Deliverance and the Occult: When Hidden Practices Enter the Church

Music 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, Chino Ross, pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Chino D. Ross YouTube channel. Chino, this is one of the episodes that everybody asked me for and I don't know that I've really done in depth but talking about deliverance and the occult and all of the different connections between them. You and I actually haven't talked as deep as

I probably will in this podcast but I started when I left this Branhamism thing and started entering into Christian churches. Some of the things that I would say or do, they were just scratching their head thinking that that was a Christian church you came from and it confused me so I wanted to know why so I started digging into some of the things that I believed and then I encountered somebody who just mentioned it randomly that there were things that I was practicing that was actually part of the occult so I started digging in and like everything else I studied okay what does what does this mean what is the

occult and sure enough not just the simple things that I was saying that was confusing them but right down to its core there were elements of the occult mixed in with the healing revivals not everybody caught it not everybody knew it because if you're doing this occult practice and you say in the name of Jesus at the end of it everybody thinks oh my gosh that's the power of Jesus but whenever you're doing things like now before I'm going to heal you I'm gonna use those three high words that nobody knows then I'm gonna heal you in the name of

Jesus you start to question well first off what are those three high words why is he using it and why does he say in the name of Jesus behind it so so much to talk about well let's get into it then how about that Dr. Freeman was a deliverance minister he fancyed himself as such but where he I think thought that his area of expertise was was in this area of the occult he talked about it all the time he had a early on he had a little track that he published that we're gonna reference later on occult oppression and bondage after that he wrote

about 120 page paperback book entitled Angels of Light, where he deals with it in more detail. But when I first started listening to Dr. Freeman in 1976, this was new to me and news to me to hear so much emphasis being put on the occult. And that word occult simply means hidden, it's just a word that means hidden, when a baby, my mind and my wife's are very first baby that was born, which we lost in childbirth, by the way, had what is called in the medical world and occult court, and occult court, and it's

because the court is hidden and pinched, and you can't see it. And so we ought to start, probably, John, you're not going to know this, but the followers of Hobart Freeman will, his pronunciation of the word. He, you know, when I first started listening to him, I wasn't even certain what he was talking about, because when he talked about the O-C-C-U-L-T, it was the occult, the occult, you know, like you had a catch or something in your throat, you were just about to call out.

It was the occult. If you look up the word, the correct pronunciation is the occult, with the accent on the second syllable. So throughout my early years of being a follower of Dr. Freeman and in the charismatic movement, I pronounced it occult, because that just sounded like Dr. Freeman's way, and so that was the cool way to say it. And I never have been able to determine where he came up with that, and why. I mean, did he genuinely just mispronounce it, or was there some hidden meaning, you know, hidden meaning behind mispronouncing the word that

means hidden, that this was, you know, a deeper revelation. If you really understand the occult, then you won't call it the occult. You'll call it the occult. And, you know, in just the last week, I saw a post on Facebook by someone that I don't know, but I know them to be a second generation, faith assembly survivor, because I do know this woman's mother. And she had a really interesting, and I thought a really good post on, and you know what it was about, how damaging Dr. Freeman's teaching on the occult was to her, and it's, you know, been damaging throughout her entire life.

So, as I said, you know, he wrote this little tract, he wrote a book on it. This book, if I remember correctly, someone can correct me out there in YouTube Land if I'm wrong. But when it was first published, I think it was published by La Gaulle's International, which back in the early 70s, I think it was in Plainfield, New Jersey, and Law Golf's International, was a really big, prominent publishing company for charismatic and pentacol stool material, kind of like Whittaker House was. Baker Books did some charismatic stuff, but Whittaker and Law Golf were big publishers,

and I think they published this early on. My addition, which is actually later, is an addition that he was publishing himself. So why don't we do this, John? We normally talk for a while, and we run out of time to play the things we really want to hear. So why don't we just begin early on with a really, really weird story, Dr. Freeman told. He told it on a message entitled dealing with your doubts. I'm going to kind of set the scene for this before we play it, because it's about three minutes long. He's going to tell a story, but I want to set the scene

for it, and then I want people to be able to carefully listen to this story that he tells. It's not the only message he tells it on. I can, I have tracked down other tape titles where this same story is told. The text that he is going to preach from is James 1. James chapter dealing with your doubts. And early in James 1, James is saying in his little epistle, if you need wisdom, then ask of God, but ask in faith, nothing doubting. So you think it's going to be some kind of teaching about how to deal with your doubts. 95% of it is nothing but stories. The clip we're

going to hear is at the 13 minute and three second mark. So he is barely into an hour-long message, and he's already telling stories. And that is what Dr. Freeman did. That is exactly what he did. And my notes of this message, here's what I have, I said, he is wilder than a march hair pouring out story after story that we have no way to authenticate. A total misuse of passages combined with a total confusion and contradiction on what is faith, how to get faith, what is doubt, what is unbelief, etc., etc. And this is just so characteristic of Dr. Freeman's

teaching. He would have someone come to him and say, brother Freeman, I prayed for my healing, but I wasn't able to receive my healing because I just don't have any faith. And he would say, don't say that. The Bible says in Romans 12, 3, God is given to every man the measure of faith.

