Faith Assembly’s Cover-Up- What Really Happened When Hobart Freeman Died

Hello, welcome to another episode of the Louis William Brannum Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum.org. I'm John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum Historical Research Podcast.

I'm John Collins, the author and founder of William Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum Historical Research at William-Brannum Historical Research Podcast.

What happens when you die and you've got this whole movement that can't stop and all of these leaders who are just raking in the money and suddenly the reason the very cause of their income disappears. What do you do with this?

And so in our cult we invented this story that Brannum was going to rise from the dead and they pushed the burial back from December to Easter of the next year and kept his body on ice in the funeral home, which isn't quite, I think there's some laws broken there that has to be, but so they could reorganize and what it did was powerful. It distracted the focus of the people from the death to the resurrection.

So instead of thinking, oh my gosh, this cult just imploded, he's dead, it was all for nothing. They think, oh, he's coming back and they just totally lost focus of the death, right? Well, Hobart Freeman's death changed a few things too because there's this little bit of cover up and we'll get into that today, but it's interesting to me what happens when a cult leader dies.

Yeah, you're in a really bad situation right when you are so depended on that leader because he's the locomotive that's driving the whole engine. So Hobart Freeman was born. on June the 17th, 1920, in a little town not an hour and a half from where I'm sitting right here in Northeastern Kentucky, a little place called Ewing, Kentucky, population 300. I mean, it was literally a spot on the map up in Fleming County, Kentucky, and he died on December the 8th, 1984 at the age of 64 and a half. And it is to this day a little unclear

about the actual time of his death because I don't think the people who knew the time of his death were or have been forthcoming. So what happened was he died on the evening of December the 8th, it was this Saturday, 1984. As we said last time, it had been his custom to take a month off in the fall from preaching and he would normally go out west. This year his time to take off was a little later because he had a lot of other things happening and so we're up into November where he had not preached in November had not been at the church or the first couple of weeks of

December. And so around 845 in the morning on Sunday, December the 9th, the local funeral home, Titus funeral home received a call from the Freeman residence on Schu Lake saying that there had been a death. Whenever that happens, the funeral home calls the coroner's office which was in Casiasco County, Indiana. And the coroner's name was Gary Eastland. Gary Eastland then, obviously, this is just how these things have to go down. Got the local sheriff Alan Rovenstein and a detective Lieutenant Tom Kitch and they made the drive out to the Freeman residence.

And all of this you can find either in the coroner's report or one thing I don't think people realize, John, is that the newspaper accounts were pretty accurate in reporting a whole lot of these details. Of course, faith assembly was trained to be wary and suspicious of the media.

Dr. Freeman often said that the only time that the people from the media lie is when they open their mouth or write something down. In other words, all the time, you can't trust anything from them.

But actually, they were getting a lot of good information from law enforcement because that's what reporters do. They go. around digging. And they were getting a lot of information from the medical authorities. You know, there was a woman there in that area who was a nurse. Her name was Barbara Klaus. She was an outspoken critic of the glory barn and a faith assembly because as a public nurse in that area, she was well aware of a lot of the deaths that were happening.

So she was a very vocal critic of Dr. Freeman and of what was happening there. So you could find out things from medical sources, whether the coroner's office or the funeral home or Barbara Klaus or just other people. There were other people that were in the know of what was going down at faith assembly and around this time in Dr. Freeman's life. And so it's not just a medical report or a legal document that you have to have. You can actually just go back and check out the Warsaw Times Union newspaper articles that were coming out in

November and December and then January of 1985. So on the morning of December the 9th of Sunday, whenever the coroner and the sheriff and the police detective arrived, they were ushered into the house and they talked with one of Dr. Freeman's daughters, Pam Hill, who said that it had been her turn to watch her dad. And I think we talked last time about the fact he had this terribly gangrenous situation on his left foot. And they were taking turns to family members just sitting by wife, daughters, and changing the dressings. They were soaking this you know, rotted part of his foot while everybody's praying for, you know, God to miraculously

healed him. Pam said it had been her time to watch her father that evening. And she said at some point, she dosed off. And when she woke up, she looked and thought he had probably passed away and checked on him and sure enough, he had died. And let me just say when it comes to watching someone who is on their deathbed, that is an exhausting endeavor to be involved with.

My father passed away, spent more than a dozen years ago now. And where I'm from Mississippi, he had an accident down south and he ended up dying in Mississippi. But we took turns, we being family members sitting by his bedside the last days of his life. Now most of my relatives are in Mississippi.

So it was easy for them to go and you know, take turns. For me, it was a big deal. I had a family, had a full-time job. I live in Kentucky. It's a seven.

or eight hour drive down there, but thankfully I was down there on the last weekend of his life because it was kind of my turn, and I knew death was imminent, and I wanted to be there.

And so I was there all of that last weekend, ended up dying on a Monday morning, but I was there all of that last weekend. I just slept on a cot beside his hospital bed in a hospital in Tupelo, Mississippi.

And I remember when I woke up early Monday morning, there were monitors right over my head that would give his respiration and his heart rate and give you those vital statistics. And when I would go to sleep at night, I would look at them so I would see what they were.

And when I woke up on Monday morning, those statistics had dropped dramatically. And I knew this is probably the day. I literally got up, called the relatives that were close by and said, this is gonna be the morning, went and took a shower and got ready and within a couple hours my father passed away.

