Stage Deliverance - How Fear Replaced Faith

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

Cheno, I'm a little bit excited to talk about this one today because this is something that affected me so much and it affects so many people today. I can read through the comment feeds and I can see people who are just really struggling with it and they don't know that they're struggling with it. But this idea of this stage version of deliverance, I'm going to start using that phrase. It's a stage version of deliverance. The Bible does talk about, you know, people who are casting out demons and the sick and they afflicted in all of this. But what

they did with Latter-Rain is they turned it into a stage act and there's a few reasons why they did this. But the story that I'm going to open with is I and it'll make everybody mad. So you get, hang on to the seizure pants. You're probably going to get mad at me. I read books like Crazy when I was a kid because we didn't have a TV for a large part of my life and I would bicycle to the library and bring home these two big paper sacks full of books and I'd read them almost every week. I'd get two sack fools. One day I picked up a copy of the

shining. I'd never heard of it. And I did not know at that time that Stephen King was this thing that's taboo in all of this movement. I just read it and it was a good book. I couldn't put it down, but it was talking about people who were filled with mental demons and I started comparing that to some of the things that I heard in the sermons. Fast forward to today's world. Right before we left the religion, I started hearing people talking about Stephen King and they said the reason why he is so good at that is because he invites

all these demons in his house and the real demons and they're communicating with them. And even then I thought, you know, that's really stupid. I don't really believe that. But that was what we were supposed to believe. And the long story short, it was a stage version of this demon angels realm that got people so scared that I knew people that were just scared to walk outside. They might accidentally catch a demon and we did not have a God that would protect us from it. I think that's the biggest key which we'll get into today. But needless to

say, this this thing has trapped so many minds and has so many people so uptight that they can't even really communicate with each other. They're so afraid of it. And so I'm excited to talk about this one.

Yeah, I suppose it may be the two big threads of experience and discussion and practice in the Pentecostal movement of the 40s and 50s and on up into the 60s and 70s was healing on one hand and deliverance on the other. So it was healing and deliverance. I mean we hear those words and read of those two concepts all the time. Healing and deliverance. And you know we spent a long time. It's just been a couple of years talking about Dr. Freeman's views with regard to divine healing. That's what he was really known for on the one hand and it gave him

gave him a big platform. It also engendered a lot of negative publicity whenever the healing method didn't work the way he had said that it would. So you know we spent a lot of time on that.

And Hobart's view was definitely more extreme than you'll find in some of the other ministers and teachers where for Dr. Freeman it was no medicine, no drugs, no doctors. They had come up with this little cute understanding of what MD stood for medical deities because he said the doctors in the hospitals are like gods today and you have to obey them and believe them. So Hobart it outlawed all doctors, all medicine, all drugs and we saw the repercussions of that.

You know the healings were few and far between they weren't documented you know to try to document or substantiate anything would be you know being something akin to doubting Thomas and you just need to believe and you don't need verification. And I understand all of that rationale and in a perfect world I could agree with that rationale. Yeah we don't need any verification because we're all on the up and up and and we would never deceive or mislead anyone. So in a perfect world I'm with you on that but we don't live in a perfect world and so when someone says such and such God

healed you know I want to know what did they have and how do we know that they got healed and was it a sore back that you know they prayed and seven days later they were healed that could have been seven days of rest might have healed that back. So I'm not a big fan of things like that.

I'm just not and I don't see that in the pages of I'm sure, we all have sore backs and we all get over it eventually. If you've got a broken back, if you're blind, if you're deaf, if you're dumb, if you're dead, that's another matter.

And those are the things that we see happening in the New Testament. And so we spend a lot of time on that, the healing side, because that's what really affected people in their physical lives, in ways which we could see.

And we could talk about and we could know. This other area, John, is probably just as important and just as significant and just as dangerous. And that's this deliverance side, where Dr. Freeman and the ministers that came under him and after him were getting into people's minds.

This is a psychological attempt to try to analyze these people. And then pinpoint, well, the reason that you have this problem or hang up is because you have a demon. You have a door that's been opened to demonic oppression or depression or sometimes they would even go to the big word possession.

They'd like to tip toe around all the actions there. And they hated to get to the possession because then they were worried about, well, can a Christian who is full of Jesus really also have a demon living in them also.

We'll talk about that not today, but in the future because Hobart just had some really odd and crazy views there. But I think that the deliverance teaching under Dr. Freeman was terribly damaging in the lives of the followers.

Maybe not in a way that we can document, like we can document the healing side. If someone said they threw away their medication for kidney disease or diabetes or something and then they died, well, we know right away that didn't work and so that created a problem.

When we come over to this area of demons and deliverance, this is all invisible and in the spiritual world. And so it's a little harder to get your hands on it and to get a handle on it.

But I do think that it has caused every bit as much damage and maybe even more than the healing and physical teaching that Dr. Freeman did. The physical teaching, the physical healing side of his ministry, that could kill you.