So you have faith. And then later on, hope I would talk about the reason that you weren't healed is because you didn't have any faith. And then a person would say, well, you know, Oh, I don't have enough faith.

That's why I wasn't healed. And then no part would say, well, doesn't the Bible say that the smallest amount of faith you could have is the mustard seed. And we all have that. So if you have that, the impossible could be done.

It was just complete contradiction and confusion all over the place. But that's what he was saying. He was going to talk about dealing with your doubts. But I want people to hear this story where it happened shortly after Dr. Freeman had come back from his trip to Israel in the summer of 1966.

He was a photographer. So he had taken a movie camera with him and had recorded a lot of stuff. And he tells the story how a man and Illinois, and I would love to know who this is.

If anybody out there has any idea who this individual could have been, please let us know. He had invited Dr. Freeman to come over to his house and show him. He wanted to see these movies of Israel from 1966.

So this is back when Hobart was willing to travel to someone's house and engage personally with another human being. He didn't do that at the end of his life, but this was early on.

And he's going to tell a story that this man is going to tell when he is trying to share some charismatic truth with an Episcopalian priest. So John, if we could hear from 13 minute and three seconds to 15 minutes and 51 seconds.

So I remember one time, several years ago, after going to Israel with some others, I made the movies over there and he asked me to come up to Illinois and show them to those who had taken the trip.

And so I went up there, we were talking about various things. One of the things he mentioned, we got off into talking about this, he said that one time when he was in Toronto, I believe, ministering, he said that he happened one day, one afternoon to be talking to a priest there in Episcopal priest and trying to witness to him about the charismatic move and divine healing, the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the things that we accept as scriptural.

And he said there was quite a bit of resistance from this man, this minister, this priest in the Episcopal church. And he said as he was trying to convince him, not arguing with him, the other man was arguing.

He was really debating and getting hot under the collar. He said, the Lord opened his spiritual eyes and he said, I saw the Spirit in a vision what was actually taking place. And it wasn't a vision in the sense that it was not real, but God in the Spirit in the form of a vision, showed him what was actually taking place as he was trying to present truth to a skeptic who was resisting it.

And he said, I saw the spiritual man, me, the real man, you see, that we've been talking about on Wednesday night. You know, the living soul. He said, I saw. Me, the body I sat there, and I could see myself talking in the natural, but he said, my spirit went out of my body.

And he said, when my spirit came out of my body, he said, demons came out of this priest, all sorts of demons of lust and unbelief and resistance to the truth and skepticism and homosexuality.

He said everything in the world. And we wrestled there. You remember Paul said in Ephesians 6, we wrestled not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. God would open your spiritual eyes.

You'd see what you're wrestling with in every trial of your faith. In fact, day by day, you'll see what you're wrestling with in prayer, and as you're trying to believe for something. And he said, I actually wrestled with them.

And what we were debating in the visible, our natural realm by words, he says, was actually taking place in the spiritual realm as a warfare, a literal warfare, so to say it wasn't just a vision symbolizing something, but he says, this is what was happening.

He said the word of God overcame those demons, and I wrestled them down and defeated them. And he says, as soon as I defeated the demons in the spirit, he said he changed his whole attitude and became rather docile and meek and listened to what I had to say, but because he wasn't really interested in what I had to say, he said, after he left, he got up and left, said the demons were waiting at the door, and I saw them go right back in him as soon as he walked out.

Oh boy, what a story. You talk about spiritualism and witchcraft and the occult. Here you have this man telling where he is witnessing to an Episcopalian priest. So you've got a charismatic man in Illinois trying to share the charismatic experience with an Episcopalian priest.

And he said, as they were beginning to discuss, he saw his own spirit go out of his body up into the air, and then the spirit of the Episcopalian priest went out of his body up into the air, and then their spirits battled each other, did warfare with each other.

And of course, Dr. Freeman is going to throw in a Bible verse. He said, remember Ephesians 6, 12, we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. That verse is not, I mean, if anything, it's saying we're wrestling against principalities and powers.

