Five-Fold Mystery, One-Fold Solution

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

Chino, it's good to be back after having hijacked your last podcast. And it's actually kind of good in a way because I don't know the order of which will come out, but after I had the conversation with you and I hijacked it, literally to talk about textual criticism, the subject that you and I were getting into, we to some extent had the same conversation with Laura Lynn on the podcast series that I'm doing with her. We were talking about the need for good biblical scholarship and how not just Brannumism or Hobart Freeman, but this charismatic thing that was built on top of this, not all of it is anti-biblical. I'm not going

to go that far, but some of it is built on the wrong foundation and what it does when you lay the wrong foundation, you may have good people with good biblical knowledge who are building in the right way, but you also have a foundation that allows for building in the wrong way.

And the example that I use with her, which I'll open this podcast with, after I left the Brannum cults, and I was trying to just wipe all of this out of my head, I read the Bible over and over, you and I've talked about this, there are many passages that really hit me that we were trained and correctly, but the one that hit me the biggest was Colossians too. And the example that I gave Lorelin, which I'll read for you, it is talking about how there's this great struggle for those at Leodicea and those who have not seen me, Paul, face to face, their hearts may be encouraged,

being knit together in love, in all the riches and assurance and understanding of the knowledge of God's mystery. And I'm purposefully pausing there because in Brannumism, in all of the precursors to Brannumism, largely because of British Israelism and dispensationalism, whenever my brain heard the word Leodicea, I'm thinking this is talking about directly to the last days people, because Leodicea is the seventh last church age. And When I heard the word God's mystery, well, that opened the door for the spoken word, the ramah, all of the things that goes with this.

You're thinking literally that we must have an apostle or a prophet or messenger, five-fold ministry teacher, somebody to bring us this mystery. And what happens is when you hear all of that, when you've been indoctrinated by a cult, your brain instantly shuts off and you miss the next few words, which is God's mystery, which is Christ.

And when that hit me, I went back through all of the different passages that had the word mystery that I was programmed to think and believe and understand. And each one of them is actually talking about Christ as the mystery.

In fact, there are passages that say very explicitly, Christ is the mystery fulfilled. But yet we were taught there had to be this new thing and we were taught that the foundation that I was hinting at as we were talking with Laurel Lynn, they presented the notion that the church would fall away into this apostate condition and there must be a restoration.

And how that happens is a mystery. That was the presentation, right? And then all of these cults built upon this. So today I'm gonna try my best not to hijack the podcast. We'll talk about the need for biblical scholarship, but I'm going to reference this is my example of the need because people have twisted it so bad out of context yet kept it slightly within the framework of what's in the Bible to make it sound biblical while it is yet anti-biblical.

Do you know what I think you've just done? I think you have just hijacked the podcast again.

Which is fine. Which is fine. You said so many things, three of which I would go back and spend time on very interesting stuff, John, that you just said.

So first of all, with Leoticia, yes. So it's obvious when you read Colossians too that that's one of the few places that Paul actually did address an epistle to a group of people that he did not know personally.

We can tell from reading Luke's account of Paul's travels and acts where he went. And one place there is no record he went was Colossi and he tells us that he didn't go there in Colossians too.

So he is definitely writing them a letter. He also did not go to Leoticia, but he also wrote an epistle to the Leoticians and he encourages the Colossians to get a copy of that or at least have someone read that epistle to him.

So there's one just biblical fact that you, the only way to know that is read acts and read Colossians. There's no other sources. is of information for what I just said. But then your next point that you're building on is this whole question of Leautesia because it's that last church that John addresses in Revelation three and it is the so-called Lukewarm church that Christ is gonna spew out of his mouth where he said I were that you were either hot or cold but because you're neither but you're somewhere in between I will spew you out of my mouth.

Then yes, there's been this long theology built on the assumption and it is simply not in those chapters of Revelation two and three that those seven local individual churches they start with Ephesus and they end with Leautesia and you've got Sardis and Smyrna and Pergamus and Thia Tyre and Philadelphia and then you have the bookends of Ephesus and Leautesia that those are somehow supposed to depict ages in church history from the end of the first century until the return of Christ and there's simply nothing there that has to be imported into the passage and when you read how people have done it

it's very interesting because it is strictly arbitrary so they start with the church at Ephesus and it's convenient for their theory in that Christ said to John through John to the people at Ephesus that you have tried those who say they are apostles and are not and have found them liars.

So they say that's the Apostolic church and then you just have to pick an ending date your terminus Aquim, you just have to pick one. This is when that ended and then the next period in church history started from 313 AD to 576 and everyone has different dates and there's no way to ever prove it and there's no way to ever agree on it but it is something that William Brannum definitely believed and guess what?

It is something that Hobart Freeman taught in his series on Revelation as well that he didn't deny that those were local churches in Pro-Consular Asia at the end of the first century AD but he said, oh, but there's deeper meanings.

