From Charismatic Faith to Myth: When Testimony Replaces Truth

Hello and welcome to another episode. I'm your host John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at www.William-Brandom.org and with me I have my co-host, minister and friend, Chen O'Ross, pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Chen O'D Ross YouTube channel.

Chen O'Ross is good to be back and to talk about all things that anger both sides of the cessationist, continuationist debate. It's kind of funny, I mentioned last time, I don't put myself in either category, I don't like to be wedged into a box and I grew up unfortunately I was wedged into a box most of my life. But after you get out of that box you start to critically think about everything.

Once that floodgate opens where you can actually stop and think about the things that happened, I carried it as you know to extremes and I'm researching all kinds of things but there were many things that I myself didn't think about and should have. One of them, we just, I think it comes out before this podcast if I remember correctly. I just recorded a podcast with Bob Scott talking about his experience on the new Adam's farm and we were discussing it as a tragic story which is unfortunately made the news for all the wrong reasons but the story is quite an incredible story.

However, he was talking about something that I had thought about it some but not really until he mentioned that did it click. All of these faith healers they go over to developing nations like Africa. This was an African story and all they have to do is advertise free food and people flood by the thousand. You'll get a hundred thousand people if you offer a mammal or some kind of handout or at least that's how it used to be. I don't know if it's the same today but it made me stop and think. I started in my mind taking inventory as he was talking about

the different revivals that made Brannum famous and it began with the miraculous healing of hundreds of thousands. I can't remember the exact number that he threw out there but it was an incredible amount in Canada which isn't in the United States which isn't easily verifiable.

And I came across this publication by Alfred Poe, who was a minister that he was part of the crew that organized Brannum's campaign meetings. And he said that he had countless newspaper reporters and journalists coming up trying to find these so-called healing so that he could verify them and they could put them in the newspapers and they couldn't find one, but they could find several deaths.

And the same thing happened in Africa, but you see these photographs of tens of thousands of people filling these stadiums in Africa. And it never really clicked until he said it. Now I took inventory.

If all of those people in those meetings had been converted to the cult, there would be a ginormous cult presence right there. And there is a lot, don't get me wrong, but it's nothing like the picture show.

And that would be exponential because those people would produce offspring and it would grow. I mean, the whole of Africa would have been converted if this were the case, if this were true. But it got me to thinking about just taking inventory of what we were told as these legitimate healings, they would say that he's vindicated profit because he had healed these people.

And that sparked a movement and you had hundreds of evangelists doing the same thing. They might have prophecies or visions, a ridiculous number of them claimed that they had an angel with them and was helping them do this, that or the other.

But you did not critically think about the fact that they're asking you to prove their angel or their prophetic visions or their dreams or et cetera. They're asking you to vindicate those by the healings themselves.

And yet the healings themselves were so problematic, you couldn't really point a finger at one person or another that's healed. Instead, what they had was what's called positive confession, which you and I have talked about, you have to pretend to be healed, which creates a whole new scenario, which we can talk through all of this today, but it sets up the problem that what's real and what's not?

This is a mess. It is, and what did you call yourself, John, in our last interview together, the cessationist and the continuationist? What did you call yourself? A continued skepticist or something like this?

You know, I thought about that afterwards. And between the two, I have always called myself a continuationist. The cessationist would be people like Justin Peters and John McArthur, and they have written and published a lot, spoken a lot, that the gifts of the Holy Spirit and miracles and divine healing stop with the apostles.

And there's really no way you can make that case, either from people's experience or from the Bible. Then you have the other side, the continuationist, who, as we saw it. last time, just want to believe everything. But I would probably, you know, I'm definitely a continuationist, but I would probably be okay with the title that you give in yourself.

I definitely believe God can and I believe that He does. But I'm skeptical of a lot of stuff because someone said it doesn't make it true. I need to know for a fact that it's true. So I like that name. Yeah. Thank you for throwing that out there. That's a pretty good name. Well, I have seen some weird things in my life and I know people who also have seen some weird things. These are honest people. I have no reason to believe that they were lying and I think I shared with you one time. I don't know if I did on the podcast or

not, but I prayed for my grandfather's radio in his car one day and by faith that radio accepted it, man. It hadn't worked in years and it just suddenly started playing like that. No. Did I? Did I do it? No. Did God do it? I don't know. I don't know how to put that into, you know, why would God do it? That's ridiculous, right? Now that I'm out, I realize that that borders more towards sorcery than it does Christianity. But we were taught this fine line between the eye of Sohran and God. I mean, that's how it was. And so I did

