Positive Confession and the Death of Discernment

Music Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org, and with me I have my co-host, minister, and friend, Cheno Ross, pastor and the voice of the Understanding Scripture and Truth by Cheno D. Ross, YouTube channel. Cheno, it's good to be back and hopefully you had a good time at the gathering. I was unable to attend and actually was spending some time in the hospital, so I was not able this weekend, but hopefully you had a good time and have a lot to talk about today that I think is going to hit some

points that will bring back memories for me that are some good, some bad, some absurd. Well, we certainly miss you, John, this weekend. You're the rock star in the group, believe it or not, or whether you accept it or not, and I just play second fiddle to you. You're the rock star in the group. I wouldn't go that far. I might play some rock here and there, but...

So today we're talking about one of my favorite subjects. I don't know if you've seen the movie. There's a movie by, I think Ricky Gervais is the actor called The Invention of Lying, and it's about this fictional world where nobody has ever, ever told a lie. And Ricky Gervais is, it's somewhat sacrilegious, so it's not that I'm recommending this movie, but anyway, something happens and he realizes that it's much easier to tell somebody the false thing to make them feel better, and he does, and everybody's just, they've never heard a lie before, so everybody believes what he says. It's a good movie in that the one lie cascades

to a bigger lie, to a bigger lie, to a bigger lie, until by the end of the movie, it is so out of control that people are just breaking down his door trying to find out more about this thing that you'd have to see it to understand it, but it is the cascading effect of what happens when you lie. I grew up in a world where my father would, he grilled into me, John, he would say there are two things I hate most in the world, a thief and a liar, and then he had me in this religion that I found was just riddled with lies,

and some of which I knew I could tell that my father had, I, identified uncovered some of these things. So he himself was living in a world of a lie telling me that he hated liars. And yet the whole platform was built on this thing called positive confession, which is literally the invention of lying.

Well, you do remember John that we talked earlier about the Hans Christian Andersen's table of the emperor and his clothes, which is just a, I mean, it was the name and enclavement positive thinking confession movement, you know, 150 years ago or 200 years ago before it ever came where you got these, where you got these crafty, nifty tradesmen who came in and were able to convince the emperor that they could make him some beautiful clothes. And but the moral to it all is if you're not spiritual and wise, you can't see what they're doing. And you can't understand what they're saying. And so no one wants

to be unspiritual or unwise. So you just agree with whatever the man up front is saying. And, you know, they set up their loom and they were going to weave all of his clothes and the emperor looked and his servants looked and they couldn't see a loom. They couldn't see any thread. They couldn't see any needles. But they were about their craft. And, and then they made this beautiful garment and they asked him, stretch out your arms and let us slip this garment on. And he didn't see a garment, but he puts his arms out and they

slip it on. And now he's going to go walk down the street and you can't say that I don't see anything because that would be contrary to the spirituality and the wisdom that you're supposed to have. And it takes a child to say, what's wrong with the emperor? He doesn't have any clothes on. So yeah, we're at another of Hobart's favorite and famous borrow doctrines.

I think this did not originate with him. I will borrow a statement from someone who made a comment on one of the earlier podcasts. It was so good. I will probably always borrow this when it comes to Dr. Freeman. And that person said, if Hobart Freeman ever had an original fault, it would die alonely death. Because this came from, you know, things that were before Hobart, everything Hobart got was non original. He got it from the healing evangelist and the and healing revivals before him. Definitely got it from Hague and definitely got it from Copeland, Jerry Seville, all Roberts, you know, Fred Price, all of these people

that were the name and inclaim it, which you might call for short, PTAC. You can just call it PTAC. People probably have never heard of that. But I just say PTAC or PTAC, positive thinking and confession. That's a mouthful.

to have to always say. So you can just shorten it and say they were a PTAC teacher or PTAC teacher. It was not original to Hobart, but it was definitely a highlight in his ministry. He talked about it all the time. He has lots of messages about it. Even his taped messages that are not about that per se, they could be on a theological topic in the Old Testament. He will find opportunity to work that in. And you know, it's one thing to encourage Christian people to be positive and to be hopeful. It's one thing to try to live in a positive mindset. I mean, I think we all would

agree that we would rather be positive ourselves and we would rather be around people that are positive. The people that aren't, we generally call them a worry ward. You know, they're just always thinking the sky is going to fall down. But you know, it's one thing to to encourage Christians to want to live positively. There's nothing wrong with that. I mean, that is not only biblical. That's just good mental health is to think positively and talk positively, but don't think and speak unrealistically or outside of the bounds of reality. And some people have more to be negative about than other people. So you have to give them a break. They have a lot more

going on in their life that's not very positive. And so maybe sometimes they come across negative. But I think this whole business of being positive, thinking positively and speaking positively, doesn't really for the Christian spring from certain verses in the Bible that say you better say this, you better not say that. I think it would spring from our overall view of the nature of God of his sovereignty, of his power and of his love. And that would tend to make us be positive. If we realize God truly is in control of the universe and of my life. And I do trust him. And he does love

me and he does have the power and he does have the desire to help me. Now that doesn't mean you're never going to be sick or nothing's ever going to go wrong in your life because that's not either reality or what we find in scripture. So it's one thing to encourage people to be positive. It's quite another to turn this into a mechanical doctrine by which you bind people. Those are two different things. When people hear us talking against positive thinking and confession as a message, then they want to attack us and just say, Oh, do you believe in negative things?