There's always deeper meanings and the deeper meanings are always the hidden meanings. They're the ones that are mysterious, as you said, they're a mystery, they're not on the surface. And look, we've talked about this before and but it is so important to know that the meaning of scripture of any passage whether it's Isaiah or Revelation, the meaning is, the meaning is, and there's only one meaning.

The meaning is what the author meant and how the readers understood it. So if you were a church at Ephesus and you got a letter and it was addressed to you, guess what? That's a letter addressed to you. Now, is there application for that for Christians down through history?

Well, of course, because the Bible wasn't written with my name anywhere in it. It's got your name because your name is John and John was one of the apostles. So, but it was not written to me and it wasn't written to you.

It's written for you, but not to you. It was written to other people. So, a whole bar pick that up from William Brownham and those weren't the only two guys. It's just a very popular theory that those represent seven ages in the church's history and there's not a single shred of evidence for that.

I think you're one of your other co-hosts Charles Paisley did a he did one. I don't know if it was with you or a part, John, but it's pretty good what Charles had to say in just refuting the fact those aren't seven ages in church history. There aren't seven ages.

Those were seven literal churches that received a letter written to all of them and with a part of it in chapters two and three highlighted to them individually and then the rest of it was for all of them.

But then your final word was that word mystery and I did a lot of study on that a long time ago. It's the Greek word Musterion and the reason I did a lot of study is probably why you have studied some about that.

It's because in charismatic, prophetic, apostolic circles, there is the letter of the word and that's what we all read and then there's the spirit of the word. And that is somehow hidden. It is hidden behind the letter and it's only available to certain initiates, you know, it is definitely a mystery religion kind of thing that you see happening.

But what I have told people over and over is that if you are your minister, William Brannum or Hobart Freeman or whomever, if you are your minister or if you are the only ones aware of some hidden truth in the Bible, I would say be careful because miners call that fool's gold.

It's all shiny and it's attractive and it's but it's worthless and all it is is fool's gold. If anything is that difficult to find that no one by normal methods of study and prayer and exegesis and reading the Hebrew and reading the Greek, if normal methods of study don't can't reveal that to you, it's because it's not even there.

It is so hidden that it is not even there and so people just need to be aware of that approach of scripture. Absolutely. And where I was building and I wasn't actually trying to hijack your podcast, but there's a way to read the Bible that is normal and correct.

And then there's a way to read the Bible that is very deceptive. Yet at the same time, within that deception, there are people who don't yet understand the Bible, and they're very open to that deception because they don't understand.

It's not for them. One of the other phrases that was, I would say that this goes beyond William Brannum, but Brannum did say it often. He would say that he would use that passage from Hebrews that God, and I'm using King James English here, but God in Sunday times and diverse manners spoke to the prophets, and he would use that phrase, but he would combine it with another one from, and I can't remember, you'll know the passage, but he says basically, the Bible is of no private interpret, all scripture is of no private interpretation.

Well, he would combine those two, to make the extra biblical, anti-biblical phrase that in the past, he spoke to us through the prophets, and you can't understand it, so in the future, he must also speak to us in the prophets, which is totally hijacking what that passage says, if you understand it.

And so, whereas building with all of this, my understanding of the Bible was so skewed, that even when I say I read it, like literally I started in Genesis, I went all the way to Revelation, and I would just frequently throughout the course of several years do this after leaving, to try to wash it all off.

Well, the first time I read it, it's like I untangled parts of it, but other parts were still programmed in my head, so I had to keep doing it over and over, and that's the result of a false Bible teacher, somebody who doesn't, it's not just that they don't understand what they're teaching, in my opinion, some of the men who were involved in this were purposefully twisting the words of the Bible because it made their ministry seem bigger and greater than they actually were, and people would look up to them, revere, respect them, but as they're doing this,

they're laying this foundation that other men built on, who, and women, built on, who just really, they were deceived, there were the deceivers, and then they were the deceived, and it was hard to weed out which is which, among all of these laterane faith healing ministries.

You know, I think it's a natural tendency, John, for anyone who want to find a church, and I think they should. It's a natural tendency, and it's a valid one to find a church to attend, to find a minister that you trust and like, what he has to say and follow him.

I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but at the bottom of everything that we say today is this that we are personally responsible ourselves for our knowledge and for our understanding of scripture, and it is incumbent upon us.

The Bible says in so many places, and in so many ways to try the spirits, to test the spirits, to use discernment, to use wisdom, to use knowledge. It never, ever encourages any Christian to just go with an empty head and just receive everything being said by any minister. I don't care how good he is or how trained he is or how sound he is. Paul says that we are to test and try the spirits and that we are to prove all things and hold fast that which is good. Then these ministers, Hobart Freeman, I hate to say it,

but was one of them, that would pay lip service to allowing you to do that. But at the end of the day, if you came to a different understanding than he had, he would simply write you off and reject you.

