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
Chino's YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@chinodross
John and Chino discuss the evolution of Hobart Freeman’s teachings, focusing on how a joyful belief in divine healing gradually transformed into a controlling and isolating doctrine. They trace the trajectory of Freeman’s message from its charismatic beginnings in 1966 to its eventual rejection of doctors, medicine, and even minor expressions of physical weakness. The discussion outlines how a once-celebrated emphasis on healing morphed into an exclusive ideology that redefined salvation itself, leading followers into a world of fear, shame, and strict doctrinal loyalty.
Through personal stories and observations, they reflect on the psychological impact of being part of such a group. Chino recounts the early excitement of discovering Freeman’s message, only to later recognize the harmful imbalance in its application—especially in how communion services came to center entirely around physical healing. John adds parallels with similar movements and shares how remnants of this ideology can continue to affect people years after leaving. Together, they provide a sobering examination of how good intentions can turn into rigid systems, emphasizing the need for balance, grace, and a return to foundational beliefs.
00:00 Introduction
02:41 Proposal for a Faith Assembly Survivor Meetup
06:00 Hobart Freeman’s Turn to the Charismatic Movement
12:28 The Shift from Joyful Healing to Doctrinal Obsession
17:28 Healing Replaces the Gospel in Communion Services
24:54 Salvation Redefined Through the Lens of Health
29:00 Evolution of Anti-Medicine Rhetoric
36:12 Control, Shame, and Fear-Based Enforcement
43:03 Misuse of Scripture to Support Healing Doctrine
50:34 Comparing Spiritual Growth vs. Physical Fixation
56:04 The Gospel of Grace vs. the Cult of Healing
59:14 Closing Thoughts and Resources
______________________
– 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/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
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
Chino's YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@chinodross
John and Chino discuss the evolution of Hobart Freeman’s teachings, focusing on how a joyful belief in divine healing gradually transformed into a controlling and isolating doctrine. They trace the trajectory of Freeman’s message from its charismatic beginnings in 1966 to its eventual rejection of doctors, medicine, and even minor expressions of physical weakness. The discussion outlines how a once-celebrated emphasis on healing morphed into an exclusive ideology that redefined salvation itself, leading followers into a world of fear, shame, and strict doctrinal loyalty.
Through personal stories and observations, they reflect on the psychological impact of being part of such a group. Chino recounts the early excitement of discovering Freeman’s message, only to later recognize the harmful imbalance in its application—especially in how communion services came to center entirely around physical healing. John adds parallels with similar movements and shares how remnants of this ideology can continue to affect people years after leaving. Together, they provide a sobering examination of how good intentions can turn into rigid systems, emphasizing the need for balance, grace, and a return to foundational beliefs.
00:00 Introduction
02:41 Proposal for a Faith Assembly Survivor Meetup
06:00 Hobart Freeman’s Turn to the Charismatic Movement
12:28 The Shift from Joyful Healing to Doctrinal Obsession
17:28 Healing Replaces the Gospel in Communion Services
24:54 Salvation Redefined Through the Lens of Health
29:00 Evolution of Anti-Medicine Rhetoric
36:12 Control, Shame, and Fear-Based Enforcement
43:03 Misuse of Scripture to Support Healing Doctrine
50:34 Comparing Spiritual Growth vs. Physical Fixation
56:04 The Gospel of Grace vs. the Cult of Healing
59:14 Closing Thoughts and Resources
______________________
– 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/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
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,
00:00:47pastor 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 about all things Hobart Freeman, but before we did,
00:00:59you and I were talking offline about the possibility of maybe connecting with some people from the
00:01:06Faith Assembly sect, and I thought I'd put the feeler out there.
00:01:09If there's anybody who's interested in helping us to organize a meeting where people from
00:01:15Faith Assembly could get together and have conversations, people who have left the cult,
00:01:19obviously.
00:01:20If you're willing to organize that and to help us, you can contact me on the website.
00:01:26That's william-branham.org.
00:01:28Just go to the contact page and say, hey, I'm interested in helping to facilitate this.
00:01:32How can I help?
00:01:34And put the offer out there.
00:01:35Maybe there's interest and people might get together.
00:01:38John, I've had several people contact me and want to do something, get together.
00:01:44So this would be something maybe we would target for towards the end of the summer, early this
00:01:49fall, give people enough time to make plans.