And it did kill a lot of people. And let's don't forget, it killed Dr. Freeman himself. When he died, he weighed less. 130 pounds and he was over six feet tall. This was what was normally a big man, a large man, and he wasted away because he refused all medical treatment, all drugs, no doctors.

He wouldn't even take some natural remedies that someone was bringing to his house and knocking on the door and trying to give to him. And from what we know from the medical reports, even the bandages on his feet or his ankles were barely changed.

And you could argue going down the path of Freeman's view on divine healing that even to put a bandage on, wouldn't that be a confession that you have an issue, that you say you don't have?

I mean, I don't know anyone, John, including hope or Freeman, that logically followed that teaching, which was his own teaching to the end. He might have followed it better than other people did and there's no glory in the hat because it was a false teaching and he killed himself because of it.

But even he didn't follow that completely. If your foot is healed, you don't need to wear a shoe with a lift in it because you don't need a lift. I don't wear a shoe with a lift because both of my legs are even.

The only person who would wear a shoe with a lift in it is someone who's not healed. And the only one who would wrap a bandage around their foot or ankle is someone who has the need of wrapping that, which means that you're not healed.

So it was craziness, it was insanity coming and going. And I think that's where people need to come down and decide am I going to wouldn't headedly hold on to a verse in the Bible that I think is saying this on my just gonna face the facts of reality and the same thing can be said with demons and deliverance.

So in the last few episodes, I've beat you to the point. And today you beat me to what I was gonna build up to. And that is the fact that if you take a step back and you're not in this worldview, no matter which group it is, Brannum's Freeman's, a New Apostolic Reformation, Charismania, any of these groups, it becomes circular reasoning.

Just like you said, you can't say that somebody's demon possessed and also say that a Christian has protection from God and they can't be demon possessed, but they do it. They actually say both.

And where this comes from, we've mentioned before, Brannum learned from Bosworth, Bosworth learned from Dauy. Dauy had this problem where he kept getting exposed. And people were dying by the dozens in his healing homes.

And he had to have an explanation. Well, obviously the demons came in and got him, you know? And whenever somebody got sick and they couldn't be healed with the demons, they're really fighting in them.

But it's the circular reasoning. If you're preaching a God of protection, you can't preach that they're unprotected. So what it did in the end. and was it created this worldview that was so far different from reality.

Like you said, it's insanity, but they're so far out of touch with reality that they begin to think that everything negative that happens to them is because of a demon, everything. And I hate to say it, but as somebody who has a lot of bad luck things happen, which I do, I can tell you with assurance that some of it, maybe not all, but some of it comes from the fact that I do things too fast, I do things too quickly, and I attempt things that nobody else in their right mind would do.

I will go. In other words, it's not demonic. It's not demonic. I will go work on something that I've never worked on before, just to see if I can do it and also to say a heck of a lot of money.

Well, sometimes I'll make mistakes because I've never done it before. Or some of these skilled things that you really need training for, I'll attempt it, and I'll get my little Google out and see, well, how does this other guy do it?

We start to have things happen to you, and you can't say that's a demon, you can say that's John Collins's fault, right? Well, I'm one of these people that does that, but think about the people who don't.

People who are just ordinary people, live their lives, go to church, go home, go to their job, and something happens at work. Maybe there's an accident at work, they drop something on their foot, their foot hurts.

In this world view, there are demons out everywhere in the world, so you walk to your office, well, there's demons in your office. Branham initiated this to a large scale because every meeting, every revival he would open up, he would say things on this order.

Before I begin praying this prayer line, I'm going to take every spirit in this building under my control. Now, to the people who are sitting there, they're being told, this is comforting. This man has control of every spirit in the building, be comfort, but, A, you're being comforted by the human, not by the God, and B, the flip side of that is this is a building filled with demons, man, when we walked in it, they were filled with demons.

Well, what happens when you go into a building and that man is not in the building? Now you're sitting there thinking, oh my gosh, I wish that man was here, so that man can protect me, and the man can't be everywhere to protect you, but you've been trained to believe that the human is your protection, not God.

So it created this worldview where deliverance became, basically it became this fear-based worldview where you must live in fear because these demons will get you. We talked a few weeks ago about the passage shown in Matthew 18, binding and losing, and I think we probably all been in a service where a minister will do just what you said William Branham would do.

