Leaving High Control Church: Healing from Religious Trauma and Legalism

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 I'm starting to finally get over that cold that was bothering me the last time that we were talking. We've got just a little bit left if you can't hear it but I'm clearing up and it's good timing to

clear up because I've had so many people who are now coming out from faith assembly who are sharing their stories. We have one that's coming out just this Friday which I'll let you talk about and introduce but there are so many similarities between what the faith assembly people had, what the Branhamites have and now some of the other groups that I'm talking to even all the way in the UK. They're sharing their testimonies and their stories and you hear the same patterns repeated over and over and over. Doctorns are different I understand but the underlying problem that drove all of this

mess, the underlying problem is the same in so many different movements and yet at the same time each person who escapes they have the same set of psychological issues that they face and struggles that they face and some of them like the one that's coming out this Friday I was just so deeply burdened for this lady when she started talking because many of the things that she said in her testimony I was hearing from many people in the support groups and in private people you know people send me all kinds of stuff. The things that

she experienced which some of the things is really hard to talk about it's not that uncommon and when you understand the root of the problem was the cult then you begin to see that you know you can move on you can get past this other people have moved past it and hopefully people will hear the stories and they too can kind of you know move along and move on in life and make things better. Well what I want to do John today is at least begin I don't know that we'll get through with this in one podcast but talk about first and second generation cult members or

cult survivors or however you want to phrase that I've asked I've been asked by quite a few people could could I maybe talk about that because we're dealing with two really really different groups of people the first generation people, which would be probably how I would have to classify myself, even though I'm somewhat in between. I'm first generation in the sense that my parents did not believe this and follow it, and therefore I follow because of them. However, I was only a teenager when I got in there, so I was kind of an adult, but not yet an adult. So you have your first generation

people, and then you have your second generation people. And all of these have come from some type with regard to Freeman. It's just like this and the others, it's similar of a cult of personality where your identity is wrapped up in the charisma and magnetism, speaking ability, scripture quotation ability, whatever his stick is, you're really following this particular person. So it's an authoritarian cult. It's utopian. They're definitely promising you things that are not realistic and had I tried to tell anyone that, and I did in the 1980s. No one believed me, had someone tried to tell me that in the late 1970s, I would not have believed them because I thought I was hearing

from God, and I thought these were biblical passages. But as we look back, there's nothing like hindsight and there's nothing like history that all of us have been able to experience. This utopian setting was really not a true setting. These promises that were made, they were not realized.

So these groups are very dysfunctional, and the people who come from them consequently carry a lot of baggage. They probably carry more baggage than they realize. And until they can experience some type of healing, they're just not going to experience normalcy, whatever that is.

We talked before we came on the air that I said, I have a real normal life, and you said, what is that? It's just because you have so many irons in the fire, and you have so much going on, and I don't ever do anything. I just lay around the house and just get ready for a podcast every week.

But what I mean by normalcy is we just don't have to deal with the craziness of these religious cults. If you think of some of the taboos at faith assembly, oh my word, you're getting around this time of year, and it becomes very stressful because you were not allowed to celebrate Christmas.

And I've told you before, I don't celebrate Christmas to this day, but Christmas has never bothered me. I don't mind the lights I've always said for the people who didn't celebrate Christmas and they thought this cake and these cookies and these pieces of candy if you per take of that you're partaking of demons and always just said we'll give it all to me then because I don't believe any of that stuff will harm me. This is a traumatic time stressful for faith assembly people back in the day because everyone else is making merry with their lights and holiday celebrations and

you know faith assembly was all buckled down, rebuking demons, opposing the forces of darkness that might somehow gain entrance into their life. Look that's not a normal lifestyle even if you choose not to celebrate a certain holiday you can choose not to celebrate in some normal fashion where you're just a normal person and these things aren't bothering you.

But I think in order for the people who are carrying the baggage to be able to drop some of the baggage they've got to be able to recognize what has taken place in their life. They've got to be willing to acknowledge some of these things in the past and find an open and safe environment in which to deal with that and that was one of the problems with faith assembly. Faith assembly lack anything that would come close to being an open and safe environment. That's one of the roots of the whole problem of the people who have a past association with faith assembly and it's just

one of the things that makes them so distrusting. But my encouragement to everyone is that

even though I would say it probably takes special tools to be able to navigate your way out of these groups and away from them as far as your background goes. Even though it takes special tools we all either possess these tools or they are readily available to them and one of the most basic tools is simply to be humble and to be honest. Now I say simply because some people find that very hard but we shouldn't as a Christian to be able to just say yep here's where I was. Yes that is exactly what I believe. Now there's the honesty there's the humility and now we've got to

