Healing in the Atonement? The Long Con of Faith Healing

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 is good to be back after this will be after Thanksgiving while we're recording but for the people who are listening it'll be a few weeks after that but we had a decent yet hectic yet crazy Thanksgiving from my side and it reminds me so right now and I'll be going through this for several

years I'm certain but Thanksgiving always reminds me a family which most of them have cut me off so thanks Thanksgiving's a little bit difficult but there was a point in time in which it reminded me of family and we would get together but some of the family would be just so sick you know with their ailments their chronic illnesses that it kind of disrupted the flow of Thanksgiving which I'm thankful we didn't have really any of that other than I had a head cold but as it relates to our subject today we're we were in a

divine healing movement the number one claim to fame for this movement was that if you come bring and unload your diseases upon us and we will heal you you will be healed and you've got this big body of sick people who are in the movement because they want healing and that's really what attracted them but at the same time there's this cloud hanging over those people to the ones who are in leadership because they have to present themselves as though they aren't sickly yet many of them are which is really odd if you think about this

because they're promoting this thing as calm be healed just like we can just like we are and the rank and file member many of them just have no idea how sick some of the people are my grandfather was in it he had cancer and claimed that he had been healed of cancer yet it was if I understand correctly it was part of the reason part of his death although he died at an old age many of the leaders that I know of they either they or their wives have something that's chronic and yet they've struggled through it for decades

claiming to be healed and yet they're not so that brings us to hope our Freeman yeah as you said you were a part of a divine healing in cult. I've often referred to it as a divine sickness cult because the people didn't get the healing that they were promised, which was very, very unfortunate for the people.

I know out there in YouTube Land, we've got a broader and narrower audience. The narrower audience is made up of former faith assembly people, former Hobart Freeman followers. And they're part of my target audience. But they're not the only ones, John. We know there are a lot of other people that come from these different threads or segments, whether it's KCI hop or ladder rains, you know, the Canadian take on everything, the new apostolic reformation, maybe just old time Pentecostalism, or maybe, you know, 1960s and later what they call neo-Pentecostalism.

We also have a lot of those people out there too. And so I feel indebted to both. If I go into too much minute detail about Dr. Hobart Freeman and his church faith assembly, if I go into that per se too far, you know, it could easily, I could easily lose some of the people who are, you know, listening from a broader perspective. But I also feel in the legions to the people who follow Dr.

Freeman who are now following the podcast, just to make sure that they have on record, which is what these podcasts amount to a documented account of the very specific details. I guess I already bored Miss Jumpers, the cat she hot down, she's heard enough. One of the things we can't lose sight of while we are arguing, arguing, discussing, debating, documenting, Dr. Freeman's faith and healing, ministry and message. One of the things we can't lose sight of is the fact that he died. You know, the man did die. He died at a relatively young age. He was 64 and a half

years old or young. Most people live into their 70s if not their 80s in this country or at least late 60s. This is his mid 60s. The man died. So we're talking about a man who had a faith and healing ministry and not only a faith in healing ministry and message, but an absolute trust in God only, no medicine, no doctors, no dentists, no anything except prayer and faith, the guy died.

You know, just think where we would be if he hadn't died. I think where we would be, what will we be doing today if everything William Brannum had prophesied came true and, you know, there were no ticks and isms in his ministry of everything was clean and upright and moral and perfect.

We wouldn't be here today. We wouldn't be having these podcasts. If Hobart Freeman had experienced the things that he claimed he was going to experience, again, we wouldn't even be here. And I don't know that that ever really dawned on the majority of his followers.

They just somehow allowed him to pompously predict, I've been healed of all these conditions and I'm not going to die of any of these conditions and then he goes right out and dies on everyone of conditions that made him a very, very sick and ill man at the end of his life.

And yet people just didn't bat an eyelid. They just said, oh well, kept on going and kept on believing. It's like there's some kind of aversion to the truth or aversion to the facts because look, we can argue and debate and discuss and I'm all in favor of that in the right spirit.

I'm all for that. First Peter 224 by his stripes were healed and Peter's quoting Isaiah 53, we can argue all we want to about those passages, but the fact of the matter is Hobart died.

And that should have been enough for people to pump the brakes and say, what's going on here? What do we have happening in our midst? You know, Hobart, as we've talked about before, did believe very strongly that healing was in the atonement.

He did a lot of teaching on Isaiah 53. He was trained in Hebrew and was an Old Testament scholar at one time earlier in his life. And so he was quick to remind everyone that the correct way to read Isaiah 53 is not our griefs and sorrows that Jesus bore, but our pains and sicknesses that he bore.

And so look, John, I am perfectly willing. I really am and I have and I continue to be willing to sit down and listen to an hour long sermon on Isaiah 53 from Hobart's perspective.

I have a certain thing in me where you and I had this discussion a few weeks ago, how certain things trigger certain people, none of these things trigger me at all. I don't have any upset stomachs.

I mean, the only way in which I'm triggered, I'm triggered to be mad and to want to do another podcast to get some of his stuff. But, you know, other than that, doesn't bother me.