It's not my spirit wrestling against the spirit of an Episcopalian priest. Well they did battle, and then their spirits came back into their bodies. Hobart is not telling this story as you can, as you can tell from just having heard that in an unapproving fashion.

He completely agrees with this, approves of it, and he was just as wild as your typical cares maniac out there, his whole entire life. at something like that actually happened or was valid or was biblical, and then dares to have the presumption to say, remember Ephesians 6, 12, that is a classic Hobart Freeman John where he'll tell some wild story, that is not a biblical story, that if it happened, then those people are definitely involved in witchcraft and the occult, not Christianity, and then justify it by pulling a verse out of Ephesians 6.

It's so bizarre, man. I grew up hearing sermons, some from Brannum, some from ministers in Brannumism, but we heard everything from ghosts to goblins, to Brannum said that there's this demon that looked like alley-oop from the funny papers, and I don't know why they did it, I really don't.

There was one peculiar story that I heard, I think this came from Brannum, but it kind of grew over time. This couple was traveling, and they saw this lady in the middle of the road, and Newt Swerve nearly had a wreck, and went back to Helper, and found out there was nobody there.

Well, they read in the newspapers later that 50 years ago some lady had died, and that exact spot, and the ghost was coming back to haunt you. I mean, we heard Stephen King's style sermons, what he really did, and looking back, I tried to think what good was that for.

How did that edify my soul to hear that some ghost was haunting people that had died 50 years ago? More than worse than that, as a teenager, I was, I'm not gonna say I was dreadfully frightened of these things, but I was scared.

Whenever you think that really you might be haunted by something, and they can convince you that you are, you're gonna be a little bit edgy at night. I'll say it like that, and I was.

I'm certain that there were other people that were, but it all came back to the fact that the doctrines were made to entertain the itching years. And if Brannum could find some national geographic magazine, or I've listened, I've mentioned a few different publications that he was apparently reading, that were just really out there stories, the wild and unbelievable conspiracy theory stories.

If he could convince the people of this, then he had an edge on the other ministers because they didn't have that in their sermons. So he was trying to create that edge. The problem is this, he was the foremost leader of the revivals, so everybody started copying that style.

Well, I need an edge too, so what ghost stories cannot tell? Kenneth Hagen said, well, I went all the way down to hell and back, and you've got all these people, they're just coming up with the absurd things.

Whenever I discovered that Brannum's mentor, and likely Brannum, were posing, Brannum's mentor was posing as a converted spiritualist going to expose the... occult. He said, I was in the occult and I'm exposing them. And then heard the way that Branham talked about it. He said that they're so very close that they have an almost version of truth, but it's not centered around Jesus. We have the same thing, but we're centered around Jesus. What he was essentially saying is we can take these occult practices, stamp the name of Jesus on it, and we have something better than the occult have.

Yeah, we can baptize them, Christianize them. And I think when Dr. Freeman entered the charismatic movement and he felt his eyes were open to the fact that there is more reality than just what we can see and touch and taste and feel. And we know that from the Bible. There is an invisible world for sure. God is invisible. Angels are invisible. So there's heaven is invisible.

I just think he was looking for as many proofs of these things as he could find. And sometimes the more outlandish they were, as you just said, it sells more newspaper copies. It's just news like that. But he was a minister who was going to preach and teach lecture and warn people about and deliver people from the occult and spiritualism and witchcraft.

And what is that story that we've just heard? I'm so thankful that Paul, the apostle, does it tell us any stories like that in the epistles? He doesn't tell us my spirit went out of my body and did warfare with the spirit of this person that I was opposed to. And after they, I mean, that's like, that is like we talked before, John, something you see in Saturday morning cartoons, this little, this low goblin over here and this low goblin over here and they go up in the air and they wrestle and tumble and fight with each other. And then they come back into the

body. What does that have to do with Christianity? There's nothing that's Christian about that at all. There's everything that spiritualism about that. It's not related to Christianity at all. And I think in the end of the story, the point was that the man's spirit came back in him, the Episcopalian priest. He did not believe the charismatic truths being shared by this man in Illinois whom I would love to know who that was. And so, you know, demons entered into him.