use some introspection and be able to figure out well what was going on in my life then and what how am I what is a healthy way in which and by which to address that and also to recognize and here's a huge thing I would say to everyone it's not just those of us who have some kind of religious background that have a background that we have to deal with. Everybody has a background. Every single person has some kind of background. What if your father was in the military? You have a military background. And so as a child,

you pulled up and moved from place to place all around the United States and maybe to military bases around the world. And so maybe as a consequence of that, you have maybe an inability or an aversion or just the lack of experience in making friendships at last because you know it's not going to last. And so there's no sense in even trying. What if you are rapidly anti-catholic now, but you were born into a Catholic family, or if you're rapidly anti-baptist or pentecostal now, but that's what you were born into, or you were born into a home where

your parents were into drugs or alcohol or motorcycle gang or whatever. It could have been anything. We all have a background that we need to be able to look at, honestly, introspectively, humbly and say, you know, it's time for me to deal with that. It's just the problem with a religious cult background is it is so distorting of the truth. It's not just like I was born into a military family and I can recognize that and I have this one thing and that is making friends that I have to deal with. This religious cult background just so colors and dominates and confuses everything

in a person's background. It does make it more difficult to deal with. But as I said, we all either have the tools or they are readily available and one of those readily available tools is counseling.

Now that was a taboo absolutely forbidden at faith assembly. Number one, you couldn't acknowledge you had a problem. That would be a negative confession. And that's part of the religious cult whole background. And number two, you certainly couldn't go any to get any counseling. That would just be leaning to the arm of the flesh. God forbid you do that. Or especially, especially if this person was not a Christian or not a believer. Well, then anything that comes out of their mouth is going to be un-Christian, demonic, anti-Christ. You couldn't go down that path at all.

Well, I would beg to differ with all of that. That there are good counselors. There are good, better, and best. And there are a few bad ones out there. You have to find the situation that fits you. And full disclaimer up front, John, is I'm not a counselor. I'm not a psychologist. I'm not a psychiatrist.

If anything I say and our discussion about this somehow violates one of the 10 laws of the American Association of Counselors, please ignore what I say and please go with what they say. But I have heard enough over the last two years from faith assembly survivors to realize people do need someone that they can talk to.

You know, I've talked to hundreds at this point of cult survivors from brannemism to IHOPKC to all kinds of different cults, different Pentecostal NAR Charismatic and what I can tell you is from talking to all of these people, they all share a common, very, very troubling problem and that is humanity.

Everybody who leaves the cult is human and humans have human problems and if you go to counseling and you can kind of understand this, I'm going to try to paint a picture so that people who are having aversion to going to a counselor can understand.

But if you go to counseling, your therapist will probably work through this topic with you. But when you are in a destructive environment, which we were and you escape and everybody turns on you, which happens in almost every single cult environment, that's right.

There's a point at time in which you are so low that you just simply want to give up. And at that point, it really depends on the other things in your life that are happening.

If you are not facing anything else, if everything else is kind of going smoothly and you're dealing with the cult, you can kind of slip through, you might even get slip, you might even slip through without counseling.

But if your world is following apart and then this thing happens, what typically happens is people get into self-destruction mode. And so what happens is they leave the cult, they're human, they're in self-destruction mode, and they just give up and they purposefully do things that they would not have otherwise have done.

And this creates a even bigger problem because now you have the cult members who are pointing fingers saying, look, they left the cult just so they could go to x, y, and z. And the person leaving may have never ever done this kind of thing, but they're in self-destruction mode.

That's one of the many, many problems. And beyond that, they're trying to face, now I'm out of the cult, I'm now into a different world, a different environment, how do I adapt, how do I live, how do I grow?

And I'm in self-destruction mode. And now the world around them sees the self-destruction mode and they too cast them out because they want no part of the self-destruction mode. So it turns into this problem that grows even bigger, it's like a snowball going down the hill.

And I can speak from experience because whenever I left, my world was falling apart, and many ways I understand every single thing that everybody goes through. And people have told me the most unbelievably horrific thing.

about what they've done, where they've been, where they came from, and I don't really look at anybody with ill will because I know exactly what they went through. That's one of the huge, huge problems. The other thing that people face, and I'm going to use a ridiculous example to paint this picture, but I think people need to understand you have grown up in a culture in this cultural environment that is different than the rest of the world. And so your mindset is different. Your worldview is different. You're in a cult of personality. Your personality is

different. When you leave, whether you're in the destruction mode or not, nobody else has that same culture or personality because that was what was the cult personality. Your identity is now you're now trying to change your identity, which is difficult. One of the things that hit me that was kind of shell shock, this happened almost at the same time. I'm leaving the cult. And in the cult, we had the very rigid Pentecostal way of life, the way we spoke, the way we addressed all of it. And I'm in this big business meeting at that point. I had not yet started my business.