He would use the case of the Bereans in Acts 17 and encourage everyone. You'd be like the Bereans, receive the Word of God with all readiness of mind and then go search the scriptures and see if these things were so. But I often said whenever any of us went and did that and found out it wasn't so, then now we're no longer allowed to do that. But again, to go back to what I said, Paul said, prove, test and try and examine and prove all things. And he just means you've got to put some work

into it yourself. But to your point, you said a moment ago, unfortunately, this is just the nature of it for all of us. When you are new as a believer, a new Christian or newly exited from a cult, you don't know a whole lot. And that's a problem that you are so dependent on that minister up front.

All I can say with regard to that is if you will, it's just incumbent upon all of us to be regular students of the Bible. As you have done, John, diligently read the Bible and read it again and read it again. And I think what you will slowly come to realize is that the Bible is not written in some Holy Ghost language. It's often your old Pentecostal preachers talk like that that it's written in a Holy Ghost tongue or a Holy Ghost language and only a Holy Ghost person can read it and understand it.

And that's not true at all. The Bible is written with verbs and nouns and predicates and participles. And it's just written with normal language and normal speech. The normal laws of language that apply to modern writing apply to the Bible and Conversely, to interpret it, you interpret it the same way you would interpret anything else.

I mean, when you open up the newspaper and read, hey, we just learned that yesterday such and such happened, then what that means is just what it said, and you're not allowed to take that line from the newspaper article and go to a copy from two weeks ago and pull a statement they made out of context and somehow wed those together. And yet that's exactly what William Brannum did with the case you gave of Hebrews one and second Peter one, and that's exactly what Hobart did all the time. He would take a verse out of

his context and he somehow felt that he had the authority to do that and people allowed him the authority to do that. But I would encourage people to do what you have done and what I do and what all true believers will do. And that is read the Bible for yourself. Are you going to understand it all absolutely not? That's where we were going last week with the need for scholarship. And I gave a couple of examples and there just, you know, there's no end to examples of men who are good scholars who have good things to say in certain areas of the scripture. But the Bible is so deep and so vast

that none of us have time to know it all. And that's one of the things that makes me sad, a little remorseful as I read the Bible because I really do want to know it all. But if I had started the day I was born and study the Bible until the day I died, I'm simply not going to know it all because there's too much there. And anybody who thinks they do or will, that should be a red flag right away. Anyone who says that they know it all, that they grasp every bit of it and that they can

teach it all to you, that's a red flag. So where I was earlier, John, last week was just making a plea for biblical scholarship in just all of your independent churches, charismatic and non-charismatic.

You know, I have been a part of the charismatic element of Christianity since right after my conversion when I was 17 years old. This has been part of my, it's just been part and parcel of my life.

And when I first heard Dr. Freeman, you know, then I began hearing some new things and it made me want to study even more. And as I studied more, then more questions came up. But what I see today is there's just, there's an aversion to higher education, to professional theology.

physical training to real biblical scholarship within independent churches. There's resistance. They cast a suspicious eye toward it. And you know, you don't have that problem. Let me just say this, you don't have that problem in mainline denominations.

And I think the reason you don't have it is because they have been around long enough that they have recognized the need for an educated ministry. I mean, why wouldn't you want an educated ministry?

We've talked about this before. Every other professional profession in life around us requires professional training. There are schools involved and tests involved and licenses involved. And why wouldn't you want them to be there?

Why isn't when we come to Christian ministry? Now, all of a sudden, when you get over into the charismatic churches or your independent churches, then they have a real aversion to it. The ministers there, their proof of ministry is what they call, their call, C-A-L-L.

And you should have a call to the ministry. If you're going to be a pastor or be in any type of Christian teaching ministry, God knows you need to have been called by the Lord to do that.

But that's just the beginning of it. That's not the end. That's just the beginning. And that part of it is so subjective. I don't know whether you've had a call or not. I can't get inside your mind or life.

You tell me that you've had one, but there's gotta be some way. There's gotta be some demonstrable way to prove that, to demonstrate that. And part of that way, it's not all, but part of that way, is do you manifest, do you carry the credentials of being able to stand up and actually teach people from some passage in the Bible.

And we know people like William Branham just didn't have it. Dr. Freeman, we'll talk about him here later. Dr. Freeman did have qualifications to do that. But so many of these people in these circles are afraid of the education.

They'll say something like this. Well, I'm afraid the smart guys might take advantage of us and lead us astray. And that has happened. Have there been professional trained theologians and seminaries who wanna deny essential Christian doctrine?

Absolutely. There has been a huge problem with people who are trained but who will definitely lead you astray. But look at what the lack of scholarship has done. It has done the exact same thing where we have no scholarship in independent charismatic Pentecostal churches.

We live in this, I don't know, it's like a quicksand of individualism where everybody just believes whatever they want and if the minister tells you this is the right belief we just follow it.

But look at this trail of tears we have of these charismatic ministers who have no training. I mean, you have covered so many of them down through history, whether it's Dauy or John G. Lake or T.L. Osborne, these men were not professionally, biblically, scholarly train to be teaching us the Bible.

