Support the show:
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
John and Chino explore the early life, theology, and myth-building of Hobart Freeman, comparing his teachings to William Branham and the broader Word of Faith and Latter Rain movements. They reflect on how historic events like the 1937 flood were mythologized for spiritual capital, and how difficult childhood experiences and personal illness may have shaped Freeman’s obsession with healing and prosperity. John draws a connection between the desperate search for healing and the susceptibility to fantasy narratives, likening Freeman’s storytelling to the over-the-top promises found in comic book ads of the 1950s.
Chino brings in firsthand accounts of early Freeman followers, including one who studied both Bible and psychology to understand Freeman’s psyche. They highlight how critical thinking and knowing a minister’s background can protect people from manipulation. Through humor, personal stories, and pointed examples, the discussion illustrates how simplistic, gimmick-style preaching replaced serious, contextual teaching. The hosts argue that many spiritual leaders used personal suffering as fuel for exaggerated theology, which not only hurt their followers but ultimately ensnared them as well.
00:00 Introduction
01:04 Historic Flooding and Sob Stories in Faith Movements
05:12 The 1937 Flood and William Branham’s Mythmaking
07:11 Separating Truth from Fiction in Personal Testimonies
08:42 Mythology vs. Biblical Teaching in Branham and Freeman
10:00 Knowing Your Minister: Background and Accountability
12:09 Hobart Freeman’s Background of Poverty and Transformation
13:26 Health Struggles and the Allure of Healing Teachings
16:50 Deliverance Theology vs. Fleshly Struggles
18:04 Blurring Lines Between Sermons, Stories, and Small Talk
19:22 Caution and Discernment in Evaluating Ministers
21:47 Freeman’s Childhood Illnesses and Divine Preservation Narrative
29:06 Freeman’s “Children of Providence” and Moses Complex
35:03 Smoking, Health Damage, and Theological Misapplication
37:42 Desperation, Gullibility, and Faith-Based Claims in the 50s
42:00 Freeman’s Comparison to Moses and Elitist Spiritual Identity
46:05 Overemphasis on Healing Due to Personal Illness
48:04 Gimmick Teaching: “How-To” Sermons and Faith Formulas
51:00 Misuse of Scripture: “Cleanness of Teeth” and Other Examples
56:01 Final Reflections on Doctrine, Context, and Gospel Focus
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wil
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
John and Chino explore the early life, theology, and myth-building of Hobart Freeman, comparing his teachings to William Branham and the broader Word of Faith and Latter Rain movements. They reflect on how historic events like the 1937 flood were mythologized for spiritual capital, and how difficult childhood experiences and personal illness may have shaped Freeman’s obsession with healing and prosperity. John draws a connection between the desperate search for healing and the susceptibility to fantasy narratives, likening Freeman’s storytelling to the over-the-top promises found in comic book ads of the 1950s.
Chino brings in firsthand accounts of early Freeman followers, including one who studied both Bible and psychology to understand Freeman’s psyche. They highlight how critical thinking and knowing a minister’s background can protect people from manipulation. Through humor, personal stories, and pointed examples, the discussion illustrates how simplistic, gimmick-style preaching replaced serious, contextual teaching. The hosts argue that many spiritual leaders used personal suffering as fuel for exaggerated theology, which not only hurt their followers but ultimately ensnared them as well.
00:00 Introduction
01:04 Historic Flooding and Sob Stories in Faith Movements
05:12 The 1937 Flood and William Branham’s Mythmaking
07:11 Separating Truth from Fiction in Personal Testimonies
08:42 Mythology vs. Biblical Teaching in Branham and Freeman
10:00 Knowing Your Minister: Background and Accountability
12:09 Hobart Freeman’s Background of Poverty and Transformation
13:26 Health Struggles and the Allure of Healing Teachings
16:50 Deliverance Theology vs. Fleshly Struggles
18:04 Blurring Lines Between Sermons, Stories, and Small Talk
19:22 Caution and Discernment in Evaluating Ministers
21:47 Freeman’s Childhood Illnesses and Divine Preservation Narrative
29:06 Freeman’s “Children of Providence” and Moses Complex
35:03 Smoking, Health Damage, and Theological Misapplication
37:42 Desperation, Gullibility, and Faith-Based Claims in the 50s
42:00 Freeman’s Comparison to Moses and Elitist Spiritual Identity
46:05 Overemphasis on Healing Due to Personal Illness
48:04 Gimmick Teaching: “How-To” Sermons and Faith Formulas
51:00 Misuse of Scripture: “Cleanness of Teeth” and Other Examples
56:01 Final Reflections on Doctrine, Context, and Gospel Focus
______________________
– Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@wil
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:00:37I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:00:41at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host, minister, and friend, Cheno Ross,
00:00:48pastor and the voice of The Understanding Scripture and Truth by Cheno D. Ross' YouTube channel.
00:00:53Cheno, it's good to be back and to talk all things Hobart Freeman and Branhamism and
00:01:00Lateranism, and hopefully you stayed dry.
00:01:04We had, I guess, everybody who's in the Kentuckiana, even up to Ohio, that area, they're aware that
00:01:12the flood is just really, really raising the river levels.
00:01:17And here in Jeffersonville, I had dinner or lunch down at Foot of Spring Street, and
00:01:22you can see the water's coming all the way up the banks, and they've got the floodgates
00:01:26up and streets closed.
00:01:28And we've, you can't see it because it's behind this wall, but our house has a storm sewer drain
00:01:36right behind the house.
00:01:37And when it gets extremely bad, it starts coming up that storm sewer.
00:01:41So I've had to tear into one of the walls behind here, but hopefully where you are, hopefully
00:01:46you stay dry.
00:01:47Yeah, we are totally fine.
00:01:49We sit on a high hill in the middle of a hay farm, so the water can't possibly get to
00:01:53us.
00:01:54I've never wanted to live on a creek or a stream or a river because of this very point, even
00:01:59though the houses, you know, when you get to live on a creek or a river, it's wonderful,
00:02:04you know, for 20 years at a time until one of these historic floods come.
00:02:09And we definitely have, I mean, here in Frankfort, where I live in the capital of Kentucky, it
00:02:15is a historic flood, flood levels for the Kentucky River.
00:02:20I'm also, as you know, a fishing guide, a professional fishing guide, John.
00:02:24So I'm always looking at the falls of the Ohio and what the lower gauge is reading down there
00:02:29on the Ohio River, because I do a lot of guiding and fishing down there.
00:02:32And I see it's just, you know, completely out of control.
00:02:35But yesterday we went downtown Frankfort to help some friends of my wife's.
00:02:41And I saw a guy leaving his house in a boat.
00:02:46That's how far all of these houses were underwater.
00:02:49He was in a little small John boat.
00:02:51And here he comes up the road until the water ends and the asphalt begins.
