mean you're being punished because of them.

It just means that there can be some residual effects happening, and that's not a curse that's put on you. That's just the way that it is. That's a whole story in itself. There are better ways to interpret that passage, I would say, just like there are better ways to interpret the woman with the issue of blood over in Mark's Gospel that we talked about earlier.

So, here by the end of Hobart's life, he's just not a pleasant person to talk to at all. He's cranky, doesn't feel well, he's got pressures from within and from without. I did not visit faith assembly often.

I was busy in my own ministry. I was leading a group of people up in Minnesota for a few years, and then in New England for a few years. After that, during which time Hobart was still alive, but I did make some occasional trips to faith assembly here on, this is Dr. Freeman's tape list, 1157 of them, all of them, and if you see up here in this corner, it was published the month after he died, so this was like his final tape list.

I had it marked up, and I know when I was there because I had the very messages marked when I was there, and I was not there that often, but occasionally I would visit, and I would try to go up and talk to Dr. Freeman afterwards, and he did not want to talk.

I can remember going up one time, and I don't even think I got to him. There was always at least a little line, there wasn't a very long line because people were too afraid.

He had scolded everyone and said, you know, you shouldn't need counseling from me because I've already taught you the word, go put it into practice for yourself. So there was generally not a very long line by the end of his life, but I can remember a time when I was in line, and John Abill was up there.

Now John, I've mentioned John before, he was the tape guy. He went way back early in faith ministry's days. Bruce Kinsey was the one who was responsible right after he got saved for handling Dr. Freeman's tapes and books, but the ministry was just growing and getting bigger and bigger.

And so John Abill was hired full time to be the man who did that, and to start with, you know, he did it by himself, and I can remember John being up there, and I remember watching Hobart Holler at him, I mean raise his voice and yell at him.

And I wish I could remember exactly the conversation I don't, so I won't make believe, but it had something to do with, you know, this person shouldn't be over here, get this person over there.

I just know that he was very... pretty upset, and he was hollering. And I had never seen that before. You know, I'm not, and I know all of us, all ministers are human beings, but you would think that if you're gonna yell, you're gonna save it for home.

You're not gonna do it in public, where everybody else can see you. But I mean, he was really mad in yelling at John A. Bill that John needed to do something differently. And I have mentioned before, whenever Hobart was in court in Warsaw, and he got separated from the people that were there with him, and he got surrounded by some newspaper reporters.

I said, because the newspaper reporters reported this. They said, he hollered, where are my helpers? Because they had wandered off somewhere. You know, where's my entourage? And I guess victims of abuse just get used to bad treatment.

You know, that's just the way that it is. And that's why they don't recognize Hobart's shortness and his meanness. They just probably don't recognize it. Because if you're the dog that's kicked all the time, you're just happy to get a crumb.

Or you're happy if your master ever speaks to your smiles at you. Because most of the time he's gonna kick you and you say, it's no big deal, I'm used to that. And so those occasional times when he smiles at the dog or the person is just a wonderful experience for you.

But that's the nature of abuse. People in abuse relationships get used to it. And we just see it over and over and they say it's no big deal. For those of us on the outside, I think it is a big deal.

And maybe they would say, well, look, channel, you're being so unfair. Hobart's got a church of 2,000 or 2,300 people. You know, he can't talk to every person and be patient with every person.

But I would go back to the very beginning. And I've mentioned this before on his very first tape and his series on the Book of Acts, which is entitled The Need for Empowering. They had a couple of hundred people there.

And he said, this is plenty big enough. He said, if we ever get bigger, we're just gonna split the church and divide. Well, they grew and grew and grew and he wasn't about to give up his following.

So my point is, I think that's the problem of having a church with 2,000 people. You cannot be the pastor. You can't be the shepherd. You don't know those sheep. It's interesting when you look in the pages of what was happening in the Reformation, in Switzerland, in Germany, in the early 16th century at the start of the Reformation.

You had so many people who were leaving the Roman Catholic Church, who were becoming truly born again. And there was a need for churches to spring up everywhere. And I know in... in Geneva, they had a policy in Geneva, Switzerland.

And I've always thought back on this and thought this was very wise. There were some wise men behind the reformed efforts happening in Europe at that time, where they said that we're going to have a maximum of 50 adults per group and that's it.

And once you've got 50 and then you've got children, that's enough, you know, we'll start another group and we'll have to have another pastor. And Hobart was never willing to follow that. Even though Hobart talked all the time, one of his favorite subjects was God is in the process of restoring the New Testament pattern of the church, the five-fold ministry, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers.

