How Cult Leaders Create Sermons: The Illusion of Divine Inspiration

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, Cheno Ross, pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Cheno D. Ross YouTube channel. Cheno, the topic for today is one that I am going to have a lot of fun with. I hope I get to talk a little bit today. Well you hit me up with this and I have so much to say. I don't know that I'll be able to

constrain myself to one hour but so the the topic that you posed is how do ministers come up with their sermons. So I grew up in this cult which was a very very destructive cult and if people who are outside looking in don't understand what this means it means usually sermons are designed for scorn. That is usually what happens in a destructive cult. People are angry at the world and they're angry at the outside world so they try to preach to the inside and they preach at the outside which doesn't make it very inviting if

you are a sinner who's wondering about Jesus Christ and have never heard the name Jesus Christ. You're not very and it's not a very inviting environment for you to come into but I can recall one of this is probably the sermon that inspired me down this path of research which I have done you and I haven't talked about this. I've actually done a lot of research into how how did they come up with these sermons. Why did they come up with these topics but I can recall being in a service where the minister was just angry at the world and

it was a little bit unusual for me because we went to a lot of churches where we were hearing past recordings where the minister was angry at the 1960s world but this was a minister angry at the current world so as a child I'm fascinated oh my gosh he's angry at things that I know about and it turns out something had happened to him between the waitress and him at the restaurant and he preached an entire sermon at that restaurant and that waitress and so being angry at the world he started talking about the sins of the waitress and

the way she was dressing acting I mean the whole bit right and towards the end of it you just felt like you never really wanted to go to that restaurant you could tell which one he was talking about. So it was an advertisement against one of my favorite restaurants. So now I'm in this weird conundrum. I'm really excited he's preaching about things, he's preaching at things for today's world. But now I'm wondering, oh no, what if my parents never take me back there? They had the best desserts, man. So I'm in this weird world that is shaped by a person who is angry at

the world. And where I will head with that is usually when you're in a destructive cult of personality, the central figure has a narcissistic personality disorder or narcissistic tendencies. And whenever the people under this type of leadership are constantly indoctrinated by narcissism, it's weird because each person underneath becomes a, even if they don't have the disorder, they become a miniature narcissist. And as those people rise up into leadership and positions as pastors, et cetera, some of that comes out from, from under the rocks, like spiders, whenever they get angry at something. And you'll just hear anger preach from the pulpit. So I don't know

where you're headed with this, but I'm headed with usually it comes out of anger. I really do wonder if people have ever thought where does my pastor come up with his sermon topic? I've preached my first sermon, John, back when I was in my early 20s. I'm in my late 60s now. So I preached a lot of sermons. And if I had to do over again, I'd preach some of those early ones way differently than I did. I would do them more like I do today, but you know, you live and learn.

But where does your local minister come up with his topic? I think, for the most part, whatever subject is on his mind during the week. I mean, as soon as he gets through preaching on Sunday, by the time Monday morning rolls around, he's already thinking, oh no, I've got to come up with something else to say about a week from now. And so he begins to think about that. You know, in seminary, you have whole classes. You have whole sections of your seminary study on homiletics, what to preach, how to preach, how to prepare. But I think your average minister,

Bible teacher, your Christian minister just begins marinating on Monday. What can I say? What can I share? What can I preach? Well, they get in a, it's a real grind if you do it that way, to always have to come up with something new to say. And so as he just goes through the week, you know, I've heard enough sermons, I've been in enough churches, I've listened to even Hobart enough to know that, you know, if you're in the barbershop on Tuesday and you see Larry and you and Larry are talking, he tells you some story, ah, gave you an idea. So you go,

act that down, find some Bible verses, and now you're working on a sermon. You've got sermon preparation for the upcoming weekend. When I think of how that probably takes place for a lot of ministers, it actually shows in the congregation this real, deep belief in the divine, providential, sovereign control by God of your minister for that week, because that means the whole process of your biblical learning is governed by what your preacher does and thinks during that week.

So when you come to church, if it is a non-carismatic church, then the preacher, when he stands up to preach, he might say something like, God has laid on my heart, a certain idea or God has laid on my heart, a certain verse, and then he goes on to preach from that.

If you go to a charismatic church, it's normally a little more direct than that, and you'll hear the minister say something along the line of God spoke to me this week. And that is just a regular recurring every day of the week phrase that you hear in the charismatic movement with these ministers that the Holy Spirit said to me this week, blah, you'll hear hagan say it, Copeland say it, Freeman would say it, God told me, God spoke to me, God said, this is where it gets, I think, potentially dangerous, that's kind of somewhat of a lightweight phrase to throw around, but it has heavyweight consequences because you're

telling us that God, God, God has actually told you something that he actually said something to you this week. They probably mean it more like the non-carrismatic minister that they had a thought in their mind and they're assuming that God laid that on their heart, but they just want to bring more authority to what they are about to say. So they say, God told me this.

And so what you end up with generally are what I call topical sermons. It's the topical sermon approach. And so if you get anywhere near, for instance, Mother's Day, you know, if you go to church, you know what you're going to hear, you're going to hear a Mother's Day sermon, or if you get anywhere near Easter that time of year in the spring, you're going to hear some type of message on the resurrection of Christ. And the same is true for everything else.

So if you get near Christmas, you're going to hear something from the early chapters in either Matthew or Luke's Gospel. And you know, today there is almost a national day for everything under the sun. Back in the good old days, you just had a handful of holidays and that was it.

