From Assurance to Insurance: How Psalm 91 Became a Cult Doctrine | Chino Ross

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 talk about insurance or assurance. I had no idea the context. You gave me the passage from Psalms to read and I've still got to go through my memory probably while you're talking. I'll look up

the connections on that verse but let me read you a story that William Branham told often in his sermons. He had a guy come up to him selling insurance and the guy said, the guy says, would you like to have insurance? And William Branham said, my brother is an insurance agent and the guy said, oh I'm sorry I wouldn't bud in around Jesse your brother and Jesse, I don't know that he was actually an insurance agent but he was working with the mob which is a funny side story I won't get into but the guy says so you have insurance. He said,

I have assurance and then he went on to look around to you know everybody standing there and he said his wife kept looking at him like he was a hypocrite and he says, I have assurance, blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. I heard the story growing up all the time and I never really thought people would take it to the extremes that could be taken. We just thought it was like a joke that he frequently told but I remember as a kid here in this story and I want to say I need to look up and see how often that he said it but I want to say that through a large part of his

laterane ministry he was teaching, he was saying the story and then to find that this is part of the Hobart Freeman legacy is really odd to me. And I was curious John to know was there any William Branham connection? You almost have to have been a member of faith assembly or a follower of Dr. Freeman to know the importance of Psalm 91 in his ministry and whenever he would refer to Psalm 91 he always called it his assurance policy and so there was this dichotomy between, are you going to take out?

God's assurance policy, or man's insurance policy, and he did a message on this in the winner of 1974, 1975. And it is available online for anyone who wants to go and listen to it.

It's a two, I can remember on the tape list. It was a two-part tape, so I assumed for years that because I did probably just didn't remember, it's been 50 years since I've heard the message.

But I just assumed, you know, he taught part one on Sunday and part two the following Sunday. But I found out by listening to it online, it is a, because I don't hear any break in it at all.

It is a single message that lasted one hour, 50 minutes, and 55 seconds. So it was a two-hour message. It was a long, long message. And he was preaching Psalm 91. I'm not sure where he got this idea, assurance instead of insurance.

Not only did he teach a message on it that was two hours long, but he talked about it all the time. Hobart was one of these people that just loved alliteration. He loved cute little sayings.

He loved the repetitive nature of the story that he told. There was never anything new or fresh with Dr. Freeman. He just had the same stories and he had spent them a different way.

And many times he wouldn't even spend them a different way. You know, you'd be sitting out there and say, oh no, are we going to hear again? On the road home from a nightclub in 1952, God saved me on the road home from a nightclub.

We heard that, you know, hundreds of times. We just did. And so we heard this business of assurance. And he just loved saying, assurance. It wasn't assurance. As I think we normally would pronounce the word, blessed assurance.

Jesus is mine. We don't say blessed assurance. Jesus is mine. But he talked about it all the time. And I actually can't document from whom he borrowed this. I was really curious to know, but I told you before he went online.

I was suspecting he did not get it directly from brand on that brand. I'm taught Psalm 91 the same way Hobart did. But I'm still going to say he probably borrowed it from someone else.

Prior to him. And I only say that because that's the track record. And I've been able to document that pretty well over all of these podcasts that the things Hobart was saying, whether it was the manifestation of the sons of God.

You know, he did not see that himself one time when he was reading Romans. He got that from people before him. The term overcomer, that was not original with him. And he didn't just get that from the first couple of chapters of the book of Revelation.

He got that from other people. The use of the term man-child. That was not original with him from Revelation 12 that God showed him that, and just a host of other things. And there's nothing wrong.

As I've said, with borrowing something from someone else, as a matter of fact, that's where all of us learn things. It's from people who came before us.

So I don't have a problem at all. If somebody, if you, if I, if Hobart, I don't have a problem at all. If Hobart borrowed the idea as a concept from someone else because that's the normal process of human learning.

I was talking with someone this past week, and I said, I can't think of a single original truth that I have, or original doctrine or peace of knowledge. And that sounds pretty pathetic, but I think that's just the way education and knowledge is.

It's, I'm not just telling this person, it is so rare to be an Albert Einstein and come up with this equals MC squared, you know? That is some brilliant stuff. And even the stuff that Einstein came up with was, I mean, the ideas and preliminary concepts had been thought through by people before him, but still, I mean, he was a genius level individual.

And I'm not that, neither was Hobart, neither are most people. It's so, it's okay to build on other people, but the problem with Hobart is he always taught everything with the impression to the people listening to him that this was, that God gave him this, that this was original with him.

And that's what's so dangerous and deadly, because when you do that over a long period of time, those people in your audience come to believe that all of this stuff that you have is directly from God, and it's such a, such a huge pot of material, it's pretty impressive that you were able to come up with all of this on your own.

So anyway, if I could just read, I'll just read a couple of verses, John, to start this Psalm. So people get the flavor of Psalm 91. It is actually just one of the most beautiful Psalms in the book of Psalm.

It's anonymous. We don't know who wrote it. A lot of your Psalms will have a superscription, which actually go back to the Hebrew text as well, telling us something about authorship or the condition or background of the Psalm.

