Sanctified Suffering: When Denial Became Doctrine

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org, and with me I have my co-host, minister, and friend, Chino Ross, pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Chino D. Ross YouTube channel. Chino, it's good to be back and to talk about all things for old people. I'm not experienced it yet, although I'm getting to an age where I probably will soon, but we're going to be talking about false teeth and false

William Branham leading the healing revival as he was harping on false things, and he got on this one weird rant where women were dying their hair. And I guess he saw this as a problem because it didn't come from God. This died that they're putting in their hair. So he started blasting them and he's blasting left and right, anything that's man-made that you do to continue looking younger or to enhance your appearance or to enhance your health. He started harping on these things, but at the end of his life he started doing them. And the funny part

about some of it, when I was researching John Alexander Dowey, Dowey did the same thing. I guess this was the pattern of these gimmick faith healers, right? They walk into a crowd and say you don't need those false teeth. I can make you, you know, whatever it is, what's their platform? Well, this one lady, they're interviewing Dowey and they can't get him to really commit on anything.

And they want to see an actual healing and they can't. They go and they visit and none of the newspapers actually see a real healing. So they, after they're attending the meetings and nobody's no miracles, even though he's advertising every service. There's a miracle.

Afterwards they give up and they start talking to the people who are outside the building and they talk to this one old lady and she says, you notice that man's baldness can be. If he had the power of healing, you'd think he could make his hair start growing again. And I got to thinking about that. I went back and I started searching through Brannum sermons and there's a point at which you can tell he starts to lose his hair. And then he makes this big story out of it. He says, I was in the barber shop one time and you know that stuff that they set the scissors in to clean it?

They accidentally spilled some on the top of my head. And from then on I couldn't grow hair. and poisoned my head. And it sent me down this path of research. I started looking at all kinds of weird things, like what is the stuff they put in the jar?

Does it really do this to your head? And actually the stuff, there were different kinds of it, but the one that I found that was most likely used, I think it actually helped to grow hair.

So there's all kinds of weird mess in this. And it's all about a story. They like to take the stories that have absolutely no place in a church and ignore the stories that are from the Bible, the ones that actually do have a place in a church, and they get the people to shift focus.

So it's like the slide of hand thing there. Here's the Bible over here. Let's ignore that because I've got this other thing that's better than the Bible. Yeah, there's such a disconnect, John, and I don't even know the origin of it between reality and what these people are hoping for.

I think underlying a lot of Dr. Freeman's teaching was he was so anti-denominational that anything that was projected toward or to the next life, which is what most of the Bible is saying, where Paul is groaning to leave this world so that he can join Jesus in heaven.

That's what so much of it is about that because Hobart was so anti-denominational, he didn't want to talk about heaven. He wanted to talk about God's promises are for the hair and for the nail.

And so if they're for the hair and for the nail, then you start looking at all your shortcomings in life. And so you go down the path of healing, you go down the path of glasses.

Well, why should my eyes be the way they are? God should be able to heal that. And yeah, you go down the whole entire path of old age. And Hobart had messages on that from Psalm 103 where the psalmist said, he renews my youth like the eagles.

I've got to take where Hobart, who also had thinning hair, I don't have much hair left to thin. And he didn't like that fact because for some reason it was he was not fulfilling scripture that said his youth could be renewed like the eagles.

Well, this is, you know, wisdom poetic literature in the Old Testament. And why is it that they're always wanting to find some physical fulfillment of that? Why not in some other way? God is renewing you and bringing you back to where you were at a great early part in your Christian life.

I don't know. It was always something physical. And so there was just a disconnect between reality. I mean, we can look at... their body and say, my youth is not being renewed. I don't look like what I look like when I was 20.

And no amount of confessing will do it. But there's such a cognitive dissonance in these people's mind that Hobart on that tape was just saying, now I have people tell me, you know, I hadn't seen you brother Freeman in a few years, but wow, you look younger than the last time I saw you.

If he ever got one of those comments, he milked that thing, man. He milked it for a good 10 minutes saying, you know, I'm confessing Psalm 103. But Hobart aged, I'm aging. I'm older than Hobart.

Now than when Hobart died, we're all aging. And Hobart also was against, as you just said, John, doing the normal natural things that any human being would try to do within reason of trying to keep yourself looking halfway decent, you know, to the point of, I mean, where are you going to draw the line?

Just stop shaving, stop showering, stop doing anything because I'm just going to be natural. We all want to look the best that we possibly can with whatever that involves. Some people go too far, right?

And some people don't go anywhere at all. And we're going to talk about that here in a minute. I got to thinking about this one day, most of the things that are most impactful to the people are impactful to the older people.

The younger people, they don't have all the aches and pains and body ailments, gray hair, things like this. They don't have it. So they're just sitting here listening and they're listening to all of the adults being harped on for natural normal adult things until they grow up.

And then it affects them in the same way. So it becomes like this weird message for old people. And I got to thinking about the timeline. So you get older, you get closer to death.