They read the Bible, I read the Bible, they read the Bible, you read the Bible, you know, it's every man for himself. And you could come to more modern examples of look at Jim Baker and his wife and look at Jimmy Swaggerd and look at, I've got one, maybe you don't remember John, I don't think you've talked about him, but I don't know if you remember from the mid 1970s there was a really, really big popular black minister in New York City who actually bought, I think he went and bought one of those old theaters in New York City and turned it into his church.

And I'm talking about Reverend Ike. Reverend Ike was a huge phenomenon in New York City all during the mid 1970s. He's the one who had this, so he's a pastor, he's a preacher, a teacher.

He has hordes and flocks of people following him, but he had this saying, I think it was, you can't, let me think of how it went, you can't lose with the stuff I use.

You can't lose with the stuff I use. And he had a fleet, I'm telling you a fleet, not of Lincoln's, not of Cadillacs of Rolls Royces. He had fleeced the people, he had at least a dozen Rolls Royces, he had a big congregation, he had a big following, but he was obviously a scam artist.

He would twist and pervert Christianity, but do it by using the Bible. So he would, for instance, I can remember one of his sermons, he would go to the story where Jesus was talking to the rich young ruler, remembering he said how hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

And you know what Reverend Ike did with that? He would teach his people, well look, I mean, here's the level of professional training and intelligence of this man, he'd say, look, if it's hard for a rich man to get into the kingdom, How much harder is it for a poor man?

So I'm gonna be extra rich to make sure I can get there. That is defeating the whole spirit and meaning of what Jesus is saying there. Jesus is condemning the people who are trusting in their riches saying if you do that, it's gonna be very hard.

He totally twists that and his reasoning is, well, if it's hard for a rich man, it's impossible for a poor man. So I've got to be ultra rich in order for me to get there.

That's the kind of people we don't need in the pulpit. 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 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-Brandham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

You know, I've read the Bible more than most Christians ever will in their life. And that's the sad part about this. You would think if this is the greatest book of your faith that everybody would want to just pour themselves into it.

But sadly, most Christians have never read it. I lost count of how many times that I've read it, you know, constantly going through it. And even then, even after going through it as many times as I have, I recognize that if I were to have started this instead at age seven, which I wish that I did, I would understand it better now.

But from age seven until age 97, I would only be skimming just a fraction of the surface of what I could learn. There's so much to learn. And not just, this is offensive to people who are trained like this, interestingly, but not just about the Bible itself, but there's this broad scope of history and culture that surrounds the Bible.

And if you don't understand the history and culture that are the subjects of each passage of text, you're only just like, it's like you're reading this children's book summary of the Civil War. You can just never, you can never get a full understanding.

And one of the things that has this movement promoted, this idea of a fivefold ministry structure that created the need for mediator between God and man. In fact, replacing the role of the Holy Spirit, they've set it up such that if you want to understand the Bible, come to the Prophet, come to the Apostle, come to the five-fold teacher, whatever this is, well what this does, two things, number one, whoever's making this claim, now they're up at this higher level that you're not.

But number two, it makes the vast majority of people listening not want to learn, because why do I need to? This guy's going to teach me, this girl's going to teach me. So it created this false sense of trust in what the people were saying, and the end result of this is people shut off critical thinking.

Most of the Bible concepts, if you understand, after you've read it enough to understand and feel the voices and feel the passages what it's saying, they're trying to relay a message within the writings.

If I write you a letter, I'm not going to write you a letter and suddenly you're going to go off in some tangent and decide that I can never wear a t-shirt again, or some ridiculous thing like these ministers have done, I'm trying to send a message and you will understand that message, well the people can read that same message, but we've allowed these teachers to hijack the message that was being portrayed within the statements of the Bible, and then they built doctrines on top of that.

So they've hijacked the message, created a false message, and then built doctrines on top of it, and the doctrines are eerily similar to Christianity, but yet just slightly twisted. And you can't catch it unless you understand what the book says.

So one of the reasons why I refuse, when people ask me, they'll tell me what church should I go to, what should I believe, what should I do, my answer is always, I'm not the one to tell you this, you've got the Bible or read the book for yourself, and then it doesn't matter what church you go to because you'll listen to the pastor and you may find a spot where he's off, where he doesn't understand it and you understand it, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you can't be part of this church, it just means that now you can

help iron, sharpen iron and you can go to him, and if, whereas heading with all of this is, people who really read and understand the concepts that are presented in the Bible won't be so big-headed to refuse to learn more.

Because throughout the whole rest of their life, they can learn more about the Bible. And men who are in, men and women who are in this five-fold structure of authority, they are in a position where they have to pretend that they have all knowledge and insight, and they can't ever learn anymore.

Amen to that John. We want to arm people with information and that information comes basically from your own study of the Bible, and then other things that that study will lead to... you too. Like there's so much in the Old Testament, you will not understand if you don't pull out a map and then look, start looking at and understanding the geography of the Middle East.