this thing. I watched it happen and I know that that radio did not work, but that's the type of faith that we were taught. It was more of a sorcery type of faith. The problem for me is I've also studied many other religions. Once I left this thing, I started studying ancient cultures and ancient mythologies, how those developed, how through nosticism it's coming in a Christianity and then some of the different world religions today. These, the Charismatics and the Pentecostals who claim the healing, they're not unique. You can find the same exact thing in many, many different religions. Go to India, you're going to find

all kinds of healers and various flavors and they're not praying to the Christian God. So where does their healing come from? So there are many people who really, truly believe that the world is still fully controlled by angels and demons and they walk in that realm where they believe that all of that is controlled. If you're to go down that pathway, you have to believe that a demon healed my grandfather's radio because that's not a Christian thing to do, but that's how I was manipulated man. That's what I did. And we've all had different things happen. I just think it's probably prudent not to be too hasty to give God credit

or to put blame on God. It might just be that's just what happened. And the Lord has much bigger eternal things to be concerned with than radios working or not working. But I like the fact you don't just say, well, I'm positive God didn't do it, but I'm not positive that he did.

You know, that's neither here nor there. You know, let's get back to important matters. And isn't that the problem, John? People fight over these things. Let's get back to the important matters of scripture.

I can remember Hobart on his tapes talking about these vast crusades. You mentioned Africa earlier that the charismatic and pinnacle stole profits and apostles and evangelists had. And in particular, he was talking about T.L. Osborne.

And there are specific time stamp messages I can pull up where Hobart 100% said T.L. Osborne was an apostle. And I think you also have documentation of T.L. Osborne saying, William Branland is God in the flesh.

So that presents a big problem to me. I don't trust anything about T.L. Osborne who made a statement like that. But it's so interesting. Once Hobart left denominationalism and he became so critical of the Baptist way, the denominational way, he said, they'll go to the mission field, spend thousands of dollars, work years and make a handful of converts, dubious ones at that.

And then he'd always follow that up with. But then you take an apostle like T.L. Osborne, anointed by the power of the Holy Ghost and with signs following his ministry, confirming the word that he preached, he will go out and see 50,000 converted under one message.

And you know, when you're young in the faith, you hear that and you just believe it and you wanna believe it because you wanna believe, raw, raw, yes, go, you charismatic pinnacle stole people down with you Baptist denominational people.

Go pinnacle stole people so you wanna believe it. But that's just something Hobart read. He didn't verify, he wasn't at that convention. He doesn't, he did not do a five year follow up of those 50,000 people.

You know, you have no way. That's just, you know, I've got several of my kids have earned doctors degrees. One of my daughters-in-law is a medical doctor. She has an earned doctor's degree and we talk about these things and we say, you know, these people don't have any professional training and they just make what we call statement sentences.

There's no proof, there's no verification, there's no foot noting, there's no documentation. When you are a professional and writing in a professional journal or teaching in a professional setting, you actually have to have what we call proof or evidence or documentation for these claims.

But in Pentecostal circles, absolutely not, you know, if you said it, that's good enough because Your preacher you're up on the platform and anything you say is Annoyed by the Holy Ghost and we believe what you say, but you know, I'll and so when I heard that when I was 17 and 18 years old I had never heard the name T. L. Osborne. I'd heard of Billy Sunday and and Billy Graham, but I'd never heard of any figures like Jack Coe and T. L. Osborne and A. A. Allen Hobart introduced me to those and then I thought, oh, wow, well, these must be our

Charismatic forefathers, you know, and man, they were really getting the work done And so my point in saying this and this little spiel is that it just became part of The history of the cult without any verification. There's no way to back any of that up No one knows if 50,000 people got converted under one message of T. L. Osborne. The odds are no that didn't happen Or that 10,000 people got healed in one service, but when a minister like Hobart said it The only reason he said it it because he had heard

Gordon Lindsay and Kenneth Hagen and other people say it And so what happens is one person repeats it to another to another it becomes a part of your cult lore and legend and before we know it It's gone from just hypothesis to absolute fact and it's fact because of the sheer number of people that have said it And what I'm trying to argue for and what you have done a good job arguing for for years on your podcast is Because a man or woman said it that's not good enough people say things all the time and they're just are simply not true

We need to do our research. We need to search out those people that were converted under T. L. Osborne are these hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands in Africa being healed and delivered Um, and and we need to verify that and The odds of the matter are it we probably won't be able to verify that You made another statement in the last one John that I wanted to follow up on and then I'll get into what I wanted to talk about today where where You know, we do have people in the comments section and you'll get and I get my own emails and

messages and text and phone calls where People either are concerned about us giving up faith miracles healing or want to make sure that we're not doing that And of course we're not and we've explained that in the last podcast and then you said that You'll have people come to you and say well So if that if what you're saying is right and that was false what I was Paul, well then where do I go?