This one does not give us any superscription. It bears some close similarities to the previous Psalm, simply because... is almost the opposite of the previous psalm, and so some scholars have suggested that it might have been written by Moses, since Moses, according to the superscription, wrote Psalm 90. He wrote Psalm 90 as, well, a way down in the dumps, and then here comes Psalm 91, but we have God to depend on, and so here he's coming up to heights. Psalm 91, verse 1, he that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide unto the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, he is my

refuge and my fortress, my God, in him, while I trust. Surely he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the noise and pestilence. He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings shall you trust, his truth shall be your shield and buckler. And so forth, and obviously a whole lot of imagery and metaphors being used, just describing how wonderful God's protection is.

So you can imagine me as a teenager, and I literally heard this 50 years ago. I literally heard I'm 67, and I heard this when I was 17, and I just thought this the way Hobart was teaching it, this was just the most beautiful new revelation from God. And I quickly memorized this entire chapter, and I can remember early in my newly married years, I got Psalm 91 on my license plate for my car, and I just thought I was so cool and so spiritual, because I didn't need insurance either. I had divine assurance. You know, it's always pitted. You can either have man's way, man's insurance, or you can have divine

assurance. And so what has made me want to discuss this among so many other things that we could hear 50 years later are the comments that I've heard and that I have read from several ex-faith assembly people here recently. They've been in the comment feed, but they've also just been in my own personal interaction with some of these people. And in hearing and reading their comments, you can tell right away that they're an ex-faith assembly person, because Psalm 91 was just was really big in their foundation years as a Christian. Some of these people were just kids at the time. Some of them were

young adults, but they all knew the importance of Psalm 91. And so it's just interesting, depending on what church you have grown up in, or what minister you grew up under, certain ideas and concepts, passages, you know, are foundational.

They're just a part of who you are. And I really have come to understand, John, that if you were a part of a cult, these things become part of you just in a really unique and definite way.

I'm convinced that if you grew up in an assemblies of God church, which is a Pentecostal church, and you went there, I don't know, all when you were a kid, when you were a teenager, you're going to come away, and let's say you got away from that.

Or you didn't, either way. I would say that for the rest of your life, there are certain maybe ideas and concepts and definitely just feelings that you have because of where you were during formative years in your life.

But there, to me, seems to be something different about any type of cult of personality because of the intelligence of the leader and his ability to communicate and because of his obsession with himself, you simply hear the same types of stories and the same use of passages in such a repetitive way that I really, really do think that's what we call mind control.

And I do really believe you can use biblical passages. There's nothing wrong with Psalm 91. It's a part of the Old Testament. The hymn book of the Jewish people of God under the Old Covenant, and if you read it, it's only 16 verses, it's a small Psalm.

It's a beautiful Psalm. And I'm sure there are other people listening to this who don't have any connection with Dr. Freeman, who are familiar with Psalm 91 and who would agree. Yeah, this is really a beautiful Psalm of protection.

But when you come up under this cult mentality, he just has a different type of hold on you. So let me explain how this Psalm is supposed to work for faith assembly people. Here's how it works because here's how you heard the Psalm

told to you by Dr. Freeman and his understudies, but especially Dr. Freeman. Because even the ministers under him who learned it, they learned it in the same setting and they were out in the same audience as everyone else.

So it was not as original with them or for them or to them as it was to Dr. Freeman. But for Hobart, here's how it worked. And you will hear him say that on these in this message, which is as I say, formally a two-part message now, it's just a long hour and 50 minute and 55 second one now.

But you'll also just hearing, it's just a casual reference on messages all the time. But you're supposed to confess this. before you get out of bed every morning. This was a part of his routine.

Now, if you hear all of the context in which he tells the story, he would not necessarily quote the whole Psalm. He probably did not read it because he did have it committed to memory, but he would maybe start it, go through a few verses at the beginning, maybe pick some in the middle.

We don't know, he didn't tell, but he just says that he always confessed Psalm 91 before he got out of bed in the morning. And so as you're hearing this, and if your minister's doing it, and he's all powerful and anointed and God's man of faith and power for the hour, then you just know by implication this is something you're supposed to do.

So if you confess this, this is the way it works. Before you even get hit, he would always say, before I get out of bed, before my feet hit the floor in the morning.

I'm claiming, I'm claiming my assurance policy. And he would also throw in the first five verses of Psalm 103. Those were just his morning. You know, like you have morning coffee, this is what you do before you have morning coffee.

You claim protection from Psalm 91. And so you say, well, what does that do if you claim protection on the basis of Psalm 91? If you're lying in bed and you're quoting part of this, what are you doing?

Well, it takes the place because it's an assurance to the believer, it takes the place of an insurance policy and hence his love and his play on the words. I've gotten my assurance policy and you can have your insurance policy, but I'll take God's higher provision and you can take man's lower provision.

And so as you hear him talk about this, a favorite topic and subject of his, then he just love to go on these tangents of comparing what he has based on God's word versus what you have based on man's word.

And he would say it like that, would you prefer God's word or man's word? I prefer God's word. So I have Psalm 91. So I have faith as my shield and all you have is blue shield.

And I have the old rugged cross and all you have is blue cross. You know, he'd take all of these well-known insurance companies like blue shield and blue cross and insurance instead of assurance.

He'd say, you can have the medicine man, but I have the son of man. And I would tell people, just beware of cute slogans. Hope art was famous for cute slogans. So, he'd want you to have faith instead of blue shield as your shield.