And the same is true in just so many other areas. And this is what you were saying a few moments ago. The Bible is absolutely critical. It is our foundational document to Christianity, but having said that, unfortunately, there are many things in the Bible that you still won't know if you don't know some information outside of the Bible. I think that one way to say it because I don't want to frighten people would be something like this that the Bible, which is authored by God the Holy Spirit through this 40 plus authors down through 1500 years of Jewish and Christian

history, is written in such a way. This is what is absolutely miraculous about it. It is written in such a way that the things that are essential and necessary for you to know about Jesus and about salvation and about eternity and about life and about your responsibilities to God into your fellow man. The things that are absolutely essential for you to know a 12-year-old can literally read the Bible. They're right there in plain view. However, there are things that a 12-year-old will never be able to understand about the Bible, but they're more technical things. And when I say

technical, I don't mean that if you know those, those won't also then have bearing on the planer things of the Bible. It's just that God has written it in such a way that if you've never been to seminary and you never go to seminary or you never are trained biblically, guess what? You're going to be okay if you'll just stick with the Bible, but you will advance yourself so much more as a prospective Christian minister if you will get additional training. Here's what happens. Here's what happens with this. As you mentioned earlier, John, with this five-fold ministry and I'm more

important than you. Here's what happens. Those ministers, Dr. Freeman, is a prime example. Well, then go to the Bible. Once they have kind of abandoned their scholarly roots, they'll go to a passage like Proverbs 6-2 that are snared with the words of thy mouth and build an entire positive confession doctrine on that. And you said a moment ago where all the things or most of the things these guys teach, it has an element of truth to it and that's what is so deceptive about it.

There are plenty of passages in the Bible. that encourages to be positive people, such as when Paul said, if there's anything good and lovely and beautiful and of a good report, think on these things, but he's not saying, I mean, that's an encouragement to think on good and godly and biblical faults, but that's not saying you're gonna be reprimanded if you ever have a thought of doubt or a thought of worry.

In Proverbs six two, it does say, thou art snared with the words of thy mouth, and Hobart took the first half of the second verse, of the sixth chapter of Proverbs, built a whole doctrine on it, and he said, if you confess anything negative, then that's gonna happen to you, and that's what that verse is saying.

That is not what that verse is saying. If you read the verse before it, it is a warning against being too quick to co-sign along with someone to agree to do something for someone on their behalf or in their stead because you can't trust their reliability.

It doesn't have anything to do with positive thinking and confession. Not only does it not have much to do, it doesn't have a single thing to do with that at all, but this is the danger of leaping through the Bible, John.

It's always a plea on my part for reading the Bible yourself and for good hermeneutics. We talked a few weeks ago about the oneness heresy and trinitarianism, and the way you end up with some of these heresies is you find a passage.

I'm convinced these people, all of them. All of us, I will include myself because there have been times in my past life where I'm 100% certain I did it. There may be times now that I'm simply unaware of, but where we have a belief, a doctrine, and we're just looking for a verse to back it up.

And so the oneness people, they don't want to believe in a triune God, and so they'll say, well, didn't Jesus say, I and my father are one. How much clear can you get than that?

I and my father are one. Well, my response is I think you can get a lot clearer. I don't think that is that clear of a passage because I'm thinking of a passage where Paul said that in the marriage of a husband and wife, they become one.

When I wait a minute, they're not actually the same individual person are they? So no, of course they're not. So oneness, here's what I'm saying oneness, the concept of oneness takes on a different meaning, depending on its context and depending on the subject matter.

So because, Jesus said, I and my father are one, and a one this person will say, see, there's no difference. They're exactly the same being. I would say no, that's not how we're to interpret that.

That's not that clear of a passage. That is a little bit of a mysterious saying, just as it's a mysterious saying where Paul said, when you're married, the husband and wife become one, there is a meaning there, but it does not mean they're the exact same individual.

You have to go to a passage talking about Jesus and the father, that is clearer than that passage, and it was just a principle of hermeneutics that you always go to the clearer passages to help you interpret the less clear passage.

Passages saw a clearer passage would be, in that same discourse in the upper room, where Jesus is telling the remaining 11 apostles I don't want you to worry, I don't want you to be afraid, because when I leave, when I, when I myself and I, when I leave, I'm going to pray to the father, and he is going to send you the Holy Spirit in my stead, and he will remain with you forever.

That actually is a clearer passage, because it delineates exactly what's going to happen. That's a clearer passage than the one that says, I am my father, one, don't ever be afraid to say, this passage isn't that clear.

This passage over here is very clear. You always use in hermeneutics, you always use the clearer passage to help you interpret the one that is not as clear. I'm going to give you a version that I bet you could quote from memory that is so famous in charismatic Pentecostal circles, but it is misused about 100% of the time, and that is Hebrews 13 and verse 8, where we read Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So the occasion when that verse pops up in a sermon is the guy, the minister, if they'll be talking about Jesus casting out a demon, or Jesus raising the dead, or Jesus multiplying the low, or Jesus doing something, and he'll be telling you that story, and then immediately they bring in, now remember, Hebrews 13, 8, Jesus Christ is saying yesterday, today, and forever.