00:02:58And he had that little John boat loaded down with cardboard boxes.
00:03:03So I and another person went over there to get the boxes out of the boat and put them
00:03:09in the backseat of his truck.
00:03:10And the boxes were heavy.
00:03:11So, um, and they weren't taped shut.
00:03:13So I peeked inside and they were full of bourbon.
00:03:16So I said, you guys definitely prioritize, don't you?
00:03:20When it comes time to evacuate, you prioritize.
00:03:23They were all full of bourbon.
00:03:24And, but no, we're fine here.
00:03:26You know, I saw a guy prioritize when I was in, uh, I was working in downtown Louisville
00:03:31and I had stopped at this coffee shop and they had it set up where you could sit inside or
00:03:37outside.
00:03:37And I was sitting outside.
00:03:38I watched this hippie guy wearing some really ragged blue jeans come up on a skateboard.
00:03:45So he came down, he came towards me is the reason I noticed him.
00:03:48He came towards me on the street at the, on the street facing me.
00:03:52And he gets all the way to where I'm sitting.
00:03:55And then he goes over about half a block and then he sits right there on the curb.
00:04:00So he's sitting there, no shirt on, you know, right in the middle of downtown.
00:04:04And I thought, okay, he's, he's either drunk or he's, you know, something, something's going
00:04:09on.
00:04:10So I sat there and I'm sipping my coffee.
00:04:12I'm working on my computer, watching him.
00:04:14And pretty soon I watched this Budweiser truck drive up, drove up right next to him.
00:04:20And he sat there and he watched the Bud Budweiser guy come and open the, the back of the truck,
00:04:26got his cart and he put stacks of beer on the cart and started wheeling it into the building.
00:04:32Well, before I could stop it, before the guy could stop it, this guy took his skateboard
00:04:37and he, he had a stack of beer as tall as him, put it on the skateboard and just headed
00:04:42down the road.
00:04:44So he, he was hauling it too, but his, his way of doing it probably wasn't as, as upright
00:04:51and as honest as what you're talking about.
00:04:55But yeah, I mean, he, he really had a set up there, didn't he?
00:04:57It was, it was quite a sight to see.
00:05:00It was unbelievable.
00:05:00And, and the Budweiser guy, you know, just chasing him down the road.
00:05:03It was like a scene from a comic book or a cartoon, you know, newspapers, but, you know,
00:05:09talking about the flood.
00:05:10So it, it kind of ties into what we are talking about today.
00:05:15We're talking about the hard times that really made Hobart Freeman, William Branham, some of
00:05:21the others.
00:05:21I was having a similar conversation last week, I guess it was about some of the IHOP KC
00:05:27people.
00:05:28They all, they, they like a good sob story and William Branham sob story, interestingly
00:05:34tied to the flood stage in 1937.
00:05:38So it was hard not to think of that while I was sitting, looking at the river rising and
00:05:42watching entire trees go down the river as I'm eating and they're, they're barreling down
00:05:49the river.
00:05:49It's really fast.
00:05:50The swift, the river is right now, but Branham got a lot of mileage out of it.
00:05:55And historically, I wanted to know, as I'm examining my faith, what parts of it are true
00:06:01and what parts are not, because historically you can go back and you can line up through
00:06:07a chronological timeline.
00:06:09You can line up the things that he said compared to history and see what is what.
00:06:14Well, I found that I had to separate the truth from the fiction because there were large
00:06:19parts of his sob story that were true.
00:06:22They definitely happened and it was easy to see that they happen.
00:06:26But at the same time, we're talking about a flood that decimated this area, Louisville,
00:06:31Kentucky, Jeffersonville, Indiana, just completely almost Jeffersonville is almost wiped off the
00:06:36map at that point.
00:06:37So it wasn't just his sob story.
00:06:40It was everybody's sob story.
00:06:42And that was the 1937 flood.
00:06:45That was the 1937 flood.
00:06:47And if you go on the Ohio River, I've taken a few videos of this, but they've got the high
00:06:52water mark of the 1937 flood on one of the, I guess it's a lighthouse or something over
00:06:58there.
00:06:58It's on the river.
00:07:00But, you know, he got a lot of mileage out of that.
00:07:02But historically, I started to compare what he said because it was also tied to his divine.
00:07:09We call it his divine commission.
00:07:11This was part of why he became who he was and why he's the fabulous cult leader.
00:07:16Right.
00:07:16So I started categorizing, well, what parts were true and what parts were fiction?
00:07:21And I came to learn that, yes, there were a lot of large part of what he said was true
00:07:26and it really did happen.
00:07:27Some of it affected him.
00:07:29But a larger part wasn't true, didn't happen as he said, and there were a lot of conflicts
00:07:36in the way that he said it.
00:07:37He might tell it one way to one audience and a different way to another audience.
00:07:41And that became the mythology.
00:07:44And the real sad part about this is these guys, like Branham, like Freeman, they love to create
00:07:52the mythology because for some reason, people have itching ears to hear the mythology part.
00:07:58And they focus on it rather than on the Bible.
00:08:01So it's a huge distraction for these listeners and these audiences that do this.
00:08:08They almost, some of them, they come because they believe in Christ, they're Christian.
00:08:14But they have become so distracted by the mythology that no longer is what they're being taught
00:08:19Christianity.
00:08:20Christianity, it's Christianity plus this mythology.
00:08:24And sad to say, but that just, it distracts people from the Bible and learning what is the truth.
00:08:30And I think this goes a long way to prove a point that I have often said and strongly believe,
00:08:36John, and that is that people do need to know their minister.
00:08:40They need to know that person that is talking to them.
00:08:43And normally, you know, it's a pastor.
00:08:44You need to know something about your pastor.
00:08:48You know, I've been a little critical of the ministers who spend too much time talking about
00:08:53themselves.
00:08:54I just think you have to find that happy balance.
00:08:57I know one particular man who every time he stands in the pulpit, you know, he just wants
00:09:02to tell you what he ate last night and what they did yesterday.
00:09:06And, you know, it takes five or 10 minutes of the beginning of the message.
00:09:10And I don't think that's necessary because I always have felt all of the people sitting
00:09:16out there in the congregation, they also had a nice dinner last night and did things
00:09:21yesterday and they don't really care about your life.
00:09:24You know, they're more, they care about what they did.
00:09:26So I don't think that's what we need to know, but we do need to know some of the background
00:09:32to the people teaching us and it can't happen in these, um, in these, you know, huge mega
00:09:42churches because you don't ever really get to know that person.
00:09:46I mean, he can tell stories, but if you don't really know him and he doesn't spend time with
00:09:52you, you don't know the validity of any of that.
00:09:54I think I have mentioned before one of Freeman's early followers who actually goes back to the
00:10:03housing, the church and the house in Claypool.