And we're back to that favorite catchphrase they used. We talked about last week or the time before, about picking up a spirit. This is the way you pick up a spirit. And I can remember, I don't think I avoided talking to other people. I never took things. I never took them the same way Hobart meant for us to take them and the way other people did. Like the story I told earlier, the young woman who had heard so much of what Dr. Freeman said that was wrong about Mason.

and free masonry that there was a Masonic lodge near their home and they just, she just freaked out every time she went by it. And I told her, I said, you know, there are more weird people in Walmart today than there aren't any free masonry home. So, you know, there are more, what I call bridge trolls and aliens just in your normal Walmart today, you would have to go out of the world. And Jesus said, you are not to be of the world, but you are definitely don't leave the world. You are in the world. That's just, this is just the world that we live in. And so I never took it to

those extremes, but that you could pick up a spirit by talking to an episcopal priest, but I guarantee you that was warp and woof of what Hobart taught. And if he didn't say that in so many words, I mean, that's what he meant and people knew. And you know, this is the same man who just a few years prior to this had been an academic seminary professor teaching Hebrew, which is a difficult language to know and especially to master and to teach. This is an academic seminary professor. In looking back, I've often asked myself and wondered, what happened? I mean, he literally

fell off the railroad tracks. He literally fell off the tracks. And I don't know exactly how or why, but it tells me that there were, you know, just deep-seated problems all along.

So I think what I'd like to do next, John, if I could just have, go and take me a couple of minutes to read a little portion so that people can understand this is what I mean by what Hobart was talking about or teaching when it came to the occult. He was real big on the fact that if you have been involved in the occult at all, or in the occult, as he would say, if you've been involved in the occult at all, innocently or otherwise, knowingly or otherwise, if you've been involved, then there was another favorite catchphrase. You opened the door, opened the door,

and you have to go back and close the door. So he said here are some vital questions to consider that if you've ever been involved in any of these things, then there is a door which has been open.

And this haunted faith assembly people for years, some of them down to this day. And I'm not recommending that anybody go or do any of these things. That's not my point. But we'll save that for here in a few moments. Have you ever visited a fortune teller?

Has anyone read your palm or told your fortune by the use of cards or tea leaves, crystal balls? all or Ouija board. Have you ever consulted the Ouija board out of curiosity or in earnest or played with popular games being sold today? Now this will kind of date you with the games, but these were games you could buy at stores back in the day. ESP, telepathy, kabala, horoscope, clairvoyant or voodoo. Dividing for water, oil, minerals, underground sewer in water lines by using a fort stick is an ancient occult practice known as waterwitching or dowsing.

Have you or has anyone for you engaged in this and heave it even wants you to go so far as to find out if you bought a piece of property, have there ever been people waterwitching or dowsing on your property? So you don't know how you're supposed to find that out, but you know if you don't find that out that's why you have septic problems and water problems on your property. Have you ever at any time consulted a medium or anyone with psychic or clairvoyant powers? Have you attended a say on or spiritualist meeting or attempted to communicate with the dead? Have you ever practiced ESP

to lepathy, automatic writing, table tipping, levitation of objects, yoga? He completely outy-all outlawed yoga, by the way. So you know women were not allowed to do that. Remote influences of the subconscious mind of others or self-hypnosis. Have you ever been hypnotized?

When ill, have you ever sought or did your parents seek for you when you were a child, treatment or healing of diseases and burns and sicknesses and wart removals? Through magic charming spiritualism, Christian science. Do you read your horoscope column or follow astrology? Do you read or possess a cult literature? Books on ESP, reincarnation, dreams, fortune telling, astrology, metaphysics, self-realization, magic, clairvoyance, hypnosis, yoga, handwriting analysis, religious cults or works by authors such as Edgar Casey, Jean Dixon, author Ford or Ruth Montgomery. Have you ever attended meetings or ascended to the teachings of rose accrucian, spiritualist,

Mormons, Christian scientist, unity and just goes on and on and on and on. So any type of thing that all of us would be familiar with a Ouija board, a fortune telling and of course anything.

So that would mean you could not have watched, bewitched on TV or I dream of Genie or anything that has to do with any type of a cult, black magic, spiritualism, witchcraft, anything related to that, he would say and he would shooge on this and this pray- eat on the mind of the people and left them always in doubt wondering maybe that's why I am experiencing what I'm experiencing because I somewhere in my past have participated in these things.

This was Hobart's big, big deal when it came to his deliverance ministry, anything dealing with you called he felt he was an authority on it and if you had been involved you needed to go through deliverance for that.

Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Brannum Historical Research's website, William-Brannum.org.

On the book's page of the website you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others, with links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book.

You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top and as always be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.

On behalf of William Brannum Historical Research we want to thank you for your support. I have come to the conclusion after this series of podcasts with you that Hobart Freeman while he was in this movement, he would have flipped over his lid and he'd known how this movement started and what was in this movement.