I'm happy to listen to an hour-long sermon on his version of Isaiah 53. If, if, at the end of the sermon, every public speaker we should be responsible, accountable and liable for what we've said.

If you're willing to now take questions and answers after your pitch of healing is in the atonement, I know very well, I know very thoroughly what he believed in, what he taught about that.

But I just don't think that it was discussed in the way it should have been discussed. So what Hobart said was that, just as sin, our sin, our inherited sin from our original parents and the sin that we commit, Paul said in Adam, all die, our sin was born by Jesus on the cross in the same manner, Hobart taught, to the same degree in the same length and depth and breadth

the healing of our body was also provided for. So both sin and sickness, my problem with that, John, from way, way back in the very beginning, even though I listen to what Hobart said, I've heard the other preachers teach that healing is in the atonement, just like forgiveness of our sins is in the atonement and I would have said all along, but wait a minute, there's something different between sin and sickness.

We're not even talking about the same kind of thing. One thing is something I do, sin is something I do. And I've been promised in both old and New Testament that Jesus has bore the penalty for my sin.

If I will confess my sins, I can be forgiven. Sin is something I do, sickness isn't anything I do, sickness is just something that happens to me. Now, I think we would all say in the original sense, probably you could trace sickness back to sin, had there been no sin, there would be no sickness, but again, sickness is not something that I go out and do.

It is just something that happens to me. So right off the bat, I would say, I don't know that we have looked at this thoroughly and clearly enough if we're saying that both sin and sickness are equally carried.

Look at it like this, when we sin and we go and ask the Lord for forgiveness, do we have to wait for the manifestation of that forgiveness? How do we believe that that happens when we pray?

We pray, we say, Lord, please forgive me for this. I'm asking you to cover it with Christ's atonement, amen. And do we walk away forgiven? Or do we have to wait a month or a year, or longer before we're forgiven?

No one would believe that, would they? No. One who teaches this message would believe that, they would believe when I ask for forgiveness, I was forgiven at that moment. Then I would say, how is it?

How is it then that the same thing doesn't happen when you ask to be healed? If they're covered with the same atonement in the same way, you make application by the same method by prayer, then why is it the results are so different?

And I would also say concerning this business of healing being in the atonement is what is your understanding of Matthew's quotation in Matthew 8 verses 16 and 17 of Isaiah 53? Matthew was a Jewish tax collector, Jesus saw him at the toll booth, the tax receipt booth and called him to be an apostle.

He was a Jew, he knew his Old Testament well, long after Jesus' life and death and resurrection and ascension, Matthew sat down and wrote his gospel. And when he wrote his gospel in Matthew 8 verses 16 and 17, he looked back on that atonement passage, the suffering servant passage of Isaiah 53, and he quotes that and he quotes that interestingly enough in the context of Jesus' own healing ministry.

Verse 16 talks about they brought to Jesus people that were demon possessed, he cast out the spirits with his word, the end of that verse says and he healed all that were sick that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying himself took iron firmities and bear our sicknesses.

And Matthew does quote it that way, himself took iron firmities and bear our sicknesses. But wait a minute, Matthew is applying that to Jesus earthly ministry before Jesus had ever gone to the cross.

There has been no atonement. And Matthew also seems to be applying it indiscriminately to everyone, both saved and unsaved. I don't know that he wants us to think that the only people who came to Jesus for healing in his earthly ministry were saved or converted people.

I think there were masses of people that came to Jesus and Matthew applies that indiscriminately to all. So obviously this is not the podcast to get into the theology of Isaiah 53. I'll only bring these things up to say that Hobart's teaching on it was very deficient.

It did not answer the questions that needed to be answered and at the end of the day, Hobart died a very sick man. So his all of that teaching and all of that belief system and that hammering away in favor of healing by means of prayer only.

and against any type of medical science or medicine didn't avail Hobart at the end of his life. At some point, I think you and I should probably do this. I know I'm going to do it by myself in a few different ways, but I'd like to go through the covenants that are declared in the Bible because one of the things that happened with this chaotic movement is that it reversed the idea of some of the covenantal promises.

And in fact, it actually brought people back, it attempted to bring people back under the old covenant law, which is really odd. It happened through British Israelism. The people were trying to say that we are, when they would say we have the prophetic scriptures, what they were actually saying is, we have scriptures that were given in prophecy to the Old Testament prophets, which were four ancient Israel, but we're going to use that prophetically to point to modern events today.

And then they would run through all of these calculations and timelines and how the world is soon to end. And they've done this just repeatedly, but they have trained people not to understand the covenants.

And if you understand the mosaic law, understand the blessings and the curses, and understand what the prophets are saying after the curse of the law started to come into effect, there are many passages, not all, but many where Jesus is saying things that sounds in today's words like he's talking about healing of our bodies, but it's actually healing of a nation, healing of a people.