I've been in my share of these, where a minister before a charismatic minister, including Dr. Freeman, I've heard him do it, and I've heard people down to this day do it. These... minister stand up and they pray these audacious prayers that it's impossible for that prayer to be answered. It's just impossible. It's a megalomaniac type of prayer. It's not a humble prayer. Lord, be with me as I try to teach your word. That'd be a Christian prayer to pray. Lord, please help me and please be with me. But the ministers who stand up and say,

I bind every spirit in this meeting, you don't have the power to do that. Or the minister who says,

Lord, I'm praying, he'll even address God and say, Lord, I'm praying that every idle fault and every person's mind will be subdued and that every mind will be perfectly attuned to the word of God. In a perfect world, that would be wonderful. But you know, that doesn't happen. People's thoughts just fire off, you know, left and right during a minister's message, even the most faithful follower. You think you have the power to bring his thoughts into subjection, to listen to what you have to say. Oh, my word. Yeah. And I don't know and did not know what William

Brannum's teachings and beliefs were when it came to demons and deliverance. But let's remind ourselves, John, that when Hobart, he got this, he received his charismatic experience in March of 1966. And then in June of the same year, he went down to Dallas, Texas to Gordon Lindsay's get together. It was a two week conference. And what was it? It was a deliverance conference.

We put up the advertisements that you have on your website for that very two week experience. It was a it wasn't a healing. I mean, they talked about healing for sure and faith and prophecy and the end times and everything. But how it was marketed was this is a deliverance seminar or deliverance conference. And in the small print below the advertisement, they said they're going to teach you how to cast out devils and always laugh over that because the New Testament Greek clearly distinguishes between devil. There's only one of those. And it clearly distinguishes in the Greek. The King James unfortunately doesn't. But the Greek your Greek New Testament does.

There is only one devil. There's only one Satan. He's the accuser. He's the adversary. And there's another Greek word used for demons. And there are many of them. So when I and see that in someone who's going to be my teacher on demons and deliverance, and you don't even know that there's no such thing as casting out devils.

There is such a thing as casting out demons, but there's no such thing as casting out devils, and you're gonna be the teacher of that topic. I think I'll pass on sitting in on your teaching there.

I mean, that's just elementary stuff there. I didn't know how much of this Hobart got from Gordon Lindsay, how much he got from Brannum, but I know there was just a whole lot going on in the 1960s, and there still is today, unfortunately, 50 years later when it comes to deliverance.

And look, John, I know I get accused occasionally of not believing in divine supernatural healing, but I do believe in divine supernatural healing. Divine healing means a supernatural healing means from God. Supernatural divine healing, not a sore back, not a headache, not a toe ache.

I don't believe in any of that stuff, but I mean someone who really has a need. I do believe in divine supernatural healing, and I wish I'm not opposed to it at all. I'm opposed to all of the nonsense and counterfeit around the real thing.

I wish we could see a lot more of it. I wish I had the power. I mean, that would be wonderful. I'm not opposed to the power of God healing people at all. I wish I had the power where I could go around and lay hands on blind people and deaf people and dumb people and see miracles happen, but I don't.

And I would be the first to say, I don't have that power. And I haven't met anybody yet who has that power. And I was talking with someone about this the other day and the same would be true with casting out demons.

I wish I could just walk into a crazy house and say, all of you are set free in Jesus' name and they become hair combed, clean shaven. Now they can go out and get a job, hold down a job and go rent an apartment.

I don't have the power to do that. I don't have the authority to do that. And again, I wish I did or if I did and I wish you did or if you did and I wish someone did, I would love to see people help.

But I was talking with someone the other day about this and I said, you know, we've heard for all these years the power that all these ministers have. I have gifts of healing. It only operates in my left hand.

It begins to tingle when the gifts of healing are in operation. And I'm not saying someone doesn't have gifts of healing in their hand. We just heard so much about that and I was talking with someone I said, can you imagine if any of us did have that power?

I mean, I don't think I could keep my head on straight. I don't think I could keep my feet on the ground. I said, really, we talk about, we talk about all this stuff, but let's try to slow down and pretend that it is true.

And where does that lead us? Where do we end up? If you or I, John, had the power, we could go around and raise dead people. I mean, dead people, doorknob, dead people. Not people who have closed their eyes and stopped breathing for 10 seconds.

I mean, last year it's dead people. If we could raise the dead and open blind eyes, what do you think that would do to our own psyche? I don't know, I don't know of any humans that could handle that.

They would go off the deep end. So Paul and the early apostles, they did see these miracles happen in their lives and they evidently continue to be very grounded, mature men of God. I don't think I could handle that in my life and I don't know that other people out there could handle in their life.

And I'll say one other thing and then I'll shut up and let you talk. I'm as aware of the verses in the Bible guys out there in YouTube land as the next person is.

I'm aware of what Mark 1123 says, whoever shall say to this mountain, be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things that he saith will come to pass, he can have whatsoever he saith.

I know that's in the Bible, I'm very aware of that verse. And that's where they get the spoken word because saith, saith, saith keeps appearing. All you have to say is you can speak to this mountain and Hobart used to say, now there was a mountain, a real literal mountain in the immediate vicinity and he probably looked at the apostles and said, whoever shall say to this mountain, uproot itself and throw itself into the sea.

That is in the Bible. That is a verse in the Bible. It is Mark 1123, followed by Mark 1124 that were the hallmark of Kenneth Hagen's ministry that Hobart borrowed slash stole from Hagen and made it appear like that was his ministry and those were his verses.