The CEO, a new CEO came in, gave this motivational speech. And he said the F word in his motivational speech. And I didn't know what to do with this. I grew up in the world where if not let alone a cuss word, if you say the F word, that was like the mother of all cuss words, right? And yet he used it in a motivational sense. And I felt motivated. And I was like, well, this just doesn't make any sense to me. And I went down this pathway of I study everything to know in. So I just studied the

history of cussing. And it will take, if you study this, it'll take you down weird pathways. And I'm trying not to distract too much, but I'm trying to paint a picture. What had happened? Long story short, I won't go into all of the research, but long story short, the culture around our identity group had changed so much that even the language had changed. And some of the words used that we thought would be offensive, that the outside world years ago would have also thought was offensive.

Now it's being adapted into common language. So the two cultures have grown in two different ways. And I began as I'm studying it, the thing that hit me and made me just snap out of it and wake up was first I studied Martin Luther, I wanted to know the Protestant Reformation. And I looked at the way that he spoke and we would have called it cuss words. When he was upset, but he let you know he was he was a bull in the China shop. Yes, he was very much so. And then I started looking at okay,

when the Bible, when people got angry, what did they say? And you go back and look at some of the things they say, what's the kind of you snakes in the grass. In the translation that, you know, we just think snakes in the grass, that's a common thing that we hear from behind pulpits, but if you look at the phraseology, what they're doing is actually what we would call today's cuss words, but they were doing the same thing. It's basically you want to shock somebody with a word or phrase, get their attention, and sometimes you're doing it in anger, and that's essentially the motivation

behind it. Well, then I took it a step further. Well, if people do it and people came from God, did God do the same thing? And Ezekiel 23, 20, I'm not going to read it because YouTube might actually censor me if I read this Bible verse, but you who want to know you can go look it up.

This is God who's speaking in anger against Israel and says something that by the same comparison of what is a cuss word, you would say, well, okay, well, this God evil for saying this, I don't think God is, but what I learned was that the shock value of the words back in the ancient world was used in the same way today as the shock value. The point I'm trying to make with all of this is we had isolated our mindset, even though we weren't isolated in the world, where our culture developed in such a way, along with other cultures developing in the same way, that we

moved our culture into a box that really didn't progress with the rest of the world. Now you leave the cult and the outside world has a different culture and you feel you just feel icky. I don't know how to put it. You feel like you don't even want to adapt because your mindset is that you're associating evil with every single thing in the other culture and it's not necessarily that it is evil. It is just as progressed in different ways. Yeah, I think what you're saying, John, is something that could never have been said at faith assembly and that is just take a breath and

relax. You know, Christianity is not as complicated as faith assembly made it out to be and neither you nor I are encouraging anybody to do anything that's sinful or evil or that would be displeasing to the Lord. We're not encouraging that at all, but Christianity is not as, I mean, a phrase that I've always used when people seem to get all, I don't know, all wound up over things and I hope this is appropriate to say, if it's not, you can always edit it, right? I just say, don't get your panties in a wad. You know, it's not that big of a deal, you know, just relax, you know, so someone

celebrated Christmas, so someone ate a Christmas piece of candy, so someone made a negative confession. It's not that big of a deal. There are, Jesus said, and the prophet said, there are weightier matters of the law than tithing your little small bit from the seeds of your garden, and it's judgment and mercy and faith. Those are the weightier matters of the law. And I knew, John, your background is that, you know, you and I have a completely different background, although similar because you have a, uh, random background. I have a Freeman one. You were born into it. And I, and I wasn't. And we extricated ourselves in,

you know, just out of different path with, with different steps. You're, but they were both the same in this way that there was, um, meaningful, purposeful study and introspection and thought put into, okay, this is what I was told, but what does the Bible actually say? And I was taught this in this context, but what do I believe now? And for me, it was gradual, for sure. I just, as I've said before I saw contradictions and inconsistencies and Hobart's messages before I ever saw anything that was outright that I would say, you know, I don't agree with that interpretation of the

Bible anymore. I just saw his own internal inconsistencies. And it's okay to have inconsistencies. We all do. It's not okay when you present yourself as being infallible. Then, then you're in trouble. If you do ever have a contradiction, you know, I'm sure I've contradicted myself. I know I have, and I know I have had and have and will have inconsistencies in my life and teaching, but that's okay because that's the way I present myself. I don't know it all. But when you present yourself, as you know it all, and you're hearing directly from God, well, guess what? You cannot have any contradictions.