So I'm just saying that sitting there by a bedside with someone that you know is dying is exhausting work. In the coroner's report, Pam said that it was somewhere between 8.30 and 11 p.m. on Saturday evening.

Well, I doubt it's possible, but I doubt that Pam in a sitting up position went to sleep for two and a half hours. I'm sure she dozed off at some point. And as I said, that anybody is gonna doze off when you have been kind of round the clock vigil besides someone's bed who was as bad off as her father was.

But it's really unclear exactly what time he died. That was just what she gave, but as I said, I don't think she was asleep for two and a half hours. The funeral home did not hear from anyone until 8.45

on Sunday morning. So obviously there was the question and the question is addressed and then left unanswered in the coroner's verdict. Why a 12 hour delay before reporting the death. We also talked in our last interview, John, that the neighbors had testified that there was a flurry of automobile activity, cars coming and going the evening before.

And one of the things that I do know, I think there are several things that those that the activity was about to happen. And one of them had to do with the fact that Dr. Freeman had a large collection of research material on occult materials and on demonology.

He had written a couple of books. He had written a track. It was a favorite study of his.

say in the late 60s and early 70s, he got away from it to some degree, but whenever he was studying and writing every wind of doctrine, which was a book on American cults, and then he wrote another book entitled Angels of Light, which was more discussion of the occult and demonology. He had a lot of research material in his study that he used to write those volumes. And so what I know from the reports that I have heard is that there was a pretty large amount of fear in the Freeman home Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening. They could tell the

people who were present, the people who were physically bodily present knew he's not getting better. Of course, I don't think any of them in their mind had crossed the bridge. I think he's going to die. They're all expecting, you know, God to come down in a miraculous way and heal this man.

But they're wondering why it hasn't happened and why this is continuing. And so there was a huge there was a huge suspicion that Satan had a presence in that home because of those books sitting on the shelf. And I said last time, I'll say it again now, John, I hope we can talk about Dr. Freeman's views on deliverance, kind of Christian have a demon. How do you get a demon?

It's just fascinating what he believed. I think it was 100% unscriptural. He taught people pick up demons about the same way you pick up a cold. If you're just around someone who has one or around an object or a book or a movie theater or a false religious cult, then you could, this was the phrase open yourself up to evil spirits. So I know there was a big attempt to rid the house of the books.

Now, whether they haul them off, whether they burned them, they would definitely think they had good scriptural precedents for that with the burning of all the occult material at Ephesus and Acts 19. I don't exactly know, but I know there was a big effort to remove things. And there was something else going on on why we have this 12 hour time lapse. And you touched on that earlier in the introduction with what happened after Brandon's death. There were obviously prayers and attempts to resuscitate him after he died. Sometimes people talk about it as though it were a resurrection.

Well, they tried to resurrect Dr. Freeman. Well, technically, to be a resurrection, you have to be buried first and he had not been buried. So it would not have been a- as a reaction from the dead, which is bringing the body out of a grave or out of the ground, it would have been a resuscitation.

And I have heard, I won't give the name, how about just the initials. There was a particular minister whose initials are J-O, who actually stretched his body on top of Dr. Freeman's after the pattern of Elijah in 1st King 17, the child died and Elijah stretched himself upon him, and then the child came back to life, and we have something probably similar in Acts 20, when Uticus falls out of the window, when Paul has been preaching all hours of the night, and Paul goes down, and it says he embraced it seems like Paul may have stretched himself on this young man's body, and Uticus came back

to life. That's what I have heard. Of course, I wasn't there, and people are quick to say, you weren't there, you don't know, and that's absolutely true, I wasn't there, and I don't know.

But it makes sense, it sounds like something that could possibly have happened. Of course, what I would be quick to point out is the fact that both Elijah and Paul were successful whenever they stretched themselves out on a dead body, and those people came back to life.

You beat me to it, man. There's something that I haven't really gone deep with this yet. I really want to do a full podcast on it with somebody. Only I don't know who is my guinea pig, in the Pentecostal movement, there's this weird thing where people claim that they can heal the dead, and they always claim that there was a resurrection in their midst, and so therefore, God is in their midst. That's usually how this plays out. Dauy did it. He would say we raised a dead person, and you could never find accurate evidence that it was there. All you could find with

somebody claiming, yes, this person is dead. Yes, he's now living. Look at him living. Branum went all through Canada. In fact, this was part of the thing that made him so famous. He went across Canada saying that he raised a dead man out of the morgue back in Jeffersonville.

If you go to my website and you type in raised a man from the dead, you'll find all the newspaper articles where they actually, the reporters went to the morgue to try to figure this out.

Okay, this man raised somebody from the morgue. That's newsworthy. Let's find out. Not a single record of anybody being raised from the morgue. They finally found the person that Branum claimed that this happened to, and then there was some debate as to whether the person had actually died. The person, his life signs were low, limited, but he got back up, and so they said, well, that's raised from the dead. But technically, it's not. For you to be raised from the dead, you have to...

be dead and you have to be pronounced dead. Now we have, I could go off in a tangent and I'm trying to limit this, but I have examples of people who in the Pentecostal faith, it's not like other churches where you come in, it's calm, you sit down, you listen to a sermon, you stand up, you sing a couple songs, then you leave. I don't know how it was in your church whenever you were in this movement, but I felt like a yo-yo up and down and up and down. For me, younger, that's fine. I can, I can play yo-yo, but some of the elderly

can't do this and especially we would get in the yo-yo state and then somebody would just start preaching repetitive statements on and on and on for 30, 40 minutes. Well, some of the elderly people locked their legs and you're going to pass out. That's just what's going to happen. Something like something to that effect happened in one of the churches that I was in and we had a medical professional who came and pronounced them dead and then they raised back up when the blood started flowing to them. Well, even the way that they pronounced them dead wasn't the accurate way that you would do as a medical professional.