So if you study William Brannum and study his life stories, if you believe what he's saying, his life stories include always going to a fortune teller. He talks about how he just could not go anywhere without meeting these fortune tellers.

And I have yet to actually encounter one so I don't know what he was doing, how he was doing it. We do have some evidence that strongly suggests that he was at this camp in Indiana, the spiritualist camp.

He talks about this stage act where a piano levitates and it plays a little jingle, I think we've talked about this. And that was one of the features at the spiritualist camp. So he was definitely, it definitely looks like he was there.

But man, I knew people, in fact I have family members who were high ranking in the cult who were water witches and we, I never could do it. They showed me how it worked and I remember watching, watching them walk through a property that we were about to buy, trying to find water on it.

And they would tell me things like, you know, whenever you get near that, if you, and they would call it a diviner, they wouldn't say a water witch. If you're a diviner, when you get near that, that rod will almost bend to go to that water.

And I've watched it. I've watched them do it and it's it's a random thing man If you tilt your hand this way the rod's gonna lean So wait you till that the other way and you got to know that that's what's happening here But anyway, that's what they do they say that it works and they they say that there's a science behind it I've actually talked to people who were Christian waterwitches who said that it had to do with the Electromagnet spectrum of the of the world and I've studied this. There's just no way There is no way that that's true

but This was part of the movement and we were we were trained to believe things like The zodiac was a Bible written to Christians the great pyramid of Giza was a Bible written to Christians Pretty much everything that you if you go through Alistair Crowley's Weird religious beliefs you're gonna read through it and you're gonna see things that oh, I did that we did that And that's Alistair Crowley right the most notorious atheist Satan as whatever So we had this background that wasn't Christian But they stamped Christianity as a brand on top of it and they branded the thing to appeal to people who were

Not so happy with their denomination of faith and so what happened is when they came out of their denomination Oh, this looks appealing these people can tell me where my water is and the water hole That it was just attracting a weird crowd of people and I wondered why this was why why are those kind of people attracted to it and I went all the way back into the earliest Sermons most of this has been a race, but you find things like Branham is holding a bracelet up and he's saying now if you have enough faith you can make this bracelet move

And it's tied to a string so if you know the trick you move your hand a little bit in the string moves But he's holding his hand up and people are just what the crowd is amazed that they can move the bracelet that's the kind of techniques that were being used and really A lot of it wasn't even spiritualism. It was just bar tricks But the bar tricks were effective and to the Audience who is unaware that these are tricks they start to they start to think okay Well, there's some power here. This thing that's happening. I've never seen this before

I've especially never seen my church do this this must be God because that bracelet can move And I want to make sure people understand I do not think Christian should go to fortune tellers and You know Consult mediums, you know, I'm a pose to all of that as well But where I would differ so strongly with dr. Freeman is The there's no need to write books and tracks. This is a relatively simple thing There are verses in the Bible that warn us not to go to witches and mediums And so, you know, you just don't do it just like there are verses that say um

You know who do not engage in fornication or adultery. So you just, okay, so, you know, there, there's the teaching on that. But to think you're like some little expert on it, that's what, that's what always got to me and didn't make any sense to me.

He just blew it way out of proportion. And again, I wanna be biblically based, so I'm always thinking, what was written by the apostles and the epistles to the early churches? We don't have these long discourses against the occult and against witchcraft.

We have a lot of positive teaching about what the death and burial and resurrection and ascension of Jesus did for us as believers. We just don't have this type of teaching. And there are plenty of opportunities.

You know, Paul, when he wrote Ephesians, it was in Ephesus where the temple of the goddess Artemis was and where you have all of these people who are becoming convicted, listening to Paul's preaching and his ministry and seeing the effectiveness of his true deliverance ministry where he could cast demons out and other people just tried to use the tricks and the demons said, well, I know Jesus and I know Paul, but I don't know who you are.

It was in that city where they brought all of their occult books and burned them. Those weren't Christian people doing that. That was just citizens there doing that, getting rid of their occult material.

If anything, why didn't Paul launch into in his six chapters in the book of Ephesians, some big teaching on, yeah, remember back in the day, you know, when all of you used to do this, we got to keep those open doors closed now so we don't have any of these spirits in our life.

I just saw it was very bizarre and non-Christian to spend the amount of time Hobart did on it as you saw from that track. I mean, those things I just read on who among us hasn't done some of those things somewhere in their life, you know, who hasn't done a handful or two of those things or maybe you were taken as a child and something.

Well, that was part of Dr. Freeman's teaching that even as a child, so people had to try to do some research and find out did any of this ever happen to me. It is just a never-ending trail.

