Walking by Faith... But Not Without Orthopedic Shoes

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 that are divine healing claims but aren't actually divine healing.

I was thinking, last time we were talking about Tobart Freeman's shortened leg and my mind was wandering a million different directions. I think I cried squirrel a few times in that episode, but I was going through different various examples in my head and trying to piece it all together, but there's so many people that claim divine healing and aren't healed through the name of positive confession, which it's the adult Christian version of just simply children telling fibs or lying. You're basically saying you're healed and you're not, which is a lie. However you look at it, it's a lie. There's no way to split that any other way, but what's interesting is the

people in leadership who actually have severe problems, it actually goes a step beyond lying into deception. And I'll give a few examples of this. One of William Brannum's brothers toured with him during the Revivals and you can even find famous pictures of the famous guys of the Latter-Ain movement. You see William Brannum and his brother, you'll see Gordon Lindsay or in backs, all of these guys are together. Well, not many people know that his brother back home at a bar and was selling whiskey and you know, William Brannum was against the liquor and alcohol.

And anyway, he's traveling in these Revivals, claiming to have been healed of heart disease, of which he later died. William Brannum's son, also in his later years, they said he had cancer and he was healed of it. And his death certificate shows that he had cancer and that was the cause of his death, but he also had diabetes and several other things too. So all of these things that the people are healed of and they're not actually healed. But in a divine healing ministry, if you're in leadership, you can't show that you're not healed or people will just suddenly

wake up and leave you. Why would I stay in a divine healing cult? if even the leader can't be healed. And that brings us to Hobart Freeman and his sick and invalid leg. You're so right, Jonathan. It's a part of the message, this positive confession.

We have talked earlier in this podcast how it's very difficult to get a normal human being response out of any of them. If you ask them the simple question, brother, how are you doing today?

It's always couched in cult language, cult speak. It's a coded language. And they'll say things like, well, God is true and God is true to his word. And you just ask him, how are you feeling today? But you know, they probably don't feel that well. But they know they can't say that because you're snared by the words of your mouth, death and life are in the power of the tongue. They love it. She'll eat the fruit there. They know all these verses, Proverbs 6, Proverbs 18, that they've heard Hobart quoting. So no, they can't say that. And then when it comes to a physical

condition, yes, I think a normal person would probably say when they aren't healed, but they say they are that that's probably lying. It's just playing adult peekaboo with the circumstances there because when you look at them, it doesn't appear as though they're healed. And what we've said before in the New Testament examples is that those people who were prayed for, this is the beauty of it all while I try to like, I try to take people back to scripture, is that those people were actually healed. There were blind people that were healed and there were lame people

that were healed. And there were people that had deformities like a withered arm or withered hand. And Jesus said, stretch forth your hand. And the man could have said, well, if I could stretch it forth, I wouldn't need healing. He just said, stretch it forth and he stretched it forth. And in that whole process, he was healed. But for some reason, that was not Hobart Freeman doctrine because that was not Kenneth Hagen doctrine. And Freeman had learned his Mark 11 22 to 24 doctrine from Kenneth Hagen that you're supposed to believe that you receive. And then you don't know when the healing

might actually occur. And that sounds all good and fine when you read just Mark 11 22 to 24. But it doesn't read or sound very well when you look at the rest of the pictures of the New Testament of the four Gospels and of Acts, where, as we've said, when people were prayed for, they were healed. But if you will allow me, John, before I get into what I think will be a very fascinating subject, and that it does concern Hobart Freeman's polio shortened right leg. So that's just the advertisement for where we're headed.

with this. It's a fascinating topic. It's something I have, you know, I questioned people about 40 years ago. It was all kind of swept under the rug and I hope in this podcast we do today, we can shed a lot of light on the history of this. What was actually said and done and what was not done and we have a handful of excerpts that people will actually hear themselves. What Hobart had to say and I don't even know that you know where I'm going with all of this but by the time we get to the end it is it is pretty fascinating. But before doing that, here is another

testimony from a sister who for many years starting as a teenager was a part of one of the major satellite groups of faith assembly suffered all kinds of abuse and has been out for a long time.

And not all of these people are going to be willing to be interviewed. I think John, you have done three or four or five interviews of ex-faith assembly people and I always try to encourage these people, you know, if you are up for being interviewed, John will go easy on you. He won't, he won't hurt you too bad on these interviews. But it gives people out there in YouTube land just a chance to hear from men and from women, you know, both sides of the fence. You've had a good mixture of both of what it was like to be a part of either faith assembly or one of the satellite

groups. They simply can tell stories that I can't tell. But if they're not willing to be interviewed, I totally understand that. And so I interview myself or I get a message from them and I can relay that. And the reason that I would say that the majority of them don't want to be interviewed, the ones that, you know, decline the invitation. A few just don't want to revisit their past. But more than that, because it was such an extended family oriented kind of movement where you had so many other relatives on your side of the family and on your husbands or your wife's side of the