And if you fully understand this, it changes and alters the meanings that these divine healers are using when they twist the scriptures out of their context, but you have to understand that context. What's really sad about it for me, beyond all of the, the heresy that's introduced is the fact that if you try to combine it in the way that they did, that healing is in the covenant.

Healing was in the covenant as you think about towards the healing of the nation of Israel. That part is truly in the covenant and there are verses that really support that idea. Healing of the body, Jesus healed people and he said that if you come believing, you can be healed.

There are passages for healing of the body, but the integration of the two, the healing into the atonement, that is something by, you can only achieve it by twisting scripture out of context and twisting the understanding of the covenants.

The sad part about this for me is that when you do that, what about all of the people who aren't healed? If healing is in the covenant and your salvation is linked to your healing, and then the people aren't getting healed, we have an untrustworthy source of healing, but if it's tied together with salvation, in effect, you also have an untrusty source of salvation.

And so what happens is I have, I have no many people who have left the faith altogether for that very... reason. I didn't get healed. My mother died. She didn't get healed. She was declared healed and she died of the same diseases. Why would I stay in a religion like this? This is not a plan of salvation.

This is a plan of death. I know people that have said this to me and they've left. I just had one contact me today in email who has left and has deprogrammed, wiped all of that out of his head, and he's come back to the faith. So you have this weird mix of everybody who's left, people who are coming back and it all comes down to this one root problem that they have twisted the understanding of scripture and covenants to try to say that the two are linked, healing and atonement.

Well, John, you've brought something up in my mind and I did not plan to talk about this today, but maybe we will and maybe I will talk about what I planned to talk about today on another occasion. You talked about the connection between an idea, I guess earlier in this podcast myself, between forgiveness of sins and healing of the body. So Hobart had a very famous message and it wasn't only a message, it was a message, but it was more than that. It was a train of thought that he taught, but he had a very important message and I can't give you because I wasn't prepared

to talk about this, the number of the message, but the name of it was healing is easier. That's the name of the message, healing is easier and it was based on, and I hope this isn't too early on a Monday morning for people to grasp the logic of what I'm about to talk about because Jesus asked a rhetorical question and maybe the average reader doesn't understand the rhetorical nature of the question and I hope I can explain it with no preparation, but there is an account in the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, where Jesus heals a paralytic man. Mark and Luke, I think

tell a more complete account of it, but Matthew and Matthew chapter 9, I know Matthew's account is in Matthew chapter 9 where he is dealing with this paralytic man. So the man is paralyzed, we don't know what's called the paralysis, it's in his legs and it's, it's caused him to be unable to walk.

Thankfully, he has a group of friends who are able to put him on a cot or a pallet and they literally carry him down the street around the corner to try to find Jesus so that the young man can be healed. Mark's account, if I remember correctly, is the interesting one because it gives the details that the man could not get in the room of the house where Jesus was at the time because of the crowd of people around. So they went up on the roof. In Israel, they don't have snow, it's a very dry desert-aired climate so you don't need to build...

Houses with a pitch like that, which we do in this part of the country and the further north you go the greater the pitch is So the snow and precipitation will come off in Israel. You could build a flat roof because they rarely saw snow They went on top of the house tore up a perfectly good roof and lowered that man down on his pallet To get him in front of Jesus so that Jesus could heal him Matthew I don't believe gives those details, but it's still the same story each of the gospel writers tell the part of the story that

Fits the narrative for the audience that they're intending their gospel for So when Jesus sees the man the first thing he says is son by sins are forgiving you He obviously needs to be healed But Jesus doesn't say a word about that. He said son your sins be forgiven you Well, the Pharisees are there and they heard him say that and the Pharisees begin to murmur among themselves saying who can forgive sins But God only you know only God can forgive sins so this man who they did not believe to be God Although he was the God man this man has just committed blasphemy and

Then Jesus asked them this rhetorical question this rhetorical question was the basis for Dr. Freeman's Lifelong teaching on the subject healing is easier. Jesus asked the question He said whether is it easier to say which one of the these two is it easier for me to say son I sins be forgiven thee or arise and take up your bed It's it's question mark question mark. It's a rhetorical question and Jesus goes on in the next verse to say so that you know that the son of man has power on earth to forgive sins Then he turned to the

Parallytic man and said make up your bed rise and be healed your whole you can stand up now Hobart completely flipped that narrative. He completely misinterpreted He interpreted that to mean that Jesus was saying healing is easier But look Jesus didn't really ask which is easier. He says which is easier to say For him to say that sins be forgiven thee That's nothing that could either be proven or disproven by him or by the Pharisees We don't know whether a sins have been forgiven Jesus couldn't prove it or demonstrate it and they could not disprove it either

But when it comes to the healing question. Oh, that's another matter Whenever Jesus says to rise and walk that can easily be disproven. Let's see if it happens Let's see if the man gives up gets up or not. So it's the same for me John if I were to tell you Let me prove to you that I can pick up this 20-pound weight By picking up a 10-pound weight. Well, that doesn't prove I can pick up a 20 I have to do in other words what's harder. I have to be able to do what's harder to prove that I can do what's easier.

