How Bad Bible Interpretation Built the Manifested Sons of God Movement

Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Brandham Historical Research Podcast. I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Brandham Historical Research at William-brandham.org and with me I have my co-host, minister and friend, Chen O'Ross, pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Chen O'Ross YouTube channel.

Chen O'Ross is an exciting day for multiple reasons. We have a very interesting topic that we're going to get into but also this marks one of the greatest events in our history together and I'm certain you know what it is because you had to remind me right before this. Before we got into the podcast today I was going to ask you if you had anything for me and you would probably be you know confused what what what what I have for you and I was going to ask you do you know what day this is. No it's not my birthday and no it's not Christmas but what

is today for you and I. It is the 100th episode that we have done together and to the audience who knows me well enough to know that my memory isn't that great. I actually forgot it but I had been counting down to this time. I keep I keep a folder that's got all of the episodes and I was watching and I was waiting to build big excitement for the 100th episode and then I did not have enough coffee so I've got I've got my coffee going and we're going to do a little bit better. Well I was counting down too John it's just it

floors me to look at all of this that we have done together. I I have often told people when you know they realize I was doing some interviews and podcasts with you that I thought we might do honestly two or three or four is what I thought and I didn't know I didn't know you I didn't know how far you wanted to take this I didn't know I knew I had a lot to say but I didn't know if you or anybody else would be interested enough to listen to me but here we are two and a half

years later and this is our 100th episode. And the irony is they're more interested to hear you than they are me so this worked out pretty well. The topic you have today it actually fits with a lot of other things that I'm doing. I have been as you know looking at one just one single stream that developed from the Pentecostal movement into New Apostolic Reformation that's been Christian identity which I've been heavily focused on.

largely due to the fact that William Brandham's mentor was part of the client was a leader in the clan. So that led me down that path of research. Now there are other paths of research because what we see today is not the result of just one aspect. There are so many different doctrinal frameworks, ideological frameworks, political frameworks, all converging into this converging apostasy of mess that ended up into New Apostolic Reformation. One of the significant streams, however, is the manifested sons of God. So I've been researching that, and I'm actually getting ready to do a few videos talking about the New Apostolic Reformation

from a historical standpoint. Instead of you see all these videos out there, what is the New Apostolic Reformation or not? What is it? And usually they attack it from a doctrinal position. I want to go back to the historical because I think it might make a lot more sense for people.

But anyway, some of those trails lead to the epicenter of what created Hobart Freeman. So if you think manifested sons of God and then you think Hobart Freeman, usually you think those are two separate things, they're not. And so I'm really excited to get into this with you because there's so much that we can explore. It was huge with Dr. Freeman John. It was probably the engine that drove the machine for him. His teaching on deliverance, which we spent several weeks looking at is teaching on divine healing. All of that was just a part. It was kind of like in his theology,

the preparation for what the real goal of everything that they were working toward, that he had in his mind. And it was, you know, everything was preparation for manifestation. He has tapes in title that. I don't know that I know as much about the manifested sons of God theory and teaching historically as you do or as other people do. But I definitely know intimately exactly what Dr. Freeman believed about it and maybe more doctrinally and theologically and you can help fill in when we get to that point where some of this came from historically. Although we've already

seen through Dr. Freeman's connections with Gordon Lindsay and William Brannum and all the people he referenced from his early days in Pentecost himself, which date to 1966. We know that there was a big manifested sons of God, manifested sons of God background to all of that. He had a lot of teaching about overcomers was a favorite term of his. Pull that out of context obviously from Revelation 2 and 3. Those two chapters are not talking about any particular end time group of people. They're talking about seven historical churches.

that existed in the days of the Apostle John in what is today Western Turkey, Asia Minor back then.

His interpretation of Revelation 12, the woman and the manchild and multiple raptures that he could see at least three in that chapter in but a prophet, which was probably Hagen, said that he could see five in this chapter and it grew to be something really bizarre. But I think we'll have plenty of material to talk about. It's going to take several weeks to really work our way through it so that I can explain what I understood Dr. Freeman's views to be about all of these things.

But before we get to that, I wanted to talk first of all, this is probably preparation today. What his views were about eschatology. Eschatology is just a big word you see in seminary that is a study of last things. So I think in everyone's mind it would be those things that precede or follow, let's just say the second coming of Christ. So the tribulation period, a rapture or raptures, if you believe in plural, a plurality of them, the millennium and the judgments, the resurrection of the dead, all of those kinds of things that have to do with the end of this current age of human

history. And so what I saw with Dr. Freeman is when he read his Bible, he read his Bible as though it was written to him and not for him. And he trained all of his followers to do the same. And that is a grave mistake in her minutics. And he was certainly not the only one. I would say that's probably, I don't know John, maybe the predominant way that the Evangelical Church has been taught to read the Bible. You know, you pick up the Bible and you want to hear God speaking to you about something in your life for that day. And I think that is really the way Evangelicalism has

been taught to pick up and read and interpret the Bible. And that is not the correct way to read the Bible. The Bible is not written to us. I've often joked, my name is nowhere in the Bible because my name is Chenot. Your name is throughout the Bible because your name is John. But I don't think you as John Collins are addressed in any particular place in the Bible unless it is some whosoever kind of passage. But we're not even talking about those. We're talking about just about everything on almost every page.