And he would even encourage you when you get up every morning, once you get out of bed, before you go on your day, put on the whole armor of God. And so, you literally put on the helmet of salvation and the breastplate of righteousness.

And then you take the shield of faith and the sword of the spirit and you go through all of these motions, putting on the whole armor of God. So, you know, I look back.

And as I said, John, I hadn't heard this until I heard it recently. His teaching on this in all of these years. But I was very familiar with what he said. And it's amazing.

It's amazing what you hear as a new convert and what you hear 50 years later in the same message. Thankfully, these messages have been preserved. And as I said, this message was taught over the winter of 1974, 1975.

There was snow on the ground. They had only been in the glory barn about two years by this time. And they were excited. And he tells them at the very beginning of the message, this is going to be become part of your life and part of your regimen as an overcomer.

And so, I think it was probably fairly new to the people when he introduced them to Psalm 91 as their assurance policy instead of their insurance policy. But when I go back as I have recently listened to that, you know, you hear so many things.

You didn't hear. I was only 17 years old when I heard this. And I think what you tend to hear, because you don't have the mind that has the ability to critically think and discern.

You just hear the high points is what you hear. You hear any miraculous stories. You hear the cute slogans. You hear incredible testimonies that he tells. You hear just fantastic accounts of people who've been preserved and healed.

You don't hear all of the filler material that goes between all of those stories. And so, as I think about what he said back then, and I'm thinking about it now, and I hear that instead of blue shield, faith is your shield, instead of blue cross, the old rugged cross, instead of insurance, assurance, okay, well, which one of these things is actually providing my protection?

He just runs them all together, faith, and the cross, and claiming Psalm 91. I mean, it's just like a machine gun, a scattered gun, shooting all this stuff out there, and it all sounds so good, but I'm wondering, now as I look, which one of these things?

You said faith as my shield, and I've got the old rugged cross, Got Psalm 91. I didn't even hear any of that back then. He just runs it all together and he's just mounting all of this stuff up so that by the end of the message, all you can say is, Amen, I agree.

You don't even know what you've agreed to. As I look at the way Hobart did things, Sean, it seems to me that he just turned Christianity into such a religion of personal works. You have to do this.

You've got to quote that and don't forget to memorize this. You've got to pray. Rebuke that demon. Claim this promise. Don't wear this piece of clothing. Don't watch that television show. Don't join this group.

He just turned Christianity into, I really think such a religion of personal works and I think that it's probably because that's the way he lived in his own life. I think that's how he understood our relationship with God.

There was just this sense of extreme urgency all the time. You don't have time to lay this on the shelf. All you have time to do is obey it and believe it and he just taught that you don't have any opportunity in your life to discern, to maybe process Psalm 91 yourself and see is this really what it's saying and is this what I want to do on a regular basis?

I don't know, but it just seemed like this was a part of his regular works religion to make sure you don't forget to quote Psalm 91 before you get out of bed in the morning.

So while you were talking, I was digging into this because I wanted to see, I knew if Hobart Freeman is using the Assurance joke, it's likely he got it from somebody who was at least in that community where Brannum is repeating this joke.

And I don't know that Brannum came up with it, but he's repeating it so it was commonly popular. So I knew there must be some similarities in doctrine. Well, as you were talking, you mentioned a phrase that is forever burned in my head man from listening these recordings over and over and over again.

So I'm looking it up to see where that memory came from and the funny part is, William Brannum never mentioned Psalm 91 by name and he also didn't mention it by the Psalm. He always referred to Satan quoting Psalms 91 in Matthew 4.6 when he says, you give the angels charge over you less they dashed your foot against the stone and that second part, I don't think is actually in Psalm 91 but the scholars believe that is Satan quoting Psalm 91 according to what I read and understand.

So I'm looking at this and I'm looking at the sermons that he's referencing. this. And it would have been tied to what you're calling in Hobart Freeman, the manchild doctrine, which is William Brannum's manifest sons of God doctrine. And he's always, he always liked to quote the Satan fighting against it because he was, he was basically creating the scene in all of the minds where any religion that was against the faith healing movement that was teaching, you don't need to go to a healer to be healed. You just need to go to the Holy Spirit.

He was, he would always equate those to Satan attacking Jesus on the mount on the, you know, in front of the temple. So what, in essence, what this is, he Hobart Freeman is using one of William Brannum's key doctrines, which is about the manifest sons of God and tied to the assurance, which also in a weird way ties back to this fight against between people who are four and against the divine healing because you don't need divine healing. You have assurance, you have blessed assurance. So in a weird way, it comes down, down to the circle. I could go into

the depths of what all of this means in Brannumism and it would probably take me to a three podcast to explain it. But in essence, it is something that Brannum did teach. He just never mentioned it by name. So I didn't, I didn't immediately catch it. Yeah. And he, Hobart, uses not only for insurance. That was the primary, but he, he saw the chapter is just giving you protection period.

So definitely it had to do with divine healing because by the time you get down to,

like look at verse 10, there shall no evil befall the neither shall any plague come neither, dwelling. So a plague come neither, dwelling, a plague would be some type of sickness or illness. So what does it say here? It said no plague will ever come neither, dwelling. So he definitely use this for insurance as well as for divine healing. When you listen to him began to teach the Psalm and he actually goes to all 16 verses of it in that two hour message.