You'll never get to the end of it. You will never in your life if you think that the only way I'm gonna be free as a Christian is I've gotta go find every open door and now close it.

You'll never find every open door because there's no such thing as an open door that you open the door and you picked up a demon. Those are their favorite phrases you might have picked up a spirit.

As I... said before, it's like it's like catching the cold. How do you catch a cold? You catch a cold by being around someone who has those germs. You get a little too close to them. You breathe in air that came from them that has the germs. And guess what? You leave there in the next day or two. You found out I called a cold. That's not how you get a demon. You can't just catch one by being around an episcopal priest or by having watched some show on television. That is not how people pick up spirits. It's something that's intentionally done. It's something that's

definite that happens in their life. And you may need some form of deliverance. But for the rest of us who've gone through our life, even prior to my conversion to Christianity when I was 15, I don't remember ever having a Ouija board. But you know, I did. I'm sure something somewhere in my young teenage years, something of an occult nature that I was not supposed to do. If nothing else, just watch some show on television about ghost and goblins. And that is how you can open a door to picking up a spirit. It just seems to me. It seems so foolish and it is shocking to me that

someone who was trained as an academic ever fell for stuff like this. I can understand someone who's, you know, a little slide on their educational achievements. But, you know, deception is an equal opportunity deception. It doesn't really matter. You know, what kind of education you've had. It's just if you've had education, you should have been trained that, you know, you need to, you need to be able to check things off. You need to be able to go down the list and verify, you know, whether this really happened. But that story with the Episcopal priest, I mean, how many people heard that, John? And that's not the only time Hobart told that. He told

that on more than one, more than two occasions. And other stories, very, very similar to that, where people just take that as the gospel truth. No one, in other words, stood up in the middle of the sermon, raised their hands and said, I have an objection. That stuff never happened. And you and I both know that never happened. That never happened. Prove that it happened. You're telling me what a man told you. And you're just believing it because you want to believe it. You know, no one ever had the courage to ever challenge Dr. Freeman on any of that. And I would encourage people today

if you're ever in a meeting where things like this are said, maybe it's not polite to stand up in public, but you could at least go up afterwards and tell the minister, you know, who do you take me for a fool? You know, I don't believe a thing of what you said today. And we need to sit down and talk about that. And I'm not meaning for anyone to be rude or impolite to another human being.

But come on, the madness needs to stop. You know, this is the madness needs to come to an end and ministers need to be held accountable for what they say. None of what these guys are teaching in this area is actually in the Bible. It's not actually in the New Testament and we need to hold them accountable for that.

My mom had this friend whose husband came into sell her something one day. He said something to the fact, do you know that your blood has all kinds of toxins in them? That's why you get sick all the time. And my mom, my mom wasn't doing well at the time. She said, oh, that sounds, that sounds probably true. Well, he opens up his bag and he pulls out this bracelet and he said, this bracelet is specially designed to cure all of the toxins out of your bloodstream. It's got a magnet on the top and a magnet on the bottom. And I'm

standing here watching the whole thing. And granted, I might have been in middle school, maybe early high school. I'm thinking, you know, that's only going to catch the toxins that are attracted to the magnet, right? And I didn't say it. But anyway, this guy was able to convince my mom that she needed this thing and we were able to convince her later that she didn't need this thing. But I've come to look at this deliverance nonsense much the same way. They will tell you what it is that you have to get rid of, what it is that

is affecting you that they have power to cure so that you need their cure. If you can convince the person that they have what you need, you're going to buy what they're selling. That's really the end of it. And Brannum did this. He was twisting and reframing what diseases were and the largely uneducated population within this healing revival were accepting his medical science over the actual medical science. And he would say the most outlandish things like you can, if you're shaving and you accidentally cut your lip, you can get a life threatening disease from this, my brother. And that's a spirit. That's a devil that's

going to infect you and kill you from the mouth. He would reframe cancers. He would say it's a germ of the devil. And we know that tumors or cancers come from tumors, not from germs. But he would always go to what he could realize in the most basic common science is an infection. So he would say things like it's an infection, you get a germ and not even study the science whatsoever, but say that germ came from a spirit. And I have every spirit in this building under my control. Once he says that, well, he's got the magic bracelet

and everybody wants to rush to the stage and buy it. And that's what they did, sadly. So in the end for me, it's, it's this simple. If you can convince your audience. that you have a direct access to heal something they don't even know that they have and convince them that whatever it is that they don't know that they have yet is life-threatening and can challenge even their very existence, you're going to scare them and that's a couple that with everything that we said about the occult, the ghosts, all of the other weird things, they get you into this