God is into body ministry and restoring the New Testament pattern. But as I've said all the time, they only had a one-fold ministry at faith assembly, and it was a whole gaggle of teachers.

And Hobart wouldn't let those guys leave. If you're restoring the New Testament pattern of the church, shouldn't those men be going out and becoming pastors of these different local groups? Hobart wouldn't allow that to happen.

He said, this is your church, you ministers, and when I'm teaching, you need to be here because he's the voice of authority. He's the voice of God. And consequently those ministers were not allowed to go out and travel around and stay in these other places.

They could travel around, they just couldn't stay there. So I look at this and I hear the stories that people have told me, people who are actually a member of faith assembly, for instance, there's this one brother who was there all the time, sat on one of the front rows.

And because I received criticism, and some of it is probably deserved, I received criticism in these podcasts because I was not a member of faith assembly and I was not there for every service.

And there's some validity to that, although I don't think there's much validity to it, but there is some, I wasn't there. They say, Chino, you weren't there. You're just talking from a distance. So I have talked to people that were there, and then some of the stories I hear make me really glad that I wasn't there.

And this one brother said, he said, Chino, yeah, Hobart was not approachable at all. He said, I know, I sat on the second or third row and I would watch the way he would deal with people.

He was not, he did not want to have to deal with people. Hobart wanted to stay at home all week, be chauffeur there, sneak in the Batgarage door, sneak in his back office door, sit in his office and pray and listen to the worship.

When he's ready, he opens a door right behind the pulpit, goes out. preaches and I promised you he wanted to go back through that door and go back home. He felt like my teaching is my teaching.

He was not a pastor. He just a lecturer. I don't care about all these people. Any care that I have is expressed through my teaching you the word and you go out and live it yourself.

He was really wanted to be a monk and just live by himself. But faith assembly would occasionally have what they call love feast. You know potluck. If it's a big church fellowship meal and time together and so everyone would bring food and the whole church would participate and you know what other churches would call you know a potluck or you know just a fellowship meal they called a love feast and they would have those periodically there.

And so this brother said but you know what during the love feast we know during the ones in the Bible things like footwashing happened and we know who went out and washed the people's feet it was Jesus.

He got down on his hands and his knees and he washed the feet of his own apostles. You know if we're just amazing that our Lord was of such a character and personality that he would do that but that's what leaders do.

Their number one calling is servanhood that's their number one calling is to be a servant and that's exactly what the Lord was. So during their love feast hubbar would stay upon the platform never got down off the platform to mingle with these hundreds of people and these scores of wonderful Christian families out there he would and people will say well he couldn't it was too big that's his own problem.

The church never should have gotten that big. He sent against his own book of Acts teaching but anyway even with that big group you could still go and fellowship with somebody somewhere a few of them he would stay up on the podium June would be up there with him normally the Kenzis the hills you know two sons-in-law and their families would be up there but here was what was so fascinating to me there was somebody else up there with him and this brother telling me the story said yeah he said we had more than one but there was one particular person in the church who was

very mentally handicapped and said brother Freeman would always invite him to come up there on the podium and have their meal with the Freeman's with the hierarchy up there on the platform up on the platform and you know when I heard that I'm sorry but here's the direction and mine goes in, the only person, it's a good show like look how humble and thoughtful and compassionate I am as your pastor that I will have this mentally handicapped person up here with me.

But the mentally handicapped person couldn't raise any objections or problems or questions to the teaching. In other words, he didn't present any kind of threat or obstacle to Dr. Freeman. So on the one hand, it was a good show that you were such a compassionate person that you would have a mentally handicapped person up there.

But on the other hand, I think there were probably some selfish motives involved. Why not have me up there or somebody else up there to hang out? It probably would not have worked very well.

So I don't know, John, this just, when I hear, I wasn't at faith assembly, but had I been there and had I witnessed that, I think I would have had the same problems in that I have now when I hear the story.

You know, I wasn't there either, but I don't know that I, I don't know that I could put myself in a place where I would disagree with what you said. Because even in the Brannum Sacks and Brannum Tabernacle, you didn't find some of the elite figures lowering themselves and humbling themselves to be with the lowly people.

And that's a, it's a common problem. Back to something else that you were talking about is Stockholm Syndrome, basically, where you make this connection to the leader. That's part of the psychology behind this.

If they're above you, if they don't lower themselves and humble themselves to be like you, well, they can hold you captive in the mind. And I'll never forget when I read Dr. Hassan's book, Combat and Cult Mind Control, recommend it for anybody who's listening if you haven't read it, it does help you.

I'll never forget when I came across his mentioning of Stockholm Syndrome. And my first thought was, no way. I don't agree. There's no way we weren't trapped. We weren't in a prison. We weren't locked in somebody's basement by a captor.