00:01:52It is not a Faith Assembly reunion.
00:01:55It's just more a meet and greet, get together in person, face-to-face, compare notes, share
00:02:02notes, ask questions, share stories, tell stories.
00:02:07Something I would be willing to do, you know, and I think it would have to be done probably
00:02:12somewhere in Northern Indiana where a lot of these people are.
00:02:16But enough people have mentioned that to me.
00:02:18I thought we ought to put something out there, be happy to do it over a weekend period of
00:02:24time and just see what comes of it.
00:02:27So as you said, if anybody's willing to help organize and spearhead this, then they can contact
00:02:34you on your website.
00:02:38Sounds good.
00:02:38Well, today we're getting into some of the transitional phases of Faith Assembly.
00:02:44And the irony of this is Charles and I just had the same exact conversation with a different
00:02:50splinter group of the message.
00:02:51But when you're in one of these cults and you're being indoctrinated slowly and gradually
00:02:57over time, you don't notice how significantly things shift over time because they're happening
00:03:03so, so gradual.
00:03:05And I've told this story, I'll tell it again, I can't remember if it was with you or one
00:03:10of the others, but I'm a bit of a prankster and I like the long pranks.
00:03:16I was working with this guy in an office and he had his back to the wall and had his desk
00:03:23as you walked into his office.
00:03:24There was his desk and then he was on the other side.
00:03:26And as a prank, I came in with a friend of mine and every day after work, we would work
00:03:34a little bit late and we would push his desk, maybe a millimeter, maybe two millimeters closer
00:03:39to the wall.
00:03:40And so he didn't notice that desk moving.
00:03:42And after the end of, I don't know how many months went by, he started saying, man, I just
00:03:47feel like the walls are closing in on me.
00:03:49I feel like I need to lose weight.
00:03:50And I'm solely responsible for that man's diet.
00:03:54He can thank me for his health benefits.
00:03:57But the point I'm trying to make is when things happen so gradually over time, you don't catch
00:04:01it.
00:04:02If I had walked into his office and pushed his desk a foot and a half towards the wall, he
00:04:07would have immediately said, hey, man, this desk is too close to the wall.
00:04:10Let's push it back.
00:04:11But he didn't notice that.
00:04:13And mentally, people in these cults are doing the same exact thing.
00:04:17Yeah, we looked the last time, John, at how I think that some of the reason for Dr.
00:04:23Freeman adopting his health and wealth gospel had to do with personal situations in his
00:04:29own life.
00:04:30I wouldn't say that that is the only reason, but he definitely came from a poor background
00:04:38and he came from a sickly background as a child.
00:04:40And he had various real serious ailments as an adult.
00:04:45So whenever he did end up down in Dallas, Texas in 1966, and by the way, let me get ahead
00:04:52of myself just to say that in the future, you and I are going to have a good conversation
00:04:58or two about that meeting because we actually have the pictures of the meeting room where
00:05:04Dr.
00:05:04Freeman went.
00:05:05I'm not for sure if you know this yet, John, but in some of the information you have on
00:05:11your website, because you do have Gordon Lindsay's publication month by month by month back in
00:05:1865 and 66 and 67.
00:05:21They, Dr.
00:05:24Freeman did show up for a meeting and they actually interviewed him afterwards in that
00:05:30magazine.
00:05:31And it says, Dr.
00:05:32Hobart E.
00:05:33Freeman, pastor of the Brethren Church in Claypool, Indiana.
00:05:37And then they quote Dr.
00:05:39Freeman.
00:05:39So he was there for those meetings.
00:05:41This is where he got his faith message.
00:05:45This is where WV Grant was, Larry Hammond, Kenneth Hagan, Anna Schrader.
00:05:51So we're going to talk about that.
00:05:53And we have the pictures and we have the proof of where he was.
00:05:57And so at that time in June, it was a two week seminar in June of 1966.
00:06:05Hobart had become charismatic in March of that year.
00:06:10He, this is all brand new to him.
00:06:12He goes down there to Dallas, Texas for this, uh, two week long seminar.
00:06:18It was really billed as a deliverance seminar, but they covered prayer, healing gifts of the
00:06:25spirit, as well as deliverance and casting out demons.
00:06:29And it was at that conference or meeting where Hobart first began to hear and learn these things
00:06:38that later became integral to his ministry.
