Trinitarian vs. Oneness: The Cult War for the Nature of God

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research at William-Branham.org and with me I have my co-host, minister and friend, 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 to today talk about something that fascinates both of us as we were just discussing before we started recording.

It's something that I think everybody should be addressing. Nobody does in the Branham cults. It's the elephant in the room. After you leave the Branham cults, it's funny because historians they will take a one-sided view of one simplistic version of William Branham stage persona and they try to understand it all through that version. But today we're going to be talking about the Trinity which is going to anger half of the crowd who's watching especially if you're from the Branham, we have people who are Branhamites who watch the show just so that they can send us angry comments. Well this one is going to give you

an abundance of angry comments to send us and that's you know that's a side story. You can watch the show as it happens through the comment feed and each are popcorn as it happens etc. But for those in the crowd who are historians or those who are familiar with the way that Branhamism has been presented to you and the way that Branham, Branhamism would have been presented to Hobart Freeman. I want to read you this quote. So William Branham comes to the stage. He's getting ready for his big sermon or speech and what he liked to do when he

would go to these divine healing campaigns is he liked to claim that he had the supernatural authority over spirits and he would say things like I take every spirit in this building under my control and the the crowd is just awed. Well as he starts to do this and as he starts his opening prayer he says and now there are some sitting here who are feeble this morning that's in need of physical healing and we've chosen a few words to read from Dine and May the Holy Spirit the third person of the Trinity come in now the promise

the comforter that you said you would send. So if you're historian and you have been taught falsely that William Branham was a oneness Pentecostal minister. You have to understand that William Brandham had multiple stage personas each that shifted and changed depending on his audience. I've had ministers who were there when William Brandham was ousted from from some of his healing campaigns because he would go to one building and he would say that anybody who uses the word persons of the Trinity has taken the mark of the beast. It comes from Catholicism. They're going to hell. He would say things like this, then he would go to another building and

he would say things like I just read to you where he's saying, Father send the Holy Spirit the third person of the Trinity and he would say this not just one instance throughout and even baptize in the name of the three persons of the Trinity. So when he's speaking to a oneness Pentecostal, he is oneness to the fullest and that's where he makes his money. When he goes to the Trinitarian side, he doesn't want to lose that money. So he is becoming a Trinitarian and taking their money too. So with that, I'll open up. Here is the

podcast on the Trinity. Good deal, John. I knew that that William Brandham spoke out of both sides of his mouth. I want to accuse Hobart of that. What I'll accuse Hobart of is he was terribly confused about the Trinity and the Godhead.

He was left of center less than Orthodox in his understanding of the Trinity. He had a favorite definition. I haven't found it anywhere else. So I'm going to assume that it's his own and it is a blending of his Baptist and brethren Orthodox conservative historical background and his post receiving the Holy Spirit in March of 1966, charismatic understanding that came through his influence by the ministry of William Brandham, even though Brandham's dead by that time, and the oneness people around him. Hobart did have a lot of UPC by that. We mean the United Pentecostal Church, which is an historic oneness

denomination, but Pentecostal. He had a lot of those ministers and a lot of those people around him. There were a lot of them in Northern Indiana where he was. So he would, he gave this definition and he was so proud of it. And we've all given definitions for things. And definitions are good because they let your audience know how you understand the concept or the word you're about to mention. And so you give the word and then you give a definition. I'm fine with definitions. I've given tons of them, but I don't remember, you know, probably any

of them that I've given, you just give them in the context of that teaching go on. But proof of the fact that this was maybe his favorite of all definitions is that he said.

thousands of times and proof of that also is that anybody who sat under Dr. Freeman's ministry could probably recite this. It's a very concise, very small definition. Almost anyone could recite it and his definition of the Trinity went like this. That God is one divine spirit eternally manifested as Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Now, he would normally preface that by saying something along the line of, God's not what you think he is, God's not what the denominations teach he is, God is who he reveals himself to be in Scripture. Well, that's not a great revelation.

All truth is whatever God has revealed in Scripture. Hobart obviously felt that no one had seen in Scripture how God actually revealed himself. So as we get into this, we'll see that he had disputes with the Trinitarians and he had a dispute with the Oneness people. So if you're not three and not one, it only leads to maybe your tuness, but he wasn't that either. I don't think he really knew what the Trinity was. He definitely could not teach a healthy message on it, because in a different way than William Brown, he talked out of both sides of his mouth.

So we'll return to this definition later, but people can chew on it meanwhile. That God is one divine spirit eternally manifested as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And I think, John, what made me decide to say, hey, let's go ahead and address this in one full podcast was you just recently found a survivor from the David Herald cult. And you had her on. And I heard that interview you did with her. And I don't think a lot of people are familiar with who David Herald, David Herald was.

But here, this is, you know, the classic book that was printed back in the mid 1970s in 1975 by a professor of history down in Alabama actually printed by Indiana University Press, printed in Indiana and by Indiana University Press. But you see here's the famous halo picture over William Brannum. And here's R. W. Shambok. And then right over here is a picture of David Herald. And if you go to the center of the book, you can find full pictures of these. And I've given those so that people can, you know, see on the big screen what I'm just showing here by

holding up in my hand. So I thought maybe following on the heels of that interview that you did with that lady would talk about this. And what I found interesting because I did not know hardly anything about the.

ministry. I just didn't really know much about David Terrell at all. I knew he was there in the 60s and in the 70s. And according to this young lady, he lived to be a ripe old age. So he's not even been dead that many years. But you know what, I found interesting, what I found very interesting. And I'm sure the other people that listened to that interview with this lady found the same thing were the those cult distinctives that faith assembly people think just we believe those like anti holidays, anti all denominations, anti fellowshiping with

any other Christians, manifested sons, women's dress, women can't wear pants, all of those. And we talked about a lot of these in our podcast, all of those little distinctives that faith assembly members, I can guarantee you thought that's what God had revealed to us. You know, these are the things we believe they have no idea that this is all borrowed from these movements that came before.