We could have left at any time. But as you keep reading and you understand that your mind is doing mentally what Stockholm Syndrome victims do physically. As soon as you grasp that, it suddenly clicks and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe that they did this to my head.

You go through this phase where you get really angry about it. And I've went through all of the stages of grief over this. And I think many of the people who have been in the support groups I've worked with have, you go through the grief because you feel this broad sense of emotion.

You're connected to the cult leader. The cult leader was better than you. They didn't stoop themselves down to be at your level. Yet at the same time, they really destroyed lives. And I think that's the hardest part to grasp because as you're connecting to the leader, Self-included, you feel this empathy for them.

You feel sad and sorry for them once you get into the final stages of grief because day two can't really help what they did. Their mind is just so messed up that they can't help it.

And I still wrestle with that today, you know. Was it all on purpose? Did they, was the person just mentally insane? How did all of this evolve? And I think some of those questions will just simply never be answered.

Yeah, and those are never the paths I have gone down. I think John, you've gone down more of those from the psychology side. I've, most of the paths I've gone down have been theological or biblical.

You know, I'm just interested in what was he teaching and where was he writing, where was he wrong? But you are so right as you get into the fallout of groups like faith assembly and faith assembly itself.

Um, the damage is so deep and so long lasting. Um, you know, and you still hear from people and I still hear from people to this day who have been traumatized by it for better or for worse.

Some people have dealt with it far better than others. Unfortunately, some people have not been able to deal with it at all and have just turned their back on Christianity and the Bible. And that's, you know, that's just a terrible thing to have had happened.

But when I look at Dr. Freeman, if you needed, if anyone needs even to this day because we still have I hop the, all of the apostles and prophets and wacko groups around us today, if anyone needs any reason, a reason, not to follow a man or to sit under his ministry or to listen to his teachings, look for narcissism.

That's a reason I don't care really how accurate their teaching even is or how qualified or how trained they are. Narcissism, which is like the whole tenet of Dr. Freeman's life and ministry, he constantly talks about himself.

I've never heard anyone and I've listened to a lot of teachers and a lot of preachers and I've never heard anyone talk about themselves more than him and it's so repetitive. It's not news stories, it's the same stories that are locked in his mind and he tells them over and over again.

And what, so when I'm list, so when I sit there and listen, I've got 1157 Hobart Freeman messages and so as you listen to that, that covers a 18 year period of time from 1966 to 1984.

Or, and once I got beyond dealing with the theological and biblical stuff, because I thought he is totally an heir about serious, serious matters, then you have time or the luxury to listen to other things and to look for other things.

And so then I began to see, you know what, in 1157 messages, I've never heard a single happy story from childhood, not a single one. I've taught over 2,000 messages that are available.

I bet if you heard all those, you're going to hear a lot of stories from my life, but they're just told one time because it comes to your mind and connection to some message, but it's a happy story from childhood.

I happen to have a very happy childhood, not everybody did, and I'm sorry if they don't. And you know, you don't get to control what kind of home life you were born into or what kind of childhood you had, what kind of parents you had.

I had wonderful parents and maybe Hobart did not feel that he had that, but it is striking to me that in over 1,000 messages, I've never heard a single happy story from childhood.

Now I've heard a couple of stories, but they're about sicknesses and illnesses and accidents that he had. Never heard a happy story of riding a bike, of playing ball, of swimming down at the quarry, of going with mom and dad, you know, Hobart was born a long time ago.

Going to the dime store and getting to spend the penny on a piece of chewing gum, not a single happy story from his childhood, not a single story about his father, whose name was Edward.

That's where Hobart got his middle name, Hobart Edward Freeman, his father's name was Edward. His father, by the way, was still alive, living not that direction from me in Lexington, Kentucky, whenever Hobart died.

When Hobart died, Edward, his Freeman, his father was still alive, living in Lexington, Kentucky. Not a single happy story of your father, about your father. I have so many stories. I could fill up whole messages and I wouldn't be teaching the Bible anymore, just telling stories about my dad and the times things I learned from my father.

What I'm trying to say here is when you look through these things and don't find them, then it tells you something about Hobart Freeman's psychology. It tells you something about his background. He tells one story about Isabel Freeman, his mother.

And the only way I can know these things is I've heard. All of Hobart's teachings, and I'm so familiar with them. He tells one story about his mother. My mother was a wingless angel. She was literally an angel sent down from heaven with no wings. This is a way I believe my mother was. She was the most godly person I've ever known the most loving godly caring she would have done anything for me as her son.