You know, too bad for you. You know, you've walked out on the end of the plank and sold it off behind yourself. You can't have any errors in your life. You can't make any mistakes because you've presented yourself as being above those. But I know you have probably had more conversations with people than I have. I've had my share. I've had enough and I'm sure I will have some more because I'm not a counselor, but I do love people. I deeply, deeply love people. I love God's people and I love talking to them. And I can even remember, I don't think I've shared this, but since we started the

podcast, I did have an episode of what do you call that, talking them off the bridge. And I'd never been in a position of doing that before, but it was someone who has, he did not come. They did not come from a Freeman background in particular, but it was the same kind of thing. It was a Pentecostal background where you couldn't, women had to wear pants and you couldn't eat this kind of food and you couldn't sing this kind of song and you can't do this and don't do that. And God forbid, don't ever do that. You can't say this. You can't go there. You know,

no cards, no movies, no dice, you know, no dance. no music that's secular, you know, no, no, no, no, just a whole lot of nose. And this person began to listen to the podcast and as you just said earlier, there's a moment often of crisis in people's lives and it's happening either before, during or just after their exit from this religious group and it is a very difficult time in their life. And so I had missed a call from this young man, I had spoken with him on several occasions before that I think the first time he called me,

he was literally crying saying, you know, I'm, I'm trying to navigate my way out of legalistic pentaculsalism. It's just all a list of don'ts and cants. And I'm learning from these podcasts that this is not New Testament biblical Christianity. And so he was right in the middle of doing that. He had marital issues, he had job issues, who had financial issues, you know, unfortunately, many times when it rains, it storms. And all of these things were coming on this poor young man at the same time. And so even though we had talked on the phone before, I missed a call from him.

I can't always take everybody's call like I would like to. And when I found out the need later, I just felt terribly bad that I had not taken his call because I did call him within an hour.

And you know what? He was already out on some lonely stretch of a highway with a gun in his car. He had already walked down to the creek and he was going to shoot himself.

And I said, I am so sorry, brother, that I did not take your call. You know, if I had had any idea if you had texted me and said, what is about to happen? Please call me. I would have dropped everything and called you. But it took a couple of phone conversations. I thought one did it. And then I ended up hearing from him again when he was about to do that for the second time. Thank God, he never did it. I said, look, there are better days ahead. Just keep me on the phone, get back

in your car, get back to a safe place. And we're going to hold hands over the phone. We're going to work our way through this together. And we're going to get you off the bridge. That's what we're going to do. And we did. And I think he's in a lot better place right now. So as you said, way back at the very beginning of our time today, John, and I forgot to mention it, later this week on Friday of this week, you're going to air an interview that you did sometime ago with a faith assembly survivor. And one of the things I have realized in talking to so many of

these dear and precious people is that they don't even realize that on Fridays, you tend to do this. or stories where you have interviews of different people who have come from these different segments of a dysfunctional cult background.

And this coming Friday will make six total that you have done of people who specifically have come from Hobart Freeman and the Faith Assembly background. So I would just recommend and encourage everyone if they're not aware of that.

Now they are aware of that and they can find those interviews and listen to them. The one that's coming out this Friday and I have talked to her many times, I've actually met her one time face to face.

But she said, ball means you're welcome to use my name and refer to me. So she is a granddaughter of Don and Betty Nye. That name was fairly significant in Faith Assembly days because the Nye's were the original people who allowed Faith Assembly to build that gigantic, but today is now a pontoon boat storage place but church building on their property outside of Wilmot in Northern Indiana.

And Layelle Nye McKay is one of the grandchildren of Don and Betty. And so I would just encourage people who are not aware of the fact that you are releasing that on a Friday to look it up on this coming Friday.

And you'll hear the story of Layelle. And she's just a wonderful young lady, very courageous young woman who has in a very deliberate

and meticulous and purposeful way navigated away from all of these things in her childhood. And I don't want to steal her thunder. Maybe I'll mention something here or there when it comes to mind, but I'm gonna leave that for her.

Let me, I guess with the time we have left John today, talk a little about the first generation people. The first generation people, you know, we've got these two different groups of people. And so we have an incredibly complex dynamic happening between those who went into Hobart Freeman's church and ministry and message with their eyes wide open, wide open maybe in quotation marks.

They didn't really know what they were in for, but they went into it with their eyes wide open versus the second generation who definitely did not go into it with their eyes wide open because they were still in their mother's womb.

So you've got two different groups. You've got people who made faith assembly their choice. And Dr. Freeman's message who said, this is what I want to do. And then you have their children and we even have a third generation now, the grandchildren who did not make the choice who were simply born into it.

So for the first generation people, I think that back in the early days and even to the end of faith assembly, there were definitely some fringe members of faith assembly of that movement by fringe members. I mean, they weren't genuine. I think you'll find that with any movement, especially any large scale movement.

You're going to have fringe members. There were, for instance, predators who were lurking around the corner, seeing a situation where you have, you know, all these women staying at home, giving birth to all these children and no one going to school and all the babysitting required and all the child swapping from this family to that family because, you know, my husband can't drive and I have to drive and I've got to get him to work, but I've got seven children at home can someone watch my children. I mean, it's just a very ripe environment for a lot of not so

savory things to take place. So there were predators lurking. You've always got your, you know, I don't know, natural born anti-establishment people. So anytime you've got a movement preaching against all other denominations and preaching against the government and preaching against everything, you know, they just want to be a part of that. They're just a raw, raw. Let's see if we can be different from everybody else type of person. You've always got your curiosity seekers. You've got people that were just there because they were lonely and needed a place.