I'm aware of that verse. I know what it says. And I know more than you want to tamper with God's word and make it say or mean something that it doesn't. But having said all of that,

I think we also hand in hand with reading and studying God's word and being a lover of scripture. I'm a lover and a reader of God's word and I want to obey it and want to believe it and I don't want to try to make it say something that it doesn't really say.

But having said. that whole of that. My question to people is, have you ever removed a mountain and thrown it into the sea with your spoken word? Well, you know, no, I haven't, but it says that. I know it says that. We're agreed on that. Those are the literal words, but have you ever done that? And then my follow up question is, do you know anyone in the history of the universe who's ever done that? And of course, we all say, well, no, then I would say, well, then we should maybe slow down for just a moment. We're not tampering with God's

word, but if God's word says that, that we can just tell a mountain to move, then why hasn't anyone ever done it? Why has God put something in the Bible that no one has ever done because it's not possible to do? Then where I would go with that, John, I would say, then maybe by understanding of the passage is not accurate. I mean, you have to end up there. And people are so afraid to question anything in the Bible, but I don't think that's doubting God or questioning God. It's looking at a passage, Mark 11, 23, all you have to do is say,

and don't doubt, say it in the mountain, we'll move. It's looking at the passage, but then it's saying, all right, I also want to look at reality. Has anyone ever done that? And then if you fall back on the excuse, well, no one's done it because everyone is doubted in their heart. Oh, come on, you can't have your cake and eat it too. You're trying to find a way to make that verse happen, but that you're saying, but no, it never has and never can because we're all doubters. Then why would Jesus even have said that? My

argument would be the verse probably means something other than what we think it means. And not just something other than we think it means. Think of the levels of complexity. There are also aspects of the culture that was writing the passage. It's basically an understanding, that we have an understanding of what they wrote, but also they had an understanding of the worldview as they could see it. And the best example that I can give for this, if you read Leviticus chapter 14, I think it is, it talks about whenever a house has leprosy.

And that was their understanding. The house has leprosy. They put stones together, and if it develops leprosy, you call the priest and he prays for the leprosy. And if that doesn't work, basically what it's telling you and teaching you is how to remove mold from your hut.

That's really all it was. But in their worldview, that was leprosy. And leprosy in that worldview was also a demon. That's why the priest would have to pray for it. So in their worldview and their understanding, that's how it was. Now, one of the biggest problems that infected this movement, the movement that Hobart came from, Brannum came from, All of this was infected by Christian fundamentalism.

When you read a passage, it is explicitly stated exactly, and you can't think outside the box with culture, genre, all of the different attributes of the text. It must be as we understand it in today's language and today's English, which doesn't work with leprosy of your rocks of your hut.

So whenever I mentioned things like in that world view, they would also pray for a person with infection, and they would say this person with infection has a demon, let's cast out the demon.

In my world view, God has the understanding to know, well, they're talking about something that is an infection, but God still has the power to heal it. In the fundamentalist world view, you can't think this way.

You must think it must be a demon, so therefore, it must be cleansed. And take the rock situation, the leprosy of the rock. We understand how bacteria works and bacterial infections work today, because in a microscope, we can see the little bugs going around, and we know how to kill the little bugs and wipe out, eradicate the bacteria.

Think of carpenter ants. I've got a spot in my garage that I'm having to repair because carpenter ants got into it. Well, I can see the ants, I see them moving around, and I'm not going to say that my garage has leprosy.

I'm not going to say that there's a demon in my garage, but what this world view did was it trained people to believe that every single thing must be taken literally, and it must literally be a demon.

That was the two coordination, the two effect proposition that they were pushing. And what happened was people started to fear these things that were demons and started to reject any science. So if science had a microscope and looked and saw the bugs, and we have this medicine that can literally eradicate those bugs, like I could get ants prey and spray my, I will get ants prey, spray my garage, I'll kill the ants, I know how to kill it, because I see them.

Well, Dowie was having people reject medical science. That they're all wrong, that's all wrong. It is a demon, and you therefore cannot take medicine. Fast forward to the latter rain, they couldn't do it because people were being sued and put into jail by the government for doing this.

People were dying over it. Well, then Hobart tried to revert it back to Dowie's doctrine. You must get rid of the medicine. So in his worldview, he rejected the idea that we can see the bacteria, we can kill the bacteria.

If it's a cancer, we know the virus, we can see the virus growing and the cell is regenerating, but he had to reject all of that and say that science is basically of the devil.

You having said that, I'm gonna go down another path, and I wasn't gonna go down, John, but still talking about deliverance. And I don't know all that you have heard in your whole Christian life when it comes to demons and deliverance.