Now there's a national, you know, you name it, Suns Day. Daughters day, grandparents day, mom day, dad day, cat day, dog day. I mean, there's a day for everything now. And this is the normal ministers approach.

So here is Hobart's copy of his tape list from January of 1985. So one month after he died. And here just a couple of examples from Hobart's list. For instance, under one series, this is tape number F-134, it's entitled The Three Steps for Possessing the Land.

That's a topical sermon. The three steps for possessing the land. I have not heard that recently, so I can't tell you what the three steps are. But it's probably something like, well, claim it, and then confess it, and then go act on it.

And those would be the three steps for possessing the land. And he would probably, I can't say with certainty on this, because as I said, I haven't heard that message recently, but he would probably pull something a verse out of Joshua, which is when and where they went and possess the land.

And they'll read that verse, and then he'll give you up. What the Lord has given him to give to you, the three steps for possessing the land. Here's another one in title. This is just five tapes later.

Seven steps to victorious living. There's not five or nine. There are seven steps to victorious living. And if people are out there wondering, well, what's wrong with that? Well, there are so many things wrong with that.

Let's say that brother and sister, loyal member of faith assembly, and there were tons of loyal people in that church, who loved the Lord and who were there for good reasons. And so they're in church, and they hear this message, seven steps to victorious faith, and they're looking at why they're still driving a clunker car out in the driveway, and they don't have a catalog like Hobart does.

And so you're just always working these people up. And honey, there's just, here's what we did wrong. You know, we missed that fifth step. If we'll go back and do one, two, three, four, and get five in there, and then do six and seven, then all these things at Hobart has been promising us, prosperity and health and everything.

All these things, they'll come to us if we do these seven steps. I just think there are all kinds of things wrong with that. And so my point in this part of our discussion today, John, is that this type of approach to preaching, and let me just say, I think topical sermons are okay.

Occasionally, there is a topic that needs to be addressed, and you want to preach a sermon on it. I don't make any laws, because I don't have any laws to make. There are no laws to make.

You want to preach a topical sermon, go right ahead and I wouldn't fault you for it. If that's your normal regular approach, which it is for a lot of people and it was for Hobart, it allows that preacher to pull versus out of the context to support their point.

We've talked about this in other context prior to today, but this is exactly what ends up happening. So for instance, Sean, we talked last time about Psalm 91. We did a whole podcast on Psalm 91 and I kind of compared it and brought, tried to bring together the two Psalms that I think were meant to go together, Psalm 90 and Psalm 91. So in Psalm 90 in verse 10, it talks about living for 70 years, if by reason of strength for 80 years. And so what you would hear, Hobart always say is, you know, I'm not dying before the age 70 because I've got a verse Psalm 90 verse 10. I can live to be 70 and

if I'm really strong, I can live to be 80. And you go back and just read that verse and you only read the first half, not the second part that describes how miserable your 70 or 80 years will be while you live. It's just in toil and conflict because that's just the way human existence is.

You think you have a verse that promises you 70 year lifespan, but it's taken out of the context and we talked about the context at the end of our last interview. So I'm not going to do that again, but it takes it out of the context of that Psalm. And you know what's interesting that I didn't get to say last time, Hobart died at the age of 64 and a half. That didn't work for him because it's not a promise. It's not a promise in the Bible that you can go and drive a stake in and say,

I'm making my claim. I'm going to live to be at least 70. It's just a general statement that that is about the lifespan of a person. And if you have really good health and good genes, you may live to be 80. But if you read everything before that verse and everything after that verse, you'll see the context isn't some glorious promise that I am guaranteed to live to the age of 70. The statement is, even if you make it to 80, your life is a very, very difficult life. That's the whole context of Psalm 90. Hence, we need to put our trust in God or to give you another example.

The, let's say a person has this thing sticking out, protruding, pushing their skin out down around their waistline. We call it a hernia. They have this thing that's sticking out there and that it's painful. And so according to Freeman theology, that was covered by Christ's Atonement on the cross. That hernia is covered by the Atonement. That is a part of the biblical New Testament message of divine healing and so you simply claim your healing for that by the laying on of hands or just by a confession of faith and then you go confess it, you act on it and you endure for however long you have to endure and see if the thing ever

clears up. And to get you to do that, he'll say remember 2 Corinthians 5, 7, for we walk by faith and not by sight, not by what we see. We walk by faith, not by what we see. That is a verse hijacked from his context. I would recommend anyone go read the first half of 2 Corinthians 5 and it's talking about death and awaiting the resurrection body. It's not talking about divine healing at all. So whenever you have a topical sermon like Hobart does all the time, you have a thing you want to prove. Now you need some verses to support it. That is a very dangerous way to go

about it because what happens is you lose that built in contextual control of the meaning of the passage. If you are studying that in its context, do you have already seen the verses it lead up to it and the verses it follow it and consequently you have that passage within its context.