What do I do now? Was everything I taught false? And of course, I get that same comment or question all the time where people say, you know, I do follow what you're saying about Hobart Freeman and you've given plenty of verification.

You're playing his own messages. I'm hearing his own voice say it. So I can't deny that he said it. So if that is wrong, then it's everything wrong. And here's been my response to people over that.

I will say no, everything was not wrong that was said or taught or believed. But here's a problem with even trying to hold on to any of it. It is in the context of someone who is definitely trying to manipulate you and he will bend statistics or verses in his favor.

He is not like Dr. Freeman I'm talking about is not like any other recognized scholar. Like I look over here on the corner of my desk, John Frame, who I think is retired but John Frame is still alive today or Eugene Merrill that wrote that wonderful Old Testament history book on King entitled Kingdom of Priest or FF Bruce who's long since passed away was a world renowned New Testament scholar.

None of those guys are infallible. They obviously have things wrong in their writings but they are so good for the most part in what they say. They're so okay to read their material and follow them but you still read with a critical eye to make sure what he's saying is what you see also in the Bible.

But just because he has a half a dozen things you might disagree with, does it mean you're wedded to him like you are with these charismatic people? That's a problem with Dr. Freeman. I've had people say, well, maybe I should just get rid of everything of his and I'll have other people say, well, I think he was good in his biblical theology school and classes and I just shake my head and say no, no, and again, no.

Because even in the areas where he was evangelical and where he was conservative, hey, he's simply copying somebody else. You can find that material in a better format and coming from a better author and then be when he's giving it in his biblical theology and Old Testament and New Testament theology classes, he is still weaving into that and you can hear it easily weaving into that all of his charismatic interpretation.

So I have just told people even though there were a lot of good things Hobart taught in some of those classes, it's all in my opinion. it's almost best just to jettison all of it because you can find that same material in other conservative writers and they'll do a much better, much better job. It's interesting how Hobart always presented the charismatic school as what he called it and they did Old Testament survey and New Testament and theology and ethics and they did all kinds of things.

What I saw and what anybody outside of a cult would see is you cannot have one teacher responsible for every topic. There's no one smart enough to do that. That's why you have committees that translate Bibles and that's why you have multiple faculty members in a graduate level seminary.

You can't, there is no such thing as one person, Hobart, me, you or any of these scholars that I just mentioned that's smart enough to be able to teach what needs to be taught on all of those various topics. So get rid of it and do your own independent study. You know, I get people who talk to me and they learn all of all of this thing that I'm doing and learn what I came out of and they say, John, how are you so different? You talk normal English and most of the other people who are in it, I can't understand what they're saying or what they mean and for years I thought

that just meant my language. I was no longer using the loaded language of the cult but I have come to understand over the years of doing this that it's not just that they messed up our language and our speech patterns but they morphed and changed the way that we think about things. One example, which ironically, I can't give the name of the group or the example of the song but in music, I've learned not to mention the groups because you get all kinds of people fighting for the same exact reason that I'm about to say. There are music groups that I like one song out of their

5,000. I don't know how many songs they've got. I haven't even looked but there's that one song that's really good. Does it mean that I think they're the best group ever? No, does it mean every song is going to be good? No, but that one song is a good song and I have mentioned this using that as an example before but I made the mistake of mentioning the group name and you get all these attacks. Do you know that that person did such and such? He has a history of such and such.

It's satanic because of such and you get all this weird mess, man. I didn't even mention that. I just I like the song. The song is what I like but it wasn't a blanket approval of everything they've ever done or said or thought or smoked or drank or sniffed or it's it's kind of funny when you think about it but I'm a musician. I like music and I like good music. So anyway, all of that aside.

It were manipulated to where it's all or nothing you're giving your 200% for whoever it is. And they're going to be the expert at whatever it is that you go to them for because if they can do one thing buddy, they can do it all.

And I never fully went to that extent because as a businessman, when you hire people, you don't hire all and wonder person, you can't get one. And if you do, they're usually not as good as the people who have specific skills in specific areas.

You want to find the expert in certain areas. And so I never fully gave in, but as I'm talking to people and I'm trying to work through all this stuff that they put in my head, I realized that I was manipulated in such a way that I did not view things in a normal way.

And I've had people ask me, how do you deprogram from that? How do you get over that? And really the only way that I know to do it is just to experience life because you have to learn everything that I'm learning now.

Most kids learn in their teens. And I'm an old man learning this stuff, but you have to go through life. You have to have experiences. You have to listen to that one song. And by golly, that's the best song you ever heard, but I hate the others.