Well, in Christianity, you're thinking about going to heaven. You're thinking about leaving this earth. And you have all these doctrines about trying to keep the body perfect as you get older. When we're going to leave the body behind, it's going to go into the grave, man.

It doesn't matter in the slightest. And where it really got funny, I don't know if you saw it in the comment feeds. I've been researching John Wimber because Wimber is like the transition point from the charismatic to the NAR.

Without Wimber, you don't have an NAR. It's plain and simple. But there are many people who are in the John Wimber cult of personality to be separated from destructive cult. I don't yet see any signs of destructiveness.

But they're people that are in the cult of personality. That any time I mention Wimber, they start attacking. And I started my research on Wimber. And I use these tools, I think grammar leaves one of them.

I've got a few different tools that help me with my spelling in grammar because I hate to say it, but many times when I'm typing articles, I'm also in a business meeting. So I'm typing as I'm listening and talking, which not many people can do, but it's something I can do.

So I make some grammar mistakes and spelling mistakes at times. These things catch it. Well, one of them started using AI tools and I typed something about his kingdom theology with that exact thought.

They're more concerned about the kingdom here than they are the kingdom of heaven. And the AI could not distinguish between the kingdom now theology and the kingdom theology because in its essence, it's really the same thing.

And I got emails, I got phone calls, one guy hounded me like constantly over this split in word because the word now was there at the end of it. And after all of this was said and done, I started looking at it and comparing, it's really not that much different.

I understand the differences in the doctrine, but at its core, it's just like Hobart Freeman. They're more focused on the now than they are when you get to heaven, when you go to the other side.

Yeah, I don't know if there were any sermons done by William Brannum on this topic, but it brings something to mind and actually had a phone call. I think it was last week or the week before by an ex-faith assembly person, actually one of the people, John, that you have interviewed as a survivor of faith assembly.

And we were just talking, but these people have different things in their mind that are triggered as they're watching these podcasts and they're going back 40 years in their life with all that they've experienced in their Christian life since that time.

And things are being triggered and they remember something and he had a wonderful point. He said, do you remember Chenot Hobart ever teaching messages, tapes, recorded sermons on hope, HOPE, that happens to me in my wife's middle name, hope.

And I said, that's a really good point and to your point, no, I don't remember any messages on hope. Now if you were to ask, and I remember very few on love, the big triumvirate in the end of 1 Corinthians 13, faith, hope and love, but I do remember countless messages on faith.

That is where he wanted to hone in and camp out on. And he said, the brother talking to me said, well when I read my New Testament, hope is a really big word. It's appearing throughout the page.

of Paul's epistles, but at faith assembly, hope was a bad word. It was always antithetical to faith. You know, Hobart would talk about, now you don't, the denominational people are out there and they're going to hope and pray, but we're going to believe and pray.

And there's a big difference in believing and praying and hoping and praying. You know, he would say faith is a subject of faith is a substance of things hoped for. Faith is the most important thing. You can hope all you want, but if you don't have faith and you don't have substance to what you're hoping for and he would go off into this just crazy teaching that based on Hebrews 111, which is just one statement about faith. You can't make any verse in the Bible, stand on all four legs, but he would say faith. The writer says,

is substance is real substance. It's as real of a substance as the substance will be the answer whenever God answers your prayer. So if you prayed for a hundred dollars, when you get that hundred dollar bill in the mail, the substance of that hundred dollar bill was created out of that invisible substance called faith. So this is some weird metaphysical false teaching that faith is some type of substance in God's universe and he takes it and then he molds cars and healings and hundred dollar bills and things out of that's a maybe for a whole nother podcast. His whole view on

faith was not even a biblical view, but back to what I was saying about hope. That was a weak word. That was a dirty word at faith assembly. You just couldn't talk about hope. And yet in this conversation with this gentleman, I said, you know, when I think of the second half of Paul's life in the book of Acts, where Paul is basically, you know, he gets, he goes to Jerusalem, he ends up being arrested because of a false report that he was in the temple precincts with some Gentiles, which was not the case, but it was a false report. And the rest of Acts, he is,

the book of Acts, he is defending himself before Felix and Festus and King of Grip and different people. And in almost every one of those, he said, the reason that I'm on trial is for the hope of Israel. And the hope of Israel, if you read all the context, was the future bodily resurrection that the nation of Israel believed in, that the body would be resurrected and it would be restored and you would have a new body. And so that all of these aches and pains and illnesses and, I mean, if we were going to be healed of every one of those, you don't really need a resurrection body.

If you never age, Your vision never damns, your strength never leaves you, your hair never disappears. You don't even need a resurrection body, which by the way is a part of Hobart's theology. In some of his messages, John, like the one I have referenced from Romans 8, the law of the spirit of life, and Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death.

He comes dangerously close on many occasions, and he even warns of people now. I know this is going to be too hard for some of you to handle, but he comes dangerously close to talking about the fact that there is no reason for you to die.