Now, when you get into genealogies and first chronicles, you do have to skip over that because you really can't find anything that applies to you. But what is one of the more famous verses of the Bible, more often used, is Philippians 4.19.

It's a favorite verse for a lot of Christians, and they say, the Bible says, I can do all things to Christ who strengthen us meat. And I'm not denying that Jesus can't and won't help us accomplish whatever it is we need to accomplish.

But actually, the verse was written by Paul and Paul said that he didn't say I could do all things and he didn't say you could do all things. He said I can do all things through Christ who strengthen me.

That was the apostle Paul who said that about himself. Now again, I'm not denying that the Lord won't help all of us do whatever we're called to do, but we're going to need to find a passage that applies to us because that one simply doesn't.

So this calls serious problems for Dr. Freeman and his interpretation of the Bible. It has called no end of problems for everyone who reads the Bible because they're looking at this as a letter specifically written from God to them, to me, to you.

And so consequently, Dr. Freeman would say, you know, there's 7,847 or something he said someone in Canada had counted them, promises in the Bible. And all you have to do is just insert your name in there.

And that's what got him into trouble. Remember, we've talked earlier about the account of Moses as recorded in Deuteronomy 34, that he was 120 years old, his eye was not dim, neither his natural force abated.

So Hobart read that and saw that Moses lived to this great age of 120 and still had perfect vision. And so Hobart would say, that's a promise that we can claim for ourselves, hence no need for glasses, hence no need for being weak in your life, his natural strength was not abated.

In other words, you could have full strength, vitality and full vision, regardless of your age, because Moses headed at 120. But I think any of us who read that passage, no, that's talking about Moses.

And it is not a promise that tells us if you just have enough faith, you can claim that and that can be true for yourself. So that's just one of 7,000 places in the Bible where Hobart and many others think they see a promise made to them, but it's just a statement made.

And that classic example of someone... else is Kenneth Copeland because of that verse claiming that he is not going to die until he reaches the age of 120. I'm so glad that you started there because that is something that I have been thinking through and wanting to find a good way to put into words.

As you know, the historical research that I do when I publish a podcast, it's usually about the history and I'll let other people talk to the doctrines. But that one aspect, it's a historical aspect of the movement that has almost like a virus infected mainstream Christianity.

Not just evangelicals, there are some other groups that aren't evangelical. I'll never forget, whenever I left the group that we were in, we were in a doomsday cult, we read the Bible from the perspective of doomsday and everything was written to me.

So I'm reading these passages to me and it implies doomsday, which gets really dangerous when you get into the book of Revelation because you start to see things that just simply aren't reality, whatever you do this, and your mind goes different directions that probably isn't healthy.

I'll say it like that, but that way of teaching made it into mainstream churches. So what happened to me when my family left the destructive doomsday cult, we started attending mainstream churches, I won't give their names, and they had the same type of teaching on the way that you read the Bible, and I thought it was normal.

So I left abnormal and went to abnormal thinking that abnormal was normal. And I'll grant it, I'll guarantee you everybody who's listening this podcast out of the people that are listening, I'll bet there's like 80% that are of the same mindset, that's how just simply how they've been trained, and they don't really know any different.

So it turns into this thing where if you are trained to read the Bible like this, it alters your perspective, and it does not alter it in a healthy way. So then we started experimenting other churches and a wide variety of different teachings, and I began to realize, wait a minute, that's not quite right what we were taught.

The people working with me actually showed me how you correctly read the Bible, and I fought it tooth and nail. I was like, no, they're wrong, these people are cold and formal, all of the stuff that we were taught against them, you know.

And long story short, it took me years to really get out of that mindset even after learning that it was wrong. I was so indoctrinated to read it that way, I couldn't read it any other way.

And when I would read it, I thought, I don't know if I'm right or not, this sounds awful. But if you don't have that framework, you also can't have the manifestant sons of God.

It's building blocks of bad theology, and that bad rock really is what you just described. And I think reading the scripture that way, John, is actually demeaning to the biblical text and to the biblical authors. And I think it, I mean, we're such a self-centered society in generation.