And I would say, pump the brakes for a moment. What is the context of Hebrews 13, 8? And what type of statement is actually being made by the author of Hebrews and saying that?

Is he saying that we can expect that anything Jesus ever, if he ever did something, if he ever did anything, then he's willing to do it today as well. I don't think that's what the verse is saying, but that's what the Pentecostal people wanted to say, so that they can have a duplication of everything seen in the Gospels.

I believe that healing is still for today, but I don't think that just because Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes, that anybody has the power or authority on a regular basis to do that today.

And yep, you could make Hebrews 13, eight, say that. Well, if Jesus did it then, that was yesterday, today, today, he's the same yesterday, today, so I can expect him to do that today.

I think that his operations differ over time. He chose the nation of Israel. He chose them. God chose them as his special people. I don't really know where in the Bible, he's ever going to choose another nation as his special people.

He brought them out of Egypt with all of these plagues. I don't really where he's ever going to deliver another nation just like he delivered them, simply because he did it, well, is God the same or is he not the same?

Ontologically, he is the same being, but his operations aren't always the same. So if you read Hebrews 13, eight in the context of the whole book of Hebrews, I think what you're seeing there in those two previous chapters is in spite of the difficulties that all of the Old Testament saints went through persecutions, martyrdoms, deaths of every kind, in spite of all that, in spite of what the Hebrew Christians, they were going through persecution of their own, in spite of all that.

I think what he is saying is just as God has always been with his people down through history, even to the point of death, he has made that same promise to you. It says that a few verses previous to 13, eight, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you.

I will still be there with you no matter what you're going through. So I think it's just bad exegesis of Hebrews 13, eight. Well, on some of it just comes down to common sense.

I've led, I've managed teams of people and when you build a team, it looks entirely different than when you take that same team and you put them onto a new project. There's a series of steps you go through to get familiar with the team, what they're going to do, each person their task, and then the team themselves begin to learn and grow and sometimes their tasks change over time.

The way that these ministries have pushed the Bible text and context is that everything remains static forever and they use that exact passage to say this. God's always going, there's a phrase, if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

It's like saying that God is going to use a hammer and a nail forever. Well, now what happens whenever you have, you're building a building and you've got metal framework that takes screws. going to be so inferior that he's going to use an archaic tool. Well, what I'm trying to say with that, and that may have not been the greatest of examples, there are scenarios in which the people are learning and growing over time, and you can clearly read this through the passages of the Old Testament when God is telling them, do this thing, and I will

bless you. And if you don't, this is the thing that's going to happen to you. And the people do it, they fail, they learn from it. Sometimes they don't learn from it. There's this process of learning, the same as how whenever I'm building my team, I'm teaching them, they're learning, they're growing. Well, then, come forward to the New Testament. And the book of Hebrews is probably the best example. We have a new high priest. Everything has now changed, because they're entered into a new covenant, the ways of the Old Covenant. I think there's a passage, even Paul says, this was a lesson for us. There's, and you probably know exactly

what verse I'm talking about. First Corinthians 10. Yes. So this was a lesson for us. What these ministers have tried to do, they tried to take those Old Covenant passages, and instead of using it as the lesson that was given to the Christians, instead, now this is God remains the same forever. This is how he's always done it. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever. The funniest part about all of that is that hit me probably two years into my leaving. That phrase was used for passages where Jesus had not yet even come to earth

yet. And so I'm thinking, no, wait a minute, how does that work? How is Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today and forever, with Moses? It doesn't really apply correctly. And it all comes back to this. People are trying to teach the Bible without having yet understood what the Bible says. Yes. And the example I go back to in my mind is trying to forbid a woman from being able to wear pants. And we've talked about that before. There's nothing in the New Testament that tells a woman she can't wear pants. You have to go to truly an

archaic passage in the Old Testament. I think it's Deuteronomy 22 and verse 5. And you have to take it out of his context. And then to compound matters, you have to refuse to obey the rest of that chapter, which tells you you can't plant different types of seeds beside each other in your garden, and you can't wear clothes that are made of a mixture of fabric. None of them will be that, but they just want to obey the earlier thing. So you're right, John. It really comes down to people just don't know the Bible. They really don't understand the Bible. They don't know what it

means. They don't know what it's about. They don't know it's teaching. So where was Hobart in all of this as far as scholarship goes? I think Hobart was very, Dr. Freeman was very conflicted in his own mind. He was trained himself. He actually was trained. He had a Master of Theology from Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, and he had a doctorate in theology, not in philosophy. It's a very specialized degree. There are lots of doctorates in philosophy, a PhD, but he had a PhD in Old Testament and Hebrew from Gracieological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana. So he himself was trained. I think

Dr. Freeman sincerely wanted his followers to be biblically literate, and every minister should desire that. That's one of the main motivations in your own personal life is to make sure that you communicate accurately what the text is saying, because you do want your audience to be biblically literate. But I think as time went on, things began to change with Hobart.