And he's not even talking about the rapture. The only people who won't die, according to scripture, according to 1st Cecilonians 4, are the people who are living at the second advent. He doesn't even address the second advent question.

He's just saying, if you have enough faith, this power that's living inside your body, the Holy Spirit, it will eradicate all sin, all disease, all decay, and ultimately death. And so he would tie that in with sermons on Enoch, who Enoch simply walked with God and was not for God took him, and he would go to Elijah, that Elijah was simply raptured up into heaven and did not die, and he would get dangerously close to teaching his own doctrine of you don't have to die, even if the rapture is still centuries away.

You know, I've researched all kinds of things, mostly history, but also doctrine. I don't make out like I know a lot of it, but I've actually studied doctrine more than most people ever will, and I'm no expert still, I'm still learning, there's a lot to learn.

But in the history, like I said, I can see John Wember as the gateway into the NAR. Without Wember, there is no NAR, even though C. Peter Wagner got credited with naming the thing, which he, you know, rightfully so he did name it.

Well, Wagner was the college professor or something, right? Right. Right. And Wember was going to be like the guest lecture with his signs in one way. Yeah. Right. Well, what's funny to me is, so I see Wember as that gateway, William Brannem is the gateway between the early Pentecostalism and charismatic movement, whether they like to admit it or not, Brannem is that gateway.

And what's funny is I hear all of these things in the charismatic movement, and now the New Apostolic Reformation, that I can take it straight back to Brannemism, no matter who's saying it, I can take it all the way back there, and they have no idea where it came from.

I just, because it is... Seated with nosticism and spiritualism and the occult and all of these other things they take it back to a Step beyond Brannum. They'll take it back to the sources that Brannum used and their influences, but so William Brannum rebranded himself and created a fully new stage persona and that's what sparked a lateral Terrain movement. So 1946-ish, he got to working with the Kardashian family and started rebranding himself in a more entertaining sort of way and he started touring through the United States and Canada and this was his theme.

Faith is the substance and you can go right back 1947 April, the very first sermon that we're allowed to hear. He had more before it, but they Somehow lost those, but the very first one that we're allowed to hear is called faith is the substance and he goes in and This is a theme that he repeats continually. Faith is the substance and he's quoting the Bible, but he's trying to Tell you that it is a it's another sense that the body doesn't have that the body Isn't recognized by the education systems. You have this other sense and faith is the thing

But it's it's a tangible object faith is which doesn't make any sense if you understand what faith is But what he's trying to do is he's trying to Give people the notion that there's this thing that they don't have and I'm your gateway to get it So come to my meetings come to me. I'll give you this and in the early version Before it went really destructive There's there's that Bible passage these things abide faith hope and love But you probably know where it is. I can't Corinthians 13 13 Yeah, so he takes biblical passages, but he twists them in such a way

So hope is hope is one of the things that he is using as part of his theme But what he does and I'm sure Hobart did the same thing because every cult leader does this There is no hope people no hope But if you come to my cult you have hope the world is doomed But if you come to me, you're not doomed when the early versions it's focused on faith as a substance and there's no hope outside of Joining in this thing because the dumb they said the denominational Dedominationalism had become cold and formal so you have to join this or you have no hope

Well, then as it's turning more destructive it turns into a Gloom and doom and you really can't distinguish between what is hope and what is not towards the end of the sermons But at the end he starts giving the notion that we we don't have to die We're towards the end of his ministry. He started He said he had a vision of this, that people would all gather in this big revival tent like they had in the 50s and 60s, and there would be this little room in the corner, and if you made it to that, if you were lucky enough to make it to the tent, you could walk

in the room and he himself, William Brandham would give you your new body and you'd step into heaven. If you didn't make it to the tent, I can remember growing up, my family was telling, they would always tell the inside stories that William Brandham told them, and he would, Brandham would allegedly say things, be very careful, you got to be there, if you don't make it there, you're doomed.

And so you're like, your whole salvation depends on this tent from the 1950s. I think John's somewhere in the future, and I actually have begun to take a few notes. We ought to just do a podcast on the things we are certain that Hobart Freeman dragged over from William Brandham.

I was suspicious back when I first began hearing Hobart Freeman that he got a lot from Brandham, but I couldn't prove that because I didn't know anything about William Brandham, but he mentioned him.

He would always say, now I don't care what anybody says, William Brandham was God's prophet. So anytime you make a statement like that, I don't care what anybody says, that tells me that there was an undercurrent against William Brandham because of some things he had gotten all fun, quote unquote, in the end of his life.

Anytime you preface it with, I don't care what anybody says, you know that he had already experienced some pushback for talking about Brandham or referencing him. He had to have experienced that or he would not have prefaced it with that.

But I also knew that William Brandham had a little bit off the subject now, but we'll get back to the subject as we always do. I knew that he had a UPC, a Jesus only, a oneness background in some regards.