family, that here we are all these years later. And you have cousins and aunts and uncles and nieces and nephews and your children have relatives now. It just becomes a mess. And so, you know, I don't have anybody in the movement. I was never a part of faith assembly. I was always on the outside. And but I think you probably know me well enough. It wouldn't matter if I was smack dab in the middle of it. I'd be doing these podcasts because I feel this burden to share with people what what was going on there. It was a dangerous

call, and we're seeing that in the responses of these people. All that to read this. I found your podcast on YouTube a few weeks ago and have poured through most of them. And I think it's over 40 now, John. Thank you for putting words to so much of what I have been walking through. You have affirmed so much of what I already knew. Haven't we heard this time in again? But couldn't say out loud for fear that I would be judged for it. Touch not mind anointed and do my profits no harm. It's amazing how that terminology has manipulated and

dominated people's lives for decades. There was so much distorting and tangling of scripture to manipulate the congregation, especially women. She said, I was just a young woman when I heard the message for the first time and I fell for the teachings because they promised me a deeper walk with God. And that sounded so appealing. Once I married into the group, I was all in. And I have honestly learned things from these podcasts that I never knew. We didn't have the same access to information in the early 90s that we do today. And she goes on to say, I was naive and was told

that quote, God delivered brother Freeman from all the charges. I was not told that he ended up dying. Everything was played down and the media portrayed as the villains in it all. And isn't that exactly what we've seen? Hobart over and over would talk about the media is persecuting us. And he wouldn't say, well, the reason they are writing stories and doing articles about us is because of all the people that have died under my teaching. You know, that was all swept under the rug. It's just we're God's people. We are trying so hard to faithfully proclaim God's word. And yet we're being

persecuted by the media. But the media doesn't go where there's not a story. You know, if all you're doing is just studying God's word, you know, the media is never going to knock on the door.

Some of this information makes me simply nauseous. I'm truly disgusted by what I've heard.

She said, despite all the projected curses and speculation about God's judgment upon me for leaving the group, it's been quite the opposite. God has loved me and my children and protected and provided greatly for us. It is pure joy to look at my adult children and know that God brought us through all of that craziness and that we can now live a normal, healthy life.

It took me years just to accept the simple truth. ooth that Jesus loves me. I am so thankful for the freedom to serve him, not a pure love and adoration, and not out of fear and condemnation.

I will never be worthy of the mercy shown to me on the cross, but I am eternally grateful. It's been almost 20 years since I left the group, and I battled to hold onto my faith for many years.

I was incredibly damaged and broken. I was isolated from my family and friends. I was living hundreds of miles away from any support system that I had had, and I'm so grateful for patient-loving pastors and churches around me who have encouraged me and walked alongside me and my boys in these terrible and confusing years after leaving the call.

I just recently found the courage to seek biblical counseling to try to make sense of those years in the faith walk, and my counselor was absolutely blown away at the level of emotional and spiritual abuse and physical and emotional neglect my children and I suffered.

This is a professional counselor who is digging into her background and finding the origin of it all. I have said on these podcasts many times, I am not a professional trained, certified counselor of any sort, and I can see this stuff, but my word doesn't mean much since I don't have that training and background, but these counselors do.

And they are saying, I just can't imagine what you've been through. She said everything is so wrong. It's been very emotional and difficult to hear these podcasts and to understand that all I suspected was not right was a total misrepresentation of the scripture.

I did the right thing for my children, myself and my Lord someday. And listen to this sentence, here we are, she says 20 years removed and in the process of even more counseling, but she still puts full recovery into the future.

One day, I hope to really believe that without fear of the hammer of God's judgment or a crazy curse coming upon me, I mean, I, we said in the last podcast, John, when people are saying, and they pop up, they crawl out from under a rock every now and then and put a comment against me or a whole lot against you.

You better stop talking against God's prophet or you're going to be in trouble. And I say, God's prophet, I.e. William Brannum, that guy's been dead for decades, man, in a car collision and Hobart Freeman died in pain and agony in his bed at home.

And here you and I are still alive, while these years later talking about him. People need to wipe out of their mind any fear being judged by God. simply because we're trying to expose some false prophets and false teachers.

As much as I know these ideas are not scriptural, there's just enough of that nonsense in my head to plant doubt and fear. But I'm ready for that battle to end. Thank you once again for speaking the truth.

It really has been freeing for me. I appreciate your boldness. So there we go. I mean, that's why we do it when you... And I hear from someone like that every single week of my life now.

And I'm sure you do too. Someone knew that you haven't heard from before. And they get ahold of the podcast. And I ask her, I said, because I ask everyone this, how in the world living where you live, being removed as long as you have been removed from the group.