You know, I'm indebted to my parents to this day. People may not picture me. I'm old school. I'm 66 years old. I do have one tattoo on me. I have a tattoo. Believe it or not, people will probably be shocked to hear that Chino Rawls has a tattoo on him.

I have a tattoo and I waited and I knew I was gonna get one. But I waited until the right time and I was way on up there in my years, but it had to do with my parents.

Because as I look back on, I look where I am in my life now, John and all that I have and all that I've accomplished and how successful I have been. I trace it back. Of course, I give God the ultimate glory that he has been in control of my whole life from birth till now.

But I give the credit to my two parents. I would not be where I am today without my dad and without my mom. I simply wouldn't be here. It was their example. It was their sacrifice. They were both hardworking, salt of the earth, middle class, college educated, insisting that their kids are gonna be educated, insisting that we live a good life and a right life.

That's the kind of upbringing I had and thankfully I didn't rebel against it. I was converted to Christianity early in life when I was 15 years old. So I never had time to get old enough to get into trouble and be a bad person.

About the only thing I can think that I ever kind of did wrong as a child, you know at 4th of July, you have fireworks and there was a type of firework. I don't know what you called it, but it had a string on both end so you could tie one onto the door knob, tie the other onto the door casing and when the person opened the door, it would pop.

So some friends and I got together and tied a whole line of them together across the entrance to our road that we lived on. I lived on Picket Cove Road from the stop sign on one side of the road over to a sign on the other side.

We tied it just about at windshield height and the police were patrolling the area and so here comes a police car and it pushes against that long of all of these booby traps and they just explode.

Pow, pow, pow, pow across the windshield of that cop car. And I'm embarrassed to say I did that. I was probably 13 or 14 years old when I did that. That's as much, and we were hiding in the tall grass in the weeds right there beside the road.

The weeds were so tall you couldn't find us. We're down there just giggling under our breath, watching those cops try to figure out what happened to their car. Yeah, I should not have done that.

That was terrible for me to do that. But it's like the only thing I did to get in trouble. But yeah, I mean, I have to my parents, I owe you everything. That's the kind of childhood I have.

And unfortunately, I don't think Dr. Freeman had that. He's got one story of Isabel Freeman, his mother. And that's when he said once he got the baptism in the Holy Spirit in 1966, he'd been praying and praying for his mom to be saved, because she wasn't a Christian.

And he said, I stopped praying, and I just claimed John 14, 14, if you ask anything in my name, I'll do it. He said, I prayed that prayer and in 15 minutes, my mom was saved.

And what he means by that, because you have to hear all the tapes and you hear the other stories that, that's the prayer that he prayed, but not 15 minutes after that prayer was she saved.

At a later point, he was able to go and talk to his mother and share the gospel with her. And then he does tell the story that my mother got saved. And I hope that, I assume that's a true story.

I hope it is. And that's wonderful that it was, but no other stories about your mom sewing your clothes or picking you up at school or baking you goods to carry to schools or nothing good to say about your father or your mother.

He has no stories about his siblings except one. Remember, he was raised in a family with all sisters. He was the youngster and he had a gaggle of girls, five or six older sisters.

He tells one story that I can remember about a sister of his, a blood sister, coming to a meeting where he was teaching in Dayton, Ohio. He has no stories of his lifelong companion, Ava June Freeman, no stories about his wife.

Except stories where she had some ringing in her ear and she claimed her healing and the ringing went away. Then it came back. Then it went away, then it came back. And she just had to endure by faith and then it went away and then it never came back.

No stories about your wife where you just want to just say something, it would just come out naturally. You hear what I'm saying? It would just come out naturally. You wouldn't have to plan for it in a message.

Something would just come out because of a fault you have about your wife and you'd want to tell this story about my wife is just the best person in the world. She's my best friend or she cooked the best meal last night or something that you would want to say.

Nothing about his wife. and you know he was a father of three beautiful girls. I've seen pictures of the Freeman daughters when they were young. Those were some beautiful young ladies. He's a proud pop-up.

No stories about his daughters. No stories about his daughters except see the only time he would tell a story is if it would somehow tie into his ministry. So he tells one story about his three daughters being in a terrible automobile wreck and I don't remember the ages but I think I'm pretty close on them. I think Becky was about 12. Kathy was about 16 and Pam was about 18. So basically all in their teenage years and he has told that story on maybe a dozen tapes but here's the context. He and June were traveling. He was preaching in a meeting somewhere. He got news of that right before he

was getting ready to stand up and speak that your daughters have been in a terrible automobile wreck. And he found out about it. He took his wife, June's hand. They went out into the alley beside the meeting. They just claimed their healing and walked back in and did his teaching. So what he wanted to show everyone was you know we're not going to rush home or anything because God's faithful.