00:06:43And one of the things that he learned that he had actually taught against was the possibility
00:06:50of divine healing for today.
00:06:53He actually, before he had become charismatic, had just taught a series how healing is not for
00:06:59today.
00:07:00And then he ended up, um, in early 1966, having a heart attack.
00:07:07And I've shared some of that before, and I will share that again in more detail when Dr.
00:07:12John Ray came to the hospital and shared his charismatic experience with Hobart and the good news that
00:07:19healing is for today.
00:07:21So early in Hobart's life, that was joyful news that maybe God is still in the healing business today.
00:07:32He had been raised in Southern Baptist brethren church circles where healing was for the first
00:07:37century, but not for today.
00:07:41And when I came into this walk under Dr.
00:07:47Freeman, I was already saved.
00:07:49I was already in the charismatic movement before I ever knew the name Hobart Freeman.
00:07:54But shortly thereafter, when Hobart Freeman came to Memphis to a Howard Johnson's motel in
00:08:00the spring of 1976, and we were able to get some tapes from that meeting and began following him.
00:08:08This is where he was in his walk and his understanding of healing whenever I came into it.
00:08:16So healing was brand new to him.
00:08:20I mean, it was 10 years old by that time, but it was still relatively new in his life.
00:08:25It was a joyful experience.
00:08:27It was something that was positive.
00:08:30It was something that not only was he excited about, but everybody was excited about.
00:08:36But at that time, it didn't have any of the negative connotations associated with it.
00:08:44That is the anti-medicine, anti-doctor that it's going to have later on, as you talked about
00:08:50here in the introduction today.
00:08:52It's just like the old story of putting the frog in the pot on the stove and slowly heating
00:08:58the water.
00:08:59You know, if it was boiling hot, as soon as you hit the water, you jump out.
00:09:03But whenever it's slowly heated, you never know what's going on around you.
00:09:08And so in those days, Dr. Freeman ministered with other charismatic ministers who would
00:09:16teach a doctor's and prayer message.
00:09:20And Hobart would teach a prayer-only message.
00:09:22And he didn't have any problem sharing the platform with them at all.
00:09:26He would praise other healing evangelists who wore glasses or went to the doctor or took
00:09:33medicine.
00:09:34In other words, he didn't see that as a problem.
00:09:36He didn't see it as a contradiction.
00:09:39He even was somewhat proud of the fact and used this in his ministry if he had charismatic
00:09:50friends who followed his ministry who were dentists and doctors.
00:09:56That was something good to say because he could say, look, I've got a doctor friend here
00:10:01who has all the training, who has the medical degree, but who still believes in divine healing.
00:10:08And I've mentioned this, and you've showed this before.
00:10:11This tract entitled May I Refer You was written by Dr.
00:10:18Joseph Sneed down in Americus, Georgia.
00:10:20He had gotten this message from a healing message from Dr.
00:10:24Freeman in 1971, still a medical doctor, traveled to the glory barn, wrote this little tract and
00:10:32had this tract, May I Refer You, would have that in the waiting room of his medical practice.
00:10:39And so Dr. Freeman, we talk about him.
00:10:41So for instance, in the series entitled Gleaning from Galatians, in the message entitled Faith,
00:10:49Fact, or Feeling, he mentions Dr.
00:10:53Sneed and he mentions the publication coming out by people like this.
00:11:00So my point in saying that is that healing was 100% positive back in that day.
00:11:06Healing was joyful.
00:11:08They were so glad there was a healing message.
00:11:11And he wasn't anti-anybody.
00:11:14He was just all pro-God and pro-healing.
00:11:17So when I first came into Dr. Freeman's ministry, that's what I heard.
00:11:23And so I was hearing the same thing that he was thinking.
00:11:26My Presbyterian church either hadn't ever taught on healing, or if they ever had, I don't remember.
00:11:32It obviously wasn't something they emphasized and probably something they didn't even believe in.
00:11:37So when I heard that, wow, God might heal, I thought, you know, I've never heard that before.
00:11:42And then I would hear the verses, you know, by his stripes were healed.
00:11:46First Peter 2.
00:11:47Wow, this is awesome, you know.
00:11:49So I'm learning something new from the Bible that I didn't know.
00:11:53So that was the good beginning.
00:11:55And then the next thing that I saw happen, and it was this slow, I mean, so slow and incremental over time, there became a preoccupation with faith and healing.