And just out there with God's help, thankfully, or they wouldn't have made it, just slowly, incrementally crawling back to salvation by grace through faith, and slowly crawling back to when I open the Bible, what does it actually say?

Forget all these men and their interpretations, including my interpretations and yours. What does it actually say? It's been a slow process for them. And what jump starts it is when they have validation from these podcasts, other podcasts, people's testimony, and so I ask her, how in the world did you find these podcasts?

She said, well, every now and then, and especially going through that counseling, when I find out from my professional counselor that what I have been enduring is really traceable back to my church experience.

I mean, you wish these counselors could trace it back to when you were in a motorcycle gang or a hippie club or something. And instead of all things, they trace it back to your church experience.

I mean, that should not be. She said, I typed in Dr. Hobart Freeman. That's what people do. And all of a sudden, here come these podcasts. So blessings to you, sister, and to everyone else out there who are all in the process of recovery.

You know, when you and I first started talking about doing this, I had no idea we'd come up with 40 episodes. I looked at the history that I have on Hobart Freeman, and I'm like, yeah, there's a little bit to talk to.

But 40 episodes, and we're only skimming the surface. That's the funny part. There's so much more we could talk about. And I've seen the comments, like you said. In fact, I was reading through some this morning.

It's a weird problem because we will say things in passing that requires a lot of discussion for people to grasp and understand. But some people will stumble on to a particular video, and they'll find one little thing.

that we may have explained long back and they just pounce on it, saying, how can you say this? And you can't explain to them the past 39 episodes of this thing, man. There's just, there's so much there.

And the problem is people are unwilling to look. And so they'll, they would rather attack than try to be objective and look. But I'm gonna let you in on a little secret. So I've had, I've had people who contacted me and we're talking about Hobart Freeman.

I've never been in a Hobart Freeman cult. Or we're talking about I-Hob, never been there, Bethel, never been there. All of these different movements. And they say, how are you doing this? How are you piecing all of these connections together?

And how are you making it where one guy told me, he said, I had no idea that all these things came through Brannemism. And Brannem was like this spiderweb of evil. And he started going off into, I don't know, just different examples that he grew up with that were just further proving the point that this was a mess that was all connected.

And he said, how are you doing this? And everybody looks at what I do with all of these mappings out from all of the different theologies. And they think it's some deep theological study that I'm doing to connect them.

So I'm gonna let you in on the secret. It's not that. I actually go back to my grade school years. I remember there was a bully in grade school. I remember how he thought.

I remember how he acted. He never came at me. I was kind of larger whenever I was a kid, but I was a built. And so I didn't have them coming at me. But I watched them attack other people and they always would pray upon the ones that were weaker.

That's how bully thinks. That's how they act. They find somebody that they can intimidate. And so when I piece all of this together, it's not really that I'm looking at theology. I'm looking to see, okay, who acts like that bully in the grade school whenever I was there?

And how do they think? And how does it relate to, if they're bringing a doctrine, how does their version of Christianity relate to bullyism? So it's not really brannemism that I'm studying here. It's bullyism.

And I approached it from such a different angle because really the only thing I knew was Hobart because I was a young impressionable teenager, had all of his tapes. And I approached it from, you know, a biblical and theological point of view as I began to age and mature and learn through my own studies.

And I just realized we've got all kinds of problems. And of course, I knew there was a brannem connection. I did not know how much. I did not know that there was as much of a connection as I now know.

And maybe we can even do a podcast in the future and I can give you all the things, all the places on Hobart's messages where I know he references brannem because he'll talk about California falling into the sea.

and you know, all of these kinds of things that we now know, you know, Hobart didn't come up with that on his own. He came up with this stuff through William Brown. But, uh, so what I'd like to do to start with, um, next, John is to just, let's go back to the, uh, chronology that we left off many podcasts to go with Hobart Freeman's life. Um, I'd worked my way, you know, from early in his life up into the early 1980s. And then at that point, we just diverged and did a whole lot of

studies of the various legalisms of Dr. Freeman and where all that affected the people and where all that came from. And after that, I think we talked about a lot of different kinds of healing issues, his views on things that are even way beyond sickness or illness, you know, things like glasses and dental care and stuff like that. So if we're going to return to the actual chronology of Hobart Freeman's last few years, let's, um, and we already did all of the legal stuff that was happening in the last couple of years of his life. But let's just back up to about

1980. Hobart would have just turned 60 in the summer of 1980. He was born in the summer of 1920. And I think I could say from hearing all of his messages and seeing him and knowing him in the 1970s, uh, he would have been in his 50s during that decade. And, you know, there were some health issues, but he was, I would have to say relatively healthy. Um, there weren't a lot of big health issues or health concerns then. But I do know that by 1976, this was the last year that he traveled around the country once a month, leaving faith assembly, the glory barn at

that time in Northwestern, Indiana and traveling and doing his faith and healing seminars all around the country. And, and that kind of activity, at least had him having to get out of the house, get in a car, drive somewhere and stand up and speak for a while. He stopped doing that in 1976 and just focused all of his attention there at the glory barn and then later the new building and willment.