You've got your friends members, but I would say that most of the people, these are the people that I have talked to that most of the people are were sincere, genuine. They were young. I mean, I'm describing myself, even though I was really young. I was only 17 years old. I, most of these people were older than me. So they are, you know, in their 70s now or some of them are in their 80s now because they were in their early 20s, newly married, idealistic, so inexperienced, so trusting, but genuine and sincere. And so when they saw the glory barn where you've got tambourines and

guitars and people are worshipping the Lord and singing and lifting their hands and it, you know, were at the very tail end of the Jesus movement where so many young people had come into Christianity.

You know, this is a very inviting place and it was a very warm place at the time. When you walked into the glory barn in say 1974, they were there from 72 to 78, so right in the middle in 1974.

When you walked into the glory barn in 1974 versus when you walked into what they call the new building in 1984, That's just a 10 year time period and the church was completely different.

By 1984, it was a SS Nazi Gestapo mentality. You had to be part of the group and they had lookouts to make sure no one else got in. Back in 1974, you know, have guitar, wheel travel, have a Bible, you're welcome.

It didn't matter what you were wearing, it didn't matter if the guys had long hair and the girls had blue jeans on and trust me, they did. They were all welcome and it was, you know, just a very friendly, warm, inviting place.

So this is the environment that so many of these people, I'm talking about the first generation people came into as I have often told all of them. Because there is a lot of guilt involved in the lives of those who recognize what then they took their children and or grandchildren through.

What I tried to explain to them is, look, no one believes that you intentionally decided to get up on a Sunday morning and tell your wife, look, I'm tired of going to church. Let's go find a religious cult to join and then you go down to the glory barn.

That did not happen. You were out of the goodness and sincerity and love and enthusiasm and joy of your own heart, really believing you had found a great place to go to church. And you know, maybe for a year or two there, it could have been an okay place to go to church.

Hobart Freeman was always deeply steeped in word of faith. He was always deeply steeped in ladder rain. That was always there. That was not going anywhere. But at least there was, there was friendliness, there was toleration.

There was definitely a divine healing message being taught. But at least, and it was not a correct message, I'm not excusing it at all. But at least there was a divine healing message being taught and there was not an anti-doctor message being taught.

So again, the divine healing message that he was teaching even then was not a biblical message and his positive thinking and confession was not biblical at all then. But there was just freedom and genuineness and sincerity.

So for all of the second generation and third generation and if there are any fourth generation people out there, this is one thing they've got to recognize. There is a Facebook group called the Children of F.A.

And there are a lot of really angry and hurt people, descendants of first generation people on that page. And I met and talked with many of them, not all of them, but many of them.

And the first thing that I would try to explain to them is to give them a picture of what it was like for their parents or their grandparents when they first walked in the glory barn.

It was easy to be sucked into that. They were sucked into it and they were sucked into it because I think that they were genuine and sincere in looking for the things of the Lord. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, William-Branham.org. On the book's page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Steven Montgomery,

John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching. On behalf of William-Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support. I give this example a few times, but never on a serious podcast like this, I had a job one time as an architect. I've done all kinds of different

things in my life. It's a little bit crazy, but I had this job as an architect, and I would sit there and you're staring at drawings all day, you're looking at different measurements, etc. You really, you're really tiring your brain. And one of the guys I work with, he worked in an office across the room, and I would go talk to him, and one day he said something, and I thought, well, I'm just going to play a little trick on him to get back at him. And I stayed after hours, after he left the building for about six months, and I would push his desk one millimeter closer

to the wall for six straight months. And whenever it's that gradual, you don't notice the change. And so his desk was moving closer and closer. Well, after about four months, he says, John, I don't know what was happening, but I just feel claustrophobic in this office, and I think I'm getting fat. I'm going to go on a diet. I am thankful to me. This guy lost like 30 or 40 pounds.

He went on a very significant diet, but he did not notice that we were moving his desk. I had another guy that's helping me, and that's how gradual that change was. When you join a cult, it's this very exciting, happy, thing that you really, you're joining with good intentions. They're not sharing everything with you because it's a cult. They keep all of their darkest secrets secret. And then once you start to learn, they gradually drop them on you. And if you get into the leadership, it gets even more odd because the leadership know that they're doing this. And it's not

like they're doing it mischievously or with bad intent. They just say they wouldn't understand if you told them everything that we believe. And so they give you just little bits and pieces. What they're doing is they're moving that desk one millimeter at a time for sometimes years. And then when they drop the big bombs, well, that desk has already moved. You don't even notice big atomic bomb happens in the room. Well, you're just oblivious to it. And that's how it is. It moves so gradually that you don't understand. And once you're caught up in it, once your mind has been programmed, you never really saw it coming. And so when you

leave, it's a little bit odd as well because you leave thinking, well, all of these people knew this. What's wrong with them? I didn't know. I found out and I left. What's wrong with them.