And Hobart's teaching on the Trinity was very unorthodox, very weird, very odd. And so I knew from early in my Christian walk and following Hobart Freeman, I could connect those two dots that if William Brandham had a United Pentecostal Church background that, you know, he had crossed paths with oneness doctrine, Jesus only doctrine.

And Hobart is teaching weird stuff. His definition of the Trinity is a very unbiblical definition that God is one eternal spirit, eternally manifested as father, son, and Holy Spirit that I knew he was heavily influenced by Brandham.

But I do not know to what degree until, as these podcasts have progressed and you share things, you know, in between what I'm sharing and I find out, well, yeah, this business of Hebrews 11, 1 Faith and Substance you know, Hobart was famous for teaching things like that. And he would even tell a story like this.

He would say, yes, this person, a part of this church down in Florida, overheard their pastor say, well, I don't know what faith is. And I don't know anyone who does. And this person says, well, Hobart Freeman knows what it is. You know, he was famous for that because of Hebrews 111. And and Hebrews 111 is in the Bible. It's a Bible verse. So it's okay to use and quote and reference. But as I often tell people wherever I teach, you cannot make any lone verse in the Bible stand on all four legs. Sometimes it stands on three legs. Sometimes

two legs. Sometimes it is a unicycle. And what I mean by that is it is only giving you a piece of the puzzle. And you need other verses to go along with that to get a complete understanding of what the Bible is teaching, for instance, on faith. Anytime these people isolate a verse, and that becomes their favorite verse like Mark 1124, which Hobart got from Kenneth Hagen, or Hebrews 111 is teaching on that. Maybe evidently he got from William Brannum. Then I know it's not going to be a biblical balanced view at all. But back to our subject of hope. You really will

search in vain to find good, solid teaching in Hobart's catalog of messages on the subject of hope because hope was denominational. Hope was dirty. Hope was bad. If they wouldn't say that, they would say this. Hope is weak. You know, you're just hoping that I'm believing. So that makes me better. And that makes my doctrine better. But the verse she referenced in the end of first Corinthians 13. Paul said, now abide it. Faith and hope and love. And it's interesting the order in which Paul gives them. The only thing we can definitely make out of that is that he ends with what

in his mind is the most important of the three because he goes on to say that. Maybe you could build a case that he lists those words in ascending order. Faith being the least important. Hope being the next most important because we know when he ends with love, he says, and the greatest of these three is love. He ends with the greatest of those three words. And so here was something that I can remember as a teenager who was a freemanite, whatever Hobart taught when I was 17, 18, and 19 years old, I believed. And he said faith.

is the greatest of all things. And I'll tell you what, every time I came to that verse, I just had a problem. I just believe what Hobart said, because you know, you just somehow in your uncritical, undeveloped mind think, well, he just knows things that I don't know.

I mean, it appears like Paul says, love is better, but Hobart says faith is the greatest thing. And then he'll go on a tangent, you know, without faith you can't please God and faith is a substance.

And whatsoever's not a faith is sin. And we don't walk my sight, we walk my faith. He has all these faith verses. And he would, you know, just literally pile them on top of you and overwhelm you with them.

And so that would squash your argument in favor of love being the greatest. And you know what I would also hear him say, which would be amazing. And as I got older, I would say, look, this guy's a fool, you know, and I was a fool to follow Hobart instead of Paul.

I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna lay my claim on what the Apostle Paul taught. And he said, now I'll buy the faith, hope, and love and the greatest of these is love. But when Hobart would get to that, he would say, now, yeah, it's not like the Apostle Paul is ranking things here.

He's just talking about things, but he's not ranking things. Well, what does the greatest of these mean if you didn't just rank things right there? You know, and again, when he would say that earlier, and I had friends that I was trying to share the faith message with, quote unquote, and they would pull this verse on me.

And you know, I'm stuck because they're quoting Paul and I'm quoting Hobart and they're gonna win every day because their quoting was actually in the Bible and they say, well, Chenna, what are you gonna do with this passage?

Well, and I would just, you know, give him a Hobart argument, but it wouldn't go very far because they would say, well, I hear what you're saying, but that's not what Paul said. And you know, then you're just stuck.

And so as I have often said, anytime you have a problem with a verse in the Bible, the problem is always with you. It's not with a verse. And all it's easy, all you do is just change your theology and just say, well, you know, I'm gonna give up Hobart's view.

I'm gonna go back to the Apostle Paul's view and say that the greatest of these is love. And let me give you one other, really good example with this word hope. There is a verse in Hebrews.

I think it is Hebrews 10, 23. And I'm just gonna read this. This was a famous verse for Hobart's positive thinking in confession. I could quote it. I just had to see what verse it was because he quoted it all the time.

It was used in his messages all the time. And Hebrews 10, verse 23, the King James verse and reads this, let us hold fast. to the profession of our faith without wavering, for he is faithful that promised.