hyperstate of fear where you're scared of every single thing in the meeting and you're scared when you go home you're scared of everything that's under your bed at night and I think that's by design so that you can always go back for them to them for the answer. Yeah he definitely fancied himself John as an expert in this area of the occult and as I said earlier I don't think people would have even thought that maybe my problems most of my problems if not all of them are connected to some innocent occult involvement from my past. He was the one who had to enlighten

them to that which he did frequently and then he was the one who could deliver them from that which he also wanted to do frequently. Yeah it was a scam it really was a scam to me there's very little difference between what Hobart was advertising and say for instance when you watch TV I'm a huge hater of commercials so I record everything and I skip commercials I cannot stand commercials because I mean they're written to pure idiots you know you have this woman who is beautiful who has this stick luscious hair and she's advertising you know what

shampoo and without saying it just the you know it's it's subliminal how it happens if I will buy that shampoo I will have hair like that woman we all know that's not true every single one of us but but we fall for it every time because she's really pretty and she has really thick luscious hair and we don't and so the way we get that is you know it is a scam it's like the weight loss commercials on TV the only way to lose weight is buying you have to put out more calories than you take in it is a scientific fact you have to burn more than you take in you need to change your

diet and you need to exercise but but what can you find on TV you can find fat burning pills they will incinerate the fat around your belly if you take this pill it's a fat incinerator and you know we look at that and think wow that would incineration that's that's heat that's hot that would man that would burn my stomach up if I really took that pill it's going to take all that fat around my midsection, of course, it's not going to do that.

Commercials are just notorious for misleading people. And that's what ministers are notorious for, for misleading people. For saying, you know, I have the key here, and the key is we've got to deal with your occult past.

Let me go to just a couple of excerpts to show people some other stuff from Dr. Freeman from Angels of Light. As he just wants to explain how pretty much everything can be a demon, you know, everything can be a spirit.

So he starts listing some. He says, there are all kinds of spirits. There's blind spirits, deaf spirits, epileptic spirits, deceiving spirits. And let me just say, you know, in the gospels, we do have people who have a blind spirit, because when that spirit is cast out, they can now see.

But that does not mean that every case of blindness is caused by a demon. So blind spirits, deaf spirits, epileptic, deceiving spirits, lying spirits, spirits of pride, spirits of intellectualism, lust, infirmity, insanity, homosexuality, suicide, fear, apathy, anger, discord, strife, hate, resentment, depression, stubbornness, misunderstanding, gossip, obscenity, and many others.

In other words, everything is a spirit. In other words, you don't have to deal with anything as a normal growth process in the life of a human being or in the life of a Christian.

He mentioned things like pride, anger, discourse, strife, hate, resentment, depression, stubbornness, miss a spirit of misunderstanding, a spirit of gossip. Nowhere does the Apostle Paul ever tell anyone to cast out a spirit of gossip.

He just says, don't gossip, that gossip is wrong, to tell stories that are not true about people behind their back when they're not there to give their side of the story, when they're not there to defend themselves, that is wrong to do, to cast a person in an untruthful light.

Paul just says, don't do it. He never says that could be a spirit now, brothers and Corinth. Are you Christians and Colossi? That could be a demon, and here is the other phrase, go through deliverance.

Pick up a spirit because you've opened a door, there are three magic phrases, and now you need to go through deliverance. I don't even find that in the Bible. I don't find anywhere where Christians are encouraged to go through deliverance.

Sometimes it's they take yourself through deliverance, but he would often say, you need to go through deliverance, either at your own hand or at someone else's hand. Flipping a few pages later, this book, golly, he was so proud of this, John, and he was very well known, and long...

I'll call this international, publish this. If I'm not mistaken, way back in the early 70s as angels of light. And by the way, even the name of the book, which comes from a biblical passage in 2 Corinthians, Paul uses that angels of light in reference to false ministers who are deceiving people and who are under Satan's influence.

And he said, no wonder, because Satan can transform himself into an angel of light that he might not have ministers of, that have transformed themselves into an angel of light. The angel of light is the false minister.

And I'm thinking, who wrote this book? You know, some minister wrote this book. And yet, you know, he never saw himself as an angel of light. I mean, he would have been shocked that anyone, especially someone like me, who had agreed with him in my teenage years would have ever come around to say, hope your book was not so much about angels of light as it was written by an angel of light, who was deceiving people, who was famous for pulling text out of their context, was famous for that.

And here's another one of those. Anyway, he wants to talk here for a little bit about people who show a flight of ideas type of mentality. And he said, this individual goes off on one tangent or another, often without completing a fault.