It's so true, John. It was always an all or nothing. To this day, you know, Freeman's followers, the few that are left still think that he was just brilliant and a genius, and they don't realize, as I said last time, that he hijacked that material from so many other people.

As someone's made the brilliant comment, I think a couple of times on our podcast, where he said, if Hobart ever had an original fault, it would have died a lonely death. And I pretty much had to agree with that because there was a lot of boring that was happening there.

So if we could get back to what we were talking about earlier, the some parameters for divine healing and spiritual gifts, and I just got this kind of broken down now into three pretty easy to follow questions.

Here's the first one, John. What sort of things were people heal from in the Bible? Question mark. You know, we are Bible believing Christians. I don't know any other kind of Christian, but a Bible believing one.

And we all claim, I'm gonna base everything I believe right on the Bible. And we all do that to a greater lesser degree. Sometimes in our life, we're doing it to a higher degree and other time and remember of a cult, we're doing it to a lower degree, but we still are saying, hey, let's base everything on the Bible.

And that's a wonderful idea. And it is a goal. It's not only an idea, it's an ideal that we should all strive for. So if we are in faith assembly and Hobart Freeman, they definitely claim to be, oh, we just base everything we do in the Bible.

leave on the Bible. We don't based on anything but the Bible. Okay, fair enough. Then let's raise a question. What kinds of things were people heal from in Bible days? And I think just in asking the question, people already get a little nervous because they know where we're going with this.

And I want people to compare what we're gonna talk about, what kinds of things were people heal from in the Bible versus what kinds of things are people being healed from at faith assembly or in the services.

And I have placed some clips of Hobart in his healing line after a teaching where he will say, well, Lord shows me there's discomfort in the left shoulder. And I mean, probably 50% of us, 80% of the time have discomfort somewhere in our body.

Discomfort in the left shoulder, a jammed right pinky finger, a sore left calf, a strained right arm muscle.

Come on. That is what you hear. Now look, I do not frequent a whole lot of charismatic and pinocal steel meetings. I've almost had my fill of those in the past. I go sometimes as a spectator just to see what's going on, but what kind of healings are being called out?

What is going on in these healing lines and in these healing services? What I would say is take that since you're a Bible-believing Christian, lay it down and lay the Word of God beside it.

And when you turn to the Bible, I don't find any discomfort in the left shoulder, right pinky finger or a mild headache. What I find are significant debilitating illnesses, sometimes from birth, sometimes life long up until that point.

We see lameness, lameness cannot walk, never walk, since birth. So not only can you not walk, even if you could walk, you don't know how. A baby has to learn how to walk. It's not only leg, it's muscle, it's tissue, it's ligaments, it's joints, it's blood vessels, it's nerves, it's everything, lameness.

We're not talking about a leg a quarter inch short. You know, the modern counterparts are counterfeits

too many times for what the Bible really talks about. Lameness, blindness, we're not talking about someone that if you squint, you know, that does change the way your pupils... are. And you might can read something a little better if you squint. We're not talking about people who memorize what the chart says so they can go and pass their drivers test.

And I've heard all this. Trust me from the these wonderful X faith assembly people. They said, Oh, we learned how to cheat our way around it because we were desperate to drive. Or someone else said, Oh, I heard the person in front of me. And so I just copied, I memorized the letters they said. And I was able to get through it. We're talking about blindness.

You cannot see there's no different from daylight and darkness to you. That that is a healing. That is a miracle. Deafness, dumbness, leprosy. You read in the Bible, this old English word Paul's thing, which is just an old English word for some form of paralysis. Oh, we still have it today, cerebral palsy. It's still used today, but it's a paralysis. We have missing hands and legs. We have withered limbs that have simply withered up. I have a former friend who was in an accident. And it did so much nerve and muscle and tissue damage to hit one

of his arms that I've seen it when this person doesn't have it covered. I mean, it looks like something in a horror movie. It is all withered and dried up. How can that just become whole again? Well, it can by the power of God. And it did under Jesus' ministry, a man who had a withered hand. He just said, stretch forth your hand. And the man could have said, well, if I could stretch it forth, I wouldn't need healing. But he just did what Jesus said.

He acted in faith and God created a miracle right there on the spot. And this man who had a withered hand, and I've seen a withered hand, I know exactly what it looks like or what it can look like. This man stretched forth his hand. It had all the color in the Bible, had all the color back to it, had its movement, had the blood flow. In the Bible, we see seizures, and we see serious internal bleeding. These are the kinds of things that people are healed from in the Bible. What they are not healed from are headaches, ingrown toenails,

sore left shoulder. And speaking of headaches, I don't know if you've heard Kenneth Hagen, but I've heard multiple Kenneth Hagen messages are pretty easy to find where Kenneth Hagen will stand up late, late in his life. I mean, he was already elderly. And he'll say, blessed God in that Texas accent that I haven't said I haven't had a headache in 50 years.