00:10:07This was before the barn, before Jerry Irvin's garage.
00:10:11They met in Hobart Freeman's house in, uh, Claypool, Indiana, uh, the house under the water
00:10:17tower, a church in the home.
00:10:19Um, and he goes back this far and I think he was around college age and he said, you
00:10:24know, I went away to college from, you know, that little church and, uh, went and got a
00:10:30degree in the Bible because I wanted to understand where this guy was coming from with all of
00:10:37this teaching.
00:10:38And after he had gotten his, uh, Bible degree came back to the church because his parents
00:10:44and siblings were members of the church.
00:10:46And then he ended up, I believe this is the way he told me the story.
00:10:50He went away and got another degree this time in psychology to understand what makes this
00:10:56man tick.
00:10:57And he never could figure it out.
00:11:00But my point in saying that is we do need to know the people over us and who even, who
00:11:07even attends a church, John, who even shows up at a church with that being one of their
00:11:11early thoughts.
00:11:12I know I didn't, when I was a teenager, you just kind of expect, it's almost like all
00:11:19of us just give the minister, um, a blank check and we give him 100% benefit of the doubt.
00:11:27And you should give him some, but not a hundred percent that if he's a minister and he's standing
00:11:32up front in the pulpit, then he has to be good and he has to be right.
00:11:37And that is so far from the truth.
00:11:39That is just assuming something that we should first of all, be able to be certain about rather
00:11:45than assume it.
00:11:47So you do need to know some things about your minister.
00:11:51Do you need to know stories about him every day?
00:11:54Obviously not, but you need to check into his background and maybe, maybe his background
00:12:01will help explain his current ministry and message right now.
00:12:07So last time you and I were talking about Hobart's, uh, wealth and health gospel, he came from a
00:12:14real poor childhood and background.
00:12:17So to me, when I know those things, when I know how poor his family was and how he grew
00:12:27up with nothing, how he became a businessman, became successful and had a nice income and
00:12:34a nice car.
00:12:35And then he got saved, became a Baptist minister and his congregation said always, God will keep
00:12:42him poor if you'll keep him humble.
00:12:44And then he comes into the word of faith movement that is teaching this wealth and health gospel.
00:12:51It makes sense to me how deeply and quickly he gravitated toward a prosperity gospel, where
00:13:01if you already came from a well-established family with education, with income, with a middle
00:13:11class house and middle-class car and all of that, then hearing these things about prosperity
00:13:17wouldn't ring so loudly in your ears.
00:13:20I just don't think that they would.
00:13:22That's what we talked about last time.
00:13:24What I want to come to in our discussion today is the childhood sicknesses and injuries and
00:13:32illnesses that Hobart Freeman had to deal with.
00:13:34Because, again, I think this is part and parcel of this whole health and wealth gospel.
00:13:42I've said it before.
00:13:43I've said it before many times that when you look inside the walls of these churches, these
00:13:50word of faith churches, you see that they do attract a lot of the down and out of society.
00:13:57Not 100%, but they do attract a lot of them.
00:14:01You don't have astrophysicists and chemists and Supreme Court justices.
00:14:11And you don't have those kind of people because, you know, I hate to say it, but it's so true.
00:14:18They're not going to fall for all this baloney that the rest of us have fallen for in our past
00:14:24lives.
00:14:25They're not going to fall for that because, number one, they don't need all of this false
00:14:31teaching as we found it to be about prosperity and healing.
00:14:36They are already fine in their life, at least in the prosperity realm.
00:14:40We know you can't buy good health.
00:14:42But they're smart enough to know that this kind of stuff just doesn't seem right.
00:14:48I told you the story last time of my dad, who was an educated businessman, came into our
00:14:53little charismatic church and saw the pastor trying to cast a spirit of drunkenness out
00:14:58of a guy who wandered in.
00:15:00And the guy wandered back out just as drunk as when he walked in.
00:15:04You know, so my dad, I was so embarrassed, to be honest with you, because I so much wanted
00:15:09it to be true that everything has a demon behind it.
00:15:13And even against the person's will, as long as you have enough faith, all you have to do
00:15:18is, you know, exercise your dominion and authority, practice your deliverance ministry on this
00:15:24person's forehead.
00:15:25And I wanted that to be true so that my dad would go, wow, look, that really worked.
00:15:30But it didn't work.
00:15:32And I was really disappointed at that time.
00:15:34But, you know, as I grew up and looked back on it, I realized that's not the way these things
00:15:40happen.
00:15:41Is there such a thing as a spirit of alcoholism?
00:15:45Maybe there is, but there's just a whole lot of people that go drink because they want
00:15:50to drink.
00:15:50You know, there's also what Paul calls the works of the flesh.
00:15:53And one of those is drunkenness.
00:15:56And he doesn't say anything about it's a spirit that caused it.
00:15:59He said, it's a flesh that caused it.
00:16:01It's your fallen nature that caused it.
00:16:04And you can lay hands on that person from now until doomsday.
00:16:09And they're not going to be delivered from any demon because they don't have a demon.
00:16:14And they have works of the flesh and they simply aren't dealing with it.
00:16:18So, you know, for me at my 18 year old self, unfortunately, I had Bible knowledge and had
00:16:26verses memorized, but I didn't have the life experiences that my old man had.
00:16:32You know, he was a paratrooper in the army.
00:16:34He was a college basketball player.
00:16:36And, you know, he looked, this guy laying hands on a stranger and casting out the spirit
00:16:42of alcoholism.
00:16:43You know, my dad was like, I'll believe that when I see it.
00:16:47And he didn't see it.
00:16:48So he didn't believe it.
00:16:51You know, it's kind of funny because people in these movements have been trained and manipulated
00:16:55to mix what they call the spirit world.
00:16:59And a lot of times it is just fantasy, but mix that with everyday life.
00:17:03And so everything becomes a spirit.
00:17:05If you stump your toe, it's the spirit of stumped toe, man.
00:17:08It gets to a ridiculous level.
00:17:11But they do the same thing with everything.
00:17:15I was thinking as you were talking, you were talking about how you heard the minister and
00:17:19you didn't want to hear what he had for dinner last night and the small talk, basically.
00:17:24You don't want to hear the small talk.
00:17:25You came to hear the gospel, right?
00:17:27Yes.
00:17:27And I was just thinking there will be listeners who are listening to us who said, would say
00:17:33in the comment feeds, did you not just have small talk before you introduce this podcast?
00:17:37But see, the difference is you're going to hear a sermon and you're going to hear about
00:17:42Jesus.
00:17:42You're not coming to hear about the minister.
00:17:45What we're doing is not a sermon.
00:17:47But I have had people do the same thing with me on other podcasts.
00:17:51They want to think of everything as either it's a sermon or it's a battle of the spirits.