It was more of a show, look, he's dead kind of thing. It wasn't the official take-as-pulls, they might have checked his wrist or something like this, but you have to actually check it. See, is the guy dead? Is it real? But because of this, what happens is they can claim that they can raise the dead until somebody actually dies and you find time and time again that they keep trying it to no avail. It's not going to happen. The people don't know what to do with this. Internally, you just kind of compartmentalize the fact that, well,

we're told we can raise people from the dead. Why does it not work when we need it? Well, yes, and so Brannum died and Freeman died and both of them, I know, had told stories, many stories during their lifetime of, oh, yes, I read this account and brother so-and-so raised this person from the dead. Dr. Freeman himself never claimed to have raised anyone from the dead, but he told stories all the time of Smith Wiggles' worth of the people in Indonesia under Mel Tari and that book like a mighty wind that the dead being raised

was something relatively common and easy to do where when you read the Bible, it's very, very, very uncommon. I mean, there are just a handful of cases of anybody truly being either resuscitated who had clinically died or even more dramatically like Lazarus in John 11, who had been physically raised from the dead after being dead for several days.

You know, that is not a normal miracle that the church can expect to see. If you looked at how many times it happened in the Bible, it's like, you know, once every thousand years wearing the pinnacle of circles, this is just something...

If somebody dies, you just go raise them from the dead because you have the authority of Christ to do that. But that's, you know, Dr. Freeman, I'm sure there were attempts made prayers offered up that evening.

It would be absolutely fascinating to have a videotape of what was going on in that bedroom that night. But let's talk a little bit, John, about and give a few more facts and statistics about the condition, let's say, of Dr. Freeman whenever he died.

And I want to preface that with this, that if someone down the street from you, a neighbor, or someone across the farm from where I'm sitting from our farm, if somebody died, that's a private matter.

I don't go investigated. I don't care. I mean, you grieve for the person, but were they sick? What caused it? Could it have been this? Could it have been that? Even if it's a big public figure, like when, you know, I don't know, Billy Graham died, or when John McArthur recently died, the pastor of Grace Church out in California.

You know, these are big public figures, but, you know, they got old and they probably had some kind of illness or disease and they died. And, you know, everyone mourns their death. Dr. Freeman put himself in a different category, because of what he taught, that he had been healed at Calvary of all of these things from which he actually was never healed.

And because he forced others to believe the same thing, then it very much should be in the public domain what actually calls Dr. Freeman's death. What was he like the last weeks and days and hours of his life?

And we have been told, as a result of these last few podcasts, that people who were actually there as a loyal and faithful member of Faith Assembly had no idea of some of these details that we've been sharing.

They had no idea. That was their pastor. And it was simply he died. We have a whole lot of mental struggle over how and why and, but we're gonna put that under the rug and we're just gonna keep on believing and we're gonna keep on going down this path that we've been on.

Well, the fact of the matter is, we looked in one of our earlier interviews together that Hobart had had several hearted tax over the last couple of years and more prior to that, some of which we don't even know about, he had a serious heart condition.

And yet he said consistently that when he received the carousel medic experience in 1966 that he prayed for his healing of his heart. He threw away two kinds of medication he had been put on for life and he was healed and that was all there was to it. That's exactly what did not happen. He was not healed of a heart condition.

The other thing that he said he was healed from where he had these problems with his feet. One calls by polio, one calls by an automobile accident and he was always saying, I was healed of that. This is already in the past tense. So we do have a little clip. I don't think we have listened to previously John. It's on a message entitled Seven Channels to Faith or Doubt.

It was done in the glory barn in 1974 from 18 minutes and 13 seconds through 21 minute and 10 seconds. I preach faith. I teach faith. I guess I've got as much faith as anybody in the building and you don't have to boast to say that. If you're not, you're not, you ought to confess it.

And yet I'm still learning some things that where I'm doing something that isn't faith. And I'm going to say this to help those of you because anybody in the building can pray for a leg to go out if they'll believe. That's just one of those miracles. God's working for everybody.

People sit around in the poilers and watch legs go out. Poilers living rooms. I keep dating myself and people, people wonder why we young people get some of those old terms but

sometimes they're older than we look but we're not confessing. I appreciate what the brother said about all of the young people here. That's right. There's a student from Grace. I taught at Grace Seminary. I guess 11 or 12 years ago now. I get this all the time so I don't care what anybody thinks because people tell me this. And so someone came up and said that when you were there teaching about 11 or 12 years ago said you looked 20 years younger than you did 11 or 12 years ago. Younger friends, not older, young. And that's that is in fact because you get

what you confess and I'm not, you've got nothing to lose to confess Psalm 103 verse 5 anyway. So we're still learning and I haven't forgotten what it started to tell you. There's I've prayed for legs to grow out. Generally they'll come right out no matter with you seconds.