I bet it's gonna be very similar. to what I have heard in my life concerning demons and deliverance. We talk so much about healing, but now we are going to take this new big task ahead of us and try to understand Hobart Freeman's views on demons and deliverance. We are waiting into the weeds and the weeds are very tall whenever we begin discussing this. It's just a fascinating subject. We're not going to get very far, but let me just say for people listening, we will continue to discuss this over the upcoming weeks. I have frequently, John Benaz, because we've talked, I probably

enough about divine healing, but I have frequently been asked, Chenna, when are you going to talk about deliverance? Because I still have so many questions. And there's one sister in particular. So here we are today, dear sister, we are talking about it. But there are a lot of people that have asked me, when are you going to talk about that? So what that tells me, John, is that here 40 years later, maybe they are okay on the healing issue, maybe they wear glasses, they take ibuprofen, they go to the doctor, they're okay in that area. And I think a lot of them are.

They saw me going without eyeglasses for 15 years, my eyes are no better, they're actually worse. And so they went and got some glasses. So they're okay in that area. This area of mental health, this area of mental health, this is the demonic deliverance area, they're not thriving. They're not healthy in that area. And it's because they have all of these carryovers of what Dr.

Freeman has said. And what Dr. Freeman said about these things resonates in their ears so loudly that they just cannot be free from that. I have a clip in mind, having just said that, that we're going to listen to from one of his tapes in the Book of Acts, which was done a long time ago, if my memory serves me correctly, 1974. But I think that the biggest fear, if not the biggest one of the biggest fears that the followers of Freeman still carry with them today is this false sense of that man's status of who he was. He presented himself as God spokesman

as all of these ministers have. I am the mouthpiece of God. And when these ministers stand up in the pulpit, then it's almost like the Roman Catholic Pope when he is speaking, as the Catholics say, ex-Cathedra, he is the mouthpiece.

of God and he cannot err. When I stand up and preach or teach, I am not the mouthpiece of God. I'm my own mouthpiece. I am trying to accurately teach what I think the text has said, but these ministers went far beyond that. And they created in the minds of their followers this fear to criticize anything about them because as soon as they stood in the pulpit, they were under the anointing. And they were God's minister, prophet, teacher, pastor, apostle, whatever, but they were God's spokesmen. And so consequently, if they are God's spokesmen, then to criticize

them is to criticize God. And to criticize God would be to place oneself in the position of maybe receiving some kind of divine judgment. And that is exactly the path the ministers went down and exactly the path they wanted the people's minds to go down. So there is a message you can find on YouTube. It was in the Book of Acts series on chapter 17. It was entitled Proving and Practicing the Word. Very early on in this message, you could start at the 13-minute mark and listen for a minute and 12 seconds. Go to the 14-minute and 12-second mark.

And we need to be admonished about this. There is no such thing as having the right to my opinion, as most Christians feel they have, in politics, our religion. You know, they say, well, yes, he's standing in the pulpit, that's his opinion. I've got a right to mind. I wish you'd look at Matthew 10-40 and see what Jesus has to say about his word and his messenger, that he sends with the word. This isn't setting the messenger up to be something that isn't, but it's certainly a warning that we need to be careful. How we hear, verse 40, he that receiveeth you receiveeth

me. I wanted you to see it, friends. I know you've heard it. I'm sure you've read it. But I wanted you to see that he is equating his messenger with himself, with respect to his message. To receive the messenger is to receive Christ. And God can't make it any planer.

Then he makes it here in Acts 10-40, that to reject the messenger is to reject Jesus Christ. And so what Hobart does there is he is wanting to remind the people that, and he goes back, I think, to Matthew 10 and verse 40, which actually is not talking to me or Hobart. That was a passage in reference to the apostles when he sent him- out. When he sent the apostles out, he said, whoever receives you receives me because he had specifically and personally commissioned them in the first few verses of Matthew 10.

So when Hobart reads the Bible, John, or when he read the Bible, everything is talking to and about him. You know, he totally loses the context of what's being said and to whom it's being said, as you just said earlier in what the context of that day and age and the generation. I mean, this is Jesus in his in his first coming physically, bodily on the earth, commissioning the 12 apostles with great authority. He said, you can go out and heal the sick and cleanse the lepers and raise the dead freely. You've received freely give. I commission you. I give you the authority and I give you the power to

do that. And when they came back, they and the 70, they rejoiced that everything he said came to pass. They did have that power. Well, when we read that, that is a wonderful historical account that is not speaking to us. If you, if you reject me, when I stand up in the pulpit, you have not necessarily rejected God. You have only rejected God if what I said accurately represented God and you reject that. But you can reject me all day long and be fine in God's eyes. You know, that doesn't affect your standing with God at all. Has

nothing to do with it at all. I would not be so pompous and arrogant as to think that, these ministers were. So, you know, he said, we need to be admonished that to receive Hobart Freeman is to receive Jesus Christ and to reject Hobart Freeman is to reject Jesus Christ. That is just horrible exegesis. That's horrible manipulation of the people. But what got me on this in the first place, Sean, was I think this is the biggest fear that so many of the followers, the ones who are still Freemanites, they definitely believe this.