00:17:58And so they see me as this, if you're in the cult, you see me as this enemy spirit who's
00:18:03attacking you.
00:18:04So I, too, get the spirit label.
00:18:07For the audience who can't see, Chenna's holding up his fingers in the sign of a cross
00:18:11to keep the evil John away from his soul.
00:18:14You know, but, you know, it really turns into a problem because, like I said, with the
00:18:20mythologies, now you enter into the fantasy world where you are, you're manipulating people
00:18:26to create their own mythologies.
00:18:28The cult leader has one.
00:18:29Why don't I have one, too?
00:18:31And I had the conversation with another guy and we were talking about, oh, was there was
00:18:37a game when I was a kid, Dungeons and Dragons.
00:18:39It becomes like a game of Dungeons and Dragons, but it's for adults when you go to these churches.
00:18:45I'm fine with a little small talk.
00:18:47You know, I'm definitely in a minister sermon.
00:18:50I just think you've got to find the balance.
00:18:52I do want to know something.
00:18:53I want to know a lot about him, but I need to find that out in my personal interaction
00:18:58with him, not just from his sermon.
00:19:00Because to your point very much, John, the reason that people go to church, the reason
00:19:05they should is to hear the gospel or to hear God's word taught and explained to them, then
00:19:11we can hang around afterwards.
00:19:13And I would love to.
00:19:14That's my point.
00:19:15I would like to get to know the minister.
00:19:17I think that one benefit of all of this stuff out there now in YouTube world, with all of
00:19:25these ministers that have fallen, people have finally begun to become a little more cautious
00:19:33and far less gullible.
00:19:36Just because it's the church on the corner of Pine and Broad Street, and there's a minister
00:19:41up there, you have no idea who that man is, his character, his background, or anything.
00:19:49You need to go in with your eyes wide open and with a willing heart, but with a guarded
00:19:55mind.
00:19:57And you just have to do that.
00:19:59And it doesn't matter who the minister is.
00:20:01Because I'm not offended at all when someone approaches me that way.
00:20:05I'm willing to listen to you, but I have my guard up or something.
00:20:09Well, you should.
00:20:10Because if you don't know me, yeah, that's a reasonable way to go in to any kind of religious
00:20:18setting or service.
00:20:19And a big service has been done by the fall, I think, of all of these charismatic as well
00:20:26as non-charismatic ministers.
00:20:28And it's opened people's eyes to the fact, wow, some of these guys have been in the pulpit
00:20:34long term.
00:20:37And look at this history of misbehavior in their background that is now being exposed.
00:20:44You know, why did I sit here this whole time?
00:20:48Well, I think the problem is people sit with an uncritical attitude and you need to go in
00:20:55with a critical mindset to discern what's being said.
00:21:00So I'm, yeah, there just needs to be a balance.
00:21:02I don't want to hear everything about your daily life, minister.
00:21:06I do want to know some big things about you, who you are, what's your education, where were
00:21:11you trained, what's your background, what's your marital status, what's your criminal record
00:21:17status?
00:21:18You know, yes, I would like to know all of those things.
00:21:22And we, as people, deserve to know all of those things.
00:21:26Anybody who sits in any of my meetings deserves to know every bit of that.
00:21:31And for ministers to say, oh, you know, no, I don't want to share that.
00:21:37Well, it's going to come out if the bad stuff is there, as we know, it's going to come out.
00:21:42So if we can go further down our line, let's look at a little bit in the background of Hobart
00:21:48Freeman concerning his childhood.
00:21:50We saw that he was poor.
00:21:51And I think that that led to, you know, this overemphasis on a prosperity message.
00:21:57Then if we look at his childhood sicknesses and injuries and problems he had growing up,
00:22:05then again, I think what I can see as I got to know Hobart by listening to these stories
00:22:16from his early messages is that he preached a whole lot out of his own background and need
00:22:25rather than what the scriptures actually say.
00:22:29So if you had a minister come on the scene who is, who comes from a normal, stable background,
00:22:37the parents were normal and stable.
00:22:40And so they had enough money.
00:22:42Nobody's poor in the family.
00:22:43They were taught, you know, just general personal responsibility in life.
00:22:48You know, they graduated from high school or college or whatever.
00:22:52They have a normal amount of education.
00:22:54They have a normal approach to life.
00:22:56You know, they have a normal health history.
00:22:59If we could find some normalcy in this, John, we would probably find a minister who has a much
00:23:06better chance of himself being normal and being able to deliver a normal message.
00:23:12But if you come to the pulpit and your background is a lifelong background of sicknesses and illnesses
00:23:24and injuries, then when you come into the word of faith message, which Hobart did in the summer of 1966 in Dallas, Texas,
00:23:37and you're hearing people like Gordon Lindsay and like Kenneth Hagin teaching prosperity and teaching healing,
00:23:46you're going to gravitate to that right away.
00:23:49So, for instance, in Hobart's life, if you listen to the messages, which I have, you pick up, even though he doesn't harp on them like he does certain other stories,
00:24:00you do pick up, you hear things where, you know, on occasion he had these different health setbacks earlier in life.
00:24:09One that I can remember were his kidney stones.
00:24:13So he's told this story a few times, even though it was not one of the major ones.
00:24:17But in the late 1950s, so this is prior to his conversion to Christianity in 1952,
00:24:25he was experiencing, he said, two solid years of pain in his abdomen or over on one of his sides.
00:24:34And, you know, he found out, I mean, that's way back in early medical science days for him,
00:24:40he found out that it was kidney stones.
00:24:42And he said, they cut me half in two.
00:24:45And he said, I have the scars to prove it from one side all the way to the other side.
00:24:50He said, I have the scars to prove it.
00:24:52I was in the hospital, he said, for three weeks.
00:24:55And so that was a traumatic experience for him prior to his conversion and prior to his charismatic experience.
00:25:04He said in a message in the summer of 1976 that all of that pain had just recently come back.
00:25:11And he was thinking it was kidney stones again.
00:25:15And whether it was or not, I don't know.
00:25:17He never commented later, but he said the pain lasted for several weeks and then it went away.
00:25:22But if you do a little study on kidney stones, you find out that some people are definitely more prone to them than others, for sure.
00:25:32Because I have done some studies on this.
00:25:34One of my employees just went through a kidney stone battle about a month ago.
00:25:40And the other thing is a lot of it has to do with diet.
00:25:44And so this brings up this whole other subject in this healing message, John.
00:25:50And that is this, you know, how much of our illnesses, our sicknesses, how much of those are due to naturally cause things versus how much are due to simply a satanic or demonic, you know, attack.
00:26:10In these Word of Faith services, in their services, everything is demonic.
00:26:17Everything is satanic.
00:26:18And there is not a balanced discussion of people's lifestyle, their eating habits.
00:26:26Are you getting enough water each day?