And I'll listen to that. And there's, you know, there's a half of a one percent chance that that's actually true, that you haven't had a headache in 50 years. I don't know of human being. You hadn't had a headache in the last two years because headaches are caused by so many things. And so, of course, Hagen-Faller will say, are you accusing him of lying?

Well, maybe he wasn't lying, but maybe he would define a headache differently. You know, people in the cults, they will just find ways to manipulate the English language. So that maybe they aren't guilty of lying, but my headache, what he meant is something different than what, you know, 99 out of 100 people mean by headache, and that means my head hurts.

That's what we would mean by headache, my head hurts, but he means something different by it, so maybe his head didn't hurt. But these are the kinds of things that people are going up in prayer lines. Now, not always. I recognize that, not always, but these often are the kinds of things that people are going up in prayer lines to be healed from. And my point in highlighting this is that's very convenient that these are all internal, subjective kinds of things where you may be in a moment of elation, and joy, and singing a lot of songs, and a lot of worship happening

in the tent meeting can feel like you're better for the moment. You can't feel like you're no longer blind. You're either blind or you aren't. But if you have these other little exenisms, you might feel a little better. Whether you do or not, unfortunately, I don't know. You know, you couldn't you couldn't you couldn't convince me of that. I don't know. But hope art actually believed that these were the kinds of things that people would be healed from. Now, he believed the other big things too, because they're in the Bible. Yeah, he said, we're supposed to go raise the dead,

cleanse the leper, cast out demons, freely you've received, freely give, and they just talk. We're raising the dead and raising the dead. And I hope I never raised the dead. He never saw anybody raise from the dead. I've never raised the dead or seen anybody. I'm not going to deny that God wouldn't do it today, but it's not common. It's not happening all the time. Let me say it this way. It's not happening the way it did with the apostles, because in Matthew 10, when Jesus commissioned the 12, he said, I'm giving you power to do these very things. And he sent them out and they must have

done it. And we don't even have all of that recorded. But he said, I'm giving you the power to raise the dead. I wonder how many dead people in Israel raised by the apostles. We have no way of knowing, but they were because he gave the apostles the power to do that. So there were a lot of dead people. That's my point being raised.

Debt people aren't being raised today on any regular basis unless it's in Indonesia or somewhere where we can't get to and photograph or videotape anything. Hope I used to tell this story, John, and I'll quit talking and let you talk.

Hope I used to tell this story about a woman. He was famous for stopping teaching from the Bible and then sharing dreams, visions and revelations. God given his saints all over the world and you're supposed to just buy into that. He was famous for that.

There was this woman who was crying out to God why he had not manifested his matured son yet. This was part of all of that erroneous, deceptive teaching of Gideon's army that there's going to be an elite group of people and God is going to use them to deliver the whole of creation.

And she had heard that teaching and was part of that teaching and was under Freeman's ministry. And here we go again with one of these some lady, some undisclosed, unnamed lady had a vision or dream and you based doctrine on it.

And she was praying, Lord, you know why, when and why haven't you manifested your sons and here was God's response to her. He said the reason I haven't manifested my sons yet is because my sons cannot even deliver themselves from a simple headache.

Hobart told that story countless times, Sean, which means Hobart is saying that God is saying that one of the things he plans for all believers to be able to do is deliver themselves from a simple headache.

And I have said before, a headache is not one of those issues that you are to be healed from. It is an issue where you either aid, hydrate yourself more, be, get better sleep tonight, see, buy different mattress and pillow so you can sleep better, D, get the stress out of your life, E, eat a more balanced, healthy diet, those are the reasons that most people have headaches.

Now if you have extreme, migrate headaches, migraine and you had them your whole life, you might be a candidate for healing. But that's not true for most of us. Most of us have headaches just because that's the way we humans experience life.

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You know, you're talking about headaches, and I, from time to time, get people that send me links to watch a video or listen to a sermon, and at each time I listen to Kenneth Hagen in irony, I get a headache from listening to the guy.

So I don't know if that's a curse or what, but, you know, I mentioned in the last episode, I'm a continued skepticismist, I can't remember how exactly I said that word, but I made it up on the fly, if you can't tell.

But I truly believe that you have to have a healthy level of skepticism. And I also believe that if you're in this type of cult, they teach you that a healthy level of skepticism is a demon, and you can't have it, and you can't question because it's an end of cycle, man.