Whenever you preach like so many of these Pentecostal charismatic preachers do, he brews 13A. Jesus Christ is saying yesterday today and forever. If he healed back then, he'll heal today. Doesn't work exactly like that because I know the children of Israel went across the red sea on dry land back then. That does not mean you can expect to do that today. So be careful, I would say, to people who follow ministers who only preach topically as Hobart primarily did because that method allows them to pull that verse out of the contextual control that that verse is meant to have. Absolutely. And like I said, I've got so much to say in the late 90s,

mid 90s, I think it was 1996 if I remember correctly. C. Peter Wagner declared this labyrinth of different collective apostolic movements and networks and coined the term new apostolic reformation, which was describing something that pre-existed, not something that was being established or created. The NAR, NAR fully existed by that point in time. And what it was was this network wherein many ministers were collaborating with, reading from, watching sermons by visiting conferences to learn more from.

all of these different people in the network and so what happened and you can trace this back as far as you want to go especially if you're looking during the years when voice of healing revivals when that movement started spreading and all of these men started collaborating you have this weird thing where not a single source for a single doctrine can be identified they're all kind of learning I call it cross-pollination they're all kind of learning from and one guy will say something one other guy takes that and he says oh well if I combine that

with my thought I can do this other thing compound the complexity of that with what you just said about these topical sermons in that movement it was very I don't know what the word is it was very appealing to the audiences if you told a story about I went to the restaurant and had this bad experience with so and so not always negative when this thing started they were always good experience I went I went to the grocery store and the Lord spoke to me and said pick up the ketchup bottle I mean that's kind of how this went well then another guy oh that ketchup bottle God told me

it must be hinds and then the third guy oh well you got to have mustard with that ketchup I mean it kind of grew and developed like this so when people today scholars in fact some of them contact me and they'll say where did this doctrine originate and you can't really point to a source what you can do is point to a movement it all kind of developed through this movement so here's where the problem lies you had that type of development of doctrines but then as the movement began to grow and they started fighting with each other internally and you had this massive group of people

some of which had narcissistic personality disorders most of which were in a group that had no guidelines or rules to prevent cult groups from forming they all began to start all of these cults and each of them had these doctrines that were learned by a cross-pollination and many of these people would say God spoke to me and here's my new doctrine well he had heard it from the guy before at the conference just yesterday you know and example of this Billy Graham preached this sermon called thinking man's filter where did Billy Graham get the sermon he watched a television

commercial where there is a cigarette that's called the thinking man's filter and he preached a whole sermon about this commercial that he watched on TV probably in his hotel room so if you're asking where did Billy Graham get the sermon he got it from television and he got it probably as he's thinking I don't have any sermon content what am I going to talk about oh well that's a good topic that's a cigarette package I'll talk about this so then not long after weeks maybe months William Brannum comes along and says I heard that sermon the other day

by Billy Graham called Thanking Man's Filter. Oh, what a wonderful sermon it was. And then he proceeded to preach the same sermon but with his own spin on it. And years, maybe months, not even years, months went by and he started speaking to different audiences.

Well, the other thing that people don't realize is when you have a traveling minister, they have a repertoire of these sermons. And it's the same sermon. They're just, you know, they might preach it one way here and then might go to a restaurant and get angry at the waitress here.

Then they're gonna preach it again with the angry waitress story and it's gonna build and grow. Well, the way in which this developed was, Billy Graham saw commercial and preached a sermon. William Brannum in one of the networked, you know, collaborative efforts.

He listened to the sermon by Billy Graham. He preached it. Then it morphed into an angel came down as I was walking through the woods and I stumbled along and I saw a cigarette package and what did it say?

I wanted to pick it up but those things are filthy. I can't pick it up. So I just read it and then I walked off and he preached the sermon. Then a few years later, the angel had him pick it up and I held it in my hand.

And so the story just kind of grew and grew from I heard a Billy Graham sermon to an angel of God came down and visited me on the face of the planet. And so the world I grew up in, I never knew those series of events.

All I knew was the last one. I knew that an angel of God had come down and told him to pick up a pack of cigarettes and it said, thinking man's filter. This is one of his more popular sermons, believe it or not.

And it's one that I've listened to probably 200, 300 times in my life. I've listened to it over and over and over again. Had no idea the backstory. But I could give you story after story after story where the sermons aren't really coming as divinely inspired as the people are claiming.

I use the Brannem example, take any of the other people that I've researched. Look at Mike Bickel and his wild sermon examples. The black horse prophecy is probably one of the biggest ones if you're one of the IHOP KC fans.

Look at the progression of events that led to that and you'll start to realize that it wasn't so much that God came down with a vision or inspiration or whatnot. There was a clear calculated series of events that led to preaching that sermon.

You know, Hobart traveled the first eight years of his charismatic ministry from 1966 to 1974. So he was able to repeat the sermons, you know, just as you said, if you're traveling, you can have the faith formula message and you can preach it in Dallas and you can preach it in Miami.

And you can preach it back in your home church in Indiana. But eventually he did settle down 1976 was really the last year he did any traveling and for the next eight years. He was only there, his own church, faith assembly in Indiana.

So when that happens, you obviously can't repeat yourself. And so one of the ways to help yourself, and one of the ways, and I'll say it's an excellent way, it's probably the best way to prevent this cycle of topical sermon approach, is to preach through a passage, or passages, or even better, preach through books of the Bible.

And so this is what Hobart began doing. Just on the New Testament, I can think that he preached the book of Romans. And when I say he preached, I mean he started in the first chapter and went all the way through the book.

He preached Acts, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, Titus, Hebrews, James, 1st John, Jude, and Revelation. That's just off the top of my head, what I can think, what I can remember, just of New Testament books, that he preached his way through.