00:26:29If you don't, if you just drink soft drinks and you're not drinking water, you're not hydrated with water.
00:26:35It's one of the main causes of kidney stones.
00:26:37Those things will calcify inside you and you will have kidney stones and you will have problems.
00:26:43I don't ever remember Dr. Freeman teaching any kind of balanced series or messages on stressing, emphasizing the need for a good, healthy diet.
00:26:59He would always just super spiritualize everything and say, as long as you pray over your food, everything is fine.
00:27:05That's not balanced and that is definitely not biblical.
00:27:09You know, when we look at the health crisis that we have in the United States today, just look at the absolute overwhelming of the healthcare industry.
00:27:20And a lot of that has to do with American diet.
00:27:24You go to other countries, they don't have the same cardiovascular diseases we have.
00:27:29They don't have the obesity.
00:27:31We didn't have the obesity we have in our country now when I was a child because you did not have McDonald's on every corner.
00:27:39You know, you just didn't have it.
00:27:41You can't stop progress.
00:27:42I mean, that's just that's what's happened in society today.
00:27:45You can't go back on that.
00:27:48But what I'm saying is, as a Christian, you have to take normal, responsible, personal measures to safeguard and protect yourself.
00:27:57And it's in every area.
00:27:59It's in every area of our of our health.
00:28:02And so Hobart didn't he never dealt with that.
00:28:05Everything was treated as an attack from Satan.
00:28:09Didn't have anything to do with your diet.
00:28:11Didn't have anything to do with your hydration.
00:28:14Didn't have anything to do with your exercise routine.
00:28:18You know, I feel sorry for people who have a desk job their whole life because, I mean, if you do, you do.
00:28:26That's your job.
00:28:27So you have to make extra effort that people in the olden days didn't because it was an agrarian society.
00:28:34You know, you worked hard every day, no matter what your job was.
00:28:38So you'd have to go to the gym.
00:28:39You didn't have to worry about exercise.
00:28:42All of these things, I'm simply saying, are now needed and they're new because of how society has evolved.
00:28:49And Hobart's teachings definitely did not stay up with that.
00:28:52But if I could give one really good location and I'm not even going to ask for you to play this, John, I'm just going to give this to people and I'm going to relay what Hobart said here.
00:29:04But if you will remember this series that he taught entitled Exhortations from Exodus, that was the last main series he was teaching in the summer and the fall of 1984 before he passed away in December of that year.
00:29:19And he only got through nine or 10 or 11 messages, exhortations from Exodus.
00:29:25And on the second message in that series entitled Children of Providence, Children of Providence, beginning at the 28 minute mark.
00:29:37If people want to go find that message, you can listen or you can hear and I'm going to relay what he says.
00:29:42But what he's starting to do at that point, he's using Moses deliverance from the river in Egypt by the daughter of Pharaoh, that providential protection that God gave Moses where, you know, all of the male children under a certain age had been ordered to be killed by Pharaoh.
00:30:04Pharaoh and Moses' mother did not want to see him die, put him in a little basket of bulrushes and put him out in the river.
00:30:13And it just so happened that Pharaoh's daughter found Moses.
00:30:17This was a providential hand of God on Moses' life to preserve him.
00:30:23So with that being the background, what Hobart is going to do, which is really, really interesting, he sees himself as a new Moses.
00:30:31And he sees the hand of God's providence on his life.
00:30:37Now, to be fair to Hobart, he does say around this 28 minute mark, he does say to everyone there, I'm sure that all of you have seen the hand of God earlier in your life, preserve or protect you when you could have been killed or seriously injured and God protected or preserved you.
00:30:55He does say that to everyone, but as Hobart was very prone to do, he really wanted to focus upon himself and he wanted to show how he and his early providential protection under the hand of God is like a modern day Moses.
00:31:13And so he gives these statistics, John, he said at six months of age, so this would have been in 1920 when Hobart was born, six months of age, he said, I had double pneumonia, which is just horrific, which you normally don't survive as a child of six, an infant of six months.
00:31:36And you have pneumonia in both lungs, 10 months later, at 16 months of age, he contracted that dreaded disease before Jonas Salk came along with the polio vaccine of polio.
00:31:51And he was bed fast for months on end with polio.
00:31:57And again, we don't know much about polio today.
00:32:00We don't think about it because there is a vaccine and in America, you just don't see people contracting polio when they're a child.
00:32:08But as we know from history, that was a dreaded childhood experience for anybody who had polio and many times you would die from it.
00:32:17Hobart did not die from it.
00:32:19He did recover from it, but he had a severely short right leg, an inch to two inch right leg, shorter than his left leg.
00:32:33And that was his lot for the rest of his life.
00:32:36That happened at 16 months of age.
00:32:39At 10 years of age, he almost drowned.
00:32:43So he's told this story several times, but in this particular message, he's just hitting the bullet points one after the other.
00:32:51But he was in a swimming pool.
00:32:53He did not know how to swim.
00:32:55He had polio, but he had recovered from that, just had the short leg.
00:32:59And he was out where the chain would go across the swimming pool from the shallow to the deep.
00:33:06And he said he would let go of the chain and go out in the deep and go down to the bottom and then push off with a good leg on the bottom, come back up and grab the chain.
00:33:15And he said one time he went out further than he realized, pushed off when he came up and reached.
00:33:21He couldn't find the chain.
00:33:22And he said he was down for the third and final time going to drown when a playmate who thought he was out there in the deep end, just horsing around and came underneath him, picked him up, you know, on this guy's shoulders and shot him up out of the water just to frighten him and scare him.
00:33:39And he said it pushed me close enough to that chain that I was able to grab it and keep myself from drowning.
00:33:4613 years of age, he was run over by a factory truck out on the road and crushed his left leg.
00:33:55So he's got the damaged polio right leg, the left leg crushed.
00:34:00He said it was down to the bone, just the skin and muscle and tissue all flayed open.
00:34:08And so he said, I had that to deal with that.
00:34:12He's he's giving you all of the illnesses and injuries from his childhood.
00:34:18And then the big deal was cardiovascular disease.
00:34:22So then the last thing he mentions in this list of illnesses and problems were his heart attacks.
00:34:29And he had had several serious heart attacks.
00:34:34One thing people probably don't realize, although it is on an earlier message and I could find which one it was, but Hobart was a heavy smoker for 18 years.
00:34:46And I can actually provide the very message that he says that on.
00:34:50I'll look for it here in a minute.
00:34:52But from age 14 to age 32, Hobart was a smoker.
00:34:57That's 18 years from age 14 to age 32.
00:35:01He smoked and as we all know, smoking is bad for your lungs and bad for your heart.
00:35:09Of course, you know, Hobart gets converted in 1952.
00:35:13And as I mentioned last time, people want to quote Second Corinthians 517.