in negative confession? No, of course not. But it's not in either or here. It's why do we believe in positive thinking in confession? We're not going to do it in a wrote mechanical fashion that you're trying to tell us to do it. We're going to do it because it springs out of our heart and because most of the time, most of us are feeling positive. And we have good reason to because God is a sovereign God and Jesus is still on the throne. But it's another thing to turn that around and make it into something where if you don't watch out, that one word that you

said, that one sentence that came out of your mouth, that is going to be your ruin for the day or maybe even for your life. And I just want to reiterate, I'm a very positive thinking person.

And in this world that has been created by these religions, it's really hard to separate your mind from the true and the false way of positive thinking. People sometimes merge the two because ministers have merged the two. But if I'm in a boat and we're in a canoe and we're having a race and I've got three people in the boat with me and we're paddling for all that we all that we have in us to win this race, but we're losing. I'm going to say, come on boys, we can do it. We're going to win. And I'm going to be pushing all the harder and they are too. But if that boat were

to get a hole in it and we're in a very rough waters, I would want somebody to say, hey man, we got a hole in our boat. We're probably not going to win this thing. And if the boat fills with water and it's actually sinking, I'm going to say immediately, well, we're not going to win this thing because the boat is now sinking. But the way this religion and this platform of positive confession, positive thinking has developed, you're supposed to look at your sinking boat and everyone in the same boat is supposed to say, we're going to win this race. And the boat's going

down to the bottom of the river until it hits rock bottom of the bottom of the river on its way down under the water. You're still saying, we're going to win this race. And everybody knows that that's not true. So what it is an effect, it is lying. And there are many, many Bible passages against lying. The one thing that I'll say, and you can go listen to Charles, if you want to hear his side of this, but Charles is convinced. And I have come to the same conclusion he has that to brainwash people, one of the true elements of brainwashing in this sect was the positive

confession because if you can make them shut off their critical thinking, just to say, even though this boat is fully underwater, we're going to win this race. If you get people to that level of control, you have brainwash their heads. And by the way, I did see Charles, he did attend the meeting greet and his wife.

So it was good to see him there. We wish you were there, but we had, we had two out of three. Charles and I'll say we had the best two out of the three. We were just missing one who stayed behind.

Yeah, so yeah, and so you guys that are sinking in the boat, guess what? That's going to be called really soon if you can't swim. It's going to be called death. And that's exactly what's happened, John, to so many of these people.

On their way down to the bottom of the lake, they're saying, I'm really don't have cancer, even though my body is eating up with it. I really don't have diabetes, even though that is the diagnosis and I have stopped taking my insulin.

So I now have a hole in my boat. I'm not sinking. I'm not going to die. And unfortunately, you know, so unfortunately, they did die. They did sink. And I don't make fun of any of those people at all. I just, I really don't, you know, I just, I try to tell things as plainly as I can.

Some of the people that I was able to meet at the meet and greet say, you know, you do talk a real, real bolly. You don't hold anything back. And I said, but I hope I'm doing it in the spirit of love and grace. I'm definitely more, I'm more upset with the ministers. I'm not upset with the people at all.

You know, we had people, John, from Texas and Tennessee and Kentucky and Indian and Ohio and Michigan. Those are the states I can think of off the top of my head. And what a, what a great time to get together with people who for, you know, all of these years, literally 40 plus years are the survivors of faith assembly.

And I had not, I didn't, when I walk in the room, I don't know a soul. Of course, they know me because they see our faces in these podcasts, but I don't, I don't know them.

I've talked to or texted or emailed or written to, but I don't know them. And I see them. And I get to meet them. And I go, oh, my word. You guys are just the sweetest people ever. You know, your faith assembly ministers who change your garments and change your dress and walked away and moved to another state for another group. I said, it was their laws. It's not your laws. You haven't lost anything.

It was their laws to give up the most godly Christ honoring people who are hungry for scripture like these people who were kind to me. I'm a total stranger. They don't know me at all. I'm a complete stranger.

And to be as kind and generous and hospitable and warm, I mean, that says a lot about people. And you've been in the groups where everyone is over against the wall, looking sideways out of their eyes and all, you know, bent up and and suspicious. These people weren't like that at all.

So it was my my pleasure to meet them. and my pleasure to get to meet Charles as well. So yeah, PTAC was important enough to Hobart Freeman that he likes to call it a book.

I would call it a very, very small pamphlet. Yeah, you know. But he wrote a book on positive thinking in confession. We always called it the blue book. Positive thinking in confession. How to live victoriously 365 days a year.

Like here's the secret, here's the trick. It's in these three pages. No, it's more than that, but it's not a book. It's just a little pamphlet. And that shows that it wasn't just a side show for Hobart that he would spend the time to put out this little booklet or little pamphlet on it.