And you've seen that here where you've seen the short ones and the long ones grow out. But I've noticed on occasion sometimes nothing happens. Now let me hasten that. I can't believe for the other person so that could be it. The person may be a backslider and sin and that That may be it.

And so don't blame yourself, the leg doesn't always come out. You see, you have to learn that sort of thing or you get a little frustrated or the devil will rob you of your face.

So I'm not worried about why it's not growing out generally, but here's something the Lord showed me that sometimes we're looking at the leg and not to Jesus. We know it's going to come out and it doesn't.

And you've got all your concentration with the matrily on the physical and I have found it when I look away from the leg and look to Jesus and look back, it's happened. I never get to see those guys because it's not faith, you see, the person's watching the leg.

It's going to come out. It's going to end. It doesn't. You're watching. It's got to come out. It doesn't. Everybody's concentrating on the physical. And as we look to the Lord, it happens. Praise the Lord.

I've seen it happen, friends, where you just look away to Jesus in faith and look back and there it is. It's out. And nobody saw it. You know, and what's interesting about this, Hobart's foot loose and fancy free back in the glory bar and days.

And he's just talking about healing and he's talking about growing out of legs. That's what this clip is all about. This whole message, seven channels to faith or doubt, you know, they're not six or eight, they're only seven channels to faith or doubt.

And he is just like a wild rabbit in a briar patch, talking about Norman Grub. Talking about Kenneth Hagen, talking about people at the glory bar and he said they just walk out broken bones like it was a mosquito bite.

All of this is in this message. In this clip that we've just heard, he's talking about the growing out of legs. He said, well, that's just something that people sitting around in their parlors are doing.

Just watching legs grow out like you get together and play dominoes or play checkers or something that you just get together. Everybody just prays for each other and legs grow out. The reason Hobart was so fascinated over legs growing out was because of his own condition.

You know, we talked about this probably a year ago. We did, we did a little more than what we're doing right now. He had a personal private reason for being so interested in the straightening of his feet and the lengthening of one of his legs to get them normal again.

That was because of childhood polio and being run over by a big factory truck. I can remember, and I've said this before when I first started listening to Dr. Freeman and I didn't know people had short legs.

You can tell if a person does when they're limping terribly, but according to those preachers, everybody has a short leg, but it's just like a quarter of an inch or an eighth of an inch or three-eighths of an inch and so Hobart said, well, yeah, God just, he said that's a miracle.

God's just doing everywhere for everyone. He said people are just... sitting around in their parlors, watching legs grow out. And I just find that to be just such a ridiculous take on what the Bible talks about in the gospels.

And that's the healing of people who are truly lame. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

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You know, when Brannum first began, you can find this on one of the, actually, the very first recording that we're allowed to hear, which would have been, I think, is April, 1947. He says, I'll take any cross-eyed child in the audience without even praying for it.

I'll just look at it straight in the eye like this and you'll watch its eyes come straight. Now, to a person back then, maybe that was a good gimmick, but it's pretty easy for the average person to stand there and cross their eyes and walk up to the line and then uncross them and make them straight.

I can do that trick. My sons can do that trick. There were so many tricks involved in this scheme that, you know, I don't know where the whole bar actually believed it or if he just encountered it, but they were making these wild claims that you could heal this, that or the other.

And you take a step back, I heard the straightening leg story all the time growing up. I never really met anybody that had the crooked legs. So as much as this happens, where do you find these people that need their legs to be straightened, right?

And then you can search it online. I think it's on YouTube. If I remember correctly, it's A.A. Allen. You can find a video of how that trick works and watch him doing it.

And then you're like, no, man, I can't believe that he fooled the crowds with this. The average person looking at it can see when the torso turns, but apparently back then, people, they just shut off their critical thinking.

They were not thinking critically about the stage act that was in front of them. And then that part for me, that's evil. They shouldn't be doing that in the first place. But what happened next is all of these people, what's the word mythologicalized?

Turned it into a mythology. That's a better way to say it. And so all you... as you hear these myths over and over, will you believe them because why would they lie to you?

And believing the myth is actually easier than believing what actually happened had you been there. Yeah. And they were myths, Sean. They really were. That clip we just played, Dr. Freeman, actually, it's just so interesting. It's just so interesting how they progress down a road of deception because he firmly believed that everyone had a short leg, unless they everyone. I mean, 9 out of 10 people and that every Christian had the power given by God to sit their fellow person down and watch your leg grow out by praying for it. But in that clip, what he says is he's

learned a healing secret. And he said, you know, when we're praying and we're just knowing the legs coming out because it always does. And then it doesn't. And he said, God showed me a healing secret that we are too focused on the leg growing out and not focused enough on Jesus. So in that clip, he said, if you just look away for a moment and then look back, the leg grew out.

Well, I mean, you don't even know what happened while you were looking away. There is even another example of how none of this is verified or authenticated. So Hobart was desperate for legs to be lengthened, to be straightened, to be normal because of his own condition. But here, I'm going to read the third paragraph from the official coroner's report, sign, dated, seal, stamped by the coroner. And you know, you get a lot of trouble if you're a coroner and you write things in a coroner's report that aren't true. Of course, we've got these cult followers who won't

believe anything, whether it's in the newspaper, whether it's in a coroner's report, they only believe what their leader told them. But here's the third paragraph. Apparently, Mr. Freeman suffered from severely deformed feet due to early childhood polio and an accident, especially constructed orthopedic shoes were a must for the man to even get out of bed.