But you have to understand that they went through a similar process, maybe not the same process you had, but they went through a similar process of indoctrination. And they're not yet at the place in their journey where they can escape, but you are. So I'm very thankful for the Friday stories because in doing that, it helps other people to kind of speed up the process to help escape.

Yes, for sure. And that's exactly where I was going, John. Before you know it, you're trapped. You're quickly trapped. You're trapped by false promises. You're trapped by this sense of urgency. That was huge in the early 70 and mid 70s messages of Freeman. When you hear from the pulpit, and you think he's given you a biblical verses for it, that Jesus is coming back really, really soon.

You know, what does that do to your life? What does that do to your future plans? You know, and we have talked before how devastating that sense of urgency is to this day for those poor people back then thinking, the world's coming to an end, you know, why finish my college degree? You know, Bruce Kinsey had an outreach called the lighthouse right there at Purdue University. He had an outreach right there on at Purdue University. And so some of those people went ahead and finished their degrees, but you know, again, I've heard from a lot of them who didn't.

And I've heard from people, you know, all over. I was one of the very fortunate ones. You know, I was into Freemanism when I was a junior in high school. And I still went through college and got an undergraduate degree. I don't know what anybody thought of me. They might have thought I'm worldly or terrible because why would you be getting a college degree? But it was very important for my parents that I do that. And and I'm glad I listened to their advice and I'm glad I did that.

But if Jesus coming back, don't plan for the future, you don't even need to prepare for retirement at all because 60, 70 years, oh, you'll never live to that. You're gonna, Jesus, be back by the time you're 30 and look where that's left people today.

You know, and I lay all that at the feet of Hobart Freeman or William Branham or any other nut job who has encouraged people along that line. That is so irresponsible to do to people.

You know what I would like to say is, let's find what is owed to all of these people and we need to build that to the Freeman account. You know, that needs to come out of his estate.

Unfortunately, there's not enough money to reimburse these people for all of their lost wages. So, yeah, people were just quickly trapped by false promises. I'll tell you one of the main ways that you are trapped in a ministry like Dr. Freeman's is just the repetitive, mishandling of biblical text.

Hobart Freeman was a master at that. I'm not convinced that he understood the Bible very well but I am convinced that he knew Bible passages very thoroughly and the only way to know that is to read your Bible and memorize them and I'm convinced that Hobart read his Bible a lot.

But, you know, that's not good enough. You know, it's just not good enough. Describes and Pharisees were very familiar with the Old Testament law, with the mosaic law. But Jesus just said, often to them, it was very embarrassing when he would address them because they were the professional teachers of the law and he would address them with this question, have ye not read?

You know, that was very embarrassing to them because what he was saying to them, he knew they had read. But what his meaning was, yes, you know the text, but you've misunderstood the meaning.

And he accused the religious leaders of his day of that fact all the time. And, you know, surprise of surprise, Hobart never thought that he would be in the category of being a Pharisee but he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees.

He would bind anyone over the smallest details and he would omit the way to your matters of the law like mercy and love. Those are much more important than how you dot your eye or cross your tea on some Hebrew passage or some Greek word.

This repetition, John, is just a hallmark of religious cult. It's a hallmark of mind control. It's a hallmark of indoctrination. It was just a profuse quoting of Bible verses without any regard to the context in which they're found.

And I would invite anyone to pick up, you know, pretty much... such any Freeman tape, pick up any Freeman message and listen to it, he'll have a text that he starts with and then he tells lots of stories.

And then while he's telling stories, he's also pulling verses out of their context and the way he uses those verses, they reinforce the story that he's telling and the story that he's telling is something that Smith Wigglesworth or Orr Roberts did that I can't verify.

There's no way to verify, validate that. But I've heard the story told now from the guy behind the podium and now it's been buttress supported by all these verses before and behind it. And you don't have the critical thinking going on saying a way just a minute, that is not an appropriate use of that verse.

It's happening too fast. And this is what Hobart did. This is in my opinion the way he was able to deceive people as thoroughly as he was. It was a repetitious quoting and misusing Bible passages without any reference to their context.

His hallmark verse, if we wanna call it that and I guess we could, was Mark 1124. What things soar of you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them and you shall have them.

If he's preached that once, he's preached it a hundred times, Mark 1124. That was his ministry verse. And of course when he's quoting that, what things so ever you desire, he would emphasize. Now there are no limitations on this.