And if you looked on his tape list, you'll find all kinds of messages on PTAC, positive thinking in confession. I've copied down just a few of them, just from the faith series. 104 was called confessing faith.

119 was called the vocabulary of faith. 128 was called abiding in our confession of faith. 130 was entitled confessing our possessions. That's a five tape series. And you know, John, you would never guess.

You would never guess what chapter in the Bible, confessing our possessions is based on. It's one chapter, one of the most famous chapters in all of the Bible is Psalm 23. The Lord is our shepherd.

So what he did with five tapes on Psalm 23, confessing our possessions, is turned that psalm into a way by which you could get a new car, you could get a home, you could get new clothes, you could get a new suit.

It was all materialism, confessing our possessions. We possess these according to scripture. So you must confess your possessions in order to possess your possessions. And then one other message was 150 and it was entitled the importance of what we say.

And like I said earlier, it's not just on messages which were specifically devoted to the PTAC subject. You will literally find this brainwashing teaching, ignore reality and jump on board with PTAC positive thinking in confession.

This is simply the way to go. And he tells you all about how to do it in the book, positive thinking in confession. This is how to live victorious 365 days a year. And so heels so many times, especially when he was traveling and he was a guest speaker somewhere else where people didn't know him, so they didn't see him on a regular basis.

And he would say something along this line. He said, you're looking at a person who lives in victory 365 days a year. And you know, of course, in one sense, that can be true if you are a child of God and redeemed by the blood of Christ, you truly are living in victory 365 days a year.

So there's always a sense in which something is true, but there are also many senses in which it is not true. You know, he had the same car wrecks and kidney problems and heart conditions and polio and headaches and theft of his home and theft of business offices.

I mean, he had the same experience as everybody else had, but when you stand up and say, I live and walk in victory 365 days a year. The audience just looks at the person and thinks, wow, you know, they don't have any problems.

And according to Freeman, he didn't have any. They just had invented other terminology, you know, for them a problem was not a problem. They called it a T-R-I-A-L, a trial. They had their own language for things because they were not wanting to deal with reality.

I don't know how many doctors and surgeons and businessmen and insurance agents use our positive thinking and confession, not only to help themselves, but to help others. Like one doctor has it in his reception room, positive thinking and confession.

I know a charismatic, spirit-filled doctors and surgeons that will tell their charismatic, spirit-filled Christian patients that you don't need our treatment if you're willing to trust God like we do. I mean, like the doctors do.

These doctors, I know them personally, some of them. They don't get too many takers, they tell me. I know of at least three insurance agents. I know a four now. That will tell you ass-shurns, ass-shurns.

Spelt with A, not an eye, ass-shurns is the best policy you can get. Like one brother said, in Florida, he said, I'm an agent, I have my own agency. You keep preaching it just like you do.

Come on, that's strong because he said, I sell it, but it's not for a Christian, although they buy it. He said, insurance is for the unbelieving world and the skeptics and daughters in the church.

I was just reading a letter from a couple who have a friend who's an insurance agent, he said, he's getting a lot of opportunities to witness now that he canceled his insurance. There's a fourth one we know of, who got into the Word, who heard the faith tapes or whatever, and saw the end-c- Assistance you, well, lightning rods to paragraph, sub-paragraph B in some insurance policy, being your assurance.

They've discovered that assurance, insurance, and assurance, while they sound similar and not the same thing that insurance can only comfort your survivors and can't help you at all. Assurance is a great comfort to the person who has it.

When I've got a letter here from a Christian banker, I get all sorts of weird mail. From a Christian banker who said, I tell the Christians who come in for loans, they don't need to borrow money from a bank.

He's a banker. If they're willing to trust God like he does. So one of the reasons I wanted people to hear that was he brings in his positive thinking and confession book. He says, as everyone just heard, that doctors and loan officers at banks and surgeons and insurance agents, they're ordering the book.

They keep it on the table out in the waiting room. He said, I've got any number of doctors who believe in PTAC, and they'll treat you, but they won't treat themselves or the children.

He goes on as you hear in the clip there of bankers who will tell you, you don't need to borrow money, you can just claim things by fate. So you don't need to come seeking a loan.

You need to get into this book on positive thinking and confession. So it's no doctors, it's no insurance, it's no bank loans, it's no seat belts, it's no lightning rods, because it's PTAC, positive thinking and confession.

As we know from life and as we know from reality, it's not reality. In Hobart's other little book, aka pamphlet, it was the orange one about faith. He had his famous five conditions for faith that you have to base it on the word of God, then you claim it, confess it, act on it and endure it.

And if I've heard that one time, I've heard it a thousand times, and that is what we call, they hate that we called it that, but it is what we call faith formula theology.

It was divorced from a real understanding of Scripture, and it was divorced from a real understanding of reality. But the third one of those three conditions, based on the word, claim it, the third one is you must be willing to confess it.

And so people, including myself and my young days of ignorance, would go around saying things as you have said earlier, John, that weren't true, but I thought they were true simply because I was saying that they were true.