I have to be able to pick up the 10 pound weight, I'm sorry, the 20 pound weight, to prove that I can pick up the 10, not vice versa. So in other words, we understand the import of Jesus' rhetorical question.

It was harder for him to say, be healed than it was, be forgiven, because one of those could be controverted by the Pharisees and the other one couldn't. And yet, Hobart totally misunderstood. This classic passage in the Bible, totally misunderstood it.

And because he misunderstood it, he mistought it. And then here's the ramification of that false teaching. What Hobart taught is that healing, according to that passage, is easier to do than forgiveness of sin.

And that's not what Jesus said. He said just a reverse. But Hobart went out saying, healing is easier. All right, so listen, you glory barners out there. You faith assembly members. If forgiveness of sins is harder to do, and you have believed for that, then what is wrong with you people when you can't believe for little o' healing of your body?

That was the whole impetus of this healing is easier message. And it is completely unscriptural. It completely just destroys that whole narrative, that whole story, the force of Jesus rhetorical question. It completely destroys that.

And then it put people under the burden of, how do I even know if I'm saved since that's the harder thing, according to Hobart? How can I even know that I'm saved if I can't even believe God for my healing?

So as I prefaced this earlier by saying, John, maybe this is too early on a Monday morning for people to follow the rhetorical nature and the logic of it all. But hopefully I've done a halfway decent job.

I try to use movie references whenever I'm trying to make something easy for people to understand. And sadly, I've learned that not many people like my genre of movies. So usually when we're talking on the subject of the cults and the cult mindset, the matrix is my go-to movie because it really, if you follow the whole series, when everybody suddenly wakes up and realizes that the world that they were in were fake, it's just so similar to how I felt when I woke up from the cults.

But the, so I use a reference that everybody knows and I'll try to make this make more sense. If you were to suddenly turn on the TV and the Wizard of Oz is playing and they're going up the yellow brick road, they're about to see the Wizard and that's the only part of the movie that you've seen.

Oh boy, I'm going and I'm going to get a brain or I'm going to get my courage and then you shut it off. If you do this, the whole story from start to finish.

takes a different meaning. Number one, the grand wizard, who is a guy behind the curtain, is really a grand wizard. The whole journey to get there, which was really the most important part of that book in that movie, you've totally missed it, and you've got this one little slice of a snapshot of a thing that's taken out of context, and your frame of reference is totally skewed.

The way that the British Israel movement taught, Hobart Freeman, Brannum, Lindsay, all of these people, Cindy Jacobs, when I was recording the podcast last night, Cindy Jacobs was on the board of directors for Christ for the Nations, Gordon Lindsay and Brannum, and Gordon Lindsay started that from the voice of healing. She's doing the same thing, and you can go through and you can see how things are just taken out of context, and they're doing that same thing. They'll take passage from Isaiah just this one verse. Let's take this one verse, let's apply it to the whole

world today. It's just so ripped out of context. Whenever I first, when I left the message and I began to understand the reading of the Bible that anybody can read it, it's a series of books, you just open the book and you start reading it, I read through the passages that we were programmed and indoctrinated to believe out of context, the greatest of which is Isaiah. If you leave one of these movements, you need to open up Isaiah, read it, start to finish, because in Isaiah, what is it 53? I think that's the healing and its atonement passage as they go to. If you understand the context

of what is happening in Israel, they fallen under the law, they have been exiled, they've so many things, the nation itself is bleeding, the nation is suffering, the nation of Israel, and then Isaiah is coming and he's talking about by his stripes, they're healed. The things that are the things that are mentioned prophetically in Isaiah, if you understand the context for which they're written, it is about the nation of Israel. Now there are parts of it that obviously are for other scenes within the Old Testament, but the ones that are used exclusively for the divine healing

movement are mostly, I should say that differently, the ones that are used for the healing is in the atonement scriptures. Most of them apply to Israel, and there was healing in the atonement, Christ came, he paid the penalty of the law, all of that really does apply to the Old Testament and beyond, because the other thing that is taken out of context, like you just mentioned, Jesus does heal physical ailments, but when he does it, like you said, it is a sign for the coming kingdom, it's not a sign that you can become a grand wizard, which is what they want to say,

in essence what they're doing when they go down that pathway, they're trying to say, look what I have in my ministry, look at the miracles that I have, am I not the great one? And they want to be the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, that's really all it is, but all you have to do is just open up.

the book and read and essentially you're peeling back the curtain and you see what's actually underneath. And not everybody's happy when you pull the curtain back, are they? You know, that's a great movie.

I've watched that movie many times. I'm just going to take a stab at it. Was that movie done in 1939? I could be totally wrong, but I'm sure someone's going to Google that and find out.

I'm not certain. I know you watched it live, but it came out long before I was born. Oh man, be easy on an old guy on a Monday morning. It's a great movie. Your right John was so, was so much to tell in the movie.