And so that was a great, positive confession burst. They would go around saying, I'm holding fast to my confession of faith, holding fast to my confession of faith, not wavering. Why? Because God is faithful that promised.

So when I was in my mid-20s, I was doing a long series that I never did finish, and here I'm in my mid-60s on Christian ethics. I think I taught 250 messages or something. Never got to all of the particular doctrines people want to hear in Christian ethics. It was just all foundational of different systems of ethics, different worldviews, and especially a lot of study about all of the Christian virtues. People think of the fruit of the spirit in Galatians 4, and they say, well, they're nine fruit of the spirit. That's just a representative list. There

are so many other things that are not there. So we would take each one of those words. Faith was one of them, love was one of them, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, endurance, patience, just all of the words that are descriptive of a Christian's life and do a thorough study of each of them. And of course, one of those words was hope. So Hobart had never told me this, but as I studied the word hope, you know, I would use my Nestlelelin or my United Bible Society's third edition, my Greek New Testament. I had studied Greek and undergraduate

in my undergraduate days. So I'd take my Greek New Testament and I'd find the word hope, and I came to Hebrews 1023, and I go, what? I thought it read, let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for he is faithful to promise that is not the Greek word, the Greek word for faith is not there. Guess what the word is? It is the word hope.

Anybody can go check their own Greek New Testament. So it's just a mis-translation in the King James. And so I taught that. I said, this is not talking about holding on to a profession of faith.

It's talking about holding on to your confession of hope without wavering, your confession of hope because God is faithful who promised. And so what that told me, John, was one of two scenarios, and I can't tell you which one is true, but either, either, Hobart knew that the word in the Greek is hope and not faith, but he wasn't about to tell anyone that because that messes up your favorite verse. Either that or he didn't know because he was just using his King James translation, and here he's supposed to be a biblical.

scholar and you should know what the background in Hebrew and Greek of the passages before you teach on it. So either he knew and he hit it from people or he didn't know because he didn't do his homework and either one is not acceptable as a Christian minister. Now maybe for your first year or two when you don't know anything, but as he had a doctor's degree in theology, my guess is he probably had run across the fact that this was not supposed to be translated faith. That's just my guess. I can't prove it, but that really upset probably the major

verse for holding on to a confession of faith when you have claimed something by faith and he just didn't want to give it up. 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 the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. I was almost shell-shocked whenever I left the cult and I started entering into a new church because so many things were flipped upside down. And it became problematic because since the whole... I was considering the Christian religion

having been flipped upside down. Since it was all flipped upside down, I'm sitting and thinking, okay, it can't be that far off. What in the world was I in what in the world am I heading towards? And which is the bigger mass? But I started realizing that what what happened was and I'm certain based on what I know of free minutes the same case. The focus was in the wrong direction. The focus was on gloom and doom and destruction and whenever the words like hope were used or peace or security. It was always used in the context of the

greater scare. So they would scare you with this world is doomed. There's no hope outside. They would say things that were correct. There's no hope outside of Jesus Christ. But then they amplify it and focus more heavily on the gloom and doom than they did the actual hope. So you left there being more scared than you were.

with hope when you left a sermon. And then I started attending these non-cult churches. And some of them, you left with this warm feeling of security. And I'm thinking, this feels awkward, this is not right. I'm supposed to be scared. And this is a tame down, watered down religion that I'm attending. That's the kind of thoughts I go in your head. But one, I've mentioned this before, one of the things that helped me tremendously was I read the Bible cover to cover over and over and over and over. And as I was reading, I would try to ignore everything that I had ever learned

about it. Pretend I'm a brand new, pretend I'm a 10-year-old, and I just got this Bible. What's in it? Let's read it and find out. I read with those eyes, with the eyes of a 10-year-old, towards the end of it now, I'm obviously I'm digging a little bit deeper. I'm going into cultural references. I'm studying, I actually started reading the works of other ancient authors to try to understand the context of what this was. So I did get more advanced with it. But the very first few times, it's just very simply, what is being said here? And what's interesting is,

if you read the New Testament in that way, you're left with this peace and security, and our God is powerful enough to protect you, I don't need to worry about all of these things. And then, when you started attending the New Churches, you start to realize that, well, there's a reason why they don't focus on the fear and doom and gloom is because we're not supposed to worry about it.