So you have this nasty you have that going on. This nasty cough going on and people say, are you sick, brother? You say, no, I'm not sick. Well, it serves sounds like you are.

You go again, are you sick? I'm not sick because if what happens, if you say you're sick, then you might get sick. But the problem is you already are sick. So it's too late now to use positive thinking and confession.

And all the times before you actually got sick when you were claiming Psalm 91 and claiming Psalm 103 that you would never get sick, it didn't work because one day you came down with something and you got sick.

And now the next step is to pretend like you're not sick and confess that you aren't sick and act like you aren't sick and endure until you finally are no longer sick. And then you go to church and say, praise God, I just want to give the Lord the glory that the devil tried to put something on me, but I'm healed.

But you went through the seven day crud, just like your neighbor who's not even a believer went through the seven day crud. And at the end of it, he bought his body finally through it all.

And at the end of seven days, your body finally threw it all. So we have a problem here, do we not? I'd say we do. One of the more absurd stories, William Brannum was big into the positive confession, obviously, as all faith healers per se, I hate to use that word faith healers, but that's what they claim to be.

There was this one guy who was in a wheelchair and he was crippled, he was crippled for life. There was no way he was getting out of that wheelchair. And Brannum had boasted of thousands upon thousands of wheelchair patients being healed.

We have members who were in the congregation who were at some of the meetings, watching people come into the line and the elderly would be given a wheelchair so the ushers could push them up and they didn't have to stand in line so long.

So even though he never specifically claimed to have healed their walking, the audience is seeing people rise out of wheelchairs and you know what this does to an audience when they see this. Well, this one guy who actually was a wheelchair patient who never again would walk, who never again did walk for the rest of his life until he died.

Brannum said, one of these days, brother, you're gonna say the right thing. And when you do, you'll rise up out of that wheelchair. And so this guy went to his grave thinking that someday he's gonna say something out of his mouth that's gonna make him instantly healed, which will never happen.

But don't think about him. Don't think about the nonsense, Brannum said. Think about all... of the people who are around him who aren't in this cult, who he uses this positive confession and says, one of these days, I'm going to say something and whatever it is that I say, I don't know what it is yet. It's going to instantly heal my body and I'm going to rise up out of this thing. The people think this guy is a fool, man. And rightfully so, what I'm headed with this is, I was in the positive confession faith. I believe this

whole thing, hook line and sinker, I did positively confess to people who weren't in the cult. And I remember them raising that eyebrow. You'll never forget it when it first happens to you. You will always remember when they raised that eyebrow and you're suddenly faced with a thought, wait a minute, what I said is really stupid and I can see in their face that they don't believe it. It's really stupid. And you either try to convince them that your positive confession is true or you realize that you're just going to hit a brick wall because you yourself inwardly know there's a problem here. And I think

deep inside, whoever's in this positive confession thing, I think deep inside, under all of that programmed indoctrination, they know it's wrong, but they still say it. That brings two things to my mind, John. One, how we would all like to go back and apologize to those people years ago and say, you were right and I was such a fool. And the second thing it reminds me of is we would all like to go back and get a refund, get a financial refund from all of these people. Hobart Freeman, Brandon included who deceived us. You know

how Hobart went about this and it wasn't hit unique to him. He got it from the guys before him is he went looking through the Bible. Let's break this down a little. He went looking through the Bible to find the words say or say it or said to show that you must confess these things. Their most favorite and famous verse is Mark 1123, who so ever shall say to this mountain, depart and be cast into the sea and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things that he sayeth shall come to pass. He shall have whatsoever

he sayeth. And it was that sayeth that was always emphasized. We have one say and two sayeths in Mark 1123. And I can remember as I was being trained in this in my teenage years and in my early 20s, then as I would read the Bible, you know, those words with all of a sudden start standing out to me. And so you would have the case of the centurion in the gospel accounts with his servant. The centurion, a Roman military leader had come and it told Jesus I've got a six servant. And would you heal him?" And Jesus said, yes, he said, I will come. I will come to your

house. I will come to your place. And I will heal him. And the centurion said, look, he said, I'm a man under authority. I have people over me. I am an authority. And I have people under me. And I will say to one, go. And he will go, come. Another will come. Do this. And they'll do it. He said, I recognize you're a man of authority. And all you have to do is to say it. All you have, you don't have to come. You don't have to lay hands. There's no anointed cloth required. Nothing is required. But

for you to say, if you will speak the word only, then my servant will be healed. And of course, that's what Jesus did. He spoke the word only. And that's exactly the result. His servant was healed.

So we would see these places in Scripture. And they would tell us, here is the power of what? The spoken word. And I think that's William Brannum's publication, spoken word, publication, spoken word, ministries. It is that spoken word. And so once you see a few examples, then you're finding more examples. And so then you find the woman with the issue of blood in Mark five, where there was a crowd around Jesus. She had this issue of blood for a long time. And she wanted to be healed. And we read in Mark five that she said that she said, if I can just touch the

hymn of his garment, then I will be healed. She did. And she was. And so I've heard my share of messages on that. That's the power of the spoken word. She said, you can't just sit there and think, you can't just believe you can't wish. She said, you have to speak it out loud. You have to say it out loud. And you do. That's their belief. This is not done in your mind mentally or quietly.