The very, very beginning of it though, here are the things you hear now that you don't hear as a 17 year old. I'm going to say within the first three minutes of it, he does, he talks about Lloyds of London, how they'll ensure you against just about any laws, but there's always a catch, there's always a catch. And you know, he says, well, there is no catch here. But then within a couple of moments, he says, now Psalm 91, in order for it to work, it's dependent upon meeting the conditions. And you know what, he gets two conditions, John. He said it's dependent on meeting

the conditions, total faith and total obedience. You know, I never heard that before. I just saw it it was a lucky charm. You know, you just, you- Just quote it, say it. And once you quote it and say it, and I'm sure that's how everyone else took it.

And then we go back and this is called, we read the fine print. When you read the fine print, well, the only way this works, he said, it is dependent upon meeting the conditions of total faith and total obedience.

Well, there we go again with Hobart's nonsense. I don't know that anybody has ever had total faith in their life. And I am certain that nobody has ever had total obedience in their life.

You'd probably be living in heaven if you had total obedience and total faith in your life. We do the best we can and we always strive for more and we do it out of the depths of our heart and our love for God to believe him and to obey him.

But we're always finding areas that we come up short in, which was just something Hobart didn't believe and didn't tolerate. I think he thought that he was walking in total faith. That was a phrase they would love to use.

Brothers, we gotta be walking in total faith and total obedience. He has a series of tapes called total discipleship, total commitment, total consecration. You know, again, it's this works religion. None of us are able to do that and we should try and we should want to try.

We should never look for ways to be disobedient or to be lacking in faith. But that's just, I think, the height of presumption to think any of us are walking in total faith and total obedience.

But as he begins to exegy this, he says, now those are two conditions. Again, small print that none of us were able to read back in the day. And then he breaks the song down into seven different sections, all of which begin with a C.

And then he, because he just loves a littleeration. And he said, well, this is the way the Lord gave it to me. Those are the little subtle things you find in Hobart sermons all the time.

Hobart didn't study this as a professional scholar would study it, look at it in its context. It's in the book of Psalms. It's the 91st Psalm. The book of Psalms is actually divided. If you study the book of Psalms into five books of its own, you've got to find which of those five books Psalm 91 is in.

It's easy to find the five books because they all end with a doxology. Psalm 91 is preceded by Psalm 90 and followed by Psalm 92. You know, this is the way you study God's Word just like you read any book.

You study it in its context. Not with Dr. Freeman. God gave him this message on Psalm 91 and God gave this message to him with seven subsections in the Psalm. all starting with a C. Hobart was just, it's fascinating. He was a proof texture of the proof textures. He was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. And I don't even mean that in a bad way, although he was the bad version of that. I just mean it in the sense that I said this before.

Someone asked me, several people asked me, Chino, do you think Dr. Freeman was a smart man? Do you think he was intelligent? And I said, yeah, I think he was really smart. I think he was really an intelligent person. But I think his intelligence shown in the areas of memorization.

He loved schemes, categories, charts. He loved everything starting with the C. What I think he failed terribly in is the ability to process information. He could memorize information, but he couldn't process the complexities of the information. He knew how to come up with arguments against cults, you know, Jehovah's Witness, Mormonism. He would have a list of verses to combat them. And I would say that his, the list of verses were accurate and they were the appropriate ones to use to combat. But I just think he never understood the complexity of the differences and the nuances of the arguments that were involved. But to show you how God gave

him this sermon, which is not the way ministers are supposed to get their sermons. By the way, God doesn't just give it to you. He gave words to the prophets. He gave revelation to the apostles.

That's not how that happens today. In the very first verse, he that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high. He said, well, the secret place, he said, I looked that up in the Hebrew.

And what that means, secret place is it means a shelter. And I've never looked that up. I don't know whether that's true or not. But it probably is, you know, when he said he looked something up in the Hebrew, I don't, I don't doubt things like that. I always will give him the benefit of the doubt then. But then he said after he looked it up in the Hebrew, what does secret place means that it means in Hebrew a shelter, then he asked the Lord. He said, I prayed and said, Lord, what's the meaning of this? And so here we go down that path that you are dependent on your minister now who

prayed and asked God to tell him what does this mean. Now you're just dependent on him. God told him this and who am I to say God didn't tell him. You know what it is? According to Hobart in his prayer, he said, I asked the Lord and the Lord told me it's the cross and it's a baptism of the Holy Spirit. And I'm going, wait a minute, there was no cross when this Psalm was written. There was no baptism of the Holy Spirit. This is so unaccranistic. This is for those two events, the cross of Christ,

and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit ever happened. So there's no way it could mean that, because then you're telling me that this Psalm had no meaning to any Jewish person back in the days of the Psalms.

It had zero meaning. We have to wait until post Acts 2 before they could even claim Psalm 91 in verse 1. It's just a terrible way of trying to understand scripture or exegita passage to get on our hands and knees and say, Lord, tell me what this means.

And then he gives you something way over in the New Testament. So anyway, he just goes along, John, in his exegesis of this, and makes his comments, tells his stories. I will say that there are two specific points.

There are around the 50 minute mark. I didn't timestamp him exactly, but I will use them in a later podcast when you and I go back and pull explicit, specific documented things that Hobart got or used from William Brannum, because there's been an old mountain goat on YouTube right now putting out some videos and he is a died in the wool freemenite follower.