The ones who've listened to these podcasts and who've gone through the process of purging some of this Freemanism craziness out of their life, that's still in the back of their mind because they tell me it's still back there. I just have this fear of rejecting or criticizing anything that Hobart taught. And I don't know who the fool was. That first found some 10515 and began using it to beat the sheep over the head, touched not mind anointed and do my prophets know harm. I don't know who the first fool was that found that.

But that's a horrible thing to do. The shepherd is there to serve the sheep, not vice versa. Woe to the shepherd is what Ezekiel says that harmed the sheep, not woe. are the sheep, because they don't exactly agree with what the minister has said.

And you beat me to point number two, I've used the word sorcerer a few times, but that's really what these people are trying to portray themselves as. What it did when you create this world view, and you're up on stage and you're the one who understands this world view, now everybody in the audience looks to you as the gatekeeper of this world view.

You're the one who you go through, and you can't touch that person, touch not God's anointed. That person becomes the, whether it's a prophet or a apostle or whatever they call themselves, they basically become the sorcerer.

They're the ones step out on stage, I take every demon under here, under my power, under my control, and it's like if you're watching Lord of the Rings and the great wizard comes out and stretches forth his hands, that's what they're trying to do.

They're trying to put on that stage act. The problem is, again, once the sorcerer is out of the picture, now how are the people protected? And so what happened was there were enough people, and some of them ministers of churches, they wanted to understand, okay, well, how do I protect the people?

Like you're protecting the people in these conventions. So they started holding these deliverance seminars, the one that you mentioned that Hobart went to, they tried to teach people how to become sorcerers. And what they were teaching, while yes, the word deliverer might be in the Bible, the way that they're doing it isn't, because they're putting the power in the human.

It's not telling the people, pray to God, and you can do this in your house. You can go to your own home, and you can do exactly what I'm doing here, just pray. It wasn't that.

They wanted to bring people attracted to the stage act. So they wanted to train these ministers that they too can take people under the power and control, but they'll never step up to the level of the grand wizard.

The grand wizard has it all. And therefore you need to come to our convention and pay our money and learn how to do it. And you mentioned the word deliverer. You said the other word deliver does occur and absolutely does, deliver us from evil.

And the Greek probably means it's probably a masculine ending to that, deliver us from the evil one. It's in the model prayer and in the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 10. Yeah, the word deliverer appears a lot in the Bible, and the word deliverance appears a lot in the Bible, but what does that mean?

You know, when you have come out of or when you are a part of this whole healing, deliverance, movement, and revival, when you see that word deliverance, you have been programmed to think of nothing, but demons.

That's what you think of. You think when you see deliverance, you go, oh, that's a deliverance ministry. That's like laying on of hands and casting out demons. That's a deliverance ministry. Let me just show you.

I'm going to show you. show everyone an incredible occurrence of this in Dr. Freeman's ministry. And when I, I always wanna include myself as a guilty party because when I was 17 and 18 and 19 and 20,

I had been trained by Hobart, so I was a Freemanite. And so I saw things through his lens, not through my own. I didn't have the maturity, I didn't have the intelligence. I didn't have the training, I didn't have the schooling.

You know, I didn't have all the things that you need in order to not fall into a religious cult, such as was led by Dr. Freeman. And once I was able to get free from that, then when I read the Bible, I read it carefully and I read it critically.

Critically, to read something critically doesn't mean to criticize it. Those are two entirely different words. To read something critically, means you're reading it carefully, you're looking at the words, you're looking at the context, you are keeping in your mind, the authorship, you're keeping in mind, the readership, you're keeping in mind, the date, that's all we mean when we say, read critically, we don't mean read with criticism and criticize, we mean just pay attention to what you're reading.

And now we do that. And I hope a lot of people from listening to these podcasts, yours in mind and yours with other people, John, and wherever they are learning this in their life, that they are learning, it's okay, God's not gonna throw a lightning bolt at you because you're looking at a passage that you thought meant this and you're saying, I'm not so sure it means that.

Maybe after you go through all of your study of that, you end up with your original position, so be it, you know? But maybe you don't, maybe you don't. And meanwhile, do you think God is angry with you because you're going to carefully look at a passage frontwards, backwards, inside, outside?

No, he's not angry and no, you're not gonna be struck down with a lightning bolt because you do that. I don't think we should be critical or criticize the Bible, but we should carefully and critically study the text scripture to make sure we know what's going on.

So back to my illustration with Dr. Freeman. This actually comes, John, from not one of his pop sermons on four keys to divine healing, three steps to keeping your deliverance. You know, he just had a plethora of garbage messages like that.

But this was actually in his so-called theological school that he was teaching there back in the glory barn days. This was in 1975 in the glory barn days. Cory Barn, when he was teaching Old Testament survey.