So she was she was just like a textbook example of someone with exception to Terrell's view on the Trinity, who would easily could have been inserted right into faith assembly and fit just fine because it's his same legalism, legalistic attitude. It's the same authoritarian, austere, prophetic minister. He would even prophesy in poetry. He had he was known as a prophet.

Gordon Lindsey said he was a prophet. A lot of his contemporary said that David Terrell was a prophet. And I just found her interview to be it's just so confirming of what we are saying throughout all of these that they have a common thread. And it's just grandchildren of someone who came before. But as I have tried to explain for the followers of Hobart Freeman, I know those people fall. This is God's minister. And somehow God had revealed to this one man all of these unique, distinctive, particular items. And that is just not true. He hijacked them from all the people

or from many of the people that came before him. He just he took them over, did not give people credit, acted as though these were his own, maybe made a few tweaks in them, definitely found scriptural backings for everything and had already taught the people. But it's in the Bible, you know, we're bound to believe it. And I've always said every doctrine and every call, if you want to, you can find a verse that says what you needed to say in the Bible. That's just the nature of how big the Bible is. And it's just the nature of religious calls that they will

highlight a particular verse to the neglect of everything else. And I saw also How this woman who gave a great testimony and was so forthcoming in everything, explained that whenever she went away to college, I guess she would say she kind of entered a backslidden state.

And I've seen that's the exact same path that so many faith assembly people took. Once your bedrock of your cult group is destroyed and gone, then you go out and not only do things that would have violated your cult teaching, but are also contrary to scripture as well.

Because you don't know the difference. You don't know. I was taught all this stuff. What's biblical and what's not. And so people go out there and live their life. And thankfully for God's people, the Holy Spirit always rescues them sooner or later.

And then they're able to understand, well, here were the things that I was taught that were wrong and here were the things that were right. And so one of those things that she brought up was the fact that Terrell was a oneness person and he preached that very strong.

We'll come back to how she deconstructed that view later. But that's what made me say, hey, let's go ahead and talk about the Trinity on our next interview. So much here that we could probably talk five times about this and not even skim the surface.

And I'm going to be full of quotes in this one because this one, like I said, it fascinates me. And there's a reason why it does, which I'll get into later. But as I said, most historians who talk about William Brannum, they say he was a oneness been a costal.

He preached oneness doctrine. And some of them who do know the history, they'll say, well, he was, he was trainitarian in the early years and later he converted to oneness been a costalism. That's how they'll try to explain this way and what both historians and cult members are doing.

They're both trying to take a person who has no theology, who is completely purposefully contradicting so that his sense of it, yeah, and try to make sense of it. That's what they're trying to do.

So I read you that where he's praying to the Trinity. Let me read you. And that was early on. That was like 1951, I believe. So in 1964, this is William Brannum in a sermon called Broken Sisters, Broken Sisters.

He says, he come in a Trinity, he being God. He come in a Trinity father, son, holy ghost. 1961, just three years earlier, and after he prayed to the Trinity, he said, trainitarianism is of the devil.

I say that, thus say it the Lord. So he just stated that he had the doctrine of devils. But what this ended up to be, William Brannum, because he had no theology, and he was reading from all of these extra biblical and anti-biblical sources, he found that if he could come up something that sounded just a little bit different than mainstream Christianity.

The itching ears would have more in the offering baskets. That's what he was doing. And let me read you to you this quote, which is, I believe in from everything that I have studied, I believe that this is the foundational doctrine of the Trinity that Brannem taught and Hobart picked up on.

In one sermon, he's preaching an Easter sermon the year before his death in a sermon entitled it is the rising of the sun. So picture this. Everybody's there. They're coming to hear about God and the resurrection, basically the most wonderful thing in the gospel to anybody who's sitting in there.

And William Brannem says this, the Spirit left him in the Garden of Gethsemane. He had to die a man. Remember friends, he didn't have to do that. That was God. God anointed that flesh, which was human flesh.

And if he didn't, if he went up there as God, he never would have died that kind of death. You can't kill God, but he had to do it. That's it is the rising of the sun.

And then more specifically, he nails it down here. This is probably where Hobart picked it up. And this is 1952. So in the range of Trinitarian oneness all over the place, this is like right smack dab in the middle.

Brannem said, he was the divine one God manifested in flesh, scene of angels preached on, received up to the heaven sitting at the right hand of the Father. Certainly he was God. He was more than a man.

He was God man. He was man in the flesh, but he was God in the Spirit. That's what he was. God coming down to suffer temptation and martyrdom to take a sense on himself that he'd passed on to the human race.

So what he's doing here, if you understand William Brannem's theology and also his sources, he's preaching from different Bibles, then we would call these heresy translations. Blanda translation is one of them. Blanda translation taught that Jesus was not fully divine, that he was a human.

And it was a good supportive text for those who wanted the idea that this manifested sons of God, Jesus was the most powerful manifested son of all time until the end of days, then God would manifest himself again as a manifested son of God.