You must speak these things out loud. The interesting story, however, with the woman with the issue of blood is if you read Matthew's account of it in Matthew chapter nine, what she said were told by Matthew, she said within herself. In other words, she didn't say anything verbally. She didn't say anything out loud. It was a thought that she said. And she said it within herself. So, you know, we are tricked by these ministers into following this line of reasoning. Hobart has his famous blue book on PTAC. But let me tell people who are longtime faith assembly followers and Hobart

Freeman followers. Let me tell them an interesting story that they might not know. I didn't know until recently. And how I found out was through one of the former tier one faith assembly ministers, and that was Jim Brennan.

There were two brothers, Joe and Jim Brennan, who were long, long time members of faith assembly back to glory barn days, and they were hard-nosed Freemanites. Joe passed away about a year ago. Jim is no longer a Freemanite, but they continued years after Freeman died teaching Hobart Freeman doctrine thoroughly and hard to everyone.

So I say that as a background that Jim, who is an acquaintance of mine to this day, I mean we've spoken in the last year and last year, that Jim was not a critic of Dr. Freeman or anything by any means.

He was a loyal follower and adherent of what Dr. Freeman taught. And so it was Jim himself who told me this story, and he told me face to face. We're four feet away, three feet away from each other, as I'm hearing this story, because we were talking about Dr. Freeman's book on positive thinking and confession.

And Jim said to me, you know what, you know, he said, I came across, this was early 1970s, I came across an interesting booklet, book, pamphlet, newsletter, something on positive thinking and confession that maybe at that time, I doubt Jim believes this to this day, but at that time sounded interesting to him.

You know, that's end of Jesus movement, that's Kenneth Hagen, Kenneth Copeland, that's name and enclaim it, that's all of this stuff, word of faith, W-O-F happening. So it was interesting to Jim. So guess what?

He gave that booklet or pamphlet to Dr. Freeman. And he said, within a matter of a couple of months, here comes Dr. Freeman's book, positive thinking and confession. So you know, we kind of call that plagiarism, we kind of which is, you know, academic fraud.

That's what we call that. It's, you know, intellectual embezzlement to have just picked up this little pamphlet that probably done by a no name person, so no one will ever know. I don't know who did it, no one will ever know if you kind of take the gist of that.

And that's what Jim said. He said what was in Hobart's book was what you actually originally found in this pamphlet before. So yet another historical tidbit, in fact, coming from someone who was a died in the wool, Freemanite, and Freeman follower.

So he had no reason to try to make Dr. Freeman look bad in any way. He was a loyal adherent of everything. Here's... a tidbit of factual information that that book, or booklet that Dr. Freeman wrote, was not original with him in any sense of the word.

As I've said all along, I don't think very many of these things were. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website, William-Brandham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, 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.

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Positive confession, as I said earlier, it's one of the key manipulation tools for brainwashing. If you can convince the people to say something they know is not true, then you have full control of their head.

We'll take that to the next level. Somebody outside says something that is destructive, that can be critically against the group or its theology, and they see it as destructive in their heads. They will start attacking it in the same way that they attack whatever is said about the positive confession.

So people have, they often ask me whenever they encounter one of these groups, why are they get so upset whenever you tell them some little thing that's off with their theology? Why don't they just say, oh, let me look at that.

Let me see if it's right or wrong. Instead they want to attack. They want to attack whoever is speaking. It's because of that positive confession mindset. They're attacking the human who is giving them something, the inoculation for their false doctrine or whatever, in the same way that they would the doctor who's giving them medicine for whatever they're confessing they don't have.

And we've talked about this before, John, that you can hardly get through to these people. It was one of my biggest frustrations 40 years ago in trying to talk to Hobart, where I got to the point, well, he died, so that was in the talking to Hobart, but even trying to talk to anyone else that was related to it, connected to it, not on your life.

I mean, you're just, you're just almost wasting your time. And I can genuinely say that this is not the way I taught my church, and this is not, I didn't teach them this to close your mind to anything anybody says.

What I said. is you may have the right opinion or you may think or we may think that we have the right opinion or the right doctrine on something, but that's never a reason not to listen to the other side.

And I always use the argument either they will convince you that you are wrong or you will be unable to convince them that they are wrong and you'll be confirmed in your own belief.

So it's a win-win either way. But I think where this, you know, this continued to, you know, by looking at all these passages where, you know, Moses spoke to the rock or Moses did this or Joshua did that or Elijah did that, we're looking at all these passages where these people said things.

And so as this theology just developed over time, then I think rather than just being kind of something humorous like, oh, you say you aren't sick, but we know you are, you know, a big deal that doesn't really do any harm, it began to develop into something that was I think completely unbiblical, probably even heretical.

And that was when they evolved to the point of teaching their congregation that words actually have power within themselves, that somehow words actually have power. Or if you just say, hey, let's all think positively and speak positively, I don't have any problem.