If you don't question, then they can continue doing it to you. That's the problem. But in all things, so I also mentioned last time my father was healed of rheumatic fever. I have also done the studies because I may continue skepticismist, even though the faith healer on the platform declared that my father was dying and that he did, the doctors, the doctors were not giving good optimism, I'll say that too, but I've learned since then that doctors in the medical industry know more about this disease than they did back then, and they have proven through statistics that not everybody who was branded as going

to die from this disease actually died. There were a large number of people that just recovered without a healer on a platform. They just recovered, and they end up with other complications, which I can say that the pattern fits.

I'm not going to say that it wasn't God, because who's to say it could have been, I will say it's not the man on the platform. But the point I'm driving at is that we were manipulated in so many ways, but one of the biggest ways that we were manipulated is that it mattered.

It mattered where the healing came from. It mattered. The fact that the person is healed, that's a great thing. My father got well, I'm alive today because my father lived. That's a great thing.

But when you're in this type of movement, it's greater than a great thing. You have to focus your entire energy. You have to go tell people, it's like a new gospel. Did you know that I got healed, and this person who was on the...

platform healed me, come hear him. It turns into a new gospel. And for an average Christian who wasn't in this thing, if they got healed of something horrendous, which I have no, I know people who are in other Christian non-cult churches that they do, they also get healed.

And they say, praise God, I got healed and make nothing more of it. You won't hear it again because they healed. They got over it. And that's their past history. But what happens is these types of religions want to live the past. And they keep you in that past. And if you study ancient religions enough, you'll understand that that is exactly how a mythology is birthed.

I agree, John. So because these types of illnesses and miracles in the Bible were so obvious. And the ones today are all of this subjective internal stuff. You know, I just think there's some, there's a parameter that people should keep in mind as they're looking at healing. And that brings me to the second point. Because they are all of these vague and subjective things, what are we going to do about the critical procedure of verification? And you've touched on this just a few minutes ago.

In these circles, it's almost a no-no to ever look for or request any kind of verification. But isn't that exactly what a magician would want you to do? A magician who is not doing anything for real. It's all by illusion, slight of hand and distraction. He's not going to show you how he does all of that. I mean, that would ruin the whole process. When we go to the Bible, however, there's nothing done in a corner. There's nothing done behind closed curtains. There's nothing done in secret. Because there's nothing fake. In these other circles, some of it is fake.

And some of it is just a psychosomatic. And the rest of it is stuff that we can't verify. If a person's lame from birth, we can verify. Did you get healed or not? If a person said that they had a leg a quarter inch short in the other, as we've talked before, ad nauseam. You can't really verify whether they did or whether they didn't. And the same is true with these internal things where Hobart would say, now the Lord shows me, all I see is a left arm. I don't know if it's man or woman

left arm. And I want to say, well, there's 2,000 people in the building with a left arm. What do you mean, a left arm? Are you wanting to grow and... Do or know, he just meaning you got something wrong with your left arm.

If you put 2,000 people together, how many of the 2,000 have something wrong with their left arm? 10, 15, 5, 20, 2,000 people, something wrong with their left arm. Something wrong.

I'm sure there are a lot of people. That's not kosher guys. That's not the way to do it. That's not the way they did it in the Bible. If we're going to say we're Bible-believing Christians and we're going to base our beliefs on the Bible, then we need to acknowledge the fact that the Bible deals with significant debilitating illnesses, some of which are lifelong, and then when the people are healed, there is absolute verification, not because you had to dig a hole in the earth or look under a rock for it, just because it's staring you right there in the face.

One of the biggest miracles, one of the biggest miracles that happened in the New Testament that was not a faith or healing one, but I just use this as a comparison, was the resurrection of Christ.

That was such an important historical, it actually happened, event, that God wanted to make sure that there were many, many, many eyewitnesses of that. It would have been easy for God to say, hey, you take it or leave it.

You know, I raised my son from the dead, took him straight to heaven. You can believe me or not. You can take it or leave it, but he didn't do that. There were eyewitnesses before they could, in Acts 1, select a new apostle to replace Judas Iscariot.

One of the qualifications was you had to have seen the Lord, and one of the problems that Paul was facing early in his ministry is that he was not one of those original disciples that walked with the Lord.

And so Paul, that's why Luke three occasions in Acts gives the recitation of the appearance of the Lord to Paul in his resurrected form to be sure, but he's definitely alive on the road to Damascus.

That was huge. And then when Paul starts talking about the resurrection of the dead over in 1 Corinthians 15, he kind of goes down, not a totalist, but a partialist if the Lord was seen by Peter, and he was seen by James, and he was seen by the women.

And then Paul, this is the only place in the New Testament we have this, Paul said he was seen by 500 brethren at once, of whom the majority are still alive today. In other words, you can go and verify with them.