If he had just stayed himself trained and wanting to train your audience, that is exactly the first two steps you should take as a Christian minister. But he got to the place where he wanted to be their only teacher. And this is simply pride. I mean, this is simply thinking more of yourself than you should think of yourself. He got to the place where he wanted to be the sole preacher teacher. Now, I realized he had ministers under him, but they were just parroting what he said, not none of them had original fault on their own. And they're simply regurgitating what Hobart

said. And not only did he want to be their only teacher, he wanted, this is another only thing, he wanted them to only believe what he said and not what they heard or learned anywhere else.

And I think that's where the wheels began to fall off of the wagon. He turned, he went from encouraging biblical scholarship, even recommending people like Tenney's book for New Testament or Jay Parton's book for Old Testament theology or Merle Unger or whomever. He went from recommending scholarship to turning people against higher education, turning people against seminaries. The old Freudian slip for all charismatic people is to say, yeah, you don't want to go to cemetery. I mean, seminary, that was the Freudian slip always because they just hated seminaries. Well, there are good ones in there are bad ones and there are lots of ones in between.

And it's up to you to figure out, where can I go get a better education? You're not going to get a perfect education anywhere. You know, I think we have these people out there really today, John, that thing. If I could just...

find the Christian minister that is 100% accurate. Well, if you find him, tell me about him because there's no such thing that exists. A Christian minister who is 100% accurate, but shoot for one that's higher in the accuracy realm rather than lower.

You know, shoot for one that's up in the 70 or the 80% percentile, not the gym and Tammy Bay Faker. I even think her name is Tammy Faker, but Tammy Bay Faker, why not?

They're bound in the 20 or 30% percentile. Let's don't go there. You know, whenever Hobart left the glory barn, they had this great bookstore that was owned and run by Hank Platt, one of the long-term followers of Dr. Freeman entitled The Upper Room Bookstore.

They had all kinds of literature in there. Now, to be sure, it was mostly the John G. Lake, the FF Bosworth Christ, the healer, the Stanley Frodschum books that he wrote about Smith Wigglesworth.

It was mostly that kind of stuff, but there were books that were written by seminary professors, but as I'm saying that his Hobart's life went on, he saw himself as a Moses when he taught that series toward the end of his life in Exodus, and he went down the list of how Moses was trained in all the wisdom of Egypt.

And then he said, now that's just like my training. God trained me in the seminaries so that I would know what not to believe and so that I would know what to teach you people, what not to believe.

So it was okay for him, you see, to go to seminary, but it's not okay for you to go to seminary. You know, somehow you're just not smart enough to be able to figure out what's right and what's wrong at seminary.

He had to go, he figured all that out for you. And so now he is your teacher and you're just gonna have to listen to him. So here's some, as we wrap this up, John, here's one of the questions that I get relatively often in the last couple of years of our, of our doing these podcasts together and people will say something like this.

Okay, I'm understanding that Hobart was wrong about dress and positive thinking and confession and growing legs out and, you know, whatever, all these things we've talked about. But can't he really be that bad?

I mean, didn't he have some good things to say and they'll say, what about his biblical theology series? A lot of people feel and they have told me, and I think I got a good solid foundation in my understanding of theology and biblical scholarship by listening to Dr. Freeman's messages in that area.

And here's what I would say about that. that there were some good things Hobart said. He was not wrong on everything that ever came out of his mouth. Of course not. But here's what I would have to say, whenever a person wants to use that argument, look, I'm willing to throw away some of the care as manious stuff, but I want to hold on to all the Dr. Freeman's good biblical theology.

I just tell him it comes with a price. It comes with a price because I have listened to all of the biblical theology stuff and there is poison throughout it. Even when he is teaching on some technical, theological area, you cannot get away from his elitism, from his, well, I'm the only one who knows what's right, from his arrogance, from his, where are the only ones that are right?

We are the hub of the wheel and the spokes go out from us all over the world. There's no way to escape that. That is part and parcel, warping woof of Dr. Freeman's personality.

He was very arrogant. He was very much an elitist. He condescended to people around him and he thought he was the world's leading biblical scholar that he was able to take traditional theological scholars and wed it with Smith Wigglesworth, John G. Lake, William Brannum, Charismatic stuff and end up with the perfect balance of those.

And it simply didn't happen. If you hold on to all of Hobart's biblical theology foundation, it's gonna come with a price. You can't escape it. There's poison throughout. He actually, and you won't know this unless you go to seminary yourself or do, if you don't go to seminary, you don't have to go, but you've gotta buy the material and you've gotta do the study and you've gotta do the research yourself.

He was not very good on just a whole lot of points. He did not comprehend the complexities of the issues in theology. He did not understand the nuances that were involved in certain biblical text.

And beyond that, he was simply wrong about a lot of stuff. You know, not only did he not understand the nuances, he was wrong on the Trinity. He was wrong on teaching his people.

He kept them in fear all the time that they could be saved and they could lose their salvation. He was wrong on his teaching on deliverance from demons. He's wrong on his eschatology. He was wrong on textual transmission.