How can you go wrong in teaching just a survey class? Well, when you're a charismatic maniac, like Hobart was, you can easily go wrong. And I've had other people say, well, you know, I'm not gonna listen to any of Dr. Freeman's messages on faith and healing and deliverance, but I think he did okay when it came to his more theological studies.

And I've told him, absolutely not. There is poison throughout. And right when you are listening to maybe something that is free from Cara's maniac deception because he's talking about the authorship of an Old Testament book or the dating of that book.

Before you know it, he sees a word in that book. And then he just falls right off the slope into, in this case, talking about deliverance. So you're not gonna believe it, but this is on a message in Old Testament survey where he was discussing Ezekiel and Obadaya.

How can you go wrong talking about the little one chapter book of Obadaya? Actually, you have to go to the very end of the message, the 51 minute and 42nd mark. Let me read because he's on the last verse of Obadaya.

So I've got Obadaya opened here. First of all, he read verse 17, upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance. Oh no, there's that word. This is Obadaya, maybe eight or nine centuries before Christ is this prophecy.

Mount Zion, probably speaking of Mount Zion, but you can always spiritualize that. And somehow that's the body of Christ, that's the church. Upon Mount Zion will be deliverance. And there will be holiness in the house of Jacob, shall possess their possessions.

And then when he gets down to verse 21 and saviors, which can also be translated delivers, delivers shall come up on Mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau and the kingdom shall be the Lord's.

There's the last verse in that little pre-exilic minor prophet, Obadaya. Well, that's significant, verse 21. That deliverance will come. And that speaks not just of deliverance for Israel, but these end time deliverance ministries and deliverance in the body of Christ.

You see, there are various levels of spiritual truth. And the speaks of deliverance coming to the body of Christ, too. Just to show everyone, because you mentioned a few moments ago, John, that, well, the word deliver does appear in the Bible.

And I just want people to see when Hobart saw the word, Leverance, I don't care if it's in Leviticus, Second Chronicles, Obadiah, because his mind is just trained to think casting out of demons.

What did he just say? He said, now that's significant. That speaks Obadiah 21. You know, I just put a pistol to my head and just fire the trigger that anybody would be this horrible in the way they handle God's word.

That speaks of these end time deliverance ministries. Really and deliverance in the body of Christ is talking about they're going to judge the amount of Esau and Mount Zion. You see, there are various levels of spiritual truth.

Oh boy, is that a worm hole that you never can crawl back out of? As soon as someone says that that's just a catchphrase for I can make this mean anything I want it to mean.

You see, there are various levels of spiritual truth. One level is what Obadiah said. And the other level is what Hobart wants to make it mean. And this speaks of deliverance coming to the body of Christ.

You know, John, I know I'm kind of sounding harsh here, but that's just junk scholarship. That is junk scholarship and has nothing to do with Obadiah. There's not a single reputable old testament, theologian biblical scholar who would agree with that at all. Hobart would be on an island by himself. They would say that is not what Obadiah is talking about. That's not on the surface. Neither is that the deeper meaning of it. The deeper meaning is the same meaning that's on the surface. Whatever Obadiah said and meant by that, that's the meaning. What it meant

always say is what it means. What it meant is what it means. You can't read something back into that. But that's a classic example of Hobart thinking that every time he sees deliverance, you know, he doesn't think of deliverance from sin, which sometimes that's the context in which the word is. That's not it here, but he would never think of deliverance from sin because John 3.16, oh, that's just basic elementary Christianity. Everybody has that. We don't even care about deliverance from sin. We want deliverance from demons where I would I would reverse that, John. I would say

the biggest message is John 3.16. The biggest message is our deliverance from sin and the gift of eternal life we have received. But if Hobart sees that word deliverance, he does not want that to have anything to do with anything other than demon deliverance because that's the way his mind has been trained. I've talked about this a few times in other podcasts series, but there was a deep level of the occult that came into the Latter-Rain movement.

And we have strong evidence that shows that Brandon was going to spiritualist camps, et cetera. So keep that thought. And now think of the way the occult handles this exact type of thing. Whenever you go to somebody for your healing in the occult, but picture going to, I don't know what you call these people, the medium, the lady with the crystal ball, the one who can tell you your futures, well, in that worldview, you go to the person because there is a special person that you have to go to for your healing or for your peering into the future.

What it did was it created ways in which the person who has the power to heal you, the one who's thrown the tarot cards and throws out the healing card or whatever. You're going to that person because they can tie every single thing to the spirit world.

And you go there and you may not have even known, it was supposed to be a spiritual thing, but they'll tell you it was a spiritual thing. So you're depending on the gifted personalities who understand how the spirit world works.

They know how to curse people, how to take a curse from people. They know how to basically manipulate the person who's sitting in the room with them. And everything that I just said there, actually was my list of deliverance ministers, but they both fit exactly like this because that's what they did.