The majority of those 500 men are still alive, and you can go ask them, did you see the resurrected Lord? So my point is seeking... Looking for, asking for, verification, there's nothing wrong with that at all.

For the resurrection of our Lord, it was critically important. It is not a lack of faith, never was, to seek verification. It's not doubting God, it's just preventing fraud and charlatans from running rampant and running loose out there.

So again, when we go to the scriptures, I'm going to turn to a passage and read it over here in Acts 4, John. And we see a man, and there's many cases like this.

Most of them are like this. We see a man who had been healed. He was the lame man at the gate beautiful in Acts 3. And Peter and John were going to the temple and they saw this man, been there for four decades.

And he was a beggar, didn't have any way to make a living. He was lame, he couldn't walk, so he couldn't get a job, and he couldn't earn a living. And he just lived as a poor person begging.

And when he saw Peter and John about to come in the temple, he asked, will you please give me something? And Peter made that famous statement, silver and gold, have I none? But such as I have, give I thee in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.

This is a lame man. This is not a guy with a leg a quarter and shorter than the other. None of this fraud, charlatan stuff going on. This is the real deal. And when people have all of this charlatan stuff going on, they think they're believing in healing and supporting scripture.

And all they're doing is trivializing the reality of true miracles and healings. This man leaked up and walked and everybody knew it. And it created a great commotion among the religious leaders. Had it been something they could have easily denied or disputed or disproven.

That's the first thing they would have done. But rather, here's what we read in Acts 4 and verse 14. These religious leaders be holding the man which was healed, standing with them, they could say nothing against it.

You know, I laugh at Luke's comment is almost a tongue and cheek comment. It's like they would love to have said something against it. Would have loved to have had something to say against it.

But there's nothing they could say against it. Why not? Because they saw it. They knew him. They had walked in the same temple gate countless times. And you just have to smile and marvel at a true miracle, a true healing.

And you lay that place that up against what we see happening in these carnival shows. They said, but when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council. They conferred among themselves saying, what shall we do to these men for that?

Indeed, a notable miracle, half been done by them is manifest to all that will and Jerusalem and we cannot deny it. There's a biblical miracle, there's a good parameter. Maybe you do have a weak left shoulder and maybe God did heal it and that's great and I would never dispute that.

But those aren't the types of miracles and healings that we see in the Bible. We see really, really critical, serious things and then we have absolute verification. There is no doubt about it when you have even the people

that have everything to lose to admit its validity and yet they have to admit it because it's standing and staring them right there in the face. What's also interesting when you study the backgrounds of many of these people, their origin stories don't really match where they end up and if you can find that history, that's why they want to conceal the history.

They don't want you to know how this all started out. I did this with Brandon, I did this with several others but they have this fantastic story and you go look up the details and none of it's quite true but it's a story worth telling and so back in the days whenever people would go around holding these meetings and people would flock to the, you call it circuses.

That's pretty much what it was like. One of the big meetings that was in Brandon's origin story, they were selling hot dogs and hot dog stands to feed all the people and they had to.

There were so many people there, there weren't restaurants to feed that many people so they had hot dog stands wheeled in from other. Anyway, it becomes a circus and you go to this thing and people who travel so far seeking healing, they were desperate.

Whenever they saw somebody be healed or through positive confession claimed to be healed, that claim was powerful enough for them to go back to their city and tell everyone in the city, hey, I saw this, I witnessed this, that person had positive confession.

Well, over time the mythology grows actually bigger than the stage act and so everybody wants to come see the mythology, they get to be part of the mythology and what's interesting is almost everyone that you study once the mythology surpasses the level of actuality, then they shift towards the mythology because the mythology kind of grows on its own in different ways in the different forms and it takes on a new life and a new stage persona and then they step into what was created not even by them but mostly by the people around them, right?

So one of the, one of the, Most famous healings of William Branham when I left the cult There were people who actually Mentioned this specific event. They said how can you leave? There's healing in this you're not going to find healing if and I always mention the Baptist church for some reason You're not gonna find healing in the Baptist church John and do you remember Donnie Morton?

Well Donnie Morton was a person who made readers digest the mythology had grown bigger than the stage act There was a there was an issue of readers digest published that was called the miracle of Donnie Morton and Because that title on the cover had miracle People assume that it was an actual healing and William Branham ran with it the mythology grew He started claiming that he healed Donnie Morton and Donnie Morton was a child who I can't remember how young but just a little boy and he had spinal men and gytus I believe Only had weeks to live the father came all the way down from says scatch a one I think

Somewhere up in Canada came all the way down to the United States for this healing and The miracle of Donnie Morton was that the father's faith was so steadfast If you read the actual version of the story that's in readers digest it was that the father had faith The boy died and the boy died of the very disease that he came to be healed from Well the mythology out grew William Branham stage act and he started claiming that he actually healed them go read the miracle of Donnie Morton So anybody who can look they can see a cover on the magazine that says miracle

But they don't actually read it to find out wait a minute the boy died He wasn't actually healed But the way it works is once that mythology is established people will step into it and nobody Questions they all turn off critical thinking much like they did in the ancient world whenever the mythologies of Zeus or Poseidon or Whatever other deity formed. This is a deity in its formation these people worship the faith healer and what's interesting John is that people like Dr.