According to Mrs. Freeman, an open sore had developed on his left foot, which progressed to the point of virtually keeping the man bedfast. Mrs. Freeman told of other occasions in which the subject had suffered medical problems, including at least one heart attack, and that this is a quote from June, God had healed him up. God had healed him up. Well, God did not heal him up, because the medical report tells us what his condition was this last night of his life.

And we've talked before. I'll just remind people for folks who haven't heard it before, Dr. Freeman said, you're supposed to act your faith, which means you act as though you are healed. However, he didn't.

He had a new pair of shoes for both feet that he always carried around in the trunk of his car. He was waiting for his manifestation of his healing and then he would go out to his car and be able to get those new shoes and put those on.

And here is one other clip. I don't think we've heard before. It is from the series he did on Jeremiah, which he called preaching from the prophets. It was a message entitled The Call and Commission of a prophet, part three, done in 1982.

It's interesting that he spent that much time on the call and commission of a prophet and let me just say, Hobart never said I am a prophet. He never claimed to be one, but he said everything leading up to that.

He said everything just short of that. So for him to have spent the first, I think it's the first three messages in this series in Jeremiah on the call and commission of a prophet, he's obviously wanting to compare himself to Jeremiah, show how Jeremiah was called and commissioned, then people could look at Hobart's life and go well.

Based on the stories he has told me about himself, he sounds to me like Jeremiah. So in this clip, 35 minute, 27 second, to 36 minute and 50 second, we will take a moment to listen to that.

There's a certain healing. By the way, I've been healed supernaturally many, many times and many things, but there's one healing. I've been waiting a good 16 years for it's manifestation. Not be nice to have it, but you see, I know in my spirit and others have even told me relating envision how others are going to be involved in the manifestation of that healing.

I don't know exactly what that means. It may mean that others will get their healing when mine's manifested. Now, you can take that and leave it, it doesn't matter to me. Like, you know, that I am something you have to wait on me.

That is what I'm saying. But for my side, there are bigger and more complex factors than just my personal comfort. And I'm willing to believe that and wait upon the Lord because I know that the almond tree will bloom at the right time for me, because God is watching over His word to perform it.

And so there's just things sometimes that people don't understand. I don't understand at all, but like one sister said that Lord showed her that particular healing I'm waiting for in a vision and said, he showed me that when you get your healing, the body of Christ enters into it.

Now, I don't know what that means. I don't even begin to know. I don't. I have to know. My healing has been seen at least 20 times. I'm sure and I've seen it myself in vision. I saw myself going through an airport healed. So that's only about a minute long and he's talking about, he calls it a certain healing. I don't know why he then just say my feet because everyone knows what he's talking about. But he said, I've got this certain healing that I've been waiting 16 years for. That's how you're able to date these messages. He claimed that healing

in 1966, plus 16 years is 1982. And in 82 and 83, that's when he was preaching this series on Jeremiah. And then he goes on, as I've also said before, John, to mention the fact, it's just so bizarre how ego-driven Dr. Freeman was because he goes on to talk about his own personal trial. And that is the fact that he needs his legs to be healed. And he said, there have been at least 20 visions confirming my healing. They don't have 20 visions confirming anybody else's healing in the church, but of course, no one is as important as he is. So there are 20 visions. And he said one sister

even said that somehow when my healing is manifested, then the whole body here will enter into it. Now he's quick to say, I don't know what that means. But he said, it may mean that whenever I'm healed, or I receive the healing of my two feet and legs, then some of you people will receive missing teeth and whatever things you have prayed for as well. That is just dark and disturbing to me on every front that he has so wrapped up in his own self and that he keeps sharing about all of these visions. And I think what happens, John, is that people love their pastor and they believe in

their pastor. And so he's telling them this story. And they, quote unquote, have a vision that he's going to be healed. It's just an emotional experience someone has, but it's in the moment, it's in the mood, it's what's happening right then. They go up and share with him afterwards and makes him happy. And so the next time he can say, you know, no, there used to be 15, but now we're up to 20 different independent visions, confirming confirming my healing. The problem is the medical report, he wasn't healed. So what are we going to do with these 20 visions? He wasn't healed. It was

just an emotional experience that these poor people were having. And I just feel so sorry for them being being dragged along. They knew that Hobart would relate visions or testimonies. that were good, that fit his message, they knew he would relay those to the congregation because if they had them, because they had heard him do that for so many other people.

So I just think it was the thing to do, to say that you had a vision. And I know I'm going to hear from people who say, yeah, but they did have a vision.

They didn't have a vision because it didn't come to pass. When are we ever just going to let reality rain and let facts rain? You know, you have to give up your religious superstitions and nonsense if they don't line up with facts.

And that's why the New Testament was so clear on the miracles that it gave these things were not done in a corner. They were things that happened under Jesus in the early church that were easily documented and easily verifiable.

And the religious leaders themselves admitted big things have happened and we can't deny it, but we don't like this Christian message. And so let's beat these men and find some way to silence them.