00:35:18If any man is in Christ, he's a new creation and all things are passed away and all things have become new.
00:35:25But Paul's context there, the old things that have passed away is that he's talking about our our alienation from God.
00:35:34And we have now been reconciled to God and brought nigh by Jesus blood.
00:35:39That doesn't undo everything automatically that's happened in our life before.
00:35:45If you were a man who was five feet, four inches tall and always wished you were six feet, one inch tall.
00:35:53Conversion to Christianity doesn't change your height at all, doesn't give you more hair on your head.
00:35:58You won't get to play for the Yankees or for the Lakers or, you know, you can wish all those old things.
00:36:07My lack of height and athleticism had passed away.
00:36:11Now all things are new.
00:36:13That's not the way this works.
00:36:14So my point being, if you have had damage done to your lungs and your heart, yes, it's possible that God can heal you from that in your conversion experience or some later time.
00:36:30But it's also very possible that that is not healed just because that is what the body sowed and what the body sows.
00:36:41As we know, the body is often going to reap.
00:36:44Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?
00:36:57You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:37:05On the books 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.
00:37:18You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
00:37:25If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.
00:37:32And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
00:37:39On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:37:43You know, Chino, my mind goes in funny directions whenever you're talking.
00:37:47We've had that conversation offline.
00:37:49But when I was a kid, I was not allowed to read comic books.
00:37:54That was part of the Branham cult religion.
00:37:56Comic books were evil for whatever reason.
00:37:58And Batman and Robin were not heroes in the minds of these ministers.
00:38:04They did not want you to catch the spirit of Batman.
00:38:07But I was at my grandmother's house, and I found this old stash of comic books that they had apparently had before they joined the message.
00:38:17And I'm just, you know, I'm a kid.
00:38:19I'm fascinated by this.
00:38:20So I sneak in the bedroom with it, and I'm opening up and reading it.
00:38:25Well, these were comics from the, probably from the 50s.
00:38:29I mean, they were old, old comic books.
00:38:31The pages were kind of falling off as I was turning them.
00:38:33Well, you read the story, which was really good, but then you get to the advertisements in the comic books.
00:38:42And even as a kid, I was, like, scratching my head, you've got to be kidding me.
00:38:46Really?
00:38:47In the 50s, during the height of this healing revival, when you were talking about, you know, stretching your body, your height, etc.,
00:38:55Well, I remember reading an ad where they made this tool that you could buy for, I don't know what it was, $5.
00:39:04You could stretch and become taller.
00:39:06They had the, you know, the Atlas programs where you're doing the push-ups.
00:39:11And you, too, can look like this guy who literally is in the gym 24-7 benching 100 pounds every time.
00:39:18He can bench at probably 200 or 300 pounds.
00:39:22Interesting side note, that same guy was a hired speaker in one of the Branham churches in Louisiana.
00:39:31It was Jack Moore's church, the one who was real big in launching Ladder Rain.
00:39:36I found the Atlas program was there.
00:39:38But anyway, they've got all of these different ads in the 50s.
00:39:42And they've got things like x-ray glasses.
00:39:44You, too, can use your x-ray glasses, and you can see through walls.
00:39:48You've probably seen these, right?
00:39:50Yes, I have.
00:39:51So you read through that.
00:39:53And in today's world, here I am a kid in, this is probably the late 80s that I'm reading this.
00:40:00And I'm thinking, this is really stupid.
00:40:02Did people really believe this back then?
00:40:04That's me as a kid, right?
00:40:06But there were kids that apparently did believe it, or they wouldn't have advertised it.
00:40:09So then I open up, as an adult, I open up the Voice of Healing magazines and read through the ads in that from the 50s.
00:40:19And, well, here's a boy who, through faith and power with William Branham's message, Ladder Rain nonsense,
00:40:26can see through a handkerchief tied around his head through his plastic eyeball.
00:40:34And this was apparently a thing.
00:40:36I published this probably two or three years ago on the YouTube site.
00:40:40I actually got people who were out of this movement who defended this and said, no, that boy, I knew him as a man.
00:40:47He could really see through that plastic eyeball.
00:40:50And the point I'm trying to get at is whenever all this was happening and all these people were trying to really grasp for something,
00:41:02anything that can help them with their healing, they're willing to believe anything because they're in desperation.
00:41:09And in so much that whenever these guys, you mentioned Hobart acting like Moses, well, there were so many people that did this.
00:41:18There were, you know, you've got Dowie who claimed to be Elijah, and he pointed to the last chapter of Malachi and said, this is me.
00:41:25Charles Parham did the same thing.
00:41:28This is me.
00:41:29Frank Sanford, he's kind of a forgotten name because he was, he really, really was destructive, nearly killed several people.
00:41:36But he also claimed to be Elijah.
00:41:39Then through British Israelism, you had all the cult leaders claiming to be King David.
00:41:44They were the return of King David in the spirit.
00:41:47And Branham, when he started his ministry, not many people know this because he is recognized as being one of the Elijah prophets.
00:41:55But when he started, he wasn't Elijah.
00:41:57He started out as Moses.
00:41:59And he kept telling the story over and over again as Moses was given two signs.
00:42:04So were you given two signs, which was complete fiction, especially because the Bible talks about the three signs of Moses, not the two signs of Moses.
00:42:13So the whole thing is fiction.
00:42:15But the point I'm trying to make and back to the why my head went to this comic book, people were willing to believe it.
00:42:22And especially in that era, whenever they largely people just didn't use critical thought.
00:42:29They hadn't been.
00:42:30They had not been duped enough to realize that people are out there to get them in today's world.
00:42:35They're not going to fall for most of this stuff.
00:42:38It's just not going to fly.
00:42:40Yes.
00:42:40And I'm glad that they won't, John.
00:42:43Hobart never, he didn't go as far as some of those other guys did.
00:42:48I think at the end of his ministry, he began making statements where it could be interpreted that he was hinting that he was this person or that person.
00:43:01But I guess he was smart enough to know I can't actually come out and say maybe what I believe about myself because I might be a false prophet or be labeled as one.
00:43:12But going back to that message on the children of Providence, not only did he say the things that I just said about his illnesses, but he kept talking about Moses in this sense.
00:43:26So I'll give you even more.
00:43:28He was saying, you know, God preserved Moses from childhood, from infancy, because he had this great plan for Moses' life.
00:43:39And he did, he had a great plan for Moses' life, and he did preserve him from infancy on.
00:43:46Dr. Freeman definitely felt, because he did say this, that he was the only one who had been given the, quote, end time message of faith, unquote, whatever that is.
00:43:58I haven't found that anywhere in the Bible that anybody had the end time message of faith.
00:44:04But he did say that he was the only one who had been given that.
00:44:08So he obviously felt that he was a special and unique person.