Freeman he Well, he looked himself for verification and when he could find it he used it but then anytime I mean they just cherry pick their way anytime That I or someone else would look for verification. Oh, that's always sinful, you know, you're doubting God, but he he quoted this this famous statement that he picked up Way back in the 60s when he was first charismatic that John G. Lake had 100,000 confirmed Authenticated healings in his church in the Pacific Northwest over a five-year period and you can find I've seen it on your on your

website, John you can find that being propagated In the late in the mid 1960s someone started making at statement, and then as I said earlier today, someone made it after them, then someone made it, then someone made it, then Hobart made it, and then I made the statement, I'd go around and tell my friends, don't you know that John G. Lake, he had 100,000 authenticated healings in five years.

What an idiot I was, why did I say that? Because that's what Hobart said. Why did Hobart say that? Because that's what she said, and he said, and they said. And as you just said, it's not true.

You know, that would be 55 healings per day, every day for five years. And it's not true, but someone started that, and then it just became part of, as I always say, the cult lore and legend.

But then if you ask for, you know, he used that because he thought, well, that's a fact. Plus it's so far back in ancient history, no one could either deny it or prove it.

So I'm safe because it's back in ancient history. Then if you go and ask for a verification, like what Dr. Freeman, I saw you just prayed for such and such to be healed of diabetes, we would like to see the medical report.

Oh, that's the lack of faith, that's unbelief, that's tempting God. You know, they would cast you out of the church for wanting a medical report. But hey, my claim is, look in the Bible.

They were all verified, authenticated. Nothing was done in secret, and nothing was done in the corner. And when people are doing things in secret, or they're doing things in a corner, or they bulk and hesitate, when you ask for verification, let's authenticate this, so that we can really recognize it to be a true miracle, and we can truly glorify God and not have heartedly glorifying, like I want to praise you, Lord, but I don't really know if you did anything or not.

That's where people are. They want to praise God, but did he do anything worth praising him for, or did he not, did the person just not get healed or something? These are just easy, simple parameters that doesn't take any high level education to come up with, you just read in the Bible and say, well, let me just see how are people healed in the Bible, and with anybody healed like secretly in a back chamber, and then nobody ever found out about it later.

No, that's not how it happened in the Bible, so it should not happen that way for us today. It seems to me, if I read the Bible, that the very point, I ace not the only point, let me backtrack, but a significant reason for the healing of the person or the gift of the Holy Spirit manifested with regard to that person was to help that person.

It was not to promote the man in his ministry. And that's where I think things have just gone absolutely haywire and that's why I am much more likely to believe someone a sheep versus a shepherd. The shepherd has everything to gain. The sheep has nothing to gain. They already have a job, a comfortable home. They're not getting paid for what they do and believe anyway. I have a much easier way of looking at it from the sheep's perspective than the shepherd that the sheep is probably telling me the truth if he said, hey, you know,

the Lord showed me such and such and I prayed for such and such and such and such God healed. And it's just all it's not upon the stage. It's not to attract a following. It's not to increase the the offering for that week. It's not to glorify any man or ministry.

If I look out there over the last 70 years of the Charismatic and Pentecostal movement, these guys are up on a stage and if they can get a half of a miracle, they will milk that thing until it runs dry to get the people to follow them and to give them money. And I just don't think that's the reason. I think that's one of the reasons God wouldn't do it through them is because he just knows how people are. He is much more likely to heal somebody, I think, in the quietness of their bedroom and people know they got healed. You know, people definitely know it

because they knew they were sick before. Now they see them healed, but it's simply not a stage act. And when you look at Hobart, as we talked a few weeks ago with his short leg saying, I've been healed and now we've got 20 visions confirming it. And then when I'm healed and it's manifested, the whole body of Christ is going to enter into it. What a circus, you know, what a circus and what arrogance to think that God needs to heal you before he's going to heal these other people that also need healing. It's just a stage act. It's a circus and it's something I think we need to

guard and protect ourselves from. Absolutely. Well, this was fun as well as, you know, the last one I enjoyed talking through this, there's so much, so much here I could probably ran below on for another hour, but I won't. So 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.

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