And so when he began doing that, I was as a young person. Again, when he was teaching Acts in Romans, this was back when I was a teenager. I actually, he taught Acts before I was even aware of Hobart.

He was preaching Romans about the time I was introduced to Dr. Freeman's ministry. And I had heard the basic generic stuff. If you look at any of his series on faith, or the deeper life, the first 5 or 10 or 12 or 15 or whatever, those go back a long time.

They're all generic. They're all basic. They're all this wild, super spiritual kind of stuff. I had already heard that and had kind of grown tired of that. So when I saw that he was going to preach through a book of the Bible, I was very excited, John, to buy those tapes and to listen because then I thought, well, now I will know this book better, this book of the Bible, this book of the New Testament.

Now I will know it better. So I'll never forget I was 18 years old and he was preaching the series on Romans. And here is from 50 years ago, whenever I would listen to something, here are my typed notes.

These are all my typed notes of 38 tapes that he did on the book of Romans. You know, I have a cover page that I typed up for it and everything. And I'll never forget how I was able to obtain this series of tapes.

I'm 17, maybe 18 years old. I don't have any money. But I'm really hungry to learn God's Word, but what I did have, and I could just shoot myself in the temple for what I did, what I did have.

is I had a nice coin collection. And I mean, I had silver. I had silver in my coin collection. I worked at a motorhome lot for a summer job between high school classes. And I had somebody, a fellow employee there, when he found out that I had this coin collection because I had collected coins since I was young.

I just, and I was young, man. I mean, since I was a child, I loved, you know, buffalo nickels and Roosevelt dimes and the feather or the wheat pennies. I collected all of that stuff.

So I had this nice coin collection. I sold that coin collection to my employee for a hundred bucks. Just so I had enough money. And I know what I did, I took that hundred dollars and I went and bought the Roman series.

And so I have all of these notes from 50 years ago. I'd sit down and write it out longhand and then I'd go back on an old manual typewriter. I'd pick it all out and I'd have, so I'd have a typed little booklet of what Hobart said on those 38 tapes.

But as I listened to these, here's what I soon found out. He wasn't really gonna teach me what Roman said. What he was really gonna do is he was gonna use that book as well as the other books that he preached from just to put a new dress on an old worn out topic.

So for instance, when you get to Romans 10 and verse 17, now we hear if you wanna get faith in your life, the way you get faith is you have to listen to the word of God.

That means don't ever miss any of the meetings here at the glory barn. That means make sure you buy all of my cassette tapes because if you listen to the word of God, the more you listen, the more your faith will grow.

He tells this story about a woman who had cancer, who was dying of cancer, who got his faith series or a faith tape and he loves to tell the story. She didn't brothers and sisters listen to that a dozen times or 20 times or 30 or 80 or 90.

She listened to that message 100 times. She wore the tape out and she wore the cancer out too. And that is Romans 10, 17. The more you listen to me preach, the more faith you will have.

Well come on, you know, that is simply, it's either not true or it's not verifiable. I don't know the lady. She was never paraded in front of the church. She lived on the east coast somewhere.

I never got to verify the story. And so I really grew disillusioned as I would continue to buy some new series that Hobart was going to be teaching on and go through it. And then I came to figure out, I know, I, I kind of know where he's gonna set up camp in this chapter.

I would guess that before I ever listened to the message. I know where he's gonna set up camp. He's gonna set up camp by a favorite verse of his so that he can preach a favorite topic of his.

So was it really teaching through the book and educating us on what the book meant? Not really. It was still the topical sermon, just looking for a new dress on an old lady. 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?

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I find it interesting that a lot of the movements that spawned out of the post-war War II healing revival because they were against seminaries. And they were like, you've made the joke and Brannum made the joke.

Everybody who is in this movement made the joke. They're cemeteries, they're people who are going to a cold, dark grave of religion. That's how, that's really what the movement taught. But along with this comes something else.

When you're teaching people that if you go to a higher level education to learn theology and it's of the devil, people begin to associate that with other forms of higher learning. And in the more destructive branches that came from this movement, some of the children aren't even allowed to go past grade school.

Some of them aren't allowed to go to grade school. So you have this vast number of people who aren't really educated. And one of the things that I highly recommend to anybody who is in this type of movement, if you're curious how the sermons came to be and you want to demystify it because in the way in which these people present their sermons, they presented as though they have this clear connection, it's like a phone line to God.

God has come and many of them will call it my message. They will refer to their sermon as my message as though God called them on the phone and gave them a message to give the people.

It's a hotline to heaven. It's a hotline to heaven, man. I recommend... And to anybody who wants to demystify how a sermon works, just simply go to, you can even do this at one of the local universities or colleges, just take a speech class.

When you're in a speech class and you start speaking, doing any form of public speaking, you watch and feel the audience reaction. And whenever words are spoken that entertains them, their face will light up.

Whenever you say something that's boring and dull, you'll watch them falling asleep, well, a minister molds his sermons after this. When he sees people light up, he goes, oh, that's entertaining. Next sermon, and as he's talking, I've done this.

As you're speaking to the people, you're taking mental note, oh, they really liked it when I hit that topic. I need to preach that one. I wasn't a preacher. I was a speaker, but I need to speak about that one next time I speak.

And that's really how a lot of this develops. This interaction by the crowd. So in this ironic way, and this is a topic that Bob Scott and I have talked about, in this weird ironic way, these cult groups are actually molded by the people who are listening themselves.