So he really, at that point, began to live even more of a sedentary type of life. As far as I'm aware of, there was no exercise involved in Hobart's life. Of course, I didn't live next door to him. So I don't know if he, you know, wrote an exercise bike that I could have peaked through the window and seen as far as I'm aware, he did not exercise because I know he would occasionally refer to that verse in 1 Timothy, where Paul tells Timothy bodily exercise, prophet it's little, and Paul does say that, but it does prophet something, it just prophets little.

And he says, but you know, spiritual exercise and eternal life is the most important thing. Hobart would reference that verse and reference it negatively, you know, you know, that exercise, you don't need to be exercising.

You need to be in the word and prayer. And so what would happen with these men under Hobart, they had learned from him, they would come home from an eight or 10 hour day at work and wolf down supper, because I've heard this from these poor women that were married to them, and then go straight to their bedroom or their basement, so they could get in plenty of time of being in the word and prayer.

And a lot of times in the word meant playing Hobart for your tapes, you know, that would be in the word. And I mean, it was just incredible how they lived. They would probably not have done that on their own to be honest to them, fair to them.

They learned that from Hobart. They think this guy is spending 14 to 16 hours a day in his study, and I've got to go to work for eight to 10 hours a day, so I doesn't leave me much time, but as soon as I get home, I'll get in there to my Bible, and you know, neglect my wife, neglect my children.

That's what created these terrible dynamics and all of these faith assembly homes. It's not true of all the men. There were some godly men who loved their wives and loved their children and spent time with them, and I'm so thankful they existed, but they were in the minority.

There were people that had signed up for Neanderthal 101 that once my wife is pregnant, then I'm free to go and study until it's time to get her pregnant again, and that's kind of the way they lived their lives.

They learned that from Hobart Freeman, Hobart Freeman had outlawed competitive sports. You can find in the 80s multiple references on tapes where Hobart would poke fun at the type of clothing that people who like to go skiing had to wear.

He would say, you know, you look ridiculous. You look like a bunny rabbit all wrapped up sliding down those slopes, knowing that his daughter Kathy and his son-in-law Bruce loved to go out west and ski.

He knew that I'm actually talking against my own daughter and my son-in-law by poking fun at people in ski suits going down the slopes. Hobart was just, he was just an unhappy man and wanted to make sure everybody else was unhappy with him.

That's the way I look at it because he couldn't ski. He thought that was a ridiculous thing. Who would want to go out and freezing cold weather, bundle up and as soon as- and go really fast down the side of a mountain.

You know, how much dumber can a person get? There's nothing dumb about that at all if that's something you enjoy doing. No, what Hobart wanted to do was be left alone by everyone so that he could spend his 14 to 16 hours a day in his study, either preparing messages out of time, newsweek, or readers' digest.

That's where he got all of his statistics or he wanted to just fool around with his radio electronic equipment. That was his only hobby. He loved radios and then as he got better with them, then he would come and part of his sermon would be he'd be bragging about.

He has an extra class amateur radio operator license and only, you know, 0.00% of people in the United States get to have because it's complex electrical theory that is on the exam that you have to pass.

You know, bless his heart. I feel sorry for Hobart. He was the most, he was just a sad person who really needed people's approval and this was the only way he could get it.

You know, if I can stand up here and be an authoritarian figure, then I can get people to think that this is a brilliant man and, you know, that's just what stroked his ego.

But I don't know anything about electrical theory, you know, that's not my field at all. But I always was suspicious whenever he would talk about it because I heard him talk about things regarding textual criticism and manuscripts and codices and the papyrus and unsholes and I knew a lot about all of that.

And when he talked about it, I could tell he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. He's just reading, you know, some statistics. He came across somewhere. And so somebody who, two people who were high up at IBM, one of them had a PhD degree, they knew all about electricity and electrical theory.

And they said, you know, we smile between these two brothers whenever Hobart starts talking about electricity, they said it sounds like he knows something but he actually really doesn't know much of what's going on.

But you know, he knew enough to snow me when it comes to electrical theory and to snow everybody else out there. So not a good situation for your minister to have no outside activities, no outside contacts, nothing outside of his home besides simply going to the church.