And when he heard you and I say, he actually commented on our very first podcast a year and a half ago, and I didn't realize it, because that's been a long time ago. But someone recently sent me one of his podcasts and said, hey, Cheno, do you know who this guy is?

And when I did a little research, I realized, wow, he's been following us for the last year and a half. He's a died in the wool freemenite, but here's what he also said, he will swear up and down.

There's no connection between Hobart Freeman and William Brannum. He even did a recent podcast on me. And I think my name is Chinko Rolls. I think that's what it is. He couldn't get Cheno.

You've only introduced me as Cheno 60 times, you know? But anyway, Chinko Rolls, he did a podcast on me saying I'm blaspheming that I'm saying Hobart had some connection to William Brannum and that he didn't.

Well, we've already documented before and we'll do some formal one of that in the future. But yes, he talked about William Brannum twice in this message and some William Brannum prophecies, because he loved William Brannum.

He was a follower of Brannum. He came out of Brannumism. But anyway, he'll get down to look at verse 7, a thousand will fall at thy side and 10,000 at thy right hand, but it will not come nivate.

And Hobart was a good storyteller, way better than I am. I'd rather teach the Bible and I'm not very... good as a storyteller. He's a great storyteller. So he has all these stories. So he tells this story, John, of a man in combat who was a Christian brother and in combat, he carried a Bible, a whole Bible. That means old and new testament, but it's just a pocket version of it in his front chest pocket. And a sniper took a shot at him and the bullet hitting right in his chest. And it went through Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and

Deuteronomy and worked his way all the way through some historical books, Samuel and Kings and Chronicles. And then it got into Psalm and it went through Psalm 1, 2, 3, and 50, and 75 and 80. And then it went through Psalm 90. And then the tip of the bullet stopped on Psalm 91 and verse 7. As a 17-year-old wide-eyed and gullible, I mean, what are you supposed to do with a story like that? But you're just flabbergasted. Here's the problem, John.

Here's the problem for ministers. And I'm a minister. I currently teach now. And it is so important. It is so important to be careful what you say. What you say is important to the people that are listening to you. And Hobart Freeman told stories that he never verified.

He never checked. And maybe there was no way to validate that, you know? Who knows? I just know he told stories at random toll, random toll stories at people before him told. And pretty soon, it becomes absolute fact because it's been repeated so many times. Could that have happened to somebody in history? Of course it could have. But did that actually happen? I would rather doubt it. I'm sure God will protect his people. I'm confident of that. But did he protect this person in that way where the tip of the bullet lodged up against Psalm 91, verse 7, and was not able to penetrate any

further. I have my doubts on that one, John. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transition through the latter reign charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen McCummery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

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You know, whenever I first left the Brannem cult, one of the things that hit me as you and I had talked offline outside of this podcast, the stories are significant, but yet at the same time, it's just kind of unbelievable whenever you take the psalm of all of the stories.

And me and another guy went through as many of the Brannem stories we could remember that we're just completely out there. Like why would he even tell this story? And between the two of us, we came up with a list.

I want to say it was in the hundreds. I can't remember the exact number, but it was in the hundreds. And he went through the long task of trying to verify most of them, most of the stories are things that can never ever be proven.

And probably by design, some of them were. He's mentioning going into the tombs of the great Old Testament patriarchs, which have never yet been found today, but he claims he's visited there and many of the different things.

But in the end, here's the problem. There is an author of early church history named Eusebius. And we've talked about him before. He walks you through all of the histories. And what happens with stories versus somebody who is trying to remain scriptural is that the stories turn into legends, the legends turned into worship, the worship turns into false gods.

False gods turns into human sacrifice. That's the chain of events that happen. And it's not a good chain. I'll just say it like that. But these stories like the I have assurance, I mean, whether he got it from Brannum or Nott and that's up for debate, it's a story that turned into a doctrine.

And out of the many stories that this guy and I went through and looked at, it's odd to me how many of the stories were repeated and given a Bible verse to link it together in a sermon, the Bible verse itself became loaded language in the movement.

And when the loaded language stuck with the story, well, then that turns into, because you're in a legalistic movement, that turns into a new rule. And then the new rule will rob some person of their freedom forever.

And then to think this freedom literally meant that you can't buy insurance, it's ridiculous when you take a step back outside of this, looking in, people would think, are these people nuts? Why would they do this?

And it happens so gradually over time that if Hobart Freeman had of just openly introduced this new doctrine. as we will never have insurance again. Everybody would say, you are nuts. But since it came so gradually in given verse context from the Bible, well, out of context, verse matching, I guess, is the better.

It's like doctrine soup. You put a bunch of verses into a bowl, you put a bunch of doctrines in a bowl, stir it up, and what do you get? That's kind of what this is.

And that's how my life was, man. Whenever I left this and just started trying to unravel, well, what parts of this were real and what parts were not, it's almost impossible to unravel the real versus the fiction, because each piece of fiction was tied to a Bible verse.

And the Bible verse is a literal verse, but you have to detangle in your head what that verse means because we had loaded language for all kinds of scattered verses in this alphabet soup doctrine.