They were taking the training that apparently some people had learned from going to these spiritualist camps. Well, I can do that in my ministry too, and I can create a stage act and I can manipulate the people.

The crowds can understand that I am the all-powerful. They can come to me for all of their diseases. Now every dollar that they would be given a doctor, they'll be putting in my offering basket.

That's how deceptive this was, and that's really what they created. And in the end, yes, there were probably people healed, but there you can talk to a person who's going to the spiritualist for their healing.

They'll tell you the same thing. Yeah, sometimes people got healed, but the batting average is pretty low. That's really the thing that's odd here. In both cases, the batting average is really, really low.

And in the end, it comes out to this question, is it really of God? Because that doesn't seem like God would have such a low batting average. And more to the point, if you're borrowing this type of theology from spiritualist and from the occult, is it really a movement that's by God?

And that's the question I've been asking forever. I can't really put my finger on anything that they're doing that even sounds remotely biblical, but they'll tell you that it is. And what's so interesting in Ironic John is that, hope I had all these publications.

This was his famous little track on occult, oppression and bondage, how to be set free, and his... Famous little book angels of light that you know probes end off. He had a fascination with the occult. We're going to talk about that later. We don't have time today. But it's ironic after what you just said that yeah, he has books on these very topics because he delved into that deeply and heavily because he was interested and he thought that he would be able to help people from that. I know we're about out of time, John. I just want to close with one other

verse that comes to mind. I wonder how many people out there in the charismatic listening audience know what second Timothy 17 says. A lot of people are going to know what second Timothy 17 says. Here's another case of we just looked at the word deliverance when Hobart sees a word deliverance. Then he just thinks deliverance ministries and he forces that back into Obadiah. I feel so sorry for the poor prophet Obadiah. He forces this back into Obadiah verse 21. Second Timothy 17 says, for God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and

of love and of a sound mind. God has not given us what? Well again, here's Hobart Freeman. Every time he sees the word spirit, he says what to himself, demon. And so this was a very popular verse and a popular misuse of it. Hobart said that fear is a demon. That if you are afraid, you have a demon because and you know what he would then say, that's what the Bible says. And here's that cherry picking again. Well, we've got a verse that does say a spirit of fear. How many people could we read about from Abraham through Moses through David through Peter through the Apostle Paul who said,

I fear in second Corinthians, you know, let's I betrothed you to Christ and someone has come and deceived you. How many men of God said I fear in the Bible? So let's make two and two equal four than all those men had a demon because they feared. I don't think that's what Paul is saying in second Timothy 17 when he says God has not given us a spirit. He's not saying that fear is a demon.

He goes on to say, but of power and of love and of the sound mind. So is there a spirit called power in a spirit called love and a spirit called sound mind? No, it's obvious what Paul is saying is the Holy Spirit which has been given to us is not one that's going to lead us down a path of fear, but is one that will lead us with the fruit of the spirit and with these other things down these other paths with these other graces and benefits in our life. That's a classy example of someone wouldn't leave reading a text and because they have a text and you say,

well, you know, you can't overcome that, you know, it's that spirit of fear. So fear is a spirit. I don't think that's what Paul is saying at all there. And I just think we need to be very careful when we reach scripture and make sure we read it wanting to understand what it says and not hoping to find confirmation of a position or belief that we already hold.

You know, for me, the biggest problem with the sorcerer type mentality, you're looking to a human instead of God and therefore your trust is built up in that human. What about for the people who desperately needed healing and it did not happen? Now their worldview has crumbled before them and their view of God because their view of God was through this person. Now their view of God is tainted. And I know a lot of people. I know there's a guy who contacts me frequently whose mother died and could have lived had she just got the medication. And in, in randomism, they didn't

forbid you, but what they would do is they would ridicule the doctors and the medicine and the medical industry. And people would think, well, I must have perfect faith so that I can get healed without that. Otherwise, I've got lesser faith. That's the mentality that they give you.

What happens when it doesn't work? And I know people like this person that I'm referring to they'll never want to sit back, put back in church unless something changes in their heart because why would you? That was a false God. This thing that they're telling me is God, that's not God.

My mother just died from it. That's what happens in this type of mentality. It is so damaging. In so many different ways, it rips families apart. It's bad. And that's one of the things.

One of the reasons why I get so excited when I want to talk about this topic, but also get angry. And I think it's, it comes out of my face. You can see me flush. I really get angry at people being manipulated because the people can't help it. People who are trapped in the, even some of the people who are preaching it, they can't help it because that's the world view they've been trained with. And they're just going to repeat what they heard. It is so damaging and I think it really just really needs to stop. So thank you for helping me do this.

Well, I share your sentiments on that, John. And we will continue the next few weeks talking about, I guess we've got a new name for him now, Hobart Gypsy Freeman. Absolutely. 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-Pranum.org. For more about the dark side of the new Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.