But it brought into the equation this God man doctrine. And this, if you look at any of the people who rose to have very destructive cults where people worshiped their leader as a God, this is exactly where it came from.

And that is the version that Hobart Freeman chose for his cult. And you mentioned. here in the very beginning of year, which you said there that William Brannum had a sermon entitled Broken Sisters.

Yeah, well, Hobart had a sermon in title that too. You know, I don't, Hobart never realized that years later, people would be doing research on all of this. And because he had heard so many William Brannum messages on cassette tape back in the late 60s, especially in the early 70s.

He had heard so many of those. And not everybody in his congregation was familiar with William Brannum. So you could use William Brannum stuff. You could even entitle your sermons the same. You could take quotations and just say them as though they were your doctrine and believed.

And no one would know that you had plagiarized. They would have no idea. But here we are of 75 years later, however, many years later at 55 years later and we can look back and we can document some of this.

And I knew early on that Freeman was influenced by William Brannum in this particular doctrinal area. I knew he was influenced because he talked about and we'll do this on another podcast so we can compare the actual California's going to fall into the ocean kind of stuff.

There's tons of that that are on Hobart's tapes and I knew that he got that from William Brannum because occasionally he would let slip. Not on every tape, but occasionally he would say, you know, that's what William Brannum prophesied.

Then all the other times he'll just say, well, God has already revealed his sermons that California's going to fall into the ocean. He wouldn't tell you which sermon he had revealed it to, but you knew I knew because I'd heard the early messages and I knew the source of that.

And so I knew when he's always talking about William Brannum and then as a few years went on, then he would begin to say, now William Brannum got off at the end of his life.

You know, he was totally orthodox, kosher, up until the end of his life and then he got off and believed in serpent seed and some other weird stuff. But I still believe he was God's prophet and he'd say, you can quote me on that.

So there were so many things that he held to and Brannum's teaching, as you've just shown everybody, John, his confused teaching, depending on what year, what audience, what version of the Bible, what he had been reading and thinking and praying about lately.

He might be a trinitarian and he might be a oneness. And I have already mentioned in the last somewhere in the last 50 podcasts that we have done this definition of Hobart that God is one, eternal spirit, one divine spirit, that eternally manifests himself as father, son, and Holy Spirit.

I've mentioned it several times because I've had several people me up, literally call me up and say, yes, that is what Hobart taught. I thought that was right. What's wrong with that? I mean, that of all the things that we have talked about, his definition of the Trinity stood out. It's legendary with him. God is one divine spirit, eternally manifested as Father, Son, Holy Spirit stood out, legendary enough that people, when they heard me make a contradictory statement to that or make a pejorative statement against his definition, they call me up and ask about it. Again, as we just concluded last week in talking about Hobart's doctrine of

healings, 99% of which he said, you don't receive instantly. I just heard a message the other day where he actually says that 99% of the time you will not receive your healing instantly. You will have to wait for its manifestation. And I said last time that word, that five syllable word, manifestation was one of his favorite words. He used it mostly with healing. You have to wait for the manifestation of your healing. He definitely used it in his definition of the Trinity. God is one divine spirit who eternally manifests himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And then he obviously

used it in his doctrine of the manifestation of the sons of God. So if people were to ask, which was he? Was he a trinitarian or was he a oneness? He was neither by his own admission. He was neither.

Why? He says they're both wrong. He said, now both views have elements of the truth, but neither one is true. And so where do you end up? You end up with his cockamani crazy, he thinks brilliant definition of the Trinity that God is one divine spirit eternally manifests as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So let's take a few minutes if we can, John. And this will fill out flesh out some of Hobart's what he got from Brannum, what he didn't get from Brannum and how he was able, how he was able to process is how this coalesce in his mind. He did come from the Southern

Baptist background. He got his master's degree at Southern Baptist Seminary. Then he left the Southern Baptist Convention because that seminary in the 1950s had become so liberal and he joined the Grace Brethren Denomination where he ended up getting his doctor's degree up in one on a lake at Grace Brethren Seminary. So both of those denominations are what? Well they're Trinitarian. You know, they hold to a conservative Orthodox fundamental evangelical view of the Trinity.

And to define the Trinity is something that is not at all easy to do to make sure you've included what needs to be included and you excluded what needs to be excluded. But in Hobart's early days, here is a copy, it's as you can read right here, it's the only complete copy and it's entitled The Faith and Practice of the Church at Winona Lake, Indiana.

And I have references before. Hobart was fired from Grace Theological Seminary as everyone knows and we have Hobart's version of the story and then we have the seminaries version of the story. And I have every reason to doubt Hobart's version and I have no reason to doubt the seminaries version that's an academic professional organization and they would have no need to lie about anything as Hobart would probably accuse him of doing.

Hobart always said the reason that he had to leave the seminary is because he said my wife wouldn't attend a Christmas banquet. And that was probably one thing they didn't do but I've read what the seminary, the president of the seminary and the other professors there have said in Hobart's firing.

He was paid by the way for the remainder of that year dismissed, will pay out your contract so you don't have to come to work and you still get a paycheck. But I've read what they've said and Hobart was just not a submissive person at all.

Hobart was arrogant even as a professor at Grace Seminary. He always thought that he knew better than other people than he knew more than other people. He was not cut out to be a follower of anybody.

He just thought he knew too much and he was pushing at the brethren seminary there. He was pushing behind the scenes to people, to young ministerial students in his classes. His own pet doctrines and they were many and so he was dismissed from the seminary and so he just started a church in his own home and he wrote the creed for the church.