00:12:11Whenever I went into the ministry, and anyone can go back and look on my early tape list, you'll see there was faith and healing for sure on there, a la Hobart Freeman and the other health and wealth piece.
00:12:23But there were so many other things that I was teaching, and because I was studying, I was interested in more than just divine healing.
00:12:32I didn't come from a sickly or poor background, so I didn't have this, you know, built-in crushing need to hear that healing is for today.
00:12:42And I've also mentioned, John, over the podcast that this healing and faith message, it works if you're in your 20s, because A, nobody cares that they're poor and nobody knows it, and B, nobody's sick.
00:12:58So, I mean, but none of us had the intelligence, none of us had the ability to recognize when I was in my 20s, let's say the first half, first three quarters of my 20s, I didn't recognize.
00:13:11I never was sick, and I wasn't poor.
00:13:13If I was, I didn't care, because you know that material prosperity comes by time and process and accumulation.
00:13:23You know, you have to work a long time, and then you look back on it and say, oh, man, I have a lot to show for my life.
00:13:30That, of course, wasn't Hobart's message.
00:13:32Hobart was all for right now.
00:13:34But I'm just saying, yeah, this message is easy for 20s and even 30-year-olds.
00:13:44It will work for them.
00:13:46But as we know, it doesn't work when you get past that time, and it did not work for Dr. Freeman.
00:13:53There's so much to unpack there, man.
00:13:55In the Branham cult, it wasn't to the same extremist level that Hobart Freeman had, but we still looked at divine healing much in the same way.
00:14:07And like you said, when you're 20, 30, it works great, because your bodies are very healthy in most cases.
00:14:13But you go into some of the older people's houses, and I can't tell you how many houses were like this.
00:14:21You go in, you walk into their kitchen, and you're expecting, you know, the tablecloth, a little display in the center.
00:14:27When a lot of these houses that I'd go into, there would be this big tub of herbs.
00:14:32And as you get older and your body, your health starts to decline, and you're in these divine healing cults,
00:14:38you're against taking the, you know, casual medicine or even important medicines.
00:14:43And so when you have an ailment, and you go to the doctor, and the doctor says,
00:14:46hey, I can help you get over this, just take this little pill.
00:14:50In many cases, in the Branham cults, people would say, no, let's wait until it gets a lot worse.
00:14:55In Hobart Freeman's cult, it's, no, I'm not taking it at all.
00:14:58But you go into the houses, and instead of medicines, they found alternative medicines is really what it is they're trying to do.
00:15:05And in some cases, it gives a little bit of relief, not a lot.
00:15:08And I would say probably in only 3% to 5% does it actually help entirely in the same way that the medicine does.
00:15:18Because usually it's something that you need medication for.
00:15:21But they're trying to circumvent that medication doctrine by all of these herbs.
00:15:25And just like you said, in the early years, Branham was much the same way.
00:15:31And I always refer back to that Voice of Healing magazine that you're describing.
00:15:37Because it shows all of the clear shifts and transition in just the entire movement, not just Branhamism.
00:15:43In the very, very first issue of this, it is William Branham's magazine.
00:15:49It's called, I'm trying to remember the title without looking at it, but it's something like an inter-evangelical ministry of the Branham campaign.
00:15:59Something like this.
00:16:00I'll throw it up on the screen.
00:16:01But it is clearly a Branham magazine, and Branham is the publisher.
00:16:07It's Branham's magazine.
00:16:08It's not Gordon Lindsay's.
00:16:10And then a year into it, Branham's ministry explodes.
00:16:14We can't get the medical records, but I've been told by more than one person, and the newspapers kind of confirm this.
00:16:23After a year of this, Branham went mentally insane.
00:16:26And he was whisked out of the country, I think it was Mexico, where he was locked up in a padded room.
00:16:34Comes back into the field, and then he mentions that he kind of alludes to the fact that he went through this.
00:16:40But he says, every seven years, I face a similar problem.
00:16:43And you can watch the seven years, and you can see how he just goes off the rails crazy.
00:16:47But in the early years, that inter-evangelical, everybody's welcome.
00:16:54It's not a destructive cult from its outward appearance.
00:16:58If you're Catholic, I don't care.
00:17:00Come join me.
00:17:01If you're Baptist, I don't care.
00:17:02Come join me.