I think it unduly, unnecessarily, unscripturally, elevates us. And that's why people think, oh, such and such person is a prophet in the Bible. Oh, you know, you're test to win. I think God's called me to be a prophet. You know, it's you, you just have unnecessarily elevated yourself because you're reading something that happened in the Old Testament or in the New. And you're just thinking, you know, they have all these false lines of reasoning. And one of them would go, God is no respecter of persons. That is a verse in the Bible, but they just lift it out of

context and say, well, if the Bible says God is no respecter of persons, if he did that for Moses, surely he'll do that for me. That's not the way this works. That is not the way it works at all.

And when people have tried to make it work that way, Hobart's a classic example, guess what, they miserably failed. We've talked before about the practice of sending out anointed handkerchiefs. You know, this has a long history in the Pentecostal church. And when I talk to people about this and try to get them to focus on what does the text in Acts 19, which is the only place that this is mentioned in the Bible, what does the text actually say? You know, they become, they feel so threatened and yet to be very patient with people and very loving and very slow

in explaining to them because they are so fearful that something is being taken away from them. And you know, they'll put this up and plead the blood of Jesus against you. I've had faith assembly people say, Oh, I don't want to hear that. The blood of Jesus. And all I'm doing is like reading the verse. And what the verse says is that is that God brought special miracles through the Apostle Paul. So when I see that, that tells me, Hmm, maybe I should pump the brakes thinking that I can pray over a cloth and send it out. And demons are exercised from people. Maybe I need

to slow down and practice a little humility there because it said that God did special miracles. So if they're going to happen through me, then God's going to do special miracles through me as well.

I just think if we, if we read the Bible in a humble, more accurate, more honest method, then when we see passages like that, they are truly amazing and we praise God for what happened then.

But then we are not so ready to say, well, anything that happened to Paul, Peter, James, John, Moses, Abraham, Daniel, David, can necessarily happen in my life. Maybe there's an occasion where someone has prayed over a cloth, and something has really happened.

You and I are all big on, I need some verification. I need some confirmation in order to really believe that just because everybody is so harem-scarom out there. So there's another example, the anointed clause, and Paul didn't pray.

Another thing is this has all been cast in a certain formula in the charismatic Pentecostal movement. It's not in Acts 19. So even if you're going to do it, you at least have to be honest with the text and say what we're doing is not what is said here.

It just said that people took. Paul was a leather worker. He had some sweaty outer bands, wristbands and headbands and aprons on him. And people took those two other people. It didn't say that they brought them to church.

They were prayed over up front by the pastor. They were put in a little envelope and then sent to, you know, and daisy. And then whenever those things touched her, she was healed. That's not even what the text says anyway.

So I know, I know, I realize people are just horrified because you are taking something away from them. You're robbing them of the blessings of God. I think the blessings of God are far beyond anything we could ever comprehend or ever deserve.

But let's just make sure that we have a scriptural foundation for them. You know, the real problem with reading the Bible and the way that they're reading it to cause all of this to happen is that it takes passages that are meant to be something that's extraordinary and trying to make it common.

And when you try to make it common, then you try to wedge it in and make it fit in your normal life. Exactly. It just simply doesn't work that way. Think of the letters from Paul.

This is a letter from Paul for a specific thing that happened to a specific people. And yes, it is shared among the rest of the church and we read it today. And the things they want to take are the extraordinary things.

You know, the fruit of the spirit that, you know, living a victorious life is a growth. That is a process. They don't really want those. They want the miraculous, the instantaneous things. I think this method of reading the Bible as though it's written to us instead of for us.

It's especially problematic for understanding things about the last days. So this is where I want to head now in the direction of eschatology and that will lead us eventually into Dr. Freeman's views on the manifestation of the sons of God.

It's very... problematic. If you're reading the Bible as, you know, as so it is written to you today, so when you come across a passage that talks about the last days, there are many in the New Testament, but one I can think of off the top of my head is in the first couple of verses of the book of Hebrews, where the author said that in times past, God spoke unto the fathers by the prophets, but now in these last days has spoken unto us by his son. I was trained by Dr.

Freeman to read that, forgetting about whoever the author of Hebrews was when he wrote that, he thought he was living in the last days. I don't even read it in that context. I read it as now. I'm reading this in 1976 when I first started listening to Dr. Freeman. Wow, I didn't know I'm living in the last days. How do I know I'm living in the last days? Because Hebrews 1, 2 says that I'm living in the last days, and we are living in the last days. But what I was never taught by Dr. Freeman is so were all the apostles in the early church members. They were living in

the last days too. Now, are we later in the last days than they were? Well, just my virtue of the fact that's been 1900 years, yes. But living in the last days, isn't something that started in Topeka, Kansas, or Azusa Street in 1901? And that's the way I was trained. And so you see, this can be devastating for your understanding of eschatology because you're not thinking that the first church that our forefathers who founded the church in Acts 2, the day of Pentecost, we're not thinking of them as living in the last days because that was 2000 years ago.