I mean, it is a, you know, it's an all-time classic movie for sure. And everyone was terrified of the wizard until they found out he's just an old cranky dude with these machines that can produce noise and light and smoke.

He's not the real thing. You know, he's more cowardly than the cowardly lion man is. But as long as he has the wool pulled over the people's eyes or the curtain clothes, then he can do all of this stuff.

And what bothered me so much about Dr. Freeman's use of the paralytic man was it was a blatant misinterpretation of Scripture. But I was able to realize the reason that he even came on that is because he is looking, he's looking for text to support his views and theory.

And as I have said so many times before, that is not how God wants us to read the Bible. We want to read the Bible to be informed by what the Bible says, not to see if we can find our belief in the Bible.

It is going about it completely the wrong way. You read it as best as you can with an open mind. God what does your word say to me? And when we do that, the beauty of it is we end up getting our false doctrines corrected by God's word.

But as long as you're going to hold on to your doctrine, you're always going to see your false doctrine in the Bible. You're always going to see one this, you're always going to see the oneness, heresy in the Bible.

You're always going to see extreme faith healing in the Bible. You're always going to see anti-doctors in the Bible if that's what you want to see. You'll find enough passages to support that. So it was just a huge sadness in my life as I watched Hobart teach messages like that.

And I knew had he been reading God's word for what it says and for what it means, he would have understood the rhetorical question that Jesus answered as I just tried to explain. And he never would have ended up with the healing is easier doctrine.

And he never would have ended up with the... the burden he put on people and the threats he leveled against him by saying, look, healing is easier than salvation. So if you can't believe for your healing, there's no way you can prove to me.

You can believe for your salvation because the Bible never teaches that nonsense. And so consequently, again, let me go back to where we first started this podcast, John Hobart died, you know, had Hobart lived and been healed of all these illnesses, then we would not be having this podcast today.

I would, I don't know where you would be. I would probably be out on the water before this snow hits us tonight, fishing. That's where I was saddered. It was 22 degrees, but we were out on the water, fishing.

That's probably where I'd be today, rather than stuck behind a computer monitor, talking about this old guy that died going on 41 years ago. And we shouldn't be surprised that he died. I know Faith Assembly was when he died.

When we get to that moment in time, I will give everyone many, many, many more details. The only way in which I was surprised was that it had finally actually happened. I wasn't surprised like, oh, I can't believe Hobart Freeman died.

I thought he had lived forever. You know, I think we should have been surprised that he didn't happen a lot earlier.

That's what should have surprised us that Hobart Freeman did not die sooner than his 64th year. And the reason I say that the thing that should surprise us is that he did not die earlier than he did is because look at how mean and cruel and hard and harsh and legalistic and threatening and promising damnation.

If you leave my ministry or church, he was to those poor people underneath him. I received a text message from someone this morning before you and I went on an ex Faith Assembly person who was there when Hobart Freeman was alive and he was just telling me, I'm so mad at myself looking back that I let that guy get away with all of it.

And I said, that's a good attitude to have. I mean, take it with a grain of salt. You couldn't have done anything about it back then. Hobart was just too big. He had too big of a following.

And you're just a voice crying in the wilderness. But I understand the frustration and I think a little bit of that is healthy for everyone to have. Just say, yeah, you give me that chance to do it over again.

And I'd go right up there and withstand him to his face. And this man probably would we can't relive the past, but guess what? That's okay. We can take care of ourselves. from here on out. And one thing I've learned is these people just don't allow ministers to do that to them anymore. It's like I said earlier, I'm, I'm fine listening to an hour sermon that the guy wants to preach as long as he is willing to do an hour Q and A after the sermon. I'll listen to anything you've got to say, but you've got to be accountable for what you said. So surprised

he said his death. No, I don't think we should be. Look how mean he was. Look how arrogant and boastful the man always was. We always heard his academic prowess that he had gone all through college and seminary, never made less than an A scored the highest grades had the highest average in the history of Georgetown College. Well, how do I know these things? I know these things because he told me these things about himself all the time that he had enough degrees to paper a wall. And people then would say I was pretty impressed with Hobart Freeman's

wallpaper. Well, you know, he had an undergraduate degree at a master's degree. He had one THD degree. That's only three degree. That's not very many. There are plenty of people with multiple master's degrees and multiple doctor degrees. So that's not too many degrees, but he would talk about his degrees. And of course, he would talk about how long he always studied. And I never I never tire of finding a new message where I'm hearing the same thing. So here we go, John.

We've got a little clip if you could play from when Hobart way back in 1974 before he got really boastful. He was teaching a series on the book of Hebrews. And the message from Hebrews chapter 13 was entitled exhortation to overcomers. So I say that since I walk by faith in this area, I know what God will do. I don't have any real big desires for things. Whatever I believe foreign claim for usually has a practical application anyway. It doesn't mean it's just practical.

But I've got a chair in my study. They probably cost as much as your living room suit. But I spend most of my time in that chair. Now, I don't mean I'm just sitting there, but I'm working in my study as the idea. I go in there by nine o'clock and you know when I come out, one o'clock the next morning, 16 hours a day, seven days a week. I do take a day off now. You should not do that.