And so because there was this lack of physical exercise in Dr. Freeman's life, then I think that his health really began to decline. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new Apostolic Reformation, 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. You know, you're talking about how the how Hobart wasn't happy and so nobody else could be happy. And again, that goes back to the bully. The bully was a very unhappy kid,

and nobody else was allowed to have fun if he was around. And I don't know if you've seen the movie a Christmas story, but in the Christmas story, they had the bully that's chasing the boys, and you find out that he just was a very unhappy kid until somebody put him in his place. And I think that's the problem. There wasn't anybody really to rise up until Hobart, hey, you got to stop doing this, man. This is really affecting people's lives. People are dying because of what you're doing. And like you, I kind of feel sorry for him because there's obviously some issues with him,

probably some mental health issues, but it gets to the point where you have to take a step back and say, look, man, you got to stop what you're doing here. Yeah, you know, and I try, but he's not going to listen to a guy in his mid 20s. You know, my, I laid the blame at the feet of all of the so-called word ministers there if they'd assembly. And I've even said it to them to this day that that was your fault. All of you guys were just yes, man. You were all a little yes, man, little puppets.

You were terrified of him. You obeyed everything he said. And they don't like me saying that about them, but it's true. I as an outsider wrote him letters and said, what are you doing? You know, you have really veered from where you were just a few years ago, but they weren't willing to do that.

I've got a clip that I'd like people to hear be prepared because it is, um, it's a little unnerving because you're going to hear a man who has just gone through a pretty severe heart attack the day before. And, and he is back in the pulpit barely by this time. And let me just say that Hobart had a history of cardio vascular disease.

these. He had multiple heart attacks in his life. A big one happening in January of 1966, which led him eventually to enter into the charismatic movement. And of course, whenever he did, he is claiming his healing, throwing away his nitroglycerin, believing that God has healed him. And I think he did experience some pretty good years, shortly thereafter in his life. But you know, the heart condition was never healed. He was never, that was never cured. Dr. Freeman was never healed from that. He ended up dying from that among other things.

But in the very beginning of a message in his series on First Corinthians, it was entitled The Gifts and Love. It was tape number 826. It was taught in late 1981. I know this because I was there on August the 19th of 1981 when he was on message 814 in the First Corinthians series, which was entitled celibacy or marriage. But in this one on The Gifts and Love, tape number 826, if you could just play as soon as he stands up to the podium for the, it goes to a little after the one minute, I think one minute and 11 seconds. If you could just play that and then I'll make

a comment. God is faithful. Praise the Lord. We had a relapse after Saturday. I confess that he's here. So if you turn to First Corinthians 13, I may get shot a little later, but so I've got right now. If you can't act your faith, there's no point in teaching it. So I think Hobart had had some other part attack setbacks prior to this, but this was a really serious one. He even talks about it.

He had a little relapse, a little recurrence, he said. He can barely catch his breath. I don't know. I think it was either the day before or a couple of days before he was scheduled to preach that the heart attack happened, but he's back in the pulpit now. He does, you know, make it through this message. He surprisingly kind of gets stronger as he goes. But here's a man who is only 61 years old, 1981. He's only 61 years old.

That's a relatively young man by today's standards. People live way up in their 70s and up in their 80s. My wife and I were just visiting her mother down in Western Kentucky this past weekend.

She's in her mid 80s and her circle of friends are a lot of old people. So when you go see her, you see that whole group and this a lot of people up in their 80s and you know, they're still carrying on.

Hobart died as a young man. And here in 1981, he's only 61 years old and he's had a very, very massive heart attack that he was very fortunate not to die from. But they did cause damage because in the autopsy they could see all of the scarring that had happened from these previous heart attacks.

But what I really want to get to today, John, is to talk about how Hobart was negatively affected by polio. He mentioned the effects of polio, which was a shortened right leg, often on his messages over the years.

But in a message entitled Children of Providence, and we've talked about this one before, we're not gonna go back through it again. It was in the Exodus series, taught in the last summer of his life.

It was take 902 called Children of Providence. And people can go pull any of these up on YouTube and listen to them for themselves.

His point in this message was to show how he is a current Moses. How Moses was a child of Providence. He should have been destroyed by the edict of Pharaoh, but miraculously his life was preserved.

We know the story in Exodus 2. His mother saw he was a goodly child, did not want him to die, put him in a little basket and put him out in the water in Pharaoh's daughter, finds Moses and raises him in Moses' lives.

And so Hobart was saying Moses was a child of Providence. I too am a child of Providence. And he goes through this list of things that could have killed him starting at birth. He said he had double pneumonia when he was a couple months old.

And then when he was two years old, he contracted polio. So this would be 1922. Polio, there was no vaccine for that. Polio was a dreaded disease at that time. And many people, many children who got polio died from it.

Those who didn't, not always, but often suffered lifelong effects from it. That was the case with Dr. Freeman and he had a shortened right leg. And I'm sure to have a short leg. Hobart was a tall, gangly guy.

And it's really exaggerated when you're as tall as he was to have a leg that's an inch or two. order than your left leg. And I'm sure it was a lifelong stigma for him.

Kept him out of sports, kept him from doing things that all of us did when we were boys growing up. I was an athlete. I played soccer, basketball, baseball, football. I was a number one seed on our high school tennis team.