They couldn't silence them by refuting that a miracle had happened because too many people knew that it happened. And why is it, John, that today in a place like faith assembly, we don't have any verification of anything.

We have them saying hundreds of miracles and thousands of this and this sister was healed and that brother was healed. But as I have often said, it's either something internal A or B, it's something that a week later went away and it would have gone away on its own anyway, or C, it happened in a foreign country.

I am all for miracles, but I want a miracle that actually happens where we know that person who was blind is now able to see again. You know, I feel sorry for the people too because at this moment, you're faced with two real decisions, either one, this man was delusional and he kept saying that he had these visions of these healings and he was delusional thinking that he could do this or second, he's a false prophet.

He had a false vision. It wasn't a vision by God. If you're a false prophet, you're leading people away from God actually, so that has much larger, huge, more significant consequences. But you're faced with that decision and what do you do with it?

And sadly, like every single other cult that we've examined, there's a subset of the people that will choose to ignore both sides of that and just keep on believing and ignore the delusion and ignore the false prophet.

And in doing so, the sad part about it is and the reason why I just really feel bad for for these people, they continue in their own delusion. Yes, and it's difficult to say, and I'm not generally one who goes out on a limb and said this person is a false prophet, but I mean, there was definitely serious personal delusion involved in Dr. Freeman's mind.

He obviously died of all of these illnesses. He didn't seek treatment. He did have the disease. He did have the illness and he did not seek treatment. So he quite obviously believed in his own mind that as he said, I was healed at Calvary 2000 years ago.

He said, I have no problem. I'm healed, even though I'm leaning on the pulpit or sitting in a chair, I can't stand on that left foot. So the depth of Dr. Freeman's personal delusion was simply profound.

I mean, he continued to believe things that he had confessed even when not some of them, but none of them came to pass. None of them. That is a deep and a serious and a profound self delusion to go to your grave that way.

So false prophet or not false prophet, I did have Deuteronomy 18 opened up this morning before you ever said what you just said. Let me read the last two verses, John and Deuteronomy 18.

Verse 21, the Israelites say, or God is saying to them, if you say in your heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord half not spoken? Verse 22, when a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, and Hobart was famous for saying, thus sayeth the Lord.

That means you are speaking in the name of the Lord. When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass,

that is the thing which the Lord have not spoken. I mean, that's, I think a seven year old could understand that. It doesn't take any advanced Bible knowledge or training at all. If someone says, thus sayeth the Lord, this is gonna happen and that doesn't happen, then the Lord didn't say it, or now we're blaming God for being confused about matters.

If the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord have not spoken, but the prophet had spoken it presumptuously. Other passage just say, he just spoke it out of his own heart.

And that shall not be afraid of him. And yet these poor people, whether under Paul Cain or Mike Bickel, or John Paul Jackson, or Hobart Freeman, or William Brannum, or whomever. These poor people have been terrified of these ministers, terrified 40 years after their death.

We're 41 years after Dr. Freeman's death, and he said that he had thrown away his glasses and claimed healing for his eyes, for his eyes healed, absolutely not. Paul knew more than one person knew because they saw it that he had a giant print Bible at the end of his life up there on the pulpit because he couldn't read the small print.

And it's okay if you can't read the small print. Get a giant print one, or keep the small print and go get a pair of glasses. But to say, oh, I don't need glasses, God heals my eyes, no, your eyes aren't healed, or you wouldn't need a giant print, or you wouldn't need glasses, no, your eyes aren't healed.

No, your heart was not healed, no, your feet were not straightened, no, that gangrenous hole in your left foot was not cleared up. No, here are what the actual facts are, and I'm reading from another medical report, some things that people probably need to hear.

Dr. Freeman's heart condition. So this is greater vessels of his heart. This is cardiovascular. Coronary atherosclerosis was severe. Subindocardial fibrosis was severe. The aorta atherosclerosis was severe, pulmonary congestion severe, liver congestion severe, spleen congestion severe.

This report goes on to say there are multiple factors that contributed to the death of Dr. Freeman. One of the most significant was the presence of high sugar in Dr. Freeman's blood, isn't this interesting, that I would say the majority of the people, I mean more than 90% don't have a clue, that Dr. Freeman had diabetes and died of diabetes.

Now there have been a couple of people that guess based on how grumpy he was, that maybe he did have something like diabetes, well, here's a report, this suggests uncontrolled diabetes. Additional anatomic features consistent with diabetes include gangrenous necrosis of the left foot.

He also had early KW, kidney disease, he had severe pulmonary congestion, he had severe bronchial pneumonia, he had severe bronchial pneumonia, he had severe bronchial pneumonia, Yeah. The severity of the patient's vascular disease may have been associated with his uncontrolled diabetes.

I mean, this is a person who was sick beyond imagination. And we just want people to see on the one hand and on the other hand. Here's a person who on the one hand is sick of, I mean, he is a walking dead man.

The last couple of weeks and a couple of days and definitely the last couple of hours of his life. He has so many problems physically. That's on the one hand. On the other hand, you have a person who is saying, I don't have any of those things.

I don't have any of them because of Mark 11, 24. I don't have any of those because I already claimed my healing and I have been healed of those things. So the personal delusion was through the roof.

If you want to be deluded, you know, that's okay. Keep it to yourself. But not only was he deluded, he was forcing other people to deny, to fail to recognize, to not acknowledge the reality that they themselves were going through.