So it's standard Hobart Freeman. He studies 16 hours a day. I mean, everybody who listens to these podcasts already know this. He says there, he goes into his study in the morning at nine a.m.

And he doesn't come out into one a.m. the following morning.

Who raw for you? 16 hours The day, and he's talking about his chair. He said, I've got in the chair that's more expensive than your whole living room suit because I sit in that chair 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

Well, I think this is a place where he does say, well, now I'll need to do it six days a week because I take a day off. Whoop-de-doo that you spend 16 hours a day.

It didn't teach you very much, or you would not have misread Jesus rhetorical question with the paralytic. But he's just always boasting, what happens, John, in the Bible? What happens when people are extremely arrogant and extremely proud?

What happened to King Nebuchadnezzar who said, this is my great kingdom that I have built with my own hands. Pretty soon, Daniel prophesies to him, Nebuchadnezzar loses his mind, goes out and grows hair, you know, as long as a wild animal and his fingernails and toenails are like bird's claws because he was arrogant.

What happened to King Herod in the end of, that would be Acts chapter 12, who gave this speech and everyone said, oh, that's a speech of a God and not of a man. Immediately, he was smitten dead by the angel of God and he was eaten of worms and he gave up the ghost.

Hobart didn't die quite that terribly, but wait till we get to it, it's pretty gruesome. The condition Hobart Freeman was in on December 8th of 1984. It's pretty gruesome. My point is, arrogance, pride, boastfulness, will probably bring you an early death, that's nothing that we need to scatter throughout our ministry.

All of these claims about, I am this and I am that and I'll give you one other thing before I give you a chance to talk, John. And that is, if you can remember your train of thought and that is his yelling at young ministers and yelling at people in the church, especially the young ministers for being unstable.

So here we have another clip. This is in his little judgments of Jude series that he did in 1980. We've played some of this message before. It's a message entitled The Preservation of the Elect.

We looked at this during our study of eternal security versus eternal insecurity when Hobart was eternally confused about the whole matter. But listen to this clip. I want people to hear him in his own voice.

It's about three minutes. from 16-minute 44-second to 19-minute 31-second. I want to tell you, thus, Seth the Lord, they'll not get off in there. They will be preserved because they'll persevere in obedience, in faith.

They won't run to man when they break a leg. You've got no assurance that you're one of the elect the emergency comes or the trial comes, you run to man for help. And some of you done it, and we're not going to condone it in this church.

We're going to tell you, you miss God. We don't stand at the door and say, you can't come in if you've got a cane or a crutch, but you miss God. And you are a solid testimony to this church.

And some of you sat out there for months and years, and when the baby came or whatever, you turned to man because you were afraid. There's no excuse for that. Not in this church.

And they'll be preserved in truth. They will persevere in truth. And that's why they'll be preserved. They won't be off to JDS Heresy. And I don't care whether you like it or not. If you got off in it, you're unstable.

You were unstable. And only stable people will be preserved because they will persevere. And whatever other error, shepherd ship, or anything else is because you were unstable. And some of you are still unstable.

And it's a result of the fact that you were unstable. And some of you were still getting bad reports about. Because you're unstable. And what I say to one, I say to all, you have no assurance, I don't care who you are, that you're going to make it in just because you sit out there and say, I'm a preacher or I'm a member of faith assembly.

Some of you are not going to make it in unless you change your ways. That's why you see him up here repenting. It's a spirit of God. And I'm going to tell you like it is if I empty every pew out there.

And I don't care who it is. If you are not walking in faith and walking in truth, you have no assurance you'll be preserved because you're not persevering. Whoever you are. And if I defend you, it only proves the point.

It only proves the point. You better be glad that I'm the one telling you because when you face him, it'll be too late to do anything about it. You just better get on your knees and thank God that he sets somebody in here who will tell you like it is.

So as you hear him beginning that. He says, I want to tell you and it is the saith of the Lord. Here again is one of these the saith of the Lord prophecies where he is so angry at some of the young ministers there who evidently a couple of them must have been listening to Copeland or Hagen or reading E. W. King and were wanting to follow the Jesus-died spiritually error, which was a significant error or heresy in charismatic circles at that time.

But Hobart is so angry, he's yelling at them for being unstable. And he says that in such a high pitch voice, you know, you can hear his voice is cracking. He is so angry at the people being unstable.

And so he just created so much fear in those poor men. And look, if they were wrong about something, they needed to be corrected. You can't go out and teach air and heresy. You need to be corrected, but there is a way to do that.

Let me read the way to do that from the Bible. Don't follow Hobart Freeman. Here's what Paul said in 2 Timothy 2, at the end of his life, when he had seen a lot of people depart from his teaching.

Paul had every reason to be pretty upset, pretty mad at a lot of people. But here's what he said, the servant of the Lord must not strive. But he must be gentle unto all men.