This 50 page document right here, Hobart Freeman wrote this. There is a table of contents where it is a doctrinal review and he talks about the Trinity and he goes all through here. You would not believe how many pages he has on proper Christian dress, where you would think you would talk about an important doctrine.

Like he has a paragraph, I'm going to say it's that long on the Holy Spirit and he's got pages on Christian dress. Women can't wear this and they can't put on lipstick and they can't, he might not use a word bob their hair, I think that was a brand of war.

or random did not want the women to have bobbed hair. But Hobart picked up that kind of stuff from the brethren denomination because they were big in legalism on dress. And it was a huge confirmation for him to hear God's prophet William Brownham believe the same things.

So I mean, that just cemented Hobart's belief about clothes and women's dress. They evidently on page one, they met for the first time on January 17th, 1963. In his home, he had a little house in Winona Lake.

And so in this document, credal document for his group, guess what he talks about? Not only Trinitarianism, but here's where you see that it's going to eventually an outworking in his other beliefs and practices within his church.

And that concerns water baptism. So in this book, Hobart is Orthodox. He even uses a word which later he enathmetized anyone who used a word. And I knew where he got it. And you just gave the quote right there where Brownham said, it's thus say at the Lord, you can't talk about the persons of the Trinity.

Hobart was famous on that. He said, God is spirit, John 424. God is not person. So you cannot use person with regard to the Trinity. That's why he came up with this five syllable word and manifestations.

And I'm not gonna go too far in the doctrinal area because this isn't a doctrinal podcast, but the doctrine of the Trinity is a very, it is a deep, mysterious, complex doctrine, but it's nothing new.

The church and its theologians have discussed this for 2,000 years. And right after the close of the first century within the next couple of centuries, there were heresies that arose and the early church writers and theologians did a pretty good job of saying, this is what we believe about the Trinity.

The thing about someone like William Brownham or David Terrell or so many of those other people who did not have any theological education, we know Hobart did, is that these are complex and difficult matters.

And you're not gonna know them as a third grade hillbilly by just spouting things all. And work has already been done. You don't need to discover fire or reinvent the wheel. Work has already been done.

But as you said, and I will get to in the later edition of what we're gonna talk about, hopefully today, cult leaders are looking for things that are unique and different, because that's how you get a following and that's how you attract a following.

But anyway, back to how. In Hobart's view of the Trinity, it was a oneness within the Trinity, but there were still three persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and he uses that terminology in here, the three persons.

And what you also see in here is his very odd view of water baptism. He also took four pages on water baptism. Water baptism, and he's got a paragraph this long on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and he has four pages on water baptism. And so here's what Hobart in his brethren days believed about water baptism, and you'll see how that changed as he came in to contact with people like William Branham and the oneness people. He believed that the formula for baptism was Matthew 1828-19. When you baptize, do it in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. He also

believed that the only correct mode of baptism was immersion. Obviously came from a Baptist background, and so that's nothing new. What was distinctive about Hobart's view, and you can find it by the way in his church creed. What was distinctive about his view of the mode of immersion, baptism, was that it had to be done three times. It had to be triple immersion. So you baptize a person underwater in the name of the Father, pull them up in the name of the Son, pull them up in the name of the Holy Spirit, pull them up. And then the third distinctive about his view on baptism was

they couldn't go backwards. You had to, which is the way most people would baptize, you have to

bury the person in water, face forward. And his argumentation and texts for that, they just border on the bizarre, let's say, I'll just give one. Only one right now comes to my mind. And that is when Jesus died on the cross, as soon as he died, it said that he bowed his head. You know, like so when a person dies, their head falls forward. So that was the hint of the means by which you were to baptize, not backwards, but you have to go forward. Now, I don't know what random tall on the formula and the mode and whether backwards or forwards, but this is what Hobart

taught back in his brethren days. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins Charles Paisley. Steve- and Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top, and as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. I'd have to go back and look to confirm the source, but I believe it was Dauy. John Alexander Dauy, who had a cult in Zion City, Illinois, from which many, many leaders that are tied to this movement, FF Bosworth, who mentored Brannum on doctrine, came from Dauy's cult, Gordon Lindsay, who founded Christ for the Nations.

He was born there, John G. Lake was part of this. If I remember correctly, Dauy is the one who came up with the hair-brain notion that you have to dunk three times. He would have got that through Bosworth's teaching, probably.

Brannum, I don't believe, did that. However, you did mention John, you did mention the Bob hair, which interestingly, it came from a man named John R. Rice. Rice published a book in 1941 called Bob hair, bossy wives, and women preachers.

In 1941, you published this. Now Rice also, he was the son of, I think he was a state legislator. He was a free nation in the Odd Fellows, and he was outspoken in the KKK, so he has ties to men who work with Brannum, but interestingly, Rice mentored thousands, hundreds or thousands of ministers, including Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell.

There's all these weird connections, but back to the Trinity, I mentioned Brannum is teaching the Trinitarian doctrine, right, and he's both preaching for it and talking about how he's praying to the third person of the Trinity.

See I grew up in that mindset, because in your programming, when things don't add up, whenever they just are so contradictory, your brain goes through this mental loop where you try to reconcile the differences.

The way my brain reconciled it was, I knew that he said things like this, 1964, he said, he come in a Trinity, father, son, and holy ghost, see all of it the same Christ, the same God all the time, and he goes on to say in that same sermon, everything in God is completed in threes.