Yeah, you're so right, John. That's why I said last time, people have said, well, I'm willing to give up some of the extremes of doctrine frame and like faith healing, but I want to, I think I learned a lot of good stuff from his biblical theology.

And I just said, it's full of poison, you know? Unfortunately, there are a lot of good things said. And as you have said, and as I have said, as we have both said over and over, you really have to just stop listening to people, anybody, and just pick up your Bible and just start reading it for yourself.

You know, it's terrible. You really can't go back to a minister, not like Brannum and not like Freeman, and try to find the good among the bad, because everything was too twisted. And I think every minister had some bad in him.

Every teacher has something that's not correct, but it's just a different animal that we're dealing with. You can go and listen to, say, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, who is still alive, who's a Scottish Presbyterian theologian of favorite of mine.

I don't think everything that Dr. Ferguson says is right, but I think a lot of what he says is right. And I can, I benefit from listening to Dr. Ferguson's lectures, for sure. I benefit from that, because what it is that I think is wrong, you know, I easily spot and doesn't affect me at all.

But that's not the same dynamic that you have if you have been a part of a cult and you're listening to a cult leader. It's not the same dynamic, because it doesn't matter what this person says, you're somehow drawn back into, as you just explained, so well, just a false feeling or a false interpretation of a verse.

And so as far as this chapter goes in insurance, yeah, I mean, this was an anti-insurance doctrine and chapter at faith assembly, because insurance is a negative confession. What is insurance? But you are...

purchasing something, hoping that such and such bad thing will not happen to you. And so you are buying against something bad happened to you. And Hope Art said, well, that's no different than a negative confession.

So see, all of this is tied into positive thinking and confession. Why would you buy insurance unless you are confessing something may go wrong? You might have a car accident. Your house might catch on fire, might get struck with lightning.

Why would you buy insurance? You'd buy insurance thinking that something bad may happen. So he said, no, no, no. You don't need insurance, which you need is assurance. And that is protection from the evil ever even happening to you.

But here's the problem. Hope Art, who didn't have insurance, but who did claim Psalm 91, had the exact same things happen to him in his life as dead people who bought insurance. In other words, he was still stolen from, he was still robbed, things still caught on fire.

He tells on this tape, several car wrecks that he goes through. He still had car accidents. I thought it said you would be protected from all and every evil that not a single thing would even come nigh you're dwelling.

I mean, it wouldn't even come nigh you're dwelling. But yet, they happen to hope Art, he tells them out the car wrecks on these two tapes, which is just shocking that he would do that, which shows me the massive cognitive dissonance that was in his own mind.

Because I don't think he deliberately went through the thought process, John, well, I know this hasn't worked for me, but I'm still gonna teach it and force this on the people. I don't think he went through those mental steps.

I think as he read Psalm 91 and claimed Psalm 91, he thought it did work. And as he had a car accident, he went the next morning back to claiming Psalm 91 because it works.

And when he had his next car accident, he went back to claiming Psalm 91. I don't need any insurance. I've got divine insurance. I say what madness is in a person's mind or probably for him what cognitive dissonance is in a person's mind.

Because look, you mentioned Brannum's use of this and Matthew four about if you throw yourself off the pinnacle of the temple, the angels will bear you up. So that's down in verses 11 and 12.

He will give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, less thou dash thy foot against the stone. So let's go through this exercise as we wind down.

This morning in this podcast, Sean, let's say here's how here's how this would have happened with a faith assembly member who I give them all the credit. I mean all they're doing is going to church. They hear this guy teach this beautiful Psalm and they think that what he is saying is right. So this young man and his wife who were members of faith assembly back in the mid 1970s before they get out of bed in the morning, you know, the first thing they do is Lord we're going to claim and confess Psalm 91 and I am not against confessing and

memorizing scripture. That's wonderful and beautiful and we should all do it but just make sure we know what the scriptures are teaching and make sure what our minister has been telling us is the truth and I don't think it was here. So they confess Psalm 91 before he gets up and puts his clothes on. He's breakfast and goes to work and he's got a roofing company. So he's always climbing ladders and he's always working high on people's roof and so so the first day he comes home after work and he tells us his wife prays to Lord for Psalm 91. The

Lord protected me today said the ladder was really unstable under me today on a job and it started to shift but I knew I had claimed Psalm 91 and so the ladder didn't fall. The ladder stayed there and they go praise the Lord. Psalm 91 works. The next day he gets up and goes back to work and this day the ladder actually does more than slip. It falls and the young man falls all the way to the ground but he's not injured and so when he goes home he tells us why praise the Lord for Psalm 91. The ladder fell and I hit the ground and I just hit it and I

did the double roll and I wasn't hurt at all. Praise God for Psalm 91. The next day he goes to work has to climb that same ladder. This time he the ladder falls and he falls but all he does is he just brings his ankle and so when he gets home he says praise the Lord honey. Again Psalm 91 worked. We confessed it this morning. God is faithful. The ladder fell. I fell but all I have is a minor injury. The next day he goes to work. The ladder falls again and this time he breaks his arm but when he comes home he says honey praise the Lord. We claimed

Psalm 91 this morning. The ladder fell but you know all I have is a broken arm. You know he protected me and then he goes back the next day the ladder falls and he has serious serious injuries but he doesn't die and so he says praise the Lord. Psalm 91 does work because the Lord protected me. This is the type of cognitive dissonance that these people are going through and so So what happens is as they go through life, they have to relax the meaning of Psalm 91 based on what their experiences have been.