I was always active. I was hunter, fisherman, involved in all kind of sports. When we see in Hobart's life, as he age, he couldn't do any of those things except study. And I do feel some empathy for him in that regard.

My empathy turns to anger when you take your own condition and then try to somehow penalize everyone else. And we know later in life, he outlawed competitive sports. He outlawed public schools. He outlawed doing anything.

He outlawed hunting in the very, very end of his life. The last couple of months, he came out with a message saying, overcomers are not going to hunt anymore. So my sympathy for a person goes to something different when just because you can't do something, you're outlawing this in other people's lives.

Well, once he entered the charismatic movement in 1966, he obviously claimed his healing, you know, for his leg. Again, it's not an illness or a disease. You know, this is a physical condition, a deformity, a handicap, whatever you want to call it.

But Hobart was hearing from the speakers around him that you don't have to limit your prayers and claims of faith just to coals and flus and sicknesses and illnesses. They can cover anything in your body, including hair loss.

They can include anything to keep you as young and healthy as possible. So he claimed his healing. Well, his leg didn't grow out. And so here's something people might not realize. But on Hobart's early tapes, you will hear him reference

this fact that is he traveled around because he did so much traveling in the late 60s in the early 70s, interacting with all different types of charismatic and penicolstal and neo-penicolstal people. He was in full gospel business meetings all the time.

And people would see this gangly speaker limping up to the podium and they would offer to pray for him. Don't you know, brother Freeman, that God's growing legs out? Don't you know that's a part of the charismatic blessing that if you've got a short leg, God will grow your leg out.

So he actually submitted to multiple occasions for people to attempt to grow his leg out. Now, I don't think that the people that faith assembly knew that or remembered that, maybe they had not heard the earlier messages that I heard, where, you know, he wants to be as healthy as an ex-person, and so he's in a new meeting in Iowa, and someone said, well, brother so and so over here, he's got a gift of healing, and he can pray for your short leg, and it will grow out.

And Hobart submitted himself to all that. Well, he got to the point where his faith teaching became much more rigid, and he said, no, when you pray, Mark 11, 24, believe that you have received, and you shall have it.

So when you pray ten times for the same thing, his famous statement was, because he heard it from other people, you prayed nine times in unbelief. You only pray one time, and then you wait for the manifestation.

So he did get to the point by, I'm going to say probably 1970 or 1971, where he would no longer submit to the request or the offer of anyone else to pray for his leg.

He would simply say, no, I was healed when I prayed back in 1966, and I am just waiting for the manifestation. You know, I came out of the positive confession mindset, and never looked back once I found out how wrong, and how much it resembled lying, I just could not continue doing it.

But I was in that mindset, and whenever I was in that mindset, my family struggles with diabetes. I mentioned William Brannum's family did, when my family, it's all throughout both sides of my family, both parents.

And I was developing pre-diabetes, and through name it and claim it, positive confession, you know, I was healed. But I've mentioned this before, people who are in this mindset, they like to augment their quote unquote healing with other things.

So I was reading through all kinds of different articles of these herbs that helped or different lifestyles, et cetera. One of the things that I tried to help the most was intermittent fasting. And it kept it at bay.

And so I could claim through positive confession I didn't have it, I should have had it, but I didn't have it. Well, I was doing intermittent fasting. And then after I left, I continued, and it got a little bit worse, and so I got more aggressive.

I went on a very strict intermittent fasting diet. I lost 45 pounds and 45 days. That's how much I lost. And I was, you know, pricking my finger, checking the diabetes. Well, according to my meter, I was completely overcome the diabetes.

I was reading really good numbers at all times. But see, I wasn't going to the doctor to monitor this intermittent fasting. I went once a... year if that, because I've got this, I grew up with this thing for doctors. I don't really go to the doctor very much. Well, it was either one or two years later after, you know, me prick in my finger and I'm reading, my readings are 100% in the normal zone for two or three years. Two or three years, I can't remember which. Well, I go to the doctor and she did an actual A1C and well, no, I'm full-blown diabetic. Apparently in the night, my numbers

were much different than during the day. And so I had it, but if I was still in the positive confession mindset, I could have told people that I didn't have it. That's how weird this gets. And for those who like to make this kind of comment whenever I, myself or somebody else says this kind of thing, no, I actually did believe in it when I was there. You can't say that it didn't happen because of faith. No, I believed it, hook line and sinker. I believed it. Well, after I left, I started going, you know, I did the intermittent fasting.

I kept it at bay. And in the end, like many other people, I ended up having to go on some medication for it. But here's the difference between what I had in the positive confession and what the bullying style minister has. While I was on it, whenever I did the intermittent fasting, I lost 45 pounds, 45 days. I had people who visibly, I had changed visibly, noticeably, I lost 45 pounds. So people were asking me, what happened? What did you do?