Well, that's stuck in my head, and so I read the Bible, I read how God sent the Holy Spirit, Jesus. died, and he prayed to the Father before he's crucified on the cross. I knew these things, and so I believed, honestly, looking back, I believed in Trinitarianism, but I called it not Trinitarianism because Trinitarianism is of the devil. And I remember getting into this heated debate with this guy. I was only 16 years old, and he was trying to tell me, basically, he was trying to explain I was in a cult, but he got into, if you're in a cult,

you're worshiping the false God, and he got into the nature of God, and we got in this heated argument, and I thought he was in a cult because he's in this Trinitarian cult. And I started basically going through the scriptures as I knew them, talking about how he was wrong for believing in the Trinity, and I was saying everything that he would have believed, which is the funny part.

So mentally, I was, I was making the cult program mindset. He was confused his hack because he was like, we're saying the same thing, man, don't you understand that? But to the point I'm trying to make, Brannum started this means to Christian, to Christian extremism in this. He wanted to denounce everybody else who wasn't in the cult. It became more, instead of a doctrine that was leading people to God, it was a doctrine to condemn other people for what they believe. And he trained and manipulated and programmed the masses. You can see it on the comment feeds. They really

don't care whether you have the truth or not. They just want to denounce you, and that's how they're programmed. They're programmed to, they're programmed for hate, they're programmed in extremism. Well, Brannum, one of the things that he said, which Hobart would have picked up on this, he says, and no one, no Protestant, no early church believed in three gods. It was a great issue at the Nicene Council, which I'll get into that later because that's actually not true.

He said, both of them went out on limbs this way and that way, the Chinatarian, the triune people believed in the Trinity. Remember, he just said he believed in the Trinity. He said, which finally formed in the Catholic Church, and they went on to complete Trinity making three God three people.

And he said that the other side went on to be Unitarian. They wanted to make God one, and they became Unitarian. He said, both are wrong. So what he's saying is, one is as wrong, Trinitarianism is wrong. He really plainly says this in 1963. He said, now many people gets the Trinity all mixed up when you get to thinking about it. Some make it three different individuals. And remember, he just prayed to the third person of the Trinity. He said, and some makes it one, and they're both wrong. And so this is how I was manipulated as a kid. Both are wrong.

I never was manipulated in such a way that I could ask people what they actually believed. it was no, you're wrong. And that's it. That's the end of the story. That's how you're programmed.

You're wrong. I'm right because my prophet said I'm right. And that's essentially how the programming works. But it is a doctrine simply made to prevent people from understanding what others believe to condemn the whole bunch of them so you don't leave the church. This is what traps you into the cult. And I want to say some more about that before we're done also, John. So if Hobart's got, if he's got this Trinitarian belief, whenever he becomes charismatic in 1966, he begins to, you know, obviously question a lot of different doctrines. You would never think he would have questioned

his view on the Godhead. I could see him questioning his view on spiritual gifts or other things, but I would never think that you would go back and question your view on the Godhead. But this is Hobart Freeman. You know, he, as you just said, and as I said earlier about him being dismissed from the seminary, he didn't want to be like anyone. He wanted to be unique. He wanted to be so unique that, you know, he could attract a following. I'm the only one who has the, the correct, the correct nuanced view of this doctrine. That's just the way he was. So there

was a tape he did. It was in his series on Romans. It's a long clip. So we're not going to play it. But it was entitled, there was part two, a preparation for manifestation. So it's part one in part two. He's talking about the manifestation of the sons of God. This is in his series on Romans, which was done in 1976. And the 27-minute mark, if people want to go, they can go there themselves.

And listen, he tells about a four-minute story. I just want you to explain his internal distress over hearing what Branham and other wondrous people. And maybe particularly Branham, who you said, just said, Trinitarianism, that's wrong. Oneness, that's wrong. Okay, then do I have two nests?

You know, where are you? If the three are wrong and the one are wrong, where are you? And Hobart himself said they're both wrong. He got that as we know from Branham, but he didn't get it overnight.

He tells a story that for six years, that would be from 1966 to 1972. He dates it. For three years, he was wrestling over matters related to the Trinity, especially as that would express itself in the formula for water baptism. He had always baptized Matthew 28, 19 in the name of the Father, the name of the Son, the name of the Holy Spirit. But I know that he had heard William Branham's teaching.

What happens with these people, they realize, well, I was wrong about some other things in my doctrine. Now that I'm charismatic, maybe Brannum has some other truth that the Baptist and brethren and denominations don't have. Brannum was always preaching against denominationalism.

Guess what was one of Hobart's favorite pet subjects? He was so anti-denominational. He would say, anti, the denominations, that's the Babylon of Roman of Revelation 17 and 18. No, that's not. There were no denominations back in John's days, so John definitely was not talking about the denominational system when he wrote Revelation 17 and 18. But Hobart would say, oh, yeah, come out from among her. My people, touch not the unclean thing. That was the denominational system to him. He had this crazy view of Revelation 12, the woman in the man child, that the woman was the denominational church that would give birth to the man child,

which would be the manifested sons of God. That's a whole other podcast we'll do on his view of Revelation 12. My point is he was wrestling with this. He said, he ended up in a motel and went on a three-day fast and then God revealed to him things about the Godhead and therefore the importance of the formula for baptism is in Jesus' name and that's why they're called sometimes Jesus only people, the one is people. And from then on out, he baptized in Jesus' name. And I'm not even commenting on that. That's neither here nor there. He did show that the Apostles threw out

Acts who had received that commission in Matthew 28.19, went and carried it out by baptizing in the name of Jesus. And I think there is a lot to say for that. But my point is he didn't get his understanding from Scripture only about anything. He went on a three-day fast. And then in another message entitled, what is the fullness of God? This again is another long section, like a four-minute section that we're not going to play. But in what is the fullness of God, the 23-minute beginning at the 18-second mark, guess what he does, John? He tells a story of about a man who went on, you

guessed it, a 40-day fast. He told these stories all the time. Last time we talked about a man who went on a 40-day fast and then God quoted to him, Mark 11, 22 to 24. This time a man went on a 40-day fast. And what did God reveal to him?