And that's the true hope. Now, what they called hope in these religions, it wasn't hope at all. That really good advice, John, for anyone coming out of Freeman's cult, for sure, is just to read your Bible. And I do have that question from people because there's so much to untangle, and they're trying to figure out because they think they can say, maybe it's because it makes all of us feel better if we can justify some of our past, that's just human nature. Well, there were some good things Hobart said, you know, now he did have some good doctrine, and I say, look, my recommendation

is you jettison all of it. Any good that's there is easily found in other sources out there, without all the trappings of Hobart Freemanism or with William Branham. You know, I'm sure William Branham did teach some things that were correct, but it's too difficult because of the context in which those things are said for adherence of theirs to go back and try to extricate mine as it were out of it, the good and leave the bad. That's why I think one of the brothers, and we talked about this a few months ago. He sent me a picture where he had started a bonfire, and he said,

anything Hobart Freeman, I just burned it. I just burned every bit. Books, tapes, I burned it, and I didn't tell him to do that, but I said, that's not a bad, at move, because if you find a message that is mostly on target, it's still that man and his emphasis that are not correct. You're still having to wade through that and disentangle yourself from that. Yeah, just just get rid of it all and just read the Bible. You can't go wrong there. In this latest interview, John, you did a faith assembly survivor. This sister was saying, once she left, she said, I really walked away with nothing. I didn't

even know how to pray, because the only prayers you're taught are all name and enclaim it and binding and rebuking and pleading and casting out. Those are the only types of prayers you know. So a prayer is, well, I'm low on gas. So I'm going to rebuke my low gas gauge and claim my faith that I have gas in my tank and the poor metal gas tank attached to the bottom of your car. He hasn't done anything to you. You don't need to rebuke him. Don't be angry with him. He hasn't even done anything to you. He just hasn't been filled up lately.

And that's all you need to go do is put some gas in it and you won't have to be rebuking him. But that's all they know to do. So, you know, thankfully, what she did, she said, I knew the book of Psalms was in the Bible. I knew it had to be pleasing to God because it made it into the Bible. And so I'm just going to go pray whatever prayers people prayed back then.

How could I go wrong doing that? And that's a great exercise to do. And guess what happens when you go do that? You see a lot of negativity. You don't see all this positive thinking and confession that you get from these numb skulls. You see a whole lot of dear Lord, what in the world have I fallen into? Please help me. The world is caving in around me. My enemies are surrounding me. I've almost sucked down in the mire. That's what you see. The Psalm is praying.

And then they always end with hope and faith at the end of the prayer. They don't ever start that way though. They start pretty bad all. That's absolutely forbidden in Freemanism. You couldn't the most difficult question I ever asked anyone at faith assembly and trying to get an answer from them was the simple question, how are you doing today? I could not get an answer. A real human answer. It's God is faithful. God is true to His Word. I'm living by faith. I miss all these positive confessions that they were taught that was drilled into their brain. I couldn't get an

honest human response to a basic question of how are you doing today? One of the things I did whenever I left the cult at the start of... researching everything like I mentioned, but I started reading some of the early church writings.

And I wish I, back then, I did not know that I'd be doing what I am doing today. So I read them and I just kind of took mental note. I didn't take any notes as to where I got some of the stuff, but I'm reading Martin Luther because we're Protestants.

I wanted to know why are we Protestants? Why are we not Catholics? And I'm reading through his sermons and understanding what is the Protestant Reformation. He had this one sermon and I'll never find it again.

I've actually looked and tried, but they were so oppressed by the Catholic church. It had become destructive in the same way, Hobart Freeman or William, any of these guys, right? They had become destructive and he is showing people, it doesn't have to be like this people.

You can wake up and you can have this peace and hope. And there's this one sermon he's preaching and he says something to the effect and I'm paraphrasing greatly, but he said something to the effect of, now we don't preach about hell in this church.

I know they do in some of the churches that we left or I'm paraphrasing greatly, but he says, I don't have a single person in my congregation that wants to go there. Why would I preach about this place that we don't want to go?

And I get to thinking about, man, it's just so wrong. They preached and harped on the things that had no interest to a Christian. You're not interested in doom and gloom and world war three and all of the things, politics.

Why are we preaching sermons about politics in a church? It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, and remember what we've studied, Sodomite shoes and prostitute purses. I mean, why would you go to church to hear garbage like that?

So let's continue on some of the stuff, John. We talked in the last couple of interviews about eyeglasses. And so I've just got two more things and I think I'll wrap up the different areas of healing that were a part of faith assembly.

So the next one concerns the, our pearly whites, the teeth. You know, teeth were not, they were not addressed as eyeglasses were. And that's only because everyone can tell whether you're wearing glasses or not.

So that was something that was just a huge deal. We talked about all the struggles people had been through there in the past. And so teeth, they might not kill you like diabetes or kidney disease or cancer, but our teeth are still pretty important.

You know, we shed a pear when we're young and then once we get the next pear, that's the only set of teeth you're ever gonna have. And it's pretty important to take care of them.