00:44:14So he is definitely trying to draw in the people's minds the parallel between himself and Moses, because he would also go on and say, just like Moses was trained in all the wisdom of Egypt.
00:44:31Remember, he was raised in Pharaoh's court, just as he was trained in all the wisdom of Egypt.
00:44:36So I, Hobart Freeman, your minister, was trained in all the denominational ways of the Baptist and all of these denominations.
00:44:48I was trained in there before I left it and became charismatic so that now I have a response to all of that and can go back and combat it.
00:44:59Because other people would say, well, you went to seminary.
00:45:01Why can't we?
00:45:02You know, you have higher training.
00:45:04Why can't we go get some education?
00:45:06Oh, you don't need it.
00:45:07I already have it.
00:45:08God has prepared me from all these years back in my youth and childhood and adulthood.
00:45:16He has already prepared me so that I am.
00:45:19I don't know.
00:45:20You know, I'm going to be your Moses.
00:45:21So, yes, he most definitely made that comparison.
00:45:25So you've got Hobart walking around, limping around all these medical conditions, desperately wanting this faith message and healing message.
00:45:36That he hears from Kenneth Hagin, he's definitely wanting that to be true.
00:45:40Because if that's true, he won't have a short leg anymore.
00:45:44He won't have this heart condition anymore.
00:45:46He won't have to deal with wearing glasses anymore.
00:45:50His hair won't have to thin.
00:45:51We'll talk about that in another podcast where he goes off on Psalm 103.
00:45:57He won't have to deal with the pain of kidney stones anymore.
00:46:01He is desperately wanting this healing message to be true.
00:46:06But in wanting that so badly, he just overemphasized everything because he was poor and because he was sick as a child.
00:46:15This is what I'm saying, because those were two things he brought along with him and he couldn't help it.
00:46:21If you're poor and sick as a child, you're simply poor and sick as a child.
00:46:26But because he was, he brought those with him into his Christian experience.
00:46:31And then I believe, because people have asked me, you know, how do you explain Hobart ending up the way that he did?
00:46:37I believe that this helps explain his overemphasis on things.
00:46:44He was a man who was very sick.
00:46:47He just was.
00:46:48And if you came into this, a healthy person, you, you, you, you are definitely going to, you know, appreciate the healing teaching and the healing verses.
00:47:03But you're not going to just end up in a quagmire there.
00:47:07You're not just going to camp out there and talk about it over and over again.
00:47:12So I remember in the mid 1970s, if you find messages taught during that period in Hobart's ministry, he must have just talked to someone he knew up in Canada because he made reference to the fact that this brother, and it might've been Maxwell Wyatt, who was in Toronto.
00:47:32I'm not for sure.
00:47:33But this brother up in Canada has just counted how many promises are in the Bible.
00:47:38Well, and there are 7,487 promises, and you just need to start claiming the promises.
00:47:44Hobart read the Bible like it was, I don't know, like it was a magic charm, like it was a gimmick book, like you can really find 7,487 promises.
00:47:56But they're promises about, you know, your washing machine can be healed and your body can be healed and you can drive a new car and you can be prosperous.
00:48:05And, you know, John, to show you how strange this kind of approach to the Bible is, this proof text mechanical approach rather than a contextual organic reading of the Bible, that's not the way Hobart did it.
00:48:24He had an idea in mind and then he searched the Bible to find texts that would prove that.
00:48:29There is a verse, I think it is in the prophecy of Amos, where Amos said, this is thus saith the Lord, I will give you cleanness of teeth.
00:48:42Well, Hobart did not believe in going to the dentist, did not believe in any type of medical, you know, practice.
00:48:52He, all of that was leaning on the arm of the flesh.
00:48:57And I can remember, you know, as I've said, I bought into it wholeheartedly as a 17 year old by my early 20s.
00:49:04I'm beginning to have problems with some of it because I was looking for consistency and I was looking for logic and reason.
00:49:12And I thought, well, the arm of the flesh, OK, I can understand the doctor would be leaning to the arm of the flesh and the dentist could be leaning to the arm of the flesh in the hospital.
00:49:22OK. And the bank for loaning you money.
00:49:25OK. And the insurance company.
00:49:27OK. Well, what about your HVAC guy or what about the car mechanic?
00:49:32Isn't that the aren't that isn't that the arm of the flesh to, you know, where are you going to draw the line when you can ask for human help and when you cannot ask for human help?
00:49:42I never saw a clean demarcation in Hobart Freeman's theology.
00:49:48And although Hobart never used that verse in the prophecy of Amos, I've heard other people use it.
00:49:54They say, yep, God promised to give me cleanness of teeth so I don't have to go to the dentist.
00:49:59So I have two responses to that. Number one, open your mouth and let me just look in there.
00:50:06I bet it doesn't work. Number two, do you know what the background you know, that is a horrible verse to claim.
00:50:14Cleanness of teeth is actually an Old Testament phrase for he is going to what he's promising is judgment on the nation of Israel.
00:50:22And you will have so little food to eat. You won't need to clean your teeth.
00:50:26That's the context of the verse. That is the context of the verse.
00:50:31If you don't have anything to eat, you don't need to brush your teeth because there's nothing there.
00:50:36So that's just a test case example of how Hobart Freeman's ministry, he never did that himself,
00:50:44but how his teaching and his ministry would cause people to run to the Bible and find a verse that says what they wanted to say
00:50:53and pull it completely out of its context and end up with, hey, I got a Bible verse right in the Old Testament
00:51:00that forbids me going to dentists because God has promised to give me clean teeth.
00:51:06I'm trying not to die laughing because you wouldn't want to be around me if I didn't go to the dentist, man.
00:51:12There's some people, myself included, who really, really need it.
00:51:16So it's unbelievable.
00:51:19But, you know, in the end, the mythologies that they created, the sad part and the truth of this is that the men and some women
00:51:29who rose to authoritarian control over their sects, they created a mythology that was to the destruction of the people.
00:51:37But in the end, in many cases, it's also to their own destruction.
00:51:41They're literally trapped in prisons that they themselves created.
00:51:44Yeah. And let me just, John, give you the verse that is in Amos 4 and verse 6.
00:51:50If people want to go look that up, I don't want to leave people hanging.
00:51:54And the other thing I said I would quickly go give you is Hobart being a smoker for 18 years.
00:51:59That is on the tape entitled Perplexing Problems About Prayer.
00:52:06You can start listening at the nine minute mark and you can hear that story.
00:52:11So anyway, yeah, Hobart's teaching was was not Bible teaching.
00:52:18It just was not Bible teaching.
00:52:20It was gimmick teaching.
00:52:21If you look over his tape list, he has so many messages entitled How To and then you fill in the blanks, you know,
00:52:32which reminds me of things like How to Win Friends and Influence People, the old Norman Vincent Peale book that Hobart used to talk about early in the 1970s.