We're only thinking of ourselves. Another passage is in 1 John 2 where he said, little children, as you have heard, that the anti-Christ will come even now. Are there many anti-Christ whereby we know it's the last time? John said he knew that it was the last time, the last days. He knew he was living in the last days. And even though, I mean, even though that's what it said, and even though in my own mind, I should have been able to say, wait a minute, you know, John said that 2000 years ago. And he was living in the last day. So of course, I'm living

in the last days as well. I never was able to process that as a young teenager in my early 20s. When I read the Bible, I read like everything is written to me. And so this is exactly the way Dr. Freeman and trained all of his followers, myself being one of them early in my life to think.

He felt that all of the things related to the last days were going to happen in his lifetime because he, of all people, was living in the last days. And he would generally work his way around to either Topeka, Kansas, or Los Angeles with Azusa Street, 1901, and he would say the last days began the early years of the 20th century.

And now we are living in the last days. And that's devastating for your understanding of Scripture because when you then go to read your New Testament, you really think everything is, it has to be in my lifetime.

Everything is going to unfold right before my very eyes. It creates two significant problems. The groups that are trained to believe like this are trained to dehumanize people that do not believe like they do.

And by dehumanizing that aspect, it's making them less than human, so it's an insulting way to look at other people. But yet at the same time, the people who are mentioned in the Bible or the authors of the Bible are dehumanized in that they become greater than human.

And they become more significant than human. And it doesn't allow for the human aspect as it's being presented. There were large numbers of Christians in the early days after Jesus had died that they thought this was the end time.

And that's what they wrote. We're living in the end time. They did not know that they weren't living in the end time because that was their worldview. And then later they began to realize that time is still continuing.

But when you are taught to read the Bible as though it's written to you, now you've lost the human aspect of this. And so mistakes that people are made, and there are many Bible passages talking about human mistakes, well now those become scriptures to you to read and you start making the same mistakes.

And so it's this never-ending cycle of just bad theology producing error and more bad theology. But it all comes down to this. I've been thinking about long before that we even talked about this episode.

I've been thinking about the manifested sons of God and its development. A lot of people point it back to the feast of the Tabernacle's book that was published by Warnock who was Arn Baxter's secretary.

Arn Baxter was William Brannum's campaign manager. But it actually goes so far back beyond this. Because of, again, several different streams of ideologies, the people who were being trained in the early Pentecostal years were also being trained to read the Bible like this.

The Bible's written to us. This is a new thing, a new day. And they were starting to say that we're coming to restore the truth. church, and with that restoration, now we've got these key passages that talk about how it's going to be restored.

They may not have had the entire manifestant sons of God framework, but they started all of the building blocks of theology that was required to build it, and that's how it progressed forward, and it all comes back to what you said initially.

If you're reading the Bible in this very incorrect way, you're going to get very incorrect theology from it. Yeah, it all goes back to proper hermeneutics, and we've talked about that before. How to read the Bible for all its worth.

People need to have a class or two on proper hermeneutics. I think how to read the Bible for all its worth. I believe that's the name of a book written by, I'm going to have to pull this for memory, Doug Stewart and Gordon Fee.

I think it's actually a great little primer book to explain with many, many examples of how easy it is to take passages out of their context and simply misinterpret them. When Dr. Freeman died the month after in January of 1985, they put out a tape list, and there were 1157 tapes on that tape list.

When I first began listening Dr. Freeman, which was about eight or nine years prior to that, he did not have nearly that volume of tapes. There were not very many tapes under each of his categories.

One of his categories that concerned the deeper life had a series of messages. There were 11 in this entitled Principles of the Deeper Life, Principles of the Deeper Life, but what it really was, it was a teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew's account, Matthew 5, 6, and 7 of the Sermon on the Mount.

There were not many messages under the deeper life heading, and this would have been some of the very early ones. These would have been some of the early ones, and on the very first tape of those 11 tapes, he is talking about how short the time is.

These tapes would have been preached in the mid-70s, either 1974 or 1975, the Sermon on the Mount. The very first tape he's talking about, we're very close to the return of Jesus, and because it's early in the 70s, he actually has a number of years as a buffer to make the statement that I'm getting ready to share that he made, but he said, and you got to think, I am a 17-year-old teenage boy in 1976.

These tapes are one or two years old, and I'm listening to them and just eating them up. And I hear the statement where Dr. Freeman said that the 1970s are pretty much going to wrap things up.

Wow. You see what this does to a young, impressionable, no experience, not enough worldly living, not enough knowledge of the Bible to be able to say, hold on just a minute. Who are you to make a statement like that?

And he made it based on a vision, and he's always saying, well, now that we're charismatic, we know that God gives dreams and visions. So that just preps you for, if you called into question any dream or vision, then what's wrong with you?