And that's not what Psalm 91 says. It says he'll protect you from everything into discussion, but that's not reality. Paul went through shipwreck, trophemous, got sick. Timothy had to drink some wine because he often had stomach ailments.

When a person has to reinterpret the meaning of Psalm 91 to cover for all of the changes in their own experience, then I know that we've got some kind of problem on our hand.

And John, when we get to the very end of this Psalm, the very last verse makes this promise with long life, will I satisfy him and show him my salvation.

When Hobart was claiming this, he was back in his 50s and he would say, God's gonna give me a long life. And then he would back up to the previous Psalm. And he would go into Psalm 90 and verse 10.

I didn't even know there was a verse that said this, but I can remember early on enlisting to Dr. Freeman, he was saying that he claimed that he was gonna not die before 70 because he said there's a verse in the Bible that says that you don't have to die before the age of 70.

And then lo and behold, they're actually, you know, there always is a verse. For everything they teach and say, I promise you, there will be a verse. And here is that verse, Psalm 90, written by Moses.

The days of our years are three score years in 10. And if by reason of string, they be four score. I never heard it read in context. I never even heard the rest of the verse.

I only heard the part that they wanted you to hear where Hobart would say, yep, God has promised you 70. And then he would love the word, the King James word, yay. Y-E-A, 70, yay, 80 years.

If you will claim the promises, that's not a promise. This is just something that Moses is saying and what is so interesting, John, is if you will read Psalm 90, it's pretty dreadful. If you will read Psalm 90 in its context, it is not saying what they're saying.

In its context, this is a prayer that Moses is praying to the eternal God, which you see in verses one and two. Lord, you've been our dwelling place in all generations. There's the dwelling place again, by the way.

You'll see in verse four, thousand years in your side are as but yesterday. What he is contrasting there is how glorious and eternal God ideas and how frail and temporary and transient our life is. So when he says 70 or 80, he's not saying, Oh, yeah, you get to live to be 70 or 80. He's saying, if you live to 70 or 80, what if you done? God lives forever. You're just a passing whisp of smoke. That's all any of us are here in life. So they've taken this passage completely out of context. And I think

these two Psalms really do go together. And I don't know whether Psalm 91 was written by Moses, but I know Psalm 90 was. And the context of Psalm 90 is that our whole life and our whole existence is fraught with difficulty and fraught with uncertainty and fraught with dangers all around us.

Hence the need for Psalm 91 because we don't know what life has for us. We don't know if we're going to fall from the ladder or not. And if we fall, we don't know how bad the injury will be.

And if we have a car accident, we don't know how bad that will be. But we know that our life is fraught with difficulty and fraught with danger. That's a whole message of Psalm 90 and hence Psalm 91. And in conclusion from my side, John, it was, it was just disingenious, I think, for Hobart to use this as a substitute for insurance policies because that's exactly what people went out and did. They went out and canceled all their insurance policies. Hobart is able to tell in this message how he wrecked several luxury sedans, big, big stretched led sleds, Cadillacs and

Lincoln's and Olds 98. Hobart had enough money to go replace it with another vehicle and the people in his congregation didn't. And I just find that to be a terrible trap set by a minister. I think even if you think that's the way life should be, you ought to keep that to yourself knowing if I teach this to these people. And they go cancel their insurance and something happens to them.

Of course, he said, well, that'd be a negative confession. But the fact of the matter it is, it did happen. It did happen to you. And you tell us of two car wrecks in your Psalm 91 tape and you're not being kind and generous to these people by telling them these things, knowing I can go replace my automobile. But these people simply can't. So it left people up a creek without a paddle because I've heard the stories of people who canceled health insurance, home insurance, car insurance, had bad things happen and did not have the funds to cover. Your story about the

latter reminded me, I know several people who were in this type, of religion, whether it's Brannamide or not, they're interestingly, it's a widespread thing. And the guy had the same attitude towards his healing and his safety, but the latter was so riddled and filled with duct tape to hold it together. And like it, I'm surprised that the thing was still usable. And he would go up on it. And you know, it's like an ocean nightmare. You don't trust that the latter is going to keep you up, but you're testing the faith. And I never really understood the depths of what that meant until I was out

of the cold. I was talking to this guy and he says, oh, you were in a Mark 16 religion. And I said, what? What's that? And I'd heard Mark 16 all my life growing up over and over and over. Mark 16 this, Mark 16 that. And he says, well, that's that's the type of religion where they focus on one verse and they want to test God. And I never really thought about it until he said it. That's exactly what we were doing. We were just testing God. And then take it a step further, I started down path of research like you wouldn't believe

about what that meant in history. What did it mean to test God? And there, I've talked about this, I think with you, but there were, I found court cases where there were companies making a killing lot of money. Well, killing figure to live figuratively and literally, because they were producing, I think it was strict nine. There were some, some type of poison that they would give the Pentecostals and Pentecostals could test God with this. And it was, it was actually bottled as a religious poison. And they were selling it as a religious poison until government stepped in and said, you probably shouldn't do that. Wow. But we

were in a Mark 16 religion. We were testing God. And whenever I really started piecing all of this puzzle together, it finally hit me. It was a religion that had great opposition. You had denominations who really, some of the scholars and some of the theologians in that, the domination knew their Bibles inside and out. And they knew the misapplication that was happening. They had some doctrine that probably didn't agree with the main hardcore, you know, faith healing sects. But they were more scripturally sound in many cases than the, than this. And so these people who did not have any scriptural theology, sound doctrine

and all teaching, they wanted to fight. And the way that they fought is, look, see, I can do this. And I'm right. I can do this. And I can pick up a serpent. I can drink poison.