He was wrong on so many things. So if you think, here's what I would say, John, if you think that you are smart enough and you may be, if you think you're smart enough and trained enough and qualified to pick and choose the good and the bad, I would simply say beware, because there's poison throughout, and there is not the same type of misleading poison there that you'll find in some scholarly book on the subject.

Because those guys didn't pretend to know it all, like Hobart did. You can go read other better scholarly works on whatever the topic is you're interested in. And it's going to advance you way past where Dr. Freeman would have ever taken you.

Because while you're listening to some of the accurate things that Dr. Freeman does have to say in some theological areas, poisons mixed in with it all the time. I'll just give you one example, and I'll shut up for you, John.

When he was teaching just, I think it was just Old Testament introduction, teaching the little book of Obadaya. He gets to the last verse of Obadaya. And this is in a classroom setting where we're going to study the prophet Obadaya, the date of the book.

Who was the prophet Obadaya? What was the context in which the book was given? Who were the original recipients? What's the main theme of the book? You know, those are things you do with Old Testament survey or Old Testament introduction.

So we get to the last verse, and it says, if I can remember it, in my mind, it says that saviors will come. And the word can also be translated, delivers. That delivers will come upon Mount Zion to judge the Mount of Esau, and the kingdom shall be the Lord's.

I think that's a very close quotation or close to it of the last verse of Obadaya, verse 21. That delivers will come upon Mount Zion to judge the Mount of Esau, and the kingdom shall be the Lord's.

You say, what can you get out of that? Well, here's what you get out of that when you have this big deliverance ministry. And a, by the way, I have had several requests. Will you and I do a one?

I know you've done a bunch on deliverance, but we need to do something regarding Hobart's view on it. I've got requests on that. I've got requests from another brother on eternal security, because he said Hobart always kept me eternally insecure.

That I, I just felt every day I was going to go to hell and lose my salvation. Anyway, back to Obadaya, verse 21. So here's Hobart just lecturing along, you know, good stuff, just innocuous, just date, authorship, precipiant, that kind of stuff.

But I'm telling you, he always found a way to weave into it crazy charismatic stuff. So we get to Obadaya's last verse, and it says, deliverers will come upon Mount Zion to judge the Mount of Esau, and he said not also think that this has reference to all of the end time deliverance ministries that God is raising up in the body of Christ today.

To set his peace. free into cast demons out. You've got to be kidding me. That was nowhere in Obedet Daya's mind. He had nothing to say about any kind of end time deliverance casting out demon ministry. That verse and that context and that book have nothing to do with that. So that's just an example and there are hundreds of them that if you carefully listen to Dr. Freeman you will find that following the theology will come with a price. There's very little that I would add to that but there is one thing that I will say. I have had people I had the

same conversation that you and I have just had. I've had this with people who have escaped the cults and my advice is always just go read the book for yourself. It's simple and sadly many people often respond with this. I'm not capable. I'm not qualified. I'm not I'm not spiritual enough. There's different phrases they use that have literally been indoctrinated in their heads by these people. These scoundrels who want to claim full authority and control of how they understand the Bible. But yet the Bible was written where anybody can read it. It's especially if you read some of the newer translations it reads

just like a book. And my response is this it is actually less work for you to read the Bible than for you to try every single Sunday twice on Sunday for some people and Wednesday night for other people.

Every time you're listening to a minister to try to determine if what he says is biblical it's far more work than just reading the book yourself because then when he says it you'll know it because you've read it and you can tell when things are slightly twisted. So it's always less work and I I'm a strong believer that if it's the thing that you're supposed to study most as a Christian will study it. It's it's not that hard. So I'll know that. John, I would echo that and encourage everyone to read the Bible for themselves. But what they have to do is try to read it as a brand new book.

You can't read it and see that now does it agree with randomism or freemenism or disagree? Put all of that out of your mind. Just read it like you've never read it before. Just read it for the first time yourself and forget any themes of positive thinking and confession and deliverance ministries and old order garb. Just forget all of this stuff that's been imported into people's minds and just read it for yourself. And if you're going to go to a church because I have people ask me what should I do? If you're going to go to a church look for a minister who has the signs who

shows some signs of personal piety as well as scholarship but who shows some signs of humility and willingness to dialogue and and discuss. For those who aren't watching and just listening the cat is swaying the tail right behind Chino's neck.

it looks like some sort of a play going on. Now you're gonna make them all go and look at the very end of podcasts here. Look for someone who has transparency, who demonstrates love and their communication of the subject matter, and definitely look for someone who provides you the freedom to study it out on your own, and believe it or not, in these circles, the freedom to disagree of all things.

Can you believe that someone might disagree with you? You're not allowed to disagree in these circles. Someone who gives you the freedom to disagree without the threat of some kind of divine judgment on you.

And someone who's not so full of themselves that they can't have a cat wagging their tail behind there. Thank you so much for doing this. Thanks for having me and her my favorite sidekick.

If you've enjoyed a show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Automotive.

You can find us at www.William-Branum.org. You can find us at www.William-Branum.org.

You can find us at www.William.org.