God revealed to him the mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of the Godhead, so deep, so profound, so multi-faceted and multi-layered. It's like Paul in Second Corinthians 12, called up to heaven and heard things unlawful and speakable. Hobart said, this man had the same experience, and learn things about the Trinity that he simply couldn't communicate.

I never have understood the point of Hobart telling that story because the man didn't communicate anything, so you don't know anymore. But I think his point probably was that you're not going to learn about the Trinity or the Godhead from simply reading the Bible. I don't think you're going to be able to learn what you need to know. So this is where that element of mysticism and mysticism enters into the picture where everything becomes mysterious and everything becomes by divine revelation. And we know the problem with allowing divine doctrinal revelation today, you can't dispute it. He said he got it. All right, I wasn't there. I can't say he got it or he

didn't get it. That's the importance of the canon of scripture that we all own and possess. And that's why God's not giving any doctrinal revelation after the close of the canon of scripture. There's no way to anybody to verify it, authenticate it. But it's very important for these kinds of mystics. They're like spiritual mystics and nostics, and they like this secret kind of information. And so they don't mind at all that these things are being revealed in some supernatural way that none of the rest of us can confirm. And so here's what happened.

As Hobart tried to process his his earlier trinitarian teaching and now his Jesus only had won this teaching on a tape, a pretty famous and important one that he did, which we will play a brief clip from entitled teaching on the Godhead. But I ask you to ask yourself if you can think of God apart from thinking of him as three. It's almost impossible because that's the way the church is presented. And God isn't three. He's wrong. The Jesus only are not right. They confuse the confuse the persons in the Godhead. But neither are all the conservatives right in the sense that

that they are presenting God almost as three gods. And it's called tri-theism in theology. You try to think of God. Now right now, it's not being three. And you'll find it's almost impossible because we haven't been taught what the Bible says about God. And you don't even get but it isn't seminary either friends.

There's things that are already revealed in scripture and you need the Holy Spirit to show you what God is. And God doesn't want us thinking of the MS-3. And yet at the same time, he wants you thinking of the MS-Father, son, and Holy Spirit.

You see, both of those things are true. And so having heard that, you can see he's trying to attack the orthodox understanding of the Trinity. He had very first sentences is this. He's asking the people, can you think of God apart from thinking of him as three?

Can you think of him apart from thinking? He says almost impossible. Why? Because that's the way the church has presented it. And then he said, this is all a quotation. God isn't three. God is one.

And so here again, John, is a problem with trying to discuss something as mysterious as the Trinity, is you have to not give us a definition. You have to start qualifying the words. He just said, God isn't three.

He's one. But I thought he was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So what do you mean he isn't three? What you have to do, and this goes back to basic classes that anyone would take in logic.

One of the first things you'll be taught is the law of non-contradiction. Because if something cannot be both A and non-A at the same time and in the same regard. In other words, I can be a Father, and I can be a Brother, and I can be a Son.

I can be all, and this is not an analogy of the Trinity. There are no analogies, by the way. But this is an analogy of how you have to define what you mean by one and what you mean by three.

I can be a Father, a Son, and a Brother. I can be all those three at the same time, but I can't be all three of those in the same regard. I can't be the Father and the Son of the same person.

I can be the Father of some people, the Son of some people, and the Brother of some people. So when you say that God is one divine spirit,

eternally manifested as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you have to define what you mean by one. Because when you go on to say God isn't three, then we say, oh, you're oneness. And then he'll say, no, because I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And so he became very confused. I think his view of God was something like, God is just this big, he's one divine spirit. So numerically, he is one divine spirit. He is this tube of energy or essence or spirit.

And then eternally manifested as the Father, and as the Son, and as the Spirit, but he's still one. But that's not... what the Bible means when it calls God one. Numerically, mathematically, God is clearly three.

If you deny mathematical three-ness, then you have denied the Trinity. But Hobart hated the Trinity because he thought that is trithiism, and it is not trithiism. God is one with regard to His volition, His eternity, His will.

In other words, He's one with regard to several things, and then He's three with regard to something else. And Hobart could not see the distinction, and therefore did not make the distinction. And it's not an easy area to discuss.

One of the really good books I had in seminary of people want one is this one by Gerald Bray in title, Creads, Councils, and Christ. And this does a good job of looking at Nicaea and Carthage and Ephesus and Constantinople.

That's where some of the great councils were held. And what the early church councils were dealing with were some of the most profound things that the Christian ever will have to deal with. And those things are an understanding of the Trinity in what way is God one, and in what way is God three, or in what ways plural is God one, and in what way is God three, the interrelationships among the members of the Trinity, that's one issue they were dealing with.

And the other are the two natures of Christ. He was both divine and human. And you gave some quotes earlier from Brandon. Brandon was obviously very confused about the two natures of Christ. Well, welcome to the club.