Don't you believe God? It was a vision, some sister, and they're always an anonymous sister. Just anonymous sister left and right had a vision. And she saw the pages on a, like a desk calendar of the 70s, three and four and five just being blown over by the wind.

And the view of the calendar was becoming more obscure. And you couldn't quite see the 78 and 79. And of course, he said, well, the meaning is obvious. Of meaning, he interpreted that, who knows what that meant?

Who knows if the said sister had a vision and who knows, be what it even means? Maybe she did. Maybe he interpreted incorrectly. But the way he interpreted was, well, the 70s are just going to wrap things up.

We won't even make it to the 80s. That is a, that is a dangerous type of theology to preach. And it is definitely dangerous because it's based on someone else's vision. And so what it does is, you know, it just, it just tells you, you know, why worry about tomorrow?

We only have today. Why plan for next year? Why plan for old age? All we have is today. And if you challenge that or question that or, you know, you don't totally buy in, you put it on the shelf early on, he allowed people to put things on the shelf.

But by the end of his ministry, he said, if you put it on the shelf, it becomes so hard, you can't chew it. So he wouldn't allow anyone to put anything on the shelf.

God is revealing this to his servants. And you need to believe this. And teachings like that, based on the anonymous sister's vision, just had real serious consequences in people's lives. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism, transition through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

You can learn this and more on William Brandham Historical Research's website. www.William-Branum.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.

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I've mentioned this a few times, but after we left the Doomsday mentality, we were in a new church, and I was actually in a new job at the same time, and they asked me, do you want retirement?

And it was an odd question for me. When you're in a Doomsday cult, you do not think about retirement. Why would you need it? The pastor needs your money, not you. And so I was so used to giving the money to the church.

We had zero dollars at age 37. And I was so far behind the game. I was sitting down with HR people as I'm filling out my paperwork, and I mentioned it casually. They're children.

You mean you're 37 years old? You've never even thought about it. Well, it's hard to explain to people that you were in a movement that taught you to rob yourself, and that's really what was happening.

I can't go to a lawyer or government officials and say, they stole my retirement from me, because they're just simply going to ask you, did they take it? Or did you just not say for your retirement?

And so it's my fault, but yet at the same time, they indoctrinated me to be like this. So they taught me to rob myself. And now I'm so far behind the 8-ball sitting down with my financial advisor last week and trying to rack my brain, trying to find ways where I can come up with a good, at least a healthy living whenever I retire.

That type of mentality is dominating the movement. Whenever we started the support groups, people were sharing stories of, and I'm talking people in their 50s and 60s, talking about they've got no nest egg at all.

What are they going to do? And it's really sad because you can't, you've got to be open with them. You're probably going to have to work. There is no two ways about it. And it's because of that same problem that we're talking about all along.

You read the Bible incorrectly, read it like it's read for you, read the things that aren't intended to be for you, and then you start doing things to yourself that are actually harming yourself.

And I would say this is one of the biggest harms that is being done by the movement. And it is so perverted when you think about the ministers coming out on top in all of this, but the people didn't.

You know, when Hobart died, we've looked what's been a year and a half ago. His estate was around a million dollars, I mean. and dollars back then is a lot of money. And so it's really wicked and it's really perverse that the ministers teach these things, but they don't live it themselves because they have a big congregation that's contributing money and they have a home paid for, they have vehicles paid for and they have money in the bank.

But that's just not the case with the rank and file member. You know, I used to think as I would look over, you know, Hobart would teach from 1 Timothy 2 and from Titus qualifications for a pastor or an elder or a bishop.

And of course, he fit all the qualifications according to him. And you know, you'd go through them all and you go, yeah, well, you know, Dr. Freeman fits all of them. But you know, one of those qualifications, John, that I had, that I didn't think about until years after that, one of them for a minister is he may not be greedy for filthy lucor.

In other words, for money. And of course, everyone say, well, Hobart, when I said, no way to man it, did he insist on driving a luxury automobile? He most definitely did. He always had either an old 98 or Cadillac or Lincoln.

I would classify that as someone greedy for filthy lucor. I never saw that early on. I just thought, oh, no, that's God, quote unquote, blessing brother Freeman. No, that's Dr. Freeman not being happy driving around a Ford Pinto, which was my first car.

And I was happy to have it. And it actually had a hole in the passengers floor board where you could watch the ground go underneath you as you drove along. We had to put a piece of tin over it and then put a piece of carpet over that.

And I was happy to have that. Yeah, I think these ministers who want Gulfstream jets and say, God told me that he's gonna give me that. Well, God's not giving it. It's coming through the offering of the followers.

And it's just horrible that ministers have gotten away with this. And I don't see that in the first century minister. I don't see it in Jesus. He said, the birds of the air have nests and the foxes have holes.