00:52:41He had talked about that book.
00:52:42So I know that had an influence on him.
00:52:46You know, how to lose weight without trying, how to have a million dollars by the age of 30.
00:52:51All of these how to things, I don't find that in the New Testament.
00:52:55I don't find Paul preaching a message called How To Anything.
00:52:59But here are just some of the titles I gleaned off of Hobart's list.
00:53:03How to get healed without trying.
00:53:06How to release your faith.
00:53:08How to spell faith.
00:53:11How to resist the devil effectively.
00:53:13How to get the most out of the Christian life.
00:53:17How to know God's will, which was also the title of a book he wrote.
00:53:21How to receive guidance and on and on and on.
00:53:26None of these seem to be the type of message that the New Testament ministers gave.
00:53:33They just preached the Old Testament, how it related to Jesus Christ and the future glory of his coming kingdom
00:53:40and how God, the Holy Spirit, is working in the lives of the early Christians in the church of their time.
00:53:48If you look at sermons, which are Paul's epistles, if you look at them, this is what he's talking about.
00:53:54He doesn't have any little gimmick sermons.
00:53:58How to get healed without trying.
00:54:01I mean, that is an actual title to one of his messages.
00:54:03It's like how to lose weight without trying or how to become a millionaire without trying.
00:54:08We would all like that.
00:54:10Those are gimmicks.
00:54:12That's not a Christian message, a how-to kind of message.
00:54:16And he would also have messages with how many steps it would take to accomplish this.
00:54:22So, again, I've just copied down a few for your amusement's sake.
00:54:26Five evidences of faith.
00:54:29You know, are we sure there aren't four or six or eleven?
00:54:32I mean, five evidences of faith.
00:54:35Five conditions to receive the promises of God.
00:54:38Four pillars of faith.
00:54:41Four signs of a believer.
00:54:43Three hindrances to faith.
00:54:46Three keys to overcoming faith.
00:54:49It's like an Amway salesman or something.
00:54:52This is not the way you teach Bible doctrine.
00:54:56You take a passage and you deal with it in its context.
00:55:01Hobart would always have a thought in his mind, like,
00:55:04I think I need to go preach a message on faith.
00:55:08You know, I haven't taught one since yesterday.
00:55:09So I need to go preach a message on faith.
00:55:12What's the title going to be?
00:55:15Oh, how to release your faith.
00:55:17Let me teach them how to release your faith.
00:55:20How do you release your faith?
00:55:22Go ahead and tell me.
00:55:24How do you do that?
00:55:25Are there three steps or eight steps?
00:55:28And does it take five seconds or five minutes?
00:55:32How do you release your faith?
00:55:34How are you even going to teach on a topic like that?
00:55:37You know, it's just absolutely ridiculous.
00:55:41And that message entitled, How to Spell Faith, people love that, F-A-I-T-H, Forsake All, I Trust Him.
00:55:53You know, we just come up with all these little gimmicks and shortcuts,
00:55:58and we think we're smart, and we think we're cute, and we think we're funny.
00:56:03And we just have deceived a lot of people because people come to church,
00:56:08and they hear all of this gimmick teaching, and the prophets are doing, you know,
00:56:11let me give you three steps on how to deliver a prophecy.
00:56:16Here's the three steps to how to do that.
00:56:19I just don't think that's the way Christian ministers are supposed to preach.
00:56:23I think they need to teach doctrine.
00:56:25I think they need to teach the actual passage.
00:56:28I think they need to teach it contextually and organically
00:56:32and not try to find how many supporting passages to prove my point.
00:56:41If your point is valid, if your point is good,
00:56:45you only need one verse from God's Word because God's Word is truth,
00:56:50and that is all you need.
00:56:51You need one.
00:56:52It's almost as though they're in competition with their opponents,
00:56:57that if I can get 12 points on the side of my argument,
00:57:00and you only can get nine on the side that you're defending,
00:57:05then I'm going to win just because I've got 12 and you've got nine.
00:57:08That's not the way that it works.
00:57:10You win, quote, unquote, if you are telling the truth as the Bible tells the truth.
00:57:18And I'll add to that, it must be in context.
00:57:21I've heard many, many sermons where the minister would say,
00:57:24here's our verse for today, and then he'd preach a whole sermon
00:57:27where he tried to wedge that verse into what he was saying
00:57:30rather than wedge what he was saying into the context of the passage.
00:57:35So it's such a mess.
00:57:36But, you know, to your point, Hobart and Branham,
00:57:40all of these guys would have been much better if they'd have just walked out
00:57:43and handed everybody the actuary glasses from that comic book
00:57:46because that would be obvious, right?
00:57:48People would see it and they'd say, okay, well, this is fake.
00:57:50Let's just move on.
00:57:51But what they did was so insidious because they did the same exact thing.
00:57:56It was their version of the x-ray glasses.
00:57:59But they did it in such a way where it sounded halfway scriptural
00:58:02and people didn't take the extra step to see, well, is this actually biblical?
00:58:08And is this guy trying to pull one over on me?
00:58:11Whether Hobart was legitimately trying to pull the wool over people's eyes, I don't know.
00:58:17But you have to, at some point, you have to just take a step back
00:58:20and say that, you know, critical thinking could have stopped a whole lot of this.
00:58:25So hopefully through the course of this,
00:58:27we have taught people not to go get the fake religious x-ray glasses of today.
00:58:33Yeah, it's just a big danger also, John, in majoring on the minors.
00:58:37I mean, the Bible does talk about faith and healing,
00:58:40but the Bible talks about the Christian life, the Christian virtue, so much more.
00:58:44Christ's death on the cross is what the gospel is all about,
00:58:48and that's really what we need to be hearing about from ministers.
00:58:51Instead, they major on the minors and minor on the majors,
00:58:54and I always had a problem with that.
00:58:57Absolutely.
00:58:58Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information,
00:59:00you can check us out on the web.
00:59:02You can find us at william-branham.org.
00:59:04For more about the dark side of the new apostolic reformation,
00:59:07you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR,
00:59:11available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
00:59:14www.internity.org.
00:59:15www.internity.org.
00:59:16www.internity.org.
00:59:17www.internity.org.
00:59:18www.internity.org.
00:59:19www.internity.org.
00:59:20www.internity.org.
00:59:22www.internity.org.
00:59:23www.internity.org.
00:59:24www.internity.org.
00:59:25www.internity.org.
00:59:26www.internity.org.
00:59:27www.internity.org.
00:59:28www.internity.org.
00:59:29www.internity.org.
00:59:30www.internity.org.
00:59:31www.internity.org.
00:59:32www.internity.org.
00:59:33www.internity.org.
00:59:34www.internity.org.
00:59:35www.internity.org.
00:59:36www.internity.org.