Paul said in Philippians 4, 8, finally, my brethren and he gives this list if they're good, lovely, just of a good report, think on these things. Yes, I mean, that for general advice, let's think positively and let's speak positively.

But you can't do that in any slavish fashion because sometimes people have very good reason not to be thinking positively and not to be speaking positively. And rather than shoot that down, you need to be able to reach the person and help them administer them to them in whatever state they are.

But when it reached this stage of saying that words have power, and I can remember people like Kenneth Copeland was just the worst on that. Jerry Sevelle was just the worst and Jesse Duplantis and all of that W.O.F. group, where I mean, they had as much Bible knowledge as my cat has.

And they would go to there, that's one of my harsh statements. I need to dial that back, people let me speak to you really don't even. No one has to guess where you're coming from, do they?

No, they have more Bible knowledge in my cat, for sure. So that was a hyperbolic statement, that is hyperbole a statement made for point of emphasis. So they will take you back to the Genesis narrative and say, now how did everything come into being?

God said. Let there be light, and God said, and God said, and God spoke the world into existence. And God did. That's the whole point. He did, and we're not Him. But they have this real weird little God's theology that maybe we'll talk about in another podcast, and you probably have already dealt with this, John.

That's a whole nother area. But in one sense, not a whole nother area, it's connected to this where they're saying, well, look, God just speaks the word and things happen. And yeah, you're right.

He does. And you know where you're wrong is we're not God. We're just human beings. So for them to say words have power, that's not true. That is something heretical. Words don't have power.

Words are just words. Words are just words. And you're not going to create something by speaking it into existence. Can God create something by speaking it into existence? He certainly can, and he certainly has.

Let me give you an example. One of the earliest examples I heard from Dr. Freeman. So it would be on the faith series. That's the first few five or six tapes in the so-called faith series.

And that's what you were supposed to get into early, so that you knew how to base your faith on the word, claim the promise, confess the promise, act on the promise, and endure until you receive the promise.

So that's faith formula theology 101 for Hobart Edward Freeman. And when I was 17 years old and I first heard a tape, I heard this story. There's an old couple in bed one night, country farmhouse.

The wind is lightly blowing outside. There's a little bit of a breeze outside, and they are retiring for the evening. And as they lay down in bed to go to sleep, the old man, the husband, the farmer said, you know, I'd like to open the windows.

You know, let's keep the windows open. Let's open the windows. And that'll be for a great night's sleep. This is a story that Hobart told that he said really happened. And the wife, who was, you know, she's the worry ward of the family.

She's the negative minded and negatively speaking one. She said, oh, no. Oh, no, we can't have the window open. If we have the window open, you know, I'll always get this, this group, this call, if I get this congestion, no, we can't do that.

And he said, no, I wanted to have the windows open. And she said, oh, it's going to make me miserable. You know, I'll wake up sick tomorrow if you open the windows, don't open the windows.

And he said, I want the windows open. So it's dark and he gets out of bed and he goes over there and fumbles around and opens what? He thinks of the windows and they go to bed and they wake up the next morning and he gets up out of bed, stretching and yawning and saying, what an awesome night, sleep I had because that wonderful outdoor breeze blowing through in the fresh air and the wife is over on the other side of the bed, coughing and wheezing and saying, see, I told you, if you open the windows at night,

this is what I have to deal with. And it wasn't quite sunrise yet and they did their little fussing back and forth until there was enough daylight and they got up out of bed and turned and looked and realized that he had just opened the indoor shutters but he had never actually opened the window.

The window had stayed closed all night. And so the moral of the story is he got a great night sleep by breathing all of that fresh outdoor air and she got sick by breathing all of that outdoor air and it wasn't even a reality.

The window had never been opened. It was their positive thinking and confession that kept him healthy and it was her negative thinking and confession that made her sick. When I heard that story, I thought, I was amazed but I didn't know where he was going with the punchline and when he got to it, then that convinced me being a dumb and young and gullible teenager that there is that much power in just what you think and in just what you confess enough to heal one person and make another person sick.

And right along with that, I don't think people who are in the positive confession realize how much their positive confession hurts people around them who aren't in that mindset. Whenever I believe something that I know other people don't believe, a lot of times I'll just keep it to myself because A, I might be wrong, I might need to re-evaluate it.

I don't want them to know if I believe in something wrong but B, it might be something that affins them. People in the positive confession mindset because of the way that they're indoctrinated, it's like boasting, yes, I'm missing this leg but it's gonna grow back, it'll grow back tonight.

You just watch, you say these things to people and then you're supposed to be, I don't know, you're supposed to be offended if they don't believe you so you want to fight with them.

That's essentially how you're programmed. Well, the people who are around you who don't believe this, they're offended by it and they are some often hurt because they don't know why you're acting like this.

They have no idea. And that mindset, it creates friction and divisions and families that should never be. So this, ultimately, if you take it all the way to- to its root. This is a doctrine of divisions more than it is a doctrine of healing.