That is a difficult area to discuss, and a person shouldn't take it upon themselves to think, oh, I can knock this out easily just by saying a couple of sentences. It's not that easy.

Go back and look at what the creeds and councils wrestle with and pick up some heavyweight theological textbook, and you can begin to introduce yourself to the complexities of it. Any call is just going to quote a verse.

So the one that's people will say, look, Jesus did he not say, I and my father are one. Oh, yes, he said that. Okay, so that proves the one this theory. You know, there we go, one verse.

Did he not say, I and my father are one. Well, as I often say, any type of a barrett erroneous or heretical view will have a scripture somewhere that you can support it with, but the totality of the revelation in the Bible will not support that view.

Because then, as you just said, Jesus is on the cross praying to the father, so is he praying to himself and he's on the cross. also when he dies, commending his spirit into the hands of his father, so is he given himself to himself? And of course, we have the classic case at Jesus baptism, where we have Jesus being baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist. And we hear the father's voice coming out of heaven, saying, this is my beloved son, and whom I'm well pleased.

And then we know that the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the bodily form of the duh. So that's obviously a passage that the trinitarians would use, and that's obviously a passage that the Jesus only people would not want to have anything to do with, and would find a way to explain.

And yes, they never ever preach that passage. It all comes really back to this one central thing. The manifest sons of God doctrine, which Brannum was promoting heavily, tried to diminish the nature of God from that of God, of being that no human can understand to that of a human, so that they could bring forth this God man, prophet God, nonsense. They wanted to basically apply this manifestation of God in Jesus to themselves, so they could say that we have the same thing Jesus had. And that's really where this came from. Brannum would often, you know, in baptism, he would say, whenever Matthew is talking about baptism,

it says, baptize in the name of the Father, the name of the Son, the name of the Holy Spirit. Brannum would often try to diminish that logic, logically down to elementary level understanding. And he would say, well, what is the name of the Father? It was Jesus. What is the name of the Son? It's Jesus. And totally avoid the whole understanding that they called God Yahweh, not Jesus long before in the times of the ancient Israelites, but he would also use things like how could a Son be his own Father? And what he's trying to do is he's

trying to take a nature of God, which no man can understand, bring it down to a level of human so that his audience, who's largely uneducated, can understand. And then he can elevate himself up to that God level. And that's literally what he did. But where it all comes together, everything that I have said in each one of these segments, I've been trying to lay out all the milestones so I could bring it back in. What he tried to do was this, you have to understand the history of the clan. And that's more history than we have time to go through in this

podcast, but I'll sum it up by this. The 1915 clan nearly imploded and it broke into factions. The strongest, largest faction came in Indiana, where there were no minimal number of, there was a minimal number of black people. So the clan wasn't so anti-black in Indiana, what they were, was anti-Catholic.

And especially with regards to all of the riots and the hatred that was flowing through the clans and Notre Dame, this became a heated battle in Indiana and Brannum, who is part of this battle because he's in Indiana and he's working with clan leaders, he becomes anti-Catholic.

And what they were trying to say was that the Catholic system had birth trinitarianism and the Catholic denominational system was condemned from the days of old and Brannum would say things like this, speaking of the times of Jesus, he says, the Jews screamed out, let his blood be upon us for we would believe our priests, our denominational system before we would believe him.

So he's trying to say that the denominational system existed back then and then he would say things like, I'm not oneness, not at all, I'm not trinitarian, I'm a Christian, I believe in God, I believe God manifested in three offices.

So he's trying to say that God is a manifestation of the spirit and he goes on to say that the idea of trinitarianism is as pagan as pagan can be, never one time was that even thought of until the Nicene Council, he'll never find it in the Bible or history or that time till it's there.

Another instance he says in the Nicene Council in order to do this, they had to take a trinity because the Roman world, they had many gods. So the clan was pushing this idea that the Catholics was a pagan denomination coming to invade the United States.

We need to rise up, we need to fight this and they were spreading false propaganda. The Council of Nicaea, what was it, I think it was 325 AD, 325, Tertullian and AD 200 approximately, he named the trinity long before this existed, origin, I can't remember what year origin lived until AD 254 I believe, but he talked about the eternal generation of the sun, he's basically not outright saying it, but he's describing the trinity.

And the Nicene Council was devoted towards settling the Aryan controversy, not establishing the trinity because why would you establish something that had already been established? So if Brannum wanted to make the argument that the trinitarian doctrine was of the devil, he could have said and it predated the Nicene Council and there were some very, very famous church fathers that believed trinitarianism and they're all of the devil, but he knew if he attacked the fathers of Christianity, he would never, that would never stand.

So instead, he attacked Rome, the Nicene Council, that was all part of clan propaganda in the clan agenda, and essentially that is the framework, the foundation that was laid that people... but like Hobart Freeman had built upon.

Yeah, and so Brandon was very confused about what he actually believed. Let me just show this is very easy to demonstrate from Hobart's tapes, how confused Hobart was on his tape and title teaching on the Godhead, the four minute and 39 second mark.

Here's what he said, and I'm quoting, and I just want to begin by saying, I don't think the oneness people are heretics. I just say they're mixed up on the Godhead, a heretic is one who's mixed up on Jesus.

All right, then on this tape, eternal personifications of the Godhead, they refuse to use a word person, which is a, it comes from a Latin word, and there's nothing wrong with it as long as you understand what you meant by that.

But coming from another message, eternal personifications of the Godhead, four minute, 14 second mark, oneness is a heresy of the second and fourth century, end of quote. So he just said oneness people are not heretics, then he said oneness people are heretics.