I know John that you did an interview here recently with someone from one of the satellite groups, that'll air here in a couple of weeks. And maybe you need to have him on again.

He told me, he said, I didn't get to tell all of the story I wanted to tell, but one of the hilarious stories he tells, and he's a funny guy and he just tells it openly and honestly, was he shot himself in the foot.

He said, I shot myself in the foot and the injury was severe. I was going to lose that foot. And, you know, so we had to make a decision. Dr. Freeman had to make a decision.

Dr. Freeman was not going to any medical help at all. And what was the result he died? This brother said, you know, I had to make a decision. Either I'm going to trust the Lord, and you know, Dr. Freeman had already died when this happened.

So there's not a good track record to follow there or he's going to go seek medical help. Thankfully, he went and sought medical help and he's been fine and been able to walk and jump and play and live ever since then.

So here's a problem. You've got a false shepherd. I will call Hobart Freeman that a hundred percent because he did not care about the sheet. He just cared about himself. But here you have this leader who has his personal beliefs, which everyone is entitled to.

But then he's forcing this belief on other people to the point where once this brother shot himself in the foot, he was not a member of faith assembly. He was a member of a satellite group.

But if you go to the doctor and you're a member of faith assembly, you're under church discipline because you have leaned to the arm of the flesh, you've opened yourself... club to evil spirits and the church doesn't want to have anything to do with you until you repent.

The good news is people like this brother lived and the people who have tried Hobart's way and tried going down that path simply never made it. There's something else I want to say, John, before I'll let you throw in your comments and then we can wrap it up about the cover up that I want to talk about.

I had mentioned a long, long time ago of something else that I have heard from someone who was there the last night of Dr. Freeman. I don't have a second way to corroborate it, but one of the things you do as a researcher or as a detective, you ask yourself the question, does this sound reasonable?

Is this something, is this a statement likely to have been said by Dr. Freeman? So let me put it in this context. I have mentioned many times his reference to the fact that he studied 14 to 16 hours a day.

We've got a lot of mileage out of that claim because he talked about it all the time and it gave him a certain status among the members of the church. You put him on a pedestal.

It made him unapproachable and unchallengeable. How can I know anything if I haven't studied anything like this man? He's in his study 14 to 16 hours a day so he definitely knows it all and who am I to challenge something that he said.

So that last night of his life from what I have been told, he did make an apology to his family. He made a deathbed confession and I've had people for the last year ask me, what was the confession?

What was the confession and I said, I'll get to it when we get there and that confession was this that he apologized to his family for not spending enough time with him. Now I didn't hear that myself.

That's what I have been told. But as I said a moment ago, when you are doing research on something, you're looking for, does that? I remember JB Phillips who was a Bible translator I think in the mid 1900s and he did a translation of the New Testament and JB Phillips had this favorite phrase that he called the ring of truth.

And as probably other people have used the same thing, does it have the ring of truth? Does it sound like that it was said that it could have been said? Does it sound truthful?

Does it sound reasonable? Well, in light of what we know to be a fact, 100%, that he said he spent 14 to 16 hours a day in his study, then yeah, it does have a ring of truth to me that here, this man on his deathbed realized, I didn't live my life.

exactly the way I should have. And I should have spent more time with my family. I have very little to add to that, but what I do want to say and point out, which we'll probably get into in the future episodes, once this happens, once the leader dies, once they have duped the people and the people are starting to understand that they're duped.

And like I said, you go into this phase of cognitive dissonance and you basically you ignore what is right in front of you. Well, that is whenever this gets really, really sad because what happens is there are some people that would just accept whatever it is that they're told as is the reason why this happened and they accept it blindly and that's the doctrine.

You've got others who they're not gonna double down no matter what you say. And so they have to kind of recalibrate. They're not gonna leave the movement but they recalibrate what they believe. And then that's your first schism.

You have one group that goes this way, another group that goes this way and over time, as this continues to happen, within each schism you're going to have people who they're just something in the back of their mind that's just not sitting right.

And they realize that this new group that I have, that I'm in that has schismed, they're half right but you can't really answer everything with their new version of the doctrine. And so you also can't make it work with the original people who doubled down on exactly what they're told.

So then another schism happens and another and another. And what happens in the end is you have rather than this cohesive unit of people who are like mind, like faith, now you have people who are actually creating divisions and it becomes a movement of divisions.

And you're right John, we'll definitely get into what happened the following morning, Sunday morning and what happened that summer with Jack Farrell. And yes, I mean you nailed it on the head that you do have divisions begin to happen because different people are wanting to hold to different elements of what they've been told.

What I would like to raise a red flag about here at the very end of this discussion is the deception by the leadership. The deception which was thorough and effective, it was fostered by the family and by the leadership at faith assembly.

And I say that because of this, June Freeman, the wife knew exactly what her husband looked like when he died. Dr. Freeman's daughters and his son-in-law and the top aides and ministers in that church knew exactly they had been there that night.

They had seen that man. And did they come back to the church and say, we need with full disclosure and transparency to explain to everyone so that we are all on the same page, so that we are all operating with the same- degree of of knowledge and the facts. Here is what happened to our beloved pastor last night.

Absolutely not. There was a massive cover-up. That massive cover-up continues to this day.