Yeah, I've never looked at it as a doctrine of division, but from what you just said, that's definitely true, John, because this message created a new world and sub-culture, you know, did it not of coded language and forbidden words. And so when you first, yeah, I mean, to what you, to your point, to what you just said, when you come into the group, for the first time, let's say someone shows up at the glory barn or at the new building for the first time and, you know, join, become a member, is hard on the new members.

They're always being corrected, you know? The early people, the young people, the new members are always being corrected. You find it really difficult to evangelize those outside the group, and, but to be in the group in good standing, you have to use the terminology that is part of the group. I call it cult jargon. It's, it's group specific. It's terminology that is group specific.

And it varies from cult group to cult group, but it is definitely cult jargon. It's, it's normally not that normal of a statement or an idea or a word or a concept. And so that does make it very difficult for people to pick up and to follow. And, and it, and it creates this, you know, this anxiety in new members, am I saying things the right way? Because God knows if you don't say it the right way, you are definitely going to be called out for it. Now, maybe in a loving way, but you will definitely be called out for this, a brother. You know, you can't make a confession

like that. And you didn't even know what you had done wrong. You know, but just because you said, you know, the baby was coughing and I was up a long time last night. Oh, don't, don't confess any sickness on your baby or don't confess any, you know, lack of sleep on yourself. Even though both of those were a reality, the baby was sick and you lack sleep. You know, they warn you against those things. And so it's, and we could also call it, and I've called it, it's coded language. It is cult jargon that is coded language. So let me give you a couple of examples of this. How about

the fact that you can never get a straight answer out of anybody, at least at faith assembly, in response to the simple question, hey brother, sister, how are you today? You can never get a straight answer. And it took me a while to realize that you, you can't ask someone that.

You just can't ask, how are you doing today? You would get God's word is true and God's true to his word. Invariably, you'd get... that or something similar. God's Word is true and God's true to His Word. And it's like, I realize God's Word is true. That's called an airancy. I realize that God is true to His Word.

That's called His immutability. I'm not asking for anything theological. I'm asking for your welfare, for your wellbeing right now. How are you doing today? Well, they can't say that anything's wrong. So what they have to say when you keep pressing is, well, I'm experiencing a trial. And we think of trial like courtrooms and attorneys and prosecutors and defense. We think of that as a trial. But trial became one of the most famous, largest words that faith assembly. And a trial simply meant, it's coded language for there is a reality which I can't say.

So the reality that I can't say, I can call this, brother, I'm going through a trial. Now, the trial could be the baby. It could be you lost your job. It could be your wife wasn't submissive enough to you yesterday. It could be you lost that promotion. You were hoping to get it work. It could be the washing machine stop working. But whatever it was, everything was reality. Nothing was reality. Everything was a trial. And here's another one. Yeah, that brother just missed it. Missed it. You just think about this. If you're part of the cult, you know exactly

what all these words mean. If you're not, you don't miss it. We normally think of maybe target practice that when he fired, he missed it. That's what I would think of as someone said, well, that brother missed it. You know, miss the exit or miss the target or miss the deadline.

No, missed it was cult language for they sent and maybe sent pretty badly. And how they missed it would be, see, they have a trial. So they have a trial. And the next step is they missed it.

And how they missed it was they went to the arm of the flesh. Now you have to interpret all of this. A normal person, a Lutheran, a Baptist, a Presbyterian that walks into this, they're clueless.

They talked to the brother, how are you doing? He said, well, I had a trial, but I missed it. And I went to the arm of the flesh. That translates into I was sick and I sinned by going to a doctor.

Why didn't you just say that? Why didn't you just say I was sick and I sinned against God because I went to the doctor. No, the coded language has to be used. I had a trial. I missed it and I leaned to the arm of the flesh. And so you just have created all of this subculture cult terminology.

And yes, John, it makes people feel very proud that we've learned the He called jargon and we're pretty good at it and we're good at beating other people up who don't know the cult jargon.

When in fact, if you would just speak the way a normal human being speaks, like Paul, for instance, of all people, Paul, he didn't say, well, trophemous was having a trial. He said, I left trophemous, sick.

S-I-C-K, a lefting sick at another city. And whenever he gets over his sickness, he'll be with me or do whatever he's gonna do. For some reason, Paul didn't see that it was necessary to use any of this cult jargon.

He just said things the way they were. And that's a problem with cult terminology. Not that there aren't words that are specific to Christianity, I'm not saying that, but let's don't invent more words than are necessary to our religion.

And these are just inventing words that are not necessary. Just say I was sick and according to my belief, I sinned grievously against the Lord and I went to a doctor instead of, I had a trial and I missed it and now I'm leaning to the arm of the flesh.

So this is my episode for movies. There's another movie by Jim Carrey. Jim Carrey's the main actor called Liar, Liar. And something happens and he can never tell a lie. It's one of my favorite movies.

He gets the, you know what, beat out of him for telling the truth everywhere. Well, one of the problems that you have, if you're in this type of religion and I'm gonna warn the people who have escaped, when you have lived positive confession and then you realize how wrong it is, well, the opposite of that is to just open up and tell the truth.