And even though just having your teeth professionally cleaned or looked at doesn't have anything to do with sickness or disease. You know, wholeheart was all about faith and healing. you know, Isaiah 53, healing is in the atonement. For some reason, anything, as you said earlier in our talk today, connected to the physical body, connected to trying to take care of your body, the only one you're going to have in this life, and the only set of teeth you're going to have as an adult, that was frowned upon. And so what do you have? You have the situations of

decay, of rot of your teeth. If you don't take care of them, I have never had a toothache because I always had, I always took care of my teeth, but I hear it's incredibly painful. I know the nerves from your teeth go way down into your gum. And if you've got something wrong, if you've got decay or rot in your teeth, you probably are going to be dealing with a lot of pain in your jaw. And was Hobart sympathetic to that? Well, absolutely not. I just got knowing that I was going to talk about teeth here at the end. Another one of these faith assembly

survivors who I have met, and I will not give any names here, but this just happened to be a big thing with her. And so I want to read one of the text messages that she sent me. We talked on the phone the first time we talked, she texted before and said, do you mind if I record our whole conversation? Now, if you don't want to, I'm good with that, but you know, I want to play back, and you know, make sure I hear everything and take notes on everything. And I said, that's fine with me, sister, I don't care. So later, we began texting, and she said this,

she said, I mentioned to you that as a young teen, she's a faith assembly member, John, born into it. So she didn't have any choice. I found a dentist who changed my life. He was my one of my first protectors. I first became his babysitter, and then a couple of years later, he offered to see me as a patient. My needs were obviously extensive. She says that because she sent to me her x-rays that she got from this dentist to show me what her teeth look like at the time. She even says, you can share them with John Collins and show everybody else too. I probably

don't need to do that. They are pretty bad. He proceeded to take care of all of my dental needs at no charge, and in doing so, changed my life. He never asked for consent from my parents, and I never spoke of it with my mom and dad. I think they knew it was happening, but stayed silent.

There must have been a mutual understanding ending that if they went after him for my treatment without consent, he could easily turn them in for neglect. Anyway, I'm still close with that dentist and family.

He recently was able to find my original record's X-ray. It's sad to see that there's so much healing and the acknowledgement of how bad it really was as I have spent so much energy convincing myself that everything was normal.

So here she is. I think she's in her early 40s and I just warmed my heart to hear this. God just brought across her path. Somebody she was babysitting for who happened to be a dentist.

Without mom and dad knowing, she went and got the care that she needed. So this subject of teeth, where do you draw the line? Would it be sinful to brush your teeth? Would it be sinful to do that?

Is there any bigger example of, you know, Hobart was always against, do not lean to the arm of the flesh during my 17-5? Is there any bigger arm of the flesh than this? Of course, he didn't outlaw brushing your teeth.

Why not? Can you floss your teeth? You know, would that be scriptural? Would that be acceptable? Probably okay, but you know, that's kind of borderline, whether you could floss your teeth. Can you use mouthwash to kill the germs in your mouth?

That's probably taboo, but that might be borderline. You know, can you believe we would have to have this conversation over in a church when there are so many things in the Bible that need to be talked about?

And of course, when it comes to just crooked or broken or missing teeth, well, that's absolutely taboo because in order to deal with that, you have to go to a dentist. And so I just wondered, John, so thankful this girl.

I don't know her. I've never met her or seen her. She probably got pretty straight white teeth. Two of my children, most of my children have really good teeth because I had good teeth and their mom had fairly good teeth.

Two of my daughters, they look like shark. You know, people would call them sharky because their teeth were going in every direction. And when they were very young, we had to get them some orthodontal care.

And consequently, they have beautiful straight white teeth now. And I'm so glad that we did that. You don't take care of your children and their your responsibility. Then you grow up. And you know, by the time you're our age, if you look like sharky, you just look like sharky.

There's not much you can do about it. But I just wonder the pain and the embarrassment that faith assembly survivors have gone through because of this question of dental care. You know, we had this one deacon at the Brannum Tabernet.

knackled it. I am almost positive. I can't say for certain, but I am almost positive that he tried to use faith instead of a toothbrush because when he talked, a good, lowered man, it would kill a flower. It was so bad. I, when I was 10 years old, my mother dropped me off at a dentist office and went shopping, which, you know, I'm still scratching my head why she did this, but the dentist came into the room and he put these really hard old timey clothespins on my earlobes and said, son, the pain in your ears is going to take

your mind off the pain in your mouth and pulled out a pair of pliers. I kid you not and pulled all four structure teeth and he was wrong. The pain in my mouth was much greater than the pain in my ears. But he pulled the all four structure teeth. So all my teeth just kind of messed up. I have had trouble like you wouldn't believe. I've had to have the roof cut out of my mouth over this. So I sympathized greatly with the people who were in this type of religion that couldn't get their teeth fixed. I became hard-headed because of that

experience, even though in Brannemism, you had two camps of people. You had people that actually wouldn't go to the dentist because anything you're doing doctor wise, but you also had the people that went. My family went because of this scary experience, I didn't and I had all kinds of problems. I was working under the hood of my car. It was 110 degrees outside. My car engine was hot and I drank a big ol' glass of ice water and one of my molars snapped. I heard it pop and broke completely in half because I hate dentists that

bad. I put up with that crack tooth for five years and you're right. It affects every aspect of your life when you have pain in your mouth. But for five years, I put up with it and I can't imagine putting up with it for most of my life in a cult over this. But the point I'm trying to make with all of this is we were so trained to have faith beyond what is normal, even beyond what is scriptural, that we would put ourselves through ridiculous things, thinking that we could overcome it with faith. In the back of my head, even though