The son of man half not where to lay his head. He did not have any real estate. He didn't own anything. And the apostles weren't much better. And you know what, they didn't care.

I mean, they just didn't care. God met their needs. He told them, if you forsake all, I'll give it back a hundredfold. And that's not giving them their own houses and donkeys. It's giving them the Christian community that was able in many regards to take care of the needs of the early ministers.

And as I've said so many times, even on this podcast, even though they were willing to do that, people like the Apostle Paul, who was such an example. such a godly man, he abstained from taking up offerings for himself, even though he said, I deserve it because of what I have done for the Christian faith. He said, I don't want to be accountable to anyone. So I have worked day and night with my own hands. This is all in Acts 20.

You can read it toward the end of Acts chapter 20. And I've not only earned money to provide for myself, but for my traveling companions as well. But anyway, John, to go back to this so-called vision a woman had of the 1970s, that was so characteristic of Dr. Freeman basing doctrine and theology. And you are you are manipulating the lives of your people based on some alleged vision that someone has had. I've got a little clip I want to play just to show people how strange these alleged visions and dreams are that people have had that Hobart would tell as other gospel

truth. I mean, he never really put a distinction. You never said, now I don't know whether this is really valid. He'd tell it in the context of reading a chapter in the Bible. Well, when you do it like that, then we as the listeners, we can't tell the difference. We think it's all inspired. It's all true. It's all from God, whether it's the written word or some vision that someone had.

So on he had a series where he was going to teach on the gifts of the spirit in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 or maybe 12 through 14. And he had an early message. It used to be number 276, but it was entitled God reveals himself through creation and it has a long title and through providence and other things. And it was taught in 1973. And we have just a small clip from early in this message from the six minute and 50 second mark to about eight minutes. They're like a brother in Dallas, Texas several years ago. I remember him telling how they'd received the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

And I was one night lying on his bed praying when the room suddenly lit up with a, well, and a supernatural blue light. And he didn't have any proof text for this being the Lord. He never had a vision. He never saw a thing, but he knew the Lord was that light. And the Lord said, I'm calling you to get on the radio with my word. Well, he said, Lord, I can't even read the Bible.

I can't. He was educated. He said, I can't even pronounce half of those words. He wasn't a good reader at all.

So the Lord impressed upon him to go to school and learn how to read God's something to school to a seminary out on the desert on his knees. He stayed out there. And months have just read the Bible, Lord taught him how to read the Word.

They got on the radio and that's all he did. That's all his program consisted of reading script and people were blessed and saved and ministered to and counseled and called in and tremendous. It's interesting that he starts his clip off by saying, referencing, yeah, a brother down in Dallas, Texas shared this.

This has only been seven years since Hobart's trip to Dallas, Texas. He was there in 66 and this and he's given this in 73, you know, and we documented this. This is easy to document.

He ate up with a spoon like it was going out of style, everything, those crazy people down there said, whether it was Lindsey, Hagen, WV Grant, Kenneth Hagen, the whole group of them down there.

He was flabbergasted by what he heard. Did he prove anything? Did he check anything out? Absolutely not. So as we just heard, this is a brother, you know, again, an anonymous brother down in Dallas, Texas, who was praying one night in his bedroom and this blue light appeared.

And Hobart goes on to say, you know, God often appears in light in scripture. See, that's just enough to pull you in. God does appear in light in scripture, but I've never seen a blue light in the Bible.

But that's just enough and it's so damaging and it's so dishonest for minister to ever teach like this and pull these stories in. But this man was praying, he had a vision, there's a blue light appeared in his bedroom and God's called him to the radio ministry.

The brother couldn't even read, couldn't even read. And so Dr. Freeman tells the story, God sent him to school, sent him to school and you're thinking, Oh, okay, which school did he go to?

Send him to the school of the desert, send him out into the desert on his hands and knees. God taught him how to read. This is showing just a complete lack, a total lack of any discernment.

Dr. Freeman had no discernment, he had no ability to discern anything. It's just this vision said what he wanted to believe. And so that's what he believed, they tickled his ears. God is not going to send a guy out into the desert.

He might tell the guy go to school and I'll provide funds for you to learn how to read and write. He's not going to send a guy out into the desert, at least I don't think so.

And then teach him personally, you know, be a private tutor, how does that work? How did God privately tutor an individual to teach him to read? How did that... Those things even work. People are listening to that story going, oh wow, praise God.

No wonder people did things like not wanting to change the tires on their car or doing whatever it is came to their mind because this is the proof of our faith. They were raised.

I was raised on stories like this. I think it tickled Dr. Freeman's ears to hear these stories and the Bible warns about ministers to tickle your ears and listen to stories that tickle your ears and then repeat stories that tickle your ears.