2 Timothy 2, 24 to 26, apt to teach patient in meekness, instructing those that oppose themselves if God per adventure will give them repentance, and that they may recover themselves from the snare of the devil who are taken captive by him and his will.

There is a proper way to try to help someone if you think they have gone down an erroneous path. Is that the path that those men had taken? Maybe so. But there is a better way to bring them back to where they should be.

And it is exactly, as Paul said, in meekness instructing with long suffering, patience, with forbearance, due diligence to help these young ministers or to help the people in the church come back to the truth where they should be.

Don't yell at them and scream at them for being unstable. So surprise at Hobart's death, no, just surprise that he didn't die earlier. He said that you hope my train of thought doesn't derail, you have to understand I have no train of thought.

So it can never derail. That's one of the things that keeps me safe here. There is so much that you said that came to mind and you were talking about pride. I had one guy who, I think it was in the comment feeds, it might have been email, but he started attacking me.

Why are you saying all of these things now, after all of these people are dead? You weren't alive then to say it then, you're a coward or something like this. And in my first thought was, well, if you're saying that you were alive and you knew that what they were saying was anti-biblical and a lie, then why didn't you stand up?

Who's the real coward here? I'm standing up with what I know. And I didn't respond like that because I don't want to hurt the guys' feelings. But the thing of it is, not only are the leaders filled with pride, they train the people who are in the movement to also become prideful and hateful.

That's why you see all of this hate mail. The people are so filled with pride, if you rubbed them the wrong way, they want to let you know that you rubbed them the wrong way.

They're never going to take the higher ground and say, okay, I'll let it go, you're my brother. And the irony of all of that, I mentioned that they take one little verse and just take it out of context, right?

But if you look at the book of Proverbs, it's a scatter bomb of one versus single verses that you can use for an entire meaning. And most of them are dealing with pride. So pride and arrogance is the way of evil.

When pride comes, I looked it up while you're talking. When pride comes, then comes disgrace. Everyone who's arrogant and heart has an abomination, is an abomination to the Lord. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

There's a website out there if you just type in, what does the Bible say about pride and Google search? You'll see thousands of these things. But pride is one of the number one sins mentioned in the New Testament and it's mentioned all throughout the Old Testament.

And it's in places where you can't really rip it out of context because they'll be giving you a context of scripture and then just shell shock you with and you have pride so therefore you're doomed.

But the movement is teaching them pride and they want to be prideful. Where it gets really sad is whenever you think about in the New Testament, I can't remember and I'm looking as we're talking, but there's a passage and you probably know it.

It says basically those who make themselves great will be humbled low. And it goes back to what you're saying about we should have all known what is happening to Hobart and all of these others.

Those who build themselves up onto this platform where they're high in mighty, they're gonna be made low. That's what the Bible says. And yet they don't think that they are. They think that they're above this.

The sad part is they teach you that you too can be above it. But in doing so, you're taking it really out of the Christian context and you're taking it into the context of some other religion that's not even Christianity.

Yeah, and none of us are above those warnings, Sean. I don't know why anyone would think that they were. I don't know that Hobart would have on a test or an exam would have written out.

I think I'm above all the Bible's teaching on pride. Obviously he wouldn't have done that. But your eyes just become blinded to it. If... You don't work with love and humility in your life.

One of the reasons Paul said in 1 Timothy 3, not to appoint a new believer, a novice, in any type of teaching or leadership position, he said, lest he fall into pride, which is the same condemnation that Satan fell into, the same sin that Satan committed and fell was pride, that I am better or can be better or want to be better, than I really am.

God's given us all the station in life. I'm really happy with my station and don't want anything bigger or don't want anything more. And, but, you know, I'm no perfect person. We all have to regularly, weekly, daily deal with ourselves to make sure that we, as the Bible said, that we are clothed with humility.

The Bible says that God resists the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. If there's one being you do not want in resistance against you, that would be God. I don't care so much about the devil.

I don't want God to be resisting me. You mean he is on the other side? He is my opponent. That's what the Bible says. God resisteth the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.

I understand that Hobart just didn't see his own flaw, but, you know, it's not difficult. The examples that I just gave John, those are not extreme or difficult examples to see. I'm not nitpicking over something.

Hobart always boasted about himself, talk not stop about himself. And you don't have to listen, but I would bet anyone. You can listen to half dozen messages, six. Just listen to six. And I'm going to say he's going to start telling a story about himself on every single one of those.

And I said before, an occasional story about our minister, our pastor, our speaker is totally acceptable, totally wonderful. He should be allowed to tell a story about himself. We should know things about him personally.

He should be able to tell us some things about him personally. But again, keep it in balance. At the end of the day, aren't we all there? Didn't we get up, get dressed on Sunday morning, eat breakfast and drive to church to listen to God's word being preached?

I don't want to hear Hobart stories about himself. You know, I got always would tell people, I have my own stories. I don't care about his stories and his life. I have my life.

I have my stories. My stories are more important to me than his stories are to me. You know, I like myself more than I like him. So the reason that we go to church is to learn God's word.