I know John a little more than a year ago. We had been not even a year into our podcast together and someone put on a Facebook page, a big large defense of Dr. Freeman saying Dr. Freeman was at sick.

Dr. Freeman didn't die unhealthy. Dr. Freeman just died naturally and healthily. Well, you know, of course, and people came, you know, not to his defense but came to his rebuke, the person who put that on by saying, and I've said it myself, well, then why does a church go on a three-day fast the week before for a perfectly healthy pastor? Why is he himself leaning on the podium and saying I had this huge hole in my foot? You know, no, obviously Dr. Freeman was not healthy.

But this individual said that there was a minister. There were a couple of brothers, a Joe and Jim Brennan, who were early followers of Dr. Freeman and who were rabid followers of him from the beginning. And they continued that for a few years. I don't know exactly how long for each of them after Dr. Freeman's death. But the person who put the post on Facebook said that Jim, I'm sorry, that Joe Brennan had told him he had a copy of the autopsy and had told him that Hobart died naturally, that his heart simply stopped beating. And that's what calls his death.

But what's funny when you look at this is your heart stopping to beat is not what causes death. That is death. When your heart stops beating, you are dead. There is something normally that causes that to happen. Now, I don't Joe died in the summer of 2024. I don't know whether Joe had a copy of the coroner's report or an autopsy. I don't know whether he said he did and he didn't.

I don't know that he ever told this man anything. Maybe he didn't. Maybe this man dreamed it up. I don't know if Joe did say he had a copy and falsified the information. I don't know if Joe had a copy and didn't read it carefully enough. You know, I don't know. I just know this that there was a massive cover-up. And that- people like Joe as well as any of the higher ministers knew exactly what had happened to Dr. Freeman.

And if they didn't know all they had to do is go ask June or ask one of the daughters, but the top aides and ministers knew they had seen him that last evening, but they all kept their mouths shut because they had to keep that message and keep that church and keep that ministry and keep Dr. Freeman's memory going because you know what would happen if you say he died of diabetes. He died of severe pneumonia. He died of severe cardiovascular disease. He died of gangrenous macrosis. Neither one of his legs were lengthened or straightened. In other words,

none of the things this man had ever claimed that he was healed from was he in fact healed from. And I'm just going to conclude, John, with this little bit of interesting statistical material.

On October the 17th, Hobart Receive of 1984, received information that he had been indicted by this grand jury and he was going to need to turn himself in to the local jail, which he did the next day on a Thursday, October the 18th, where he was booked and fingerprinted at the jail. You know, at that time, they look at your driver's license. At that time, Dr. Freeman's driver's license said he weighed 182 pounds. And if you want to know where you get all this, it's in the newspaper and it's in the medical reports. This isn't something we dreamed up on

our own. His driver's license said he weighed 182 pounds. Of course, when you're checked in at jail, they weigh you. Dr. Freeman weighed 158 pounds on October the 18th of 1984. When Dr. Freeman died on the evening of December 8th, 1984, he weighed between 125 and 128 pounds.

One of his daughters, when she found out that I had made that statement, said Chino's lying about dad's weight, Chino's acting like he actually weighed my dad himself. Well, of course, I didn't weigh him. I have no way of doing that. But we all have a way of doing this. You just get the coroner's report and here's the coroner's verdict and here's what it says. The said deceased being a white male of the age of 66 years.

6 feet and 0 inches in height, hair, blonde, eyes, blue, complexion, fair, weight, 125 to 128 pounds. Calls of death, severe cardiovascular disease, and pneumonia, contributory factors, gangreness, necrosis of the left foot. Now the next thing that you'll read in a medical report is the manner of death.

And it says, natural. I don't know if Joe Brennan or if not Joe, the person that reported what he said, Joe said to him, simply took that part where it said, manner of death and said, oh, he died naturally.

I don't know how you could do that and not read the whole report. It's just so easy, John, for little bits of information, which are true. It does say manner of death, natural to be spread out there.

And then people build this whole theory on that. But when you look at a coroner's verdict, which is not a medical document, it's a legal document. There are only five possible manners of death.

If you watch enough date line TV or 2020 or anything else, it's either natural, accidental, suicidal, homicidal or undetermined. Those are your five calls of death. So when they say the calls of death is natural, they don't mean he just died peacefully and naturally and he's in his sleep.

They mean it was not an accident. It was not a suicide. It was not a homicide. They means he died of natural causes. But the natural causes are the ones that they report just described above that.

So it is simply unconscionable that the leaders of faith assembly, the family members of Dr. Freeman, his wife and his children, for all of these years, have hidden the facts of Dr. Freeman's death, have pretended that things didn't happen the way that they did so that they could deceive the following.

That should never have taken place. Absolutely. And things like this are the reason I do why I do. The cults try to create a mythology. The mythology is quite fictional. But the problem is there are people that get trapped in it.

You know, there are people who will believe whatever you want them, whatever they want to believe. That may be okay, but the problem is they're deceiving other people. And so the deception is cascading.

And you need somebody like you and I to balance this so that the people who are being deceived can make the answer the question for themselves. Is this real? Is this doctrine real, or is it completely fake?

And that's why I do what I do. So thank you so much for doing this. And I totally agree with what you do. Thank you, John. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

You can find us at www.William-branam.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.

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