They play a role in this as much as the person who's ran off the rails. Yeah. And, you know, I think people in their mind, John, they think, I want something fresh. And so when you hear a minister say that he's got a hotline to heaven, and he doesn't have to use that terminology, just it's very subtle, but it's done frequently where the minister says, well, I was praying this week and the Lord spoke to me.

Well, as soon as we hear the Lord spoke to anybody, you know, he spoke to Jeremiah and Isaiah, and I really want to know what he said. So as soon as I hear the Lord talk to anybody, I mean, if you told me, John, God talked to you yesterday, you heard his voice, I'd, you know what, I'd be the first one in line.

I'd want to know, well, what did he say? And did he actually tell you, if he talked, you said he talked to you this week? I mean, I'm talking now. This is what we mean by talking.

If you had some kind of internal impression, and I don't think those are invalid, we all have internal thoughts and impressions. But if that's what you had, let's be clear, let's be very clear.

I'm talking, you're talking. When you say God spoke or God talked, this is talking, this is speaking. Mental impression is something entirely different. People say, well, what I liked about Hobart, it was all fresh.

What I liked about William Brannum, it was all fresh. That's not fresh. It's recycled, it's worn out, and it's stale. If you want something fresh, go to the Bible. It's the living word of God.

Go to the Bible. It's been there 2,000 years, we pick it up and read it, and we are still learning. It is still fresh. So let's go a little further with Dr. Freeman, though.

He had another very alarming way to come up with messages. and we're gonna need to play a few clips for this one, John, because I want the people to hear. I'm just gonna give a couple of examples, but it's on all of the early years of his ministry messages.

You will hear this same kind of thing, and you can tell that it is frequent just by the clips we're gonna play. So the first one is from a message taught at the Glory Barn in 1974, entitled The Formula for Faith.

And just look at the titles of all of these messages, The Formula for Faith. And it's just, he had something he wanted to say, and on that particular evening or morning, that was the formula.

Well, two years later, the formula's gonna be different, you know? At one point in your ministry, there are three steps to faith, and later there are six steps, and other times are 12 steps, you know?

So in the formula of faith, at the very beginning, I mean, all people have to do is find the message and begin listening for the first 45 seconds if you could play that for our audience.

I'd like for you to turn with me to Luke chapter 17, verses five and six. And the message that the Lord has given me to share is the formula for faith, the formula for faith.

Often when I need a message, I do what the Lord told me to do back, I think it was in 67, he said to me that whenever I needed a message, just sit down, he would give it to me.

It was good, yeah. I prophesied a lot of messages and preached them. In fact, I used to minister every Wednesday night through prophecy, and I taught, but I got the prophecy in the afternoon, all I had to do was wait on it.

I prophesied and came and taught the prophecy because it was a teaching prophecy. Okay, John, so you don't always get to hear and see all of this, because I spring some of this on you.

How alarming and dangerous on so many levels is what we just heard. Here's what we heard. I actually have it transcribed. He begins this message by saying, I'd like for you to turn with me to Luke chapter 17, verses five and six.

And the message, and listen to this phrase, this is throughout Hobart's ministry that the Lord has given me to share. And I hope the Lord has given it, but when you hear that phrase all the time, the Lord has given me this message who are we to say that he didn't.

So this is a message from the Lord, the formula for faith, the formula for faith. Often, when I need a message, I do what the Lord told me to do. Back, I think it was 67, he means nine.

King 67, he said to me, he said to me, that whenever I needed a message, just sit down and he would give it to me, I prophesied a lot of messages and preached them.

In fact, I used to minister every Wednesday night through prophecy. Now I taught, but I got the prophecy in the afternoon. All I had to do was wait on it. I prophesied and came and taught the prophecy because it was a teaching prophecy.

I haven't found that phrase anywhere in the Bible that that was a teaching prophecy. How alarming and how dangerous on every level. So he already tells us that it's the afternoon of any evening when he needs to speak and he doesn't even have a message.

Just as you said earlier, Billy Graham's in the hotel room, what am I going to talk about to the crusade tonight? No preparation. Nothing's been done. Last minute, I need a message. And so he says, oh yeah, remember God told him, I don't know how God told him, I don't know what his voice sounded like, what kind of words God used.

He grew Greek, English, maybe King James English, I'm not for sure. What he used to talk to Hobart in 1967 and told Hobart, if you ever need a message, I mean how wonderful would this be for any minister?

If you ever need a message, I'll give one to you. All you got to do is just begin prophesying, prophesying in his study to himself. I've never heard of anything so alarming and so bizarre and so unbiblical and so unscriptural.

Prophecy is you prophesied to other people for edification, exhortation and comfort. Here he's going to prophesy to himself in the afternoon. So you're sitting there, he's praying to the Lord and I am not mocking Hobart Freeman, but I don't think this is a valid way to go about getting a sermon.

He's praying to the Lord, Lord you told me in 1967, if I needed a message and I need one, I've been traveling all this week, I don't have anything fresh, I don't have anything to say, I need a message, Lord give me a message.

He waits on it. Therefore thus saith the Lord and he begins prophesying and he writes this out. He's prophesying to himself, yeah, I say unto thee my children that thou must have greater faith and thou hast had in the past.

He's prophesying all this. He writes it down. He finds a few verses that will go with that. He shows up that night and that is the teaching that he delivers to the people. That is not a healthy situation.