It says what things so ever and then he had emphasized the word desire. What do you desire? Do you desire a new Lincoln or do you desire a new Cadillac? It says what things so ever you desire.

And so you're hearing that, he's gonna tell you stories how I've got my first three Cadillac just on that verse. Like that verse is some kind of mechanical talisman that you can use, just some kind of lucky rabbit's foot that you can rub it enough and a genie's bottle and out something will pop.

But you're hearing him tell a story, you're hearing that he got a Cadillac from that and then you're hearing the verse and you're hearing him emphasize over and over and you know what, you never slow down to think, I wonder how the apostles heard that.

And I wonder how they interpreted that. Why don't we see cases in Acts where when they needed something, they just claimed it and said I'm claiming this based on Mark 1124. You know, when I read the New Testament, I don't see that they understood what Jesus said in the same way that Dr. Freeman taught it.

I'm convinced they did not. They did not understand that verse in a crass materialistic cars house. Donkeys, bags of money, type of way that all of your faith preachers have preached it. So what I'm saying by that is, whenever Hobart is constantly using that verse and he's constantly telling stories and then he's backing it up with other verses that say, oh yeah, Delight thyself also on the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.

What do you desire? Do you desire a new home, a better job? You know, whatever you desire, God will give you, when we're hearing that constant repetition, it is a hallmark of deception. It's a hallmark of indoctrination and it's going to trap a person very quickly so that they cannot figure their way out. Because John, I'm still hearing from people today saying, I hear what you're saying, Chino, but the verse does say, you know, such and such. We did a whole podcast, John, just on Psalm 91, 16 verses. If you want to talk about a

talisman for Hobart, that's what that was. He said, if you, because this was his practice, just quote this, pray it, confess it, read it before you get out of bed in the morning, then you don't need any insurance. This is your divine assurance.

What's interesting about that, and I'll take a breath because I thought about this, John, after we did the Psalm 91, what's interesting about that is one of those verses is actually quoted by Satan to Jesus during Jesus' temptation and the wilderness. You know the account, everyone knows after Jesus had been on this long fast, he now is going to be tempted by Satan because he's fasting, he's hungry, and so the first temptation is for his hunger to be satisfied. And the devil said, if you're the son of God, just take these stones and talk to them and tell them to

become bread and because you're God and you have that power, then they will do that. And Jesus quotes the scripture to him and said, man, it's not to live by bread alone by every word of God. Satan then realized, oh, if you're going to quote scripture, I can quote scripture also.

Watch what happens with quotation of scripture, it's not enough. Watch what happens with it in this second temptation. So Jesus is taken to the temple with the devil, sat on the pinnacle of the temple, and he said, if you're the son of God, just throw yourself down because there is a verse in the Bible, and it's in Psalm 91, and it says that his angels will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against the stone. And Jesus doesn't challenge his quotation of the passage.

That is more or less an accurate quotation from the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, the Greek translation, what Satan says to Jesus to do. Jesus doesn't dispute the quotation. What he disputes is the interpretation and the application of it.

And that's what I was doing whenever we did that podcast on Psalm 91. What Jesus is saying is just because that is there, you're not allowed to court danger. You know, Satan was misapplying the passage.

He was taking the passage out of a proper context. And what Jesus in his rebuke to him does is he lets him know. And he lets us know as we read the passage that we can't deliberately create a situation in which you have made God now obligated to save you.

You know, he's not, he is not disputing the quotation. He's disputing how Satan is interpreting it and applying it. And he's saying we can't court danger. Well, these crazy claims that Hobart was always making like, oh, you can just drive through the fog and, you know, just claim Psalm 91.

You are courting danger. In other words, what the very thing Jesus said you are not to do, he goes on to rebuffs Satan by quoting another scripture and saying, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

You are not allowed to use your faith or passages or whatever to deliberately try to create a situation where now you think God is obligated to rescue you from that. Jesus said that's not how the Bible works.

So I think that is exactly how Dr. Freeman was using scripture. He would tell people just take your glasses off. You don't need those glasses. Your eyes are healed. In other words, he's courting danger.

In other words, he's trying to get them to place themselves in a position where God is obligated to respond. Rather than you have a pair of glasses that work perfectly fine. Now you can see just where your glasses and everything will be fine.

There was no need for Jesus to jump off of the temple. He could just climb back down. We can't court danger and thereby misuse and misapply God's scriptures. And I think that's what Hobart was trying to do all the time.

Whenever you're in this mindset of being in a personality cult and especially the high control groups, you're in a high control environment and as an adult, there are certain concepts that get programmed in your head.