And I was very cautious to tell them, this isn't for everyone. This might actually make you worse. You need to talk to your doctor while you're doing this because you may have other health problems that this could hurt you, make you worse, right? I didn't go say, do this thing and you can be healed. I gave a clear warning. And I also said that, you know, this may or may not work. This helped me, but it may or may not help you. Versus a bully who isn't feeling good, who has a condition, who tells everybody, you need to do exactly like me,

and you can be healed exactly like me, while oh, by the way, he's not healed. Well, Pobart held on to this belief, John, his whole entire life. And I want to document that with several really interesting clips. And these are just representative of what can be found elsewhere on Pobart's tapes concerning his belief about his polio leg. I've tried to think about it with empathy. I don't have a short leg. I think anybody who has any kind of visible handicap is most likely self-conscious with that. So I try to take that into consideration. And I think if

you're a faith in healing preacher, you are especially self-conscious because everyone can tell it's not working. So I- I try to take that into consideration as well, but at the end of the day, I mean, I'll just let Colbert say what Colbert said.

So on a message in the L series, L15, entitled The Foolishness of Faith, let me set the scene for this message first of all. My notes on this read as follows. This is the most irresponsible teaching minister could possibly give.

This is my own note on it. That would lead men not to work. It would lead men to lay hands on car engines, lawn mowers and washing machines to get them started. It would lead people to rebuke storms and snow and fog and rain and ice rather than postpone your travel plans for that day.

Because this is what you hear on this message. I mean, he is like a spider monkey jacked up on Mountain Dew going down all these paths of, you can just name and claim anything you want from cars skidding on ice to washing machines that won't work to tanks that are empty on gas in your car.

He talks about, at one point here, where his caddy is skidding on the ice and he and June, we just yell the blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus. He said instantly the car stopped.

It's forward motion. And then it went at a right angle. Well, this is defying all laws of physics and laws of motion. It was going skidding. It stopped immediately. It's forward action. It went at a right angle and then parked itself on the curb.

And of course, everybody's praise God. No one witnessed that. You don't have to verify anything. Just if you say it, it's true. He says the spiritual laws are higher than natural laws and cancel out natural laws.

And then he says facts, quote unquote, are actually line facts. So a short leg when you claim the long leg is actually a long leg and the short leg is lying visible fact. It's from the devil.

You're not supposed to trust it. You're not supposed to believe it. And so on this particular message, the foolishness of faith,

if you could play the, let's see, it's the one hour and 52 second mark to the one hour, one minute and 12 second mark. But if you think they will laugh at you and you confess your heel while they still see your limping or whatever it is, it isn't manifested yet.

Wait till you act like it. Praise the Lord. the package in your trunk. Well, I just tell people that's my new shoes. Here we open a whole can of worms because what people hear there in listening to Hobart is that Hobart was not acting his fate. So lifting out of that quote the part that I really want, he says, what's that in the back of your trunk? Someone might ask him, well, I just tell people, that's my new shoes. You'll find this on so many of his tapes. That tells you, oh, he's wearing a specially made and ordered pair of orthopedic shoes for that short leg,

but he has in his trunk a shoe box that has normal shoes and he's waiting for the manifestation of his healing and then he is going to open his trunk and get those shoes out of that box.

That's just one of many times. Here's another time where he tells the same story on a tape. It was L25 entitled The Failure to Acture Faith. This was actually done. You can tell outside of the church in Indiana. It was a seminar somewhere in another place and at the 44 minute, 34 second mark through the 44 minute and 43 second mark if we could hear that.

Hey, man, I carry a pair of new shoes in the trunk of my Cadillac. Now, if those of you may not know what that means, it doesn't matter. If you've been here this week, you'd understand it. Praise God. And again, I can lift the quote from that. He said, I carry a pair of new shoes in the trunk of my Cadillac. Now, for those of you who may not know what that means, it doesn't matter. If you had been here this week, you would understand. So he's in a seminar in a week-long seminar and he's talking about his shoes. So here's the point in all of that. Why didn't anyone

challenge him? All those years, they heard him say this over and over. The name of that message was The Failure to Acture Faith. Why didn't they challenge him for his failure to act his faith?

He is requiring that they give up their insulin, that they don't wear glasses. He is requiring that they act their faith. If you're healed, then you don't need glasses. If you're healed, you don't need medicine. If you're healed, you don't need crunches. If you're healed, you don't need an orthopedic shoe then. Do you, Dr. Freeman? This was one of the things I was saying I'm finding a huge inconsistency here, Holbert, in what you're requiring others to do and what you're practicing yourself. And it just blows your mind how these 40 quote-unquote word ministers, sad under this man's ministry, knew.

but he was requiring of everyone else knowing full well, he did not practice at himself, and to my knowledge, no one challenged him over that. Surprise of surprises. I can't even imagine being a parent sitting in those meetings, knowing that he has this prosthetic shoe or orthopedic shoe, and yet my child is sitting next to me who wants to see and can't see because I cannot give him glasses.