That's pretty weird, man, but I think I can want up you in this case. Like I said, I have studied this to no end. I have studied this in ways in which people will never study.

how and why the brain works as it does in these cult leaders. William Branemas trying to find the source of what he, how he would come up with his sermons and his content. And the way that he presented it was much like you said, it was always the Lord spoke to me and gave me this message for you, the people.

And I knew that wasn't the case whenever he's copying Billy Graham and others. That's just, you know, he's lying out of his, out of his teeth. But there's this one instance where he says, I was sitting up in a tree somewhere.

And he, the background of the story is he liked to go hunting on the, on the funding of the church. And so he'd go on these ridiculous hunting excursions, which were very expensive, by the way.

But he says, I was sitting up in a tree somewhere, thinking, Lord, what can I do today? What will you give me for your children? In other words, Lord, I need a sermon and I haven't got one and here I am out in the woods not preparing like a, a minister should be.

I'm out in the woods. What, what should I say? And then he says, and what I do to bring his presence near, he says, I start and he's literally, if you go listen, I recommend listening to what the man says and then reading it because he starts talking about how he gets into a, a chanting session where he's literally trying to summon God, like, like you wouldn't spiritualism.

And he says, I start chanting, want two times two equals four. Two times two. And he's doing this in his breath. Two times two equals four. And he keeps doing it until he says, the Holy Spirit came down because I knew basic mathematics and it's funny when you read the transcript because as he's doing it, the translator thought it was important to note and put it in brackets.

Brother Brannum speaks each repeat a little faster. So everybody knows how he chants mathematics to bring the Spirit of God down. And, you know, I just have to take a step back and ask the question, is this in any way biblical on how you get a sermon?

Do you really start chanting mathematics so that God will come down to you? Or are you speaking to an audience who is so uneducated that two times two equals four really appeals to them?

And I have to believe that for some reason, this audience was really attracted and entertained by this chant of two times two equals four. And I don't think Hobart did that, but I think that the people and Hobart knew it would respond to him when he came in the pulpit and say, now, I've got a message here that the Lord gave me and it came by prophecy because prophecy is a big deal.

It's a big deal in the New Testament. It's a huge deal in the Old Testament. I mean, that's why we have books that we call those are the prophets because that's what they were.

They were prophets and they prophesied. And so prophecy is built... prophet is biblical, prophesying is biblical. All of these terms come right from the Bible. And so when you use all of the correct terminology, the Hobart didn't say I went in and prayed to a spirit of divination to give me something, he's using nice, wonderful biblical terms.

People do respond to that. They know, well, I've seen prophecy in the Bible. And so God gave Ezekiel a prophecy. Why can't God give Hobart a prophecy? And Hobart prayed and God gave him a prophecy and now he has come and delivered us via this hotline from heaven, a fresh message for us to hear.

Here's one other brief example, John. It is on another message called Ethogory Barn in the fall of 1976 entitled Faith's Imperative. Faith's Imperative. And that goes from the five minute mark, just 15 seconds to the five minute and 15 second mark.

Why does that call it Faith's Imperative? Well, it doesn't. It's just not one of those messages that sit down and the Lord gives me the title, then gives me the rest of it. He told me many years ago, anytime you need a message, sit down, pick up a pencil or sit at the typewriter and argue with me.

So what we learned on this one, just one example of many is God gave him the title to that message, isn't that great? That God will just give you the title. So God gave him the title, and I'm sure it was by prophecy, so he said, thus saith the Lord, the title is Faith's Imperative.

I mean, all of this is so bizarre and so strange and people should not respond positively to ministers who were getting messages in this way. But Hobart said, God gave me the title of Faith's Imperative, and I don't even know what passage he had to go find to use with that, but he tells in that little brief clip on this particular message, he references the 1967 time when God said, if you ever need a message, just sit down at your desk, he said, basically you can get a pen in a piece of paper, get a typewriter,

and then I'll give it to you, and you can prophesy it out as you type it. And Hobart said he's typed out many prophecies. So this is thus saith the Lord, and here comes a prophecy, and what it is is just a lot of generic run of the mill, either God is pleased with his people, or more times than not, God is displeased with his people because they have failed in the area of their confession, or their walk of holiness, or their witnessing, or their life of faith, or their financial support of faith.

assembly they have failed in some regard and so here is a a prophecy that has come that Dr. Freeman is going to deliver another another way that you see this kind of manipulation we're not going to listen to this but people can go here for themselves is a message entitled body ministry special instruments it was done in 1975 and again you can start at the very beginning and listen for say the first minute and a half and we won't play that but here's what's happening John and this happens more frequently than just about anything at the glory barn you would

walk up a long flight of steps to reach the second floor and that's where the pulpit was and that's where the main group of people were as the church grew a number they had to start meeting people downstairs and even people sitting outside in their cars listening over loudspeakers but you wanted to get to the second floor where the pulpit was when you walked in the glory barn immediately to your right was a little anti-room just a little small small room when Hobart came up those steps he ducked inside that room he'd come in that go in that door when he was ready to preach he had

exit the opposite side of that room right out out onto the platform where the pulpit was everybody else knew to walk by that door walk by that room and go find your seat somewhere so Hobart when he would get to the glory barn would go in that room Jerry Irvin would start the worship service and you know they would worship for a half hour 45 minutes meanwhile Hobart is in that room praying looking at his Bible you know getting ready to come out and preach so on that particular message body ministry special instruments and you'll hear the same as I said on many