I was in a family that allowed dentists, in the back of my head, I was thinking, well, if I had enough faith, I can prolong this. Maybe not conquer it completely. I've got a tooth that's cracked in half, but maybe I can prolong it. Had I just went and got a crown like a normal person, I wouldn't have put up with that pain for five years. But what happens is you ignore your actual symptoms when you're saying that you have faith. So for five years, I ignore these symptoms, thinking that faith is helping in some way and I can

assure you folks, it didn't help in the slightest. I tried to sympathize with these people simply because I haven't had the problems, but I've heard from people who have, and you know, I'm hearing your story here, you know, that's for five years, I think some of these people, you know, probably suffered a lot longer in their life than that, you know, and so, and I think that probably the majority of the people would have not gone for any dental care. Again, Hobart did not teach regularly against dentists or anything, but because anything connected to professional health, whether it's psychiatric or physical or dental, you

know, it didn't matter. He just was so strident against any kind of professional help. He thought he was everyone's help, you know, he gave you marriage counseling, which was a tremendously wrong of child rearing counsel, clothing counsel, dating counsel, you know, he was a jack-of-all-trades.

He could talk about anything, but I would, my assumption would be I've never pulled the people, we'll probably get some feedback from this, but my assumption would be because I see what people did with glasses, you know, they got rid of them. The clip I think you played last time where Hobart said in that message from Hebrews, Hebrews 11 of all places talking about faith and not needing and not wearing glasses, and he said, it may cost you your job, you know, he didn't care, the inconvenience in people's lives. You know, one thing I hope people can see through all of this

with Dr. Freeman is just a complete lack of empathy and sympathy for his congregation, which should be one of the highest marks against a minister, because that's your highest calling is to go seek and save that one-law sheep, anyone that's having a problem or a struggle, that's your highest calling as the local pastor of that group. And that was the thing that Hobart disliked the most. He had a couple of other ministers who were older, not the young guys, but older like himself, the associate ministers, Jack Farrell and Stan Hill, and he wanted them to

handle all the, you know, you deal with all of the riffraff in the church and the problems and the counseling, and let me go study 14 to 16 hours a day and where I can come and deliver God's word to you guys, and you get this mess. When you've had, when you have afforded yourself that much time, there could have been rich things being taught at a church like that, where a minister was afforded that much liberty and luxury to prepare, and I get something that is regurgitated from Newsweek or Time magazine, are you kidding me? You're going to come and teach

unsought of my shoes. I read that article myself and you're going to come and waste my time on a Sunday evening or a Wednesday night with stuff like that. Or you're going to come and talk about glasses. Yeah, you just may have to lose your job over that and just trust God for your healing.

People drive around or people don't drive because they can't see. People can barely chew their food because their mouth hurts so much. I'll never forget the last time I saw June Freeman. This was long after Hobart died. Ava June was Hobart's wife. I don't remember what year this was, but June, we were still friends at the time. We were friendly with each other. Even was at June's house and I hadn't seen her in a while and I probably hadn't paid a lot of attention earlier when I did see her. But when I first saw her on this last occasion and she smiled,

I mean, I just about had to do that. Her teeth were green. They weren't yellow. They were green. And I felt I didn't hate her at all. I loved her, but I felt so sorry for her that under the manipulation and domination of your crazy husband, you have been denied medical care and dental care.

You're an entire adult life and shame on a husband that would do something like that and find justification for that in the Bible. You know, the Bible does, as I've said often in these podcasts, John, include lots of accounts of healing. But that's just what it records. Those people were actually healed. And the people who are taking their glasses off and refusing to go to the dentist, none of those people were being healed. And I just feel so sorry for them and I'm glad to learn that some of them are in the light today and they're able to get the care that they need.

Well, I don't know what to say about the green teeth, man. I actually had this great statement that I was planning to end this with a doozy, but I got to think in about the green teeth and how nasty that is and just I'm sorry. It's hard to believe what it's hard to believe what people have went through. And for no reason at all, you know, there's absolutely no reason why a minister should do this to you. And it all goes back to what I keep saying. They've taken Christianity, flipped it on its upside down on its head. And you're sitting here trying to take little bits and

pieces and try to see how can this nonsense apply to the Bible? Let's strain at a net and find ways that it can. And that's our religion. That's what these guys are doing. So I'm glad that I'm not in that. I'm glad that I now actually go to a dentist when need to. I'm glad that this lady is getting the dental care that she needs and I hope everybody else who was trapped in this mess can move beyond it because it is difficult to move beyond and people psychologically they're just kind of a lot of people are in limbo

they're trapped in it. So hopefully we've said something that helped people and thank you for doing this. Thank you as always. If you've enjoyed a show and you want more information you can check us out on the web you can find us at 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.