And there is general incoherence of faults and ideas. Generally, they are irresponsible, unpredictable, and undependable, unreasonable attitudes or demands or characteristics of demonic activity in such persons. We all know a lot of people who have flight of ideas.

It's probably because they're just a little more creative than someone boring like myself, and their mind kind of jumps around. Mine kind of locks into a task or a text, and I don't leave it till I finish it.

Other people who are more musically and artistically inclined, their mind kind of jumps around a little. So he says, this is demonic activity. If you have flight of ideas, I think we've all had a flight of ideas.

I think we've all started to sin at sin, and I can't remember what I was getting ready to say and we never could in the sin at sin, you know. Ah, literally Hobart had people looking for demons behind every single thing in their life.

So they could not live just a normal, healthy, relaxed and balanced Christian life, which is like this. The Christian life isn't linear. It has some ups and it definitely has some downs, but because it has some downs, doesn't mean you- have a demon now. He talks about other abnormalities that are in neurotic type people.

These are people in constant need of guidance and reassurance by others. They have feelings of inadequacy and immaturity or fear of failure. They experience extreme hypersensitivity and irritability and impatience. The individual is often ill-humored, argumentative, defiant, negative, always on the defensive, highly critical of others in an effort to justify himself or herself. Sounds a little bit like Dr. Freeman. He was always on the defensive and he could not have a normal conversation. You know to this stage on the people that we know out there who are still Freemanites to a greater or lesser degree, they can't have a normal

conversation with me. They just wouldn't. I would have a normal conversation with anybody, a friend or foe. It doesn't matter to me and I could have a civil, intelligent and we can still shake hands and hug at the end of the conversation even if we don't agree. I mean, all of our Freeman had the mentality and the teaching and the church where you had to agree with him on everything, named two people in the universe that agree on everything. I can't even think of two people.

Even my wife and I don't agree on them. You and I, I'm sure John, don't agree on everything. I don't even know where we don't agree. Maybe we agree more than we disagree. Maybe we disagree more than we agree. I don't even know, but I don't even care. You know, I don't measure my relationships based on how much this person sees everything exactly the way I do. How boring of a life and relationship would that be? We probably disagree on many things and so does we with the rest of the human race, all eight billion people out there, it's not that big of a deal. And yet for

those people, it is a huge deal. You have contradicted brother Freeman. You know, I was black ball, John, back then. I was black ball by Hobart. I was black ball by everybody else and I was put on a black list. And it wasn't because I was an evil, bad person. I was, I was a Christian man, a Christian minister who had my own flaws and faults and inconsistencies and probably tons of wrong doctrine.

But I was still then and now always willing to dialogue, to discuss, to debate, even to disagree. But at least let's engage, we'll know each other better, we'll know our own position better, and we'll definitely know our opponent's position better by the time we get done.

But, you know, no, none of that was allowed because if you talk to anyone that had disagreed with Dr. Freeman, that person has got a spirit, you talk to them, you're going to pick up a demon.

I hate to tell you this, but I disagree with you that we have disagreements. You know, one of the things that we haven't mentioned that's probably the biggest one is the, once I started studying the occult and how it worked and how it operated and all of the weird, weird, weird stuff that's in it, the one that really stood out to me was the spirit guides.

Because if you look at the faith healers during this era, the era that created Hobart Freeman, they all have some sort of a spirit guide or they're connected to somebody else who does. That's how weird this gets.

Brandon would often say that he had an angel in the platform and he couldn't do a single thing without that angel being there to a Christian that sounds good because he used the word angel, but he's actually talking about a spirit guide.

Somebody who is a spirit who's with him and the spirit guide empowered him to take all the spirits in the building under their, under his control, which meant this was a spirit guide that's doing transference of power.

So this is really, really scary stuff. If it's real, I'm of the opinion and we may actually differ on this. As I'm reading through some of the occult stuff, it was out there a lot further than some of my science fiction sci-fi stuff that I'll watch.

I'm looking at this thinking, there's no way anybody in the right mind believes this. But then I started reading, I picked up a handbook of how to train a deliverance minister by Randy Clark and I looked at him much the same way.

There's no way somebody in the right mind believes this and I found somebody who did. So I'm certain that there were people out there who did. Maybe something we've said today can help them not to believe some of this stuff.

Thank you so much for doing it. Yeah, thanks for having me, John. Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web. You can find us at william-brandom.org.

For more about the Dark Side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can use weaponized religion from Christian identity to the NAR, available in Amazon, Kindle, and Automobile.