Honestly, John, don't think that the followers of Dr. Freeman really paid attention to what he was saying because they would see this man lacked complete discernment in every area of his life. He believed, hookline and sinker, everything that he was told.

And I volunteer myself as case example number one of being the same kind of fool. But it didn't last my whole life and I wasn't a seminary educated 50 something year old man. I was just a kid when I heard this stuff and believed it and it didn't take me long to begin to see just the problems, the inconsistencies, the contradictions and what he was saying.

And I just have to say the people that listened to him must not really have listened to him because had they listened to him, they would have said Dr. Freeman, you don't have any ability to discern anything because you have told so many stories of other people's visions and dreams.

You have no idea whether any of that is true or not. You don't seem to care when any of it can be validated. It just sounds like what you wanted to hear and so you believed it, you know, hookline and sinker.

I have actually spent a long time trying to find out when the doctrine shifted because it's very eerily similar to what Brannum taught in that when Brannum had the thing that looks like a halo the photograph was taken, we've debunked that.

You can go on the website and see the debunking of it. It was from that point forward, the idea that God comes in the form of a light is widespread. I don't see it widespread before this so I don't know if that's where it came from.

What's interesting is I remember the same types of things being said, God comes in the form of a light and he always goes back to his halo, right? But if you read the first few passages of Genesis, there is no light in the spirit of God hovers over the waters in the darkness and then God said let there be light.

So there's at least one example where God is not light and we always went back, this is really interesting if you think of the implications of this. When we heard that statement about God light. He would always go back to how Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. And so what it was trying to be in the sermon was a contrast. Here's God who is the real light, Satan disguised as an angel of light, but it's an angel of light. And at the same time, Brandham taught that Jesus was an angel, the Archangel Michael. So all of the theologies just so off, so wrong,

and it seems to be that his halo photograph, if it wasn't the beginning of this doctrine, it was at least the one that made it explode and go widespread. I'm certain that I've heard that outside of the cult too, and one of the churches. So this doctrine is widespread, but it comes back to this. The movement had the theme of taking anything that they could claim was extraordinary happening to them. They would try to find a Bible passage that matched what happened to them and say, look, we just read this in the Bible. This Bible was written to us today. And

totally ignore the context of where that passage actually went to. We've mentioned this before, I think, a few times with you, reading the passage from Nahum saying that outer drive in Chicago was being described in the book of Nahum. There's no way that's possible, but that's what they were claiming because if we can take this passage and make it familiar to the people, those with itching ears will enjoy what we say. And I think that's really the problem that it was a message that was intended to entice the itching ears. You know, Dr. Freeman's followers who knew a little bit about

Brandon, they thought William Brannum was nutty. They really did. They just thought William Brannum was nutty. And what I, for the life of me, can't understand is why they didn't think Dr. Freeman was nutty because he's got the same story. Some of them even more bizarre. Some of them directly borrowed from Brannum. So how is, you know, how is the master nutty, but the disciple, not nutty?

How is Brannum wrong, but Freeman not wrong? Again, I almost have to say, I just don't think people paid careful enough attention to what Dr. Freeman was saying. He was a smooth operator and he he had a craft of being able to reuse a Bible verse. He always would say, you know, turn to such and such and he'd read a verse and you're lucky if you ever got back to the Bible the next hour.

And he would just tell stories. Tell stories that from his own life and, you know, maybe they were true. Maybe they weren't, you know, at least they were stories from his own life. They weren't like third hand removed. But most of the time, tell things that he had read and that he had heard Brannum say that he had read in other people's books. And how is it that a, a seminary educated 50 something year old man just falls for all of that stuff and doesn't just you just a little bit, just a any bit, you know, a mustard seed of common sense and discernment to say,

no, I don't think God appeared in a blue light to an uneducated man called him to the radio ministry, took him out into the desert. I guess appeared to him or spoke to him audibly taught him here's a here's b here's c here's d taught him the alphabet taught him how to read taught him how to write well that's just not the way God is that you know but it's supernatural anything that's miraculous and supernatural is what they want to believe if God urged that man with an inner voice of the spirit you need to go back and finish your high school diploma first of all before

you try to become a preacher you know that would be much more believable in my book than Dr. Freeman's story and I didn't even tell the end of of that clip that we played and the man got on the radio you know this God called him to a radio ministry and you know what his ministry consisted of he just read the Bible that's all he did no preaching no commentary just reading the Bible I don't know I mean you know I'm always a perpetual doubting Thomas on all of these stories like this but that just doesn't have the ring of truth to me let me tell you one other story

from Freeman Freeman's story in conclusion here to John that today John that is shocking we just finished up four or five weeks talking about Hobart's fascination with what he called the occult even though it's the occult with the pronunciation on the second syllable but he loved the occult everything about you know soothsayers and witches and warlocks and you know games like cabala and you know anything with cards and fortune telling you know just got out of control you know because cards have been used in fortune telling you know any type of card game is completely ruled out at faith assembly and they were cards were used in gambling you know so

they're completely ruled out and that never made any sense I'm on a tangent I'll give back to my story that never made any sense to me because as I'm looking in Paul's writing about meats all for the idols Paul said an idol is nothing he said there's only one God he said he could eat meat all for died all that he said now that might offend somebody who's just come out of heathenism but but Paul knew at least Paul and his fellows could sit around and enjoy a nice steak that was leftover meat that had just come from you know the temple of Zeus or