I don't want the minister spending all this time telling me stories about himself. Well, especially when they are coming across with all of this arrogance and this meanness and this harshness, and that's where Hobart ended up.

By the end of his life, you know guys, it was terrible. He was threatening everyone, he was angry, he was short tempered, nothing was panning out the way he had hoped. His health was declining, faith assembly had not been raptured to heaven, and all of us other believers left here on earth like he had predicted and prophesied and had hoped.

He said in the Exodus series, the last series at the end of his life, mark my word, it's the saith of the Lord, God is soon gonna vindicate faith assembly in the eyes of the world.

He didn't vindicate him. He crashed and burned that church. That's what he did to them, and I don't mean that in any harsh way. That's just, let's go back again to where we started.

That's just the reality, those are just the facts. It's not my opinion whether Hobart died sick, that's the fact, it's my opinion that he was wrong in his teaching, we can argue over biblical views in our opinions, you can't argue over the fact, so Hobart died a very sick man.

Well, look John, I'm not saying, let me see if I can end on a kinder note, and I hope I haven't been unkind in what I've said so far. I'm not saying that Hobart was a con man.

I'm not accusing him of being a con artist. Let me see if I can, here's a definition, what a con man is, a man who cheats or tricks someone. I don't think Hobart was purposely, knowingly cheating

or tricking anyone, a man who cheats or tricks someone by gaining their trust and persuading them, he did that, to believe he did that, something that is not true, he did that, but by con man, I mean someone who knows they're trying to sell people to build a goods.

No, I don't think Hobart would have done that. I think Hobart knew or believed very strongly,

let me say that differently, that he believed very strongly that what he taught was true. I don't think he was a con man. I don't think he was sitting over in the corner of his office counting up stacks of $100 bills before he put him in his safe.

I don't think he was going to strip bars and strip joints at night or on the weekends or when he was out of town. I think he was genuine in what he believed. He held to those beliefs deeply and personally.

He held to the no doctor, no medicine. God will heal you super naturally. Truly every single time you pray if you make the conditions he would always say and there's always a huge if there I Think he sincerely held all that. Okay, so look we'll give him a checkmark for sincerity But if sincerity helps you at all that only helps you with God on judgment day and maybe it does hopefully it does perhaps it does Surely it does that sincerity is better than in sincerity But that has to do with his own soul sincerity means absolutely nothing to the victims. I don't care how sincere you are

How deeply convinced you are of your own beliefs I'm glad that you are teaching something in sincerity. You're not teaching something knowing That what you're saying is false and wrong. I'm glad that you are sincere about it But again, I think sincerity only helps the person who's teaching it. It does not help me. Damage is done People that the people who died still died the people who lost any hope for a stable financial future You know people living to my age and way past my age Sean who were talked out of college degrees Who were told Jesus is coming back any day now?

So you don't need to worry about investments. You don't need to and put money in the social security your social security account You don't even need to worry about any of that stuff because that's all worldly and carnal thinking and Jesus is coming back Look those people are struggling and I and I feel so sorry for them and I lay the blame for that at Dr. Freeman's feet sincere Yeah, he was sincere, but Sincereity is cold comfort to the survivors and even colder comfort to the dead The pilots of those planes who flew into the Twin Towers on 9-11. I'm sure they were sincere. I'm sure they were completely

convinced of the truth of the mission they were on You think they were insincere? Absolutely not those pilots who flew those planes into the Twin Towers were so sincere in their beliefs They're willing to die for it and They're willing to kill other people in the process and what do we have on our hands here?

Hobart was so sincere. He was willing to die for his false beliefs and he was willing to have other people die Along with him. So after having been in a movement that was led by a con man Beyond the shadow of a doubt I agree. I agree. I started studying con man because I want to know Psychologically how it works one of the best movies about this if you've never seen it as catch me if you can it's a true story of a con man and it's unbelievable what the guy got away with. But I began studying

randomism and how it, you know, there were things that he knowingly did to deceive people, knowing that it was wrong and said as though it were true, but said it with confidence. And so they believed it because of his confidence. That's the essence of a con man.

But here's where it gets odd. If you study con artists and con schemes long enough, you'll find something that's called the long con. It's something that isn't something they do one person or two people. It's something that goes through many multiple layers of people for the long con. And this is the one where you get the richest. Well, Hobart Freeman, if you understand the framework of what Brannum and Lindsay set up, both men knowingly deceiving people with things that they knew were fiction. And then everybody who joined into that movement became part of it. They became part of the long con. So they may not have known

themselves where they had con artists probably not, but they're part of that strategy that was conning people, which puts them just as guilty as the people at the top. They're part of the system.

They're the manipulators who are in between. They just they're deceived and deceiving at the same time. So I've learned to accept this with many of these people that I investigate. But fascinating stuff we're talking about, I think somebody different ideas I want to go from here and we've ran out of time. We will do it on another day. How about that? Sounds good. 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 www.William-brannum.org. From more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation,

you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available in Amazon, Kindle, in Ortebalms.

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