And it turned into this thing that spun off into, I don't know if I've told you this or not. But I have evidence that William Brannum and his mentor and clan, Peter Roy Davis were doing the strict nine poison thing in front of crowds.

And I've even had people from old churches in Kentucky email me or some of them call me and say, I'm fairly certain it was William Brannum that taught our church how to drink poison.

And I have spoken with, there's a guy in Cincinnati who I guess he lost part of his hand with a snake. And the snake handling sacked and he had a big, some sort of a big, like, I don't know, furniture store, something like this.

He's relatively famous in Cincinnati. Well, he was part of this movement. He would travel with Brannum all throughout. And apparently Brannum was working in collaboration with this. All of this to say, you've got such extremes that people will pick up a snake knowing that that snake could hurt him and doing it simply for the fact to test God, to prove a point to people who aren't in the movement.

And whenever it gets to that level, it is not, it's no longer religion. It's really a fight. You're picking a fight and you're trying to instigate a fight. And what, how do you relate, how do you say that Christianity is a fight?

You know, it's not how Christianity works. But sadly, many of the people are in this and they, they teach like that, right? So where I came, where I landed after all of this, Mark 16, I started studying and there are scholars who claim that it was not in part of the original manuscripts.

And it was an addition, whether you believe that or whether you don't, you can see clearly that people took the ending of Mark 16 and focused on it more heavenly than the entire rest of the Bible.

And they learned it pretty well. They learned it. Yes, I can, Bible says I can pick up a snake, so I'm going to do it. But then ignored every other thing that the Bible says about don't test the angels, man, don't, if you have a guardian angel, don't run them through the mill.

And it, it also reminds me of a friend. In fact, I just went to see him and I saw the dang fan. Growing up, he had this metal fan from must have been the 1930s or 40s.

And back then, a, a fan that blows air did not have the slats that keep you from putting your fingers in it. And we're talking a thick, thick metal fan that's spinning around that's wide open.

And I remember testing it one time and it'll hurt your finger pretty good. But if you are a small child and you test it, you could actually lose a finger. It's really dangerous. So you know, you could test like Mark 16 and say, well, my, my child is not going to stick his finger in that fan.

And if he does, God will protect it. I'm going to test God. But who would do that to their little child? Nobody does this to their little child. And yet we're supposed to... have childlike faith. So you have these ministers that are treating us worse than you should even treat your own child. And the whole thing, just in the end, I realized that I can't be in a religion that literally doctrines were created to pick a fight with someone.

Yeah, John, and I didn't know if you'd just give me another minute or so, and I'll be through. I never knew we would make a trip around the world and end on Mark 16. I thought of it often, and I thought, I don't know how that's going to ever tie in, but what a great job you just did to tie in on two parts, on textual criticism and manuscript evidence for one. There's called the shorter and the longer, the short and long ending of the gospel of Mark. And there is, there is definitely pretty balanced scholarly debate over whether

that should have been in Mark's gospel. And I'll say the same as you, whether it is or not, I don't have any problem with it being there. I don't see anything there that's not at least in in history, like in Paul's life, seen over in Acts, chapter 28. So I don't have a problem with the ending of Mark at all. But what I often wondered in Dr. Freeman's ministry is why they didn't pick up snakes because he 100% believed in the what we call the long ending. And people are going to turn to Mark 16 to see what we're talking about.

It's a section that said these signs will follow those that believe, and it talks about healing, talks about speaking in tongues, it talks about serpents, and it talks about poison. But in the passage there where it talks about serpents, it says, you shall pick up deadly serpents. It's almost like it's telling us you shall do it. And so what has happened in Eastern Kentucky, but Pentecostal cults have said, yep, we're going to, we're going to obey this verse, like it's a command, we're going to obey this verse. And their whole group is founded. You better believe it. It's not around biblical doctrine. They are snake

handling church. And Hobart talked about it and he said, well, now that doesn't mean that you're supposed to pick up snakes. But if it happens to happen or occur like it did with Paul over on the island of Melita in Acts 28, and you get bitten, then you, then you won't die. I think that's a better way to interpret that than to take it as a command to go and do. But I just thought, you know, it's interesting that it does have this prescription for divine protection. I mean, why not apply Psalm 91 to Mark 16 and

go ahead and pick up your snakes and drink your poison because it seems like Psalm 91 will protect you from that. Well, of course, it won't because as you just said, John, that is definitely tempting God. And I think canceling all of your insurance policies.

he's based on Psalm 91, you know, is no different than someone drinking poison or picking up a snake to fulfill the long ending of Mark 16. Well, there's so much more that I could say there and I just actually, you probably saw me do it. I just actually bit my tongue. I wanted to go deeper, but we'll save that one for another day. Thanks for doing this. Thanks for having me, John.

Well, if you've enjoyed a show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org. From 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 Automal.