That really makes me angry. And John, I'm going to take it one step further, and we're probably going to have gone long enough on this. Yeah, it was just a huge red flag and inconsistency.

Of course, the reason Hobart didn't want to wear a regular shoe is he'd be dragging a leg around, you know? He just would be. It would be a huge inconvenience for him to be very embarrassing.

Probably wouldn't be very comfortable, may even be painful to be, you know, hobbling along like this with the leg that's short, but he's requiring that of everyone else. But here, let's take it one step further.

If you want to see the narcissism involved in this one physical issue of his, a polio-shortened leg, and I've got a couple of different messages, one done in 1974, early on, entitled Healing in the Atonement.

Yes, it was a healing message preached at a communion service, as we talked about. Every communion service he would teach on divine healing, from the 48 minute 35 second mark to the 49 minute and 26 second mark.

And so it is when Jesus bore my diseases and carried away my pains. It doesn't matter because somebody sees me still limping. I was healed at Calvary, Calvary. And those who believe it with me, I believe are going to enter into the blessing of the manifestation.

I'm going to have to go to Calvary. I'll do it. I'll do it.

I'll do it. Wow, one sister had a vision. She said, I don't know what it means. All there been many visions about the manifestation of my healing. But she said, when your healing was manifested, I saw the body of Christ entering in into your manifestation.

She said, somehow, we protect of it. I don't know what that means. I don't try to figure it out, except that where and whenever it happens, somehow there are going to be a lot of healings that you've been waiting for.

Maybe that's what it means. If you're going to get your manifestation, that new set of teeth, oh, how did it go?

And I think I have that written out. Here's what he said. And so it is when Jesus bore my diseases and carried my pains. It doesn't matter because someone sees me still limping. I was healed at Calvary.

And those who believe it with me, I believe, are going to enter into the blessing of the manifestation. And then there's this church-wide in the glory barn in 1974, clapping. And then he tells this story, which he tells on the rest of the tapes of his ministry.

One sister had a vision. She said, I don't know what it means. Oh, there have been many visions of the manifestation of my healing. But she said, when your healing was manifested, I saw the body of Christ entering into your manifestation.

She said, somehow, we all partake of it. Now, I don't know what that means, but you're going to get your manifestation. You're going to get that new set of teeth. So, not only is Hobart John failing to act his faith in a critical, crucial area, just wear a regular shoe and limp around just like everyone else is having to limp around because they can't see. Not only is that occurring, but some sister unidentified had a vision.

And on another message, way late, in 1983, a year before he dies in his series on Jeremiah, it's tape 553, the calling commission of a prophet number three. He says, this healing of my leg has been seen at least 20 times in vision by others.

Hobart said, I also saw a vision of myself going through an airport healed. Well, it was a false vision because, guess what, Hobart never went through an airport healed. So, mystery lady who had this vision, that was a false vision. The 20 other visions that happened in the church that confirmed that lady's vision, that Hobart would be healed.

Those were 20 false visions. This stuff, John, is just repeated. It becomes part of cult lore and legend. None of it's true. Hobart was never healed. So, all of these visions were not from God.

When God gives a vision or God gives a word, as we read in Deuteronomy, it comes to pass. And if it doesn't come to pass, that's a false prophet that just gave you that word or just gave you that vision. And in Old Testament days, the penalties is death, stoning, death by stoning for giving a false message or false word or false vision. My pointing closing here, John, is not only is it a false word, not only was he never healed, not only did he not act his healing all those years, but the narcissism involved thinking, when I get my healing because I'm such a

special person, that the whole body of Christ is going to enter into it all on the same day. going to get my leg lengthened, you're going to get a new set of teeth. She's going to get her eyes. She's going to get this. They're going to get that. The whole body of Christ is going to enter into it. This was a destructive religious cult called faith assembly and led by Hobart Freeman to teach and believe things like that. You know, all I can really say is I'm glad I'm no longer a part of that. There's inwardly in every person there is the desire for truth

and the desire to speak the truth. And it's very difficult whenever a person who has that inward desire to say things that aren't true and yet this positive confession defies all of that. I remember as I'm saying some of the things that I believe that I was healed of this that or the other. I remember thinking at the time, well, I'm not really healed, but I'm saying it, but I don't want to think that because that's the devil thinking inside my head. You're manipulated with all of these things. But after you leave, you're free from it and you suddenly realize, wait a minute,

I was lying through my teeth and the Bible has many passages about lying. So it's very odd that this made it into Americanized Christianity like it did. It just goes to show it's the doctrine of bullies, not the doctrines of Christians. So it's a it's a mess and there's more mess to discover next time. So thank you for doing this. Thanks for having me, John. I appreciate it.

Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the NAR, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.