others when he comes out he says when now God's giving me a message and I notice that he's confirming the message by all the various prophecies I heard out here in the church so this is like all of us are working together God gave me the message I heard somebody give a prophecy about body ministry so that confirms the message and the problem again people say well what's wrong with that you know the problem with that is not that that couldn't happen not that that's not possible to happen but the problem with that is when you minister this way this is a way charismatic

ministers for the most part do it this is a way Hobart did it then when you go on and preach this message and this message contains errors and heresies and mistakes and lies and things that aren't true well it's all been confirmed by God so you have to accept all of that stuff even though your mind tells you know wait a minute I think you just totally twisted that verse out of its context whenever you have prefaced everything with the fact God gave this to you directly, and now it's been confirmed by other members in the body,

then I mean, I think this is easy for everyone to see. Logically, you have set the people in a position where they simply cannot go against anything that was said in that sermon. Exactly.

And like I said, I've heard countless sermons where the speaker, whether it be William Branham or somebody else has said, God gave me this message, and today I'm giving it to you, it opens the idea that as God is speaking to them directly, whatever they say can't be disputed.

And that's really, whenever you look at the dynamics of a cult, that's one of the most important aspects. If their sermons are so rigidly declared by God that you can't question it, well, if you do question, you're questioning God, you're not questioning the minister.

And where this becomes even amplified as a bigger problem, the way in which the ministers do this and the people are learning by examples, they will often say things like, I had this conversation recently with somebody else, they'll get in an argument and they'll say, well, I don't care what you said, God told me, and therefore that's why I made this decision.

Well, that holds the argument right there, man, because you're not gonna argue with God. And you have to ask the question, did God really say it? I don't know if God said it. But the problem is that's how the people are being taught.

And as ministers are rising in, as ministers are growing of age and becoming ministers in a movement like this, they're learning from the leader who's doing it by example. And where it gets really weird in this gray murky area, I know of the ghost writers who were writing William Branham sermons because one of the things that we haven't talked about yet is writer's block.

And sermon block, and public speaker block. If you're a public speaker, you're gonna hit a point at some stage in your ministry, or if you're a minister, you'll hit it in your ministry if you're a public speaker, where you just really don't know what to say.

And you'll go look for content. You may go read magazines, you may, you know, whatever. If you're a minister, you should be reading the Bible, but the Bible, unfortunately, in a group like this is not entertaining enough to the people because you're having to build this entertainment style ministry that they're expecting God's gonna speak to you and give you this new man of this new revelation.

Well, I can't just go to the Bible, they could go to the Bible themselves. I need something new. Well, what William Branham did was he had a lady, and I know the family that this lady, it was a ex Jehovah's Witness family.

The lady was actually writing a lot of the sermon notes. And a lot of the Jehovah's Witness theology came in to Branham's sermons through this lady, and Branham's claiming it as divine revelation from God.

So how does that work? Does the lady believe that she's God, when she... hears him say this and he's saying it does he believe the ladies God I don't I don't know how to I don't know how to frame that but he's not the only one doing this you can go find other examples where ministers are they've got people who are helping them some of them especially the more wealthy ones will have a team of people I have I need to find I need to come up with a sermon topic what is the sermon topic help me flesh out this sermon and they'll have

a staff that's doing it for them well whenever the minister gets the staff that his presented all of his sermon notes and his subject matter and he goes to the pulpit and he says God spoke to me and gave me this sermon what does that mean that the staff is God and so the whole thing just turns into this big mess that could simply be avoided by not creating this environment of an entertainment gospel and just saying we're going to preach from the Bible yeah and you guys are going to enjoy the Bible you're going to learn its concepts and whenever I need new subject matter whenever I

have sermon block or writers block well I'll never experience this because I'll go right back to the Bible and here's the next chapter I'm going through yes John um you said a moment ago that the young ministers that grow up in this they end up copying their their mentors and and I'm definitely guilty of that in my early ministry I didn't know any other way to preach or teach except the way Hobart did and so I'm I'm definitely guilty of that but it didn't take me that long to realize um because I would look out at the faces of my people I think I can't preach on faith again

they've already heard that you know I just can't do that and the reason I think I was able to come to that point is because I was tired of someone doing that to me I was tired of hearing the same old generic thing in a new dress so I knew if I'm tired of hearing that surely they're tired of hearing it and I can't keep doing it so you know Hobart had a series on the Book of Revelation that was 11 tapes you know that I'm currently teaching the Book of Revelation we're between 75 and 80

weeks and we're still in chapter 7 and I'm not saying that I'm doing it the best way or the right way or you have to do it my way I I will say that you won't really learn anything in 11 messages you need more than that to study the whole Book of Revelation but you know it was just a a hop skip and a jump in a prayer for Hobart as he would run through Revelation or run through unfortunately those of us who are ministers such as myself we aren't prophets we aren't apostles we're not like them of old we're not anything remotely like the prophets and apostles of old

notwithstanding Paul Cain and Mike Bickel and Hobart Freeman and Way and Brandon Wishing and saying that they were we're nothing like those men our ministry is nothing similar or comparable to theirs at all Oh, they receive divine revelation directly from God.

Can we even imagine the seriousness and the salimnity of that? The prophets in the Old Testament, they have this not all the time, but more times and not this regular delivery of what they receive from God.