He was as confused as Brandon. Neither one of them wanted to accept the fact that, hey buddy, you don't get to claim this as any new doctrine of yours. And that's exactly what cult leaders wanted to do, as you said earlier, and I said I would try to end with, it's the way to attract a following, people are bored with the same old thing.

People want to think that truth is esoteric and secretive and hidden. And these ministers are happy to give them that. Cult leaders, cult groups, they want to have something that is distinctive and unique because that's the only way you're gonna get a following.

Otherwise, everybody's gonna go to their local Pentecostal Baptist Episcopalian or Methodist Church. They want something distinctive. And oftentimes the people who join a cult are looking for something distinctive because they're bored with what they've had all along.

So, and it's also a way to keep the following once you have attracted them, because you have taught so much against everyone else. Everyone else is wrong. And you, as this special person of God, you have had revealed to you the secret truths.

Remember the guy that went on the 40 day fast? He had learned things about the Godhead that nobody knew up to him. So, it's a way to attract a following. It's a way to keep your following.

Now, no one feels safe ever leaving because you, as a cult leader, have taught all of these cool, unique, distinctive things. And if I could return in conclusion to that young lady you had on when you talked about the tarot cult.

She did exactly what you should do. There are other options. You can get books, like I said. This creed's Councils in Christ by Gerald Bray just gives you the historical background to the controversies that we're swirling in the first few centuries AD.

And they concern the Godhead, either the three persons of the Godhead or the two natures of Christ. And those are things you don't solve overnight and with a paragraph. But what this woman did, John, that you interviewed.

And I just loved it. You know, I just, I thank God when I heard what she did. You know, she laid aside the commentaries and the tapes and the YouTube channels and she laid all that aside and she got her new testament.

You know, and you get, you get two notepads. One that says God the Father, one that talks about Jesus Christ, one that talks about the Holy Spirit. And you simply go yourself. You can do the research yourself.

And she said, let me find every passage it talks about God and every passage it talks about Jesus and every passage it talks about the Holy Spirit. Our personal pronouns used. Are there any cases where both of them are in the same room?

You know, that's quote unquote. Do they ever communicate with one another? Do they have, are there any verses on the Holy Spirit that would lead me to think he is something other than a force or a wind or a fire?

Is there a personality? Could he be grieved in any way? You know, only something with a personality could be grieved. So what, what does she do? She listed all the texts, Father, Jesus, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

She had been raised, oneness, under David Terrell and she ended up trying to tear him. And she ended up trying to tear him and how and why? Because that's what the Bible teaches. And so the passages that say, like Hobart would always go back to Deuteronomy six four, the great Shema in the Hebrew Testament.

Here, O Israel, the Lord, your God is one. So he said, see, we don't believe in trithiism. We don't believe in three gods. The Trinity is a trithiism. It never was. The early theologians argued against trithiism.

They did not see trinitarianism and trithiism as the same thing. They had to end up numerically with three persons members in the Godhead in order to be scriptural. And then they had to define the oneness that those three experience in a way that's also consistent with the biblical record.

And as you know, we could talk for hours on the Trinity. But my point was to kind of show how Hobart started Orthodox. He became very confused. Because of Brannum and as you were showing Brannum himself was confused and then Hobart remained confused for the rest of his life.

He never denied the Trinity, but he said that the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the Jesus, only people, both of those, are wrong that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

And there is no middle. What this all comes down to, and I can sum this entire train of thought up in one single quote by Brannum, what this all comes down to is this was Corinthian worship.

They were trying to create super apostles and Brannum was effectively creating the notion that you could take a manifestation of God in yourself and claim divine authority over your people. That's what he was doing.

But it was a doctrine of divisions. That's essentially what this was. You in the Trinitarian, you're wrong. You in the Oneness, you're wrong. Come to me, I'm the manifestation of God. Absolutely. Historically speaking, it was historically created with the intent of being a doctrine of divisions.

You may not know this history. So in the state of Indiana, there was a very famous Pentecostal leader named GT Haywood, widely respected as one of the most fundamental ministers of the Oneness theology in Pentecostal history, well respected man from Indianapolis.

He published a book that became widely popular and circulated throughout the world, called The Victim of the Flaming Sword. And he was bringing blacks and whites together, like none other. And this is happening in the state of Indiana, which has the largest concentration of the Ku Klux Klan.

Branham Mentor, Roy Davis, he and Colonel William Joseph Simmons, who founded the 1915 Klan, rose up in opposition to this, and Haywood published Victim of the Flaming Sword. When the Klan dispersed, they created another entity, another organization called The Knights of the Flaming Sword, which appears to be in direct response to this.

And then Davis concentrates his efforts closer to Indiana and then finally moves into Indiana. Well, Branham sums up this whole thing, the divisions, all of it, in one single statement towards the end of his life.

And I'm talking just days before his death. He said, you oneness, united, the old JC of Pentecostal assemblies of Jesus Christ, one for the colored and separated yourself because of segregation. You did that, and then you united yourself again and called it united and organized and fussed at the assemblies as a dog turns to its vomit.

So what he's essentially saying is there was a separation, there was a separation for race, and as a dog turns to its vomit. So have you... 90ed yourself together, the blacks and the whites.

He sums this up and I could go off into another hundred podcasts on that one statement. But I won't because we've already gone over an hour. Thank you so much for doing this. Thanks for the time, John.

Well if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branham.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.