Jupiter it didn't bother Paul one bit and I think cards are the same way you don't have to use them for fortune telling you can play cards and have a good evening anyway here's the story that is simply mind-boggling and it has to do with eschatology and it has to do with the appearance of the Antichrist. Hobart, as he taught on his early messages in the late 1960s and early 70s firmly believed that the Antichrist had been born and that he was on the scene. And I don't think this was just unique to Hobart. I think other people believe this as well. But what is shocking? What is absolutely,

I mean, it makes you lose your set of false teeth when you hear what he based that on. I mean, what would you think? How do you know that Antichrist, you know, John said, as you have heard for Sean 219 that the Antichrist will come, there is the definite article in the Greek in front of that, even now there are many Antichrist small A. So the Antichrist again, how would you know that he's already been born? How would you know that he's alive? Do you know how he knew because of this woman and because of this book right here, Jean Dixon, who was like in the middle of the 20th century,

was one of the world's best-known psychics and mediums and spiritualists and fortune tellers. And he was enthralled with this book, a gift of prophecy, the phenomenal Jean Dixon, written by her biographer Ruth Montgomery. And so we can't play the clip, John, because it is 16 minutes long. But if people want to go and listen to Dr. Freeman's message entitled World's Messiah, Antichrist, done in the mid 1970s, from around the 11 minute mark to around the 27 minute mark, he is reading the visions that have been given to Jean Dixon. And one of those visions is this, she has a little blurp here in the very beginning, where she says based on a

vision that she has been given, a child born in the Middle East, and if you really read the whole vision, she identifies it as an Egypt. So an Egyptian baby born of humble peasant stock on February the 5th 1962 will revolutionize the world. So here's Hobart, who is supposed to be opposed to things like this, basing his whole theology that the Antichrist was alive as of 1962 on this type of garbage. And his rationale is, well, God gives visions to his prophets. So surely the devil gives visions to his susayers.

And so why shouldn't we believe it? And he said he firmly believes that this child that was born and he's not basing it on anything in the Bible, nothing. He's basing it on something Jean Dixon said, let's just make your hair stand up on end and should just make you throw Hobart Freeman out as being a junk scholar.

And I'll go off on two tangents. One of the prophecies or doctrines, however you wanna look at it, was that giant birds with 15 foot wingspanes would attack us in the end days. And I found the propaganda book.

It's one of those weird, not national inquire, but something similar from the 60s. He had apparently read this and thought, oh my gosh, we're gonna be attacked by giant birds. And the reason that I found out about it is because one of the splinter groups of Branum, it would be like the equivalent of Faith Assembly out in Arizona, they were teaching this and it made the newspapers that they were expecting and living in anticipation of giant birds attacking and also giant ants.

I think if you go on my website, you can type in the prophecy of the giant ants or something like this. They were literally coming out of the old sci-fi movies, sci-fi books. And to further your tangent, there's this problem that exists.

Whenever people go so legalistic that they totally lose the meaning of what the passage is saying, they're living by the letter of the law, basically. The doctrine went around exactly like you're saying, cards are evil.

Well, they took it a step further, which may have matched you, I don't know, but dice are also evil because that's what they're using, the gambling halls and the casinos. You can't use dice.

Well, if you understand what a die is for, it's to generate a random number between one and six. And if you roll two of them, it's between one and 12. So what they did, they wanted to play their board games.

So they had a cult-approved electronic device that was about this big and you push a button and it would give you a number between one and 12 and you could go continue playing your board games.

I saw this granted I'm like 12 years old whenever this happened. My family didn't believe the dice thing we thought it was absurd. I saw it and I didn't even hear any of their theology or anything like this, my grandpa had it.

And I was in his house and I said, grandpa, doesn't that generate the same random number that that set of dice does? And you should've seen the look on the faces that all the people.

And it was apparently a widespread thing because they had just taken things to so far to the extreme that in this way, they're hurting themselves, although it's trivial, they're hurting themselves like this. But there are other things like the retirement that they're hurting themselves so far to the extreme that it's doing damage.

And I hope that something we said can help people wake up and not do damage. Thank you for doing this. Yes, I agree, John. 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 read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, Available in Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

This is a new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, Available in Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.