And biblical Old Testament scholars will tell you this. If you, they have studied this well enough to know if you look at the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the 12 minor prophets, they first of all have this word arrival formula and see if you don't remember reading something in your Old Testament and the word of the Lord came unto me saying, that's the word arrival formula.

Then they had a prophecy command, go speak to the house of Israel. And then they had the legendary citation formula. This is the way you look at this from an Old Testament scholar's point of view, the word arrival formula, the prophecy command, and thirdly, the citation formula, which is the legendary thus, sayeth the Lord.

And that what they said was exactly what God said. I have never claimed that and would never claim that. You are on dangerous territory to put yourself in the same position as a prophet, as an apostle.

It's not our job, John, today as Christian ministers to receive anything fresh, to receive anything directly from God. It's already here, we call it the Bible. It is already here. It's our job to correctly interpret, to correctly teach that, and to try to correctly apply that.

And how do you do that? That doesn't come, that doesn't come multiplying numbers in your mind or out loud. That doesn't come sitting at your typewriter on a Wednesday afternoon before a Wednesday teaching, and wait for God to give you a prophecy.

It comes, it requires knowledge. It requires study. It requires education and preparation and skill. And there are subjective components like personal piety and humility and integrity. All of this comes together or should come together in order for the minister to come up with what he wants to talk about.

So in conclusion, I would say, what I'm doing currently right now, just teaching verse by verse, chapter by chapter through the book of Revelation, and one of the great things that teaching through, if you can't do or don't have the time to do the whole book, if you, We'll do a passage, or if your minister will do a chapter.

What it does is it keeps you between the lines, it keeps you driving in your own lane. So to speak, because you're in the Bible, you're in the Word of God, you're not all off into some law, prophetic prophecy land, you're actually in a contextual setting with verbs and nouns and words and sentences, and those things provide the guidelines, you can't leave that, you can't get outside of that and just make up something and say, well, I think that I can use 1 Corinthians 5.7 for we walk by faith, not beside in a healing context,

because that's not the context in which it's found. The context of the book, the passage that we as a Christian minister or pastor or teacher are delivering to the audience, it keeps us driving between the lines, it keeps us driving in our own lane, so we don't run off the road or have some head-on collision.

And you know, the audiences today, our audiences, my audiences, we actually have it way easier than the people of Old Testament Israel, because the people of Old Testament Israel, that audience, what they were hearing was the very word of God.

And that word of God said, if you will obey, you will be blessed, and if you disobey, you will be judged. They were hearing the very word of God spoken by the mouth of the prophets, and so was the early church hearing the very word of God as it was revealed to the early apostolic community.

Guess what, our audiences today have it way easier. Our audiences today, my audience, and you can check my audience, and they will verify this. I never ask, never require, never even assume that they're gonna believe anything because I've said it.

I would never require anyone to do that, because I'm not speaking the very word of God. If I thought, if I was so deluded, as to believe when I opened my mouth, the very words that were coming out were the word of God, then I would expect people to obey them and do them.

But that's psychotic to think that when you open your mouth, those are the very words of God. Our audience is the same as the audience in Berea. They are required to, listen to what's being said.

Don't just reject it. Hear what's being said, and then you go, and you search the scriptures daily, and you compare what was said with what you know from the Bible, and that is the proper balance where the minister is going to be teaching you what he thinks the passage is saying, but he gives you, not 50% or 75% but 100% liberty to take or leave what I said, you're a human being, you've got a brain, you've got a mind, you own a Bible. Now, you go study this out and see where you end up. And if we happen not to end up with the same conclusion, that's okay. That is

actually okay. That is part of everyone's experience and part of everyone's growth. So I appreciate the opportunity, John, to talk on the local pastors sermon material. It's a crazy subject and I could probably go on for a few hours more. The only thing that I'll add to try to sum it up in a thousand words combined into one statement is that there was a problem that existed, which you and I did speak on this recently. There's a problem that existed after the original gospels were written and after the original letters that were combined into the Bible today were written,

other letters or books or scrolls written by other people under pseudonyms with the authority of the author who they weren't. There might be a scroll that claims iPolum writing to the people and here is what I'm saying to do. So therefore, listen to me because I'm Paul. And then they find out later, well, that wasn't really Paul that wrote that. And some of those, you can go look up a lot of these. I can't remember the website, but there's a number of scrolls that never made it into the Bible because they weren't by the people who they claimed to be from. And what they were doing

was they were claiming false authority. My point that I was building up to and I probably ran out of time. So I didn't do it very well. Whenever these ministers are saying God spoke to me or thus say at the Lord or all of these various ways in which they say, listen to my sermon because you better or God's going to punish you, they're speaking out of authority that isn't theirs and they're claiming authority that was never there to begin with. So in the end, they're no better than the scrolls that were written out of the Bible. That's right. You know, there's a gospel

of Thomas and a gospel of Nicodemus. And you know, those works are generally called the Suda Piggrafa, but there were your right John. Quite a few works written. And the writers of those were smart enough people. They knew in order to gain some authority, authenticity, and a reading audience, even though I'm not Thomas, I've got to pretend like I'm Thomas because Thomas was one of those people back in the synoptic gospels and I want to attach his name to the book, of course. Absolutely.

Well, like I said, I could go for a few hours. I won't. People get tired of hearing me. So we'll end it here. Thank you so much for doing this. Thanks, John. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at William-Branum.org.

For more about the dark side of the NAR, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.