And they don't really apply to the real world. And one of them result, one of the concepts. I won't go too deep. We were running out of time. But one of the concepts with regards.

to just work ethics. Usually results in child labor for the cult members who are second third generation. I was in that category. My father frequently used me as child labor. The thing of it is, because you're in this world where you're supposed to know everything because God has given you the mysteries, well frequently you don't train your child before you give them the task. You just watch them fail and scold them for it because you're going to church and you're getting scolded for it. I'm going to a point here.

I was, I want to say I was second grade. It might have been second grade, maybe earlier, barely enough to know, you know, old enough to know how the world worked. And my dad entrusted me with washing his car. And he came out one time and he showed me a look. If you take this SOS pad and clean the tires, the letters will shine. Something like that, right? Well, my brain, because I'm still learning everything, I thought, well, it made the tire shine. I wonder what it does to the side of the car. And I took an SOS pad to the entire side of his car. And that concept,

if you think of that, yes, it does make the car shine, but not everything on the car shines. You have to know the specific rules to which they apply. Well, many people who are in the cult, they'll use that same mentality with Bible verses. Yes, you too can move a mountain because the Bible says, speak to the mountain, be you removed, or Moses parted the Red Sea. Do we not have the power to part the Red Sea? And they're doing exactly the same thing that as a second, you know, second grade child is doing. Yes, it did work in the Bible, but I don't think that

applies today in the way that you think it applies today. I just had this conversation. I guess it was yesterday with Jed, we were recording a podcast. And the mentality that you get, it creates an alternate worldview. And when you're in that alternate worldview, what happens is because the world that you're speaking doesn't come into existence, not a single person can move a mountain by speaking to it. Well, it causes you to disassociate. And so now your brain enters into this world where the reality that you're living doesn't really exist. And you try to find other things that

apply to the same concept as moving the mountain, even though you can't move the mountain. And so you'll you'll like your brain goes through these ridiculous exercises, trying to prove your faith. And the sad truth of that is if you look back through history each time that a group starts doing this, they'll try to prove their faith and go into destruction, sometimes deadly destruction, snake handling, you know, drinking poison, this kind of thing. You can't you can't apply everything in the same way. But the way that the cults have twisted the passages and though what they're doing is they're taking a verse and they're wanting to apply their

context to that verse instead of the context of the verse to their meaning. It's completely upside down and reversed. And like I said, when you do this, it turns out deadly. In Hobart Freeman's case, it turned out deadly. Yes, it did turn out deadly. And he was such a master at it. And I think, John, what made him so dangerous was he really did know Bible verses better, far better than most ministers that you will ever hear. He's quoting the passages without looking at them. But it was easy to do because he'd been doing it for years. And you've got to set group of passages to use

for healing, for faith, for eyesight, or whatever. And he knew him, and he knew him well. But they're misapplied. They're misinterpreted. They're pulled out of their own context. And it was, you know, I'm talking to all of the people, the first and second generation. It was almost impossible not to fail. It was almost impossible. Once you got in that, not to become quickly trapped.

And so that's my plea, which we will continue in our next podcast to the second generation people who are looking back saying, mom and dad, how dumb could you have been? Yeah, it was, it's not as easy to say how dumb could you have been when we put ourselves in their position when you are hungry, you're newly saved, maybe you're newly baptized in the Holy Spirit, maybe you're newly in a group or you're listening to, you know, this lively kind of worship rather than the church hymns that maybe they had been brought up with in an earlier denominational setting. It's just,

it's just a very intoxicating environment. And I don't mean intoxicating negatively or positively. It's just that's what it is. And it's difficult. I mean, a person would be an unusual and exceptional person to have been able to put the brakes on really, really early. I mean, I went several years before I was able to put the brakes on. And I'm, you know, probably about average for that. I don't know anyone because you see if you could have put the brakes on early, you never would have gotten there in the first place. As soon as you walked in and you heard your

first sermon, you'd say, well, this guy's nuts because he's pulling these verses all out of context. So by virtue of the fact that you were there and listened to a sermon or two and didn't immediately object to it means that you're probably going to be there for a little while.

Something is going to have to happen. I think in our last podcast, the thing that so was so surprising to me, John, that we talked about that did happen was the man who said he would never die and was always going to be well died. And he died very sick. And, you know, I was not shocked that it happened. I was just shocked when the news came to me, the realization of it, but most of the people I'm going to tell that story because that's a very personal story the day I found out and what my immediate reaction

was that cold, dark Friday afternoon when I found out, I found out on a Friday afternoon after he had died the previous weekend, I'll tell that, I'll save that story for later. But for everyone at Faith Assembly when they found out, it's like, oh, I mean the sky is falling because here's our leader and he died and they were so shocked over it.

And my point in our previous podcast is we should not have been shocked over that. We should have been shocked at how long God allowed this man to live even though he was creating so much distress and harm in the people's lives.

So next go around, we'll pick up here and we'll talk some more about first generation and then our second generation group of folks. Sounds good. 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. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

You can also read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.