And I, there was a time, I think it might have been, I think you called me on that same day, but I was having one of the worst days ever. Everything that I touched went wrong.

I was having, I had two people in the hospital, one person had died, I had a vandal who had beaten out my wife's car windows or a car. Everything, every single thing was hitting me.

And somebody called me and said, how are you doing? Well, even in mainstream Christianity, the common positive confession word that is used by mainstream Christianity is all as well. Well, I can't do this anymore, man.

I lived in positive confession, all was not well. So I started opening up and I realized that after about 20 minutes, I still probably had 20 minutes of things that went wrong to tell.

And I could tell the person who was listening, he didn't want to hear more. I was just ruining their day too. So the point I'm trying to make is, don't unload everything, hold a few things back because you will make a fool of yourself and the person who's listening to you might tell you like, I think this person may have told me this, you may need to go see a counselor, John.

You have an awful lot going wrong with you, which is probably true. But there's balance, I guess is what I'm trying to say. There's balance to it. If you go to the positive confession extreme, you're just lying.

All is well, my friend. Or if you go to the other side, you can just really unload and you can ruin somebody's day. And I realize I don't want to ruin somebody's day. So I just say, and I'm going through a little bit, it'll get better.

That's usually my standard answer now. So I would just recommend that the people be careful with the way their ministers use scripture. Proverbs 6.2 was probably Hobart's favorite one. They all aren't snared with the words of thy mouth.

And he just thought that was a great verse to use. If you read the verse before it and the verse after it, you can, you'll realize right away. That's absolutely horrific taking of a verse out of his context.

It has to do with loaning money to someone, getting yourself in a position that you should not have gotten yourself into. In other words, practice some wisdom and discernment. It's nothing about positive thinking and confession.

They had a doctrine. This is what I've always said. They had a doctrine. Then they search the scriptures to find verses to back it up. And then they pull those verses by scissors and paste out of context, move them to a new location, inserted that text in their message.

And everyone knew thou art snared with the words of thy mouth. So that woman who was in bad, who was snared with the words of her mouth, I'm making a negative confession. That's why she got sick the next day.

I don't even believe the story that he told. Honestly, I don't even believe that story at all. He either made it up or someone who told him the story had made it up. So what this does, John, in conclusion here is if this positive thinking, positive confession, message, it leaves no room for Christians just to be able to speak and live and think and act normally.

They're afraid. They're taught to be afraid over being afraid. They're taught fear over, don't ever use the word fear. One of the big verses I can remember all the Hagenites and Copelandites using was back in Job.

And they said the reason Job had all of his problems was Job 325. He said the thing I greatly feared has come upon me. And because of that negative confession and negative thinking, that's why Job had all of his problems.

But that's not true. That's a verse out of context. That's not true if you read chapters 1 and 2. Job was such a perfect and such a righteous man. And it were told in chapter 2 that he did not sin with his lips.

He was a great man. And God simply allowed Satan to test him for a while. the origin of his misery and trials had nothing to do with what he said or thought. And I can remember John, and after hearing all of these things from Hobart that you can't say this and can't say that, I'd repassages in the New Testament, definitely in the Old, but even in the New, where I think it's in 2 Corinthians 11, where Paul said, I fear that as Eve was deceived, you Corinthians may be deceived.

He said, I fear, and I can remember reading that, because I know I couldn't say I fear, could you ever say I fear anything? You weren't allowed to say that. That's a negative confession.

And so in my young mind, the only way I knew to deal with that is somehow, and this is where it was headed and where it kinda ended up is somehow, I guess we're better than Paul, that we have a revelation in this end time message of faith that's a higher revelation of faith than Paul had.

Because you better believe Hobart would have never said, I fear, because that would be a negative confession as soon as you make it, words have power, you've opened the door to the devil, to his demons, your life, something bad is gonna happen to you.

But as I progressed in my early Christianity, I came to realize that I think Paul knows more than Hobart Freeman or William Brandham or me. I'm gonna have to trust Paul more than any of them, and Paul didn't fear, there was anything wrong in 2 Corinthians 11, I think it's verse two, to say, I fear that as Eve was deceived, so will you be deceived?

Because Paul's living in reality, he said, I have this fear that if you don't make changes in your approach to matters, you can be deceived by Satan as Eve was deceived. So what we all experience in life is not an illusion, it's a reality, and it won't go away just because you say the right thing for the long enough period of time.

It's a whole freedom, I think, for people who've been in PTAC, positive thinking and confession, it's a whole freedom to realize, God expects you to have the normal thought processes, the normal reaction to feel the normal emotions.

I mean, these people were so robbed of reality that when a person would die and they would bury them, it's almost like you couldn't cry, you couldn't mourn, you couldn't feel anything, because that would somehow be an admission that this person is dead and buried and gone.

So it's just robbed of people of so many things. It is a false message. In my opinion, it is not a biblical message. It is definitely not. And the bottom line for me is, if the boat is sinking, get out of the boat. Thank you so much for doing this. Amen, brother. Thank you.

If you 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 new apostolic reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, Available in Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.