We don't need to go home. They have faith and we have faith and we've prayed for them and so they're healed and so I'm going to practice what I preach rather than being worried or cancel the meeting and drive home. I'm just going to stay right here and preach. Any stories that he told he told another one about Kathy. He had the Hong Kong flu one time and then God gave her a vision of a bunch of Vietnamese boys and she was going to pray for them and God was going to save them and it

might be some kind of like a mighty wind, meltari, indonesia kind of thing. I don't know. He would only tell a story about the girls if it involved him or he looked favorable and I'll tell you one last one John and I've told you this one before but to show you what I mean no stories from childhood or mother or father or wife or daughters unless it somehow fed the narcissism that Dr. Freeman had in him was whenever his oldest daughter Pam who had married Steve Hill I think they got married someone can correct me if I'm wrong but maybe in 1970 her first born was a couple of years after

that and she had been in labor for three days this was a long period of labor and so everybody you know she was not going to the hospital gonna have natural childbirth at home and everybody was a little concerned and upset about it.

And you can hear this by the way on a tape entitled praying in faith at the 34 second 34 minute rather and 16 second mark is where he tells this story and he's told it a few other times but he gives more details here. So they're calling him and saying, you know, you know, we need some help believing. So on the third day Hobart says he's driving over to Pam and Steve's house and on the way over there the Lord he said told him just to trust his faithfulness. So when Dr. Freeman got there, he sat in the living room and he basically takes credit

for the childbirth because he said every time someone would walk in the room like, oh, you know, it's getting to the second day now or oh, every time someone would walk in the room, he would say God's word is true and God is true to his word. God's word is true and God's true and so he basically takes credit for three days worth of labor that his daughter had to go through.

But I don't really call these proud poppa stories about your children. They're always telling a story only whenever he can work himself into the narrative. I'm choosing my words carefully here because I don't want to anger those who really are indoctrinated and can't help it.

But I have family members who, as you can imagine, have completely cut us off, won't have anything to do with my children or myself or my wife. But in that one off chance where you might see them once every five to ten years, whenever the children are around, they're basically the props for how wonderful life is in the family, in the family that they never go see. And they'll come up and, you know, just brag and brag on my children and yet won't ever, ever come to see them. And it's kind of the same way. They've been manipulated in the same way

that you're describing with Hobart Freeman. The stage act has separated everything personal from the stage act. And so the stage act is everything and the appearances are everything. Hobart Freeman, I'm certain if he were in the same situation with, you know, my family members and my children, he would probably do the same thing because that's how these guys think and act. And it is narcissism like you said, but what's really sad is that narcissism trickles down to the members without them even understanding what's happening. Because again, in the book, Combat and Cult Mind Control, you begin to understand that the people who are manipulated take on the identity of the cult leader.

And it's a, it's not their personality. It is a cult identity that they've taken on a cult personality. And that's what you see when you see the people, especially if you get them to thinking and talking about the cult. The cult personality rises, the authentic person inside goes down. And it's just, it's really sad. The whole thing is really sad. I, I, you know, I could go off and talk probably 10 podcasts about just that, but we'll cut it off. We're, we're a little bit over right now and I will not drag everybody down. It's a, it's an uplifting

thing to have escaped. And I think people, if they can take something that we've said and just think about their past and think about how wrong this close knit, unhealthy level of closeness people were. And then think about the new people that they're around. The new, if you go to church, think of the new church, how healthy, how much healthier it is, not to have that in your face closeness and not to have that negativity. When people start focusing on the positive instead of the negative, their life changes for better. So hopefully we have said something that

will change somebody's life for the better. So thank you for doing this. You're welcome, John. I'm sorry to have to talk about some of this. And as you have said before, sometimes I feel sorry as I think of Dr. Freeman's life. I just have to, when I look at what he did not talk about regarding his parents, I mean, it's, it's the silence is somewhat deafening that he probably did not have the best childhood. And not, and not all of us do. And I understand that. Like I said with, you know, my tattoo, I waited until my, my mother, who was the last one of my parents to pass away

until she passed away. And that was, I had no need of it while one of them was still here. But when both of my parents died, that's when I went and got that just to always remind myself to be thankful for them. But even if you haven't had a good childhood, we have to find, we all have had something traumatic in our background, all of us have. And we just have to find a healthy way, a biblical way, a prayerful way, a counseling way to deal with that so that we are not still suffering the effects

from it to whatever degree we can, we need to try to escape it. Absolutely. 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-Branum.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.