00:17:03And then you see this transition over time to exclusivity, authoritarian control.
00:17:08It's all documented right there in the pages.
00:17:10And then that entity becomes Christ for the nations, because Gordon Lindsay just takes it over and runs with it.
00:17:18Yeah, we're going to have fun when we get to the Voice of Healing edition, since you guys have all that on your website.
00:17:23But I'll save the rest of what I want to say until we get there.
00:17:26But Hobart's preoccupation with faith and healing, and definite preoccupation, that I think was harmful, because it began to elevate it as one of the important doctrines of the Christian faith.
00:17:43If you talk about it all the time, you don't have to say it's one of the most important doctrines.
00:17:51Just the repetitive nature of your teaching says that.
00:17:53And one of the things that I first saw, the way I was able to identify the preoccupation, is in the most interesting way that you could imagine.
00:18:05And that is, whenever the Glory Barn would have a communion service.
00:18:11Whenever they would have a communion service.
00:18:13So they're going to serve the bread and cup.
00:18:17And Hobart talks about it at the beginning of the message.
00:18:19We're going to serve the bread and cup.
00:18:21And so we know what that's about.
00:18:25That's about the death of the Lord Jesus.
00:18:27That's about his atonement on the cross.
00:18:30And we think we know what that's about.
00:18:33I say that in quotation marks.
00:18:35You know, having been in church, we think that's about his payment for the penalty of our sin.
00:18:44His sacrifice that we can be brought into a right relationship and right standing with God.
00:18:52That's what we had been taught the cross was all about.
00:18:56But when Hobart would have a communion service, he would invariably start the message.
00:19:04And I'm going to just give a partial list.
00:19:06And there are dozens and scores of them on the tape list.
00:19:10And you can almost spot them by the title.
00:19:14When he would start the message, he would say, because people could tell, they could see, you know, communion apparatus out there.
00:19:23And he would say, now we're going to observe the communion of the bread and cup today.
00:19:29And so the Lord has given me a message about our full redemption, about our full redemption.
00:19:35And every single time, there aren't any exceptions that I'm aware of, John, when he would talk about when they were going to have communion and he's going to preach a message, then he would say, I want to talk about our full redemption.
00:19:52But invariably, he would only talk about half of it.
00:19:56And that's a bodily healing.
00:19:57He never addressed the other side.
00:20:01He never addressed sin and salvation.
00:20:04It's almost as though he thought, if I preach enough on healing, I can balance out the scales of what all these people have heard every time they had a communion service.
00:20:16I'm sure their minister talked about sin and salvation.
00:20:20So I'm going to balance everything out.
00:20:22And we're going to talk about our full redemption.
00:20:25And so here are just some of the titles.
00:20:27These are messages on Hobart's list where they were going to have communion and he preached on healing.
00:20:34Our one remedy for healing, that's a communion service.
00:20:38He preaches from Luke 6.
00:20:40Right thinking, the key to healing and health.
00:20:45Communion service, Mark 2.
00:20:47Will thou be made whole?
00:20:50A message preached from John 5.
00:20:52But it's not any spiritual health.
00:20:54This is all physical health.
00:20:55The healing of the whole person, the redemption of the whole body, the healing question, surviving the pill generation, son of man versus medicine man, the Lord's report versus a medical report, holding fast to what you have.
00:21:10Healing is easier.
00:21:13Communion and Calvary.
00:21:16No warning on the label.
00:21:18And on and on and on and on were messages on divine healing at a communion service.
00:21:26And obviously, I think everyone can see what a normal person's reaction would be.
00:21:32If you're going to teach on our whole redemption, how about 50% of those times being about the spirit and 50% about the body?
00:21:40You know, it was just completely out of order.
00:21:43It was completely out of balance.
00:21:46And I would say out of order.
00:21:49Surely, surely we all agree that the sin problem is way larger in the grand scheme of things than the physical sickness problem.
00:21:59At least physical sickness, there is a way.
00:22:01There is medical science.
00:22:03There are natural herbs and vitamins and techniques.
00:22:06There is no cure to the sin problem apart from the sacrifice of Christ.
00:22:11There is no cure for that problem at all.
00:22:14And I just thought he was so preoccupied.
00:22:17He was so bound and determined that I'm going to give you what you people have never heard before.
00:22:23I'm going to give you the message of your full redemption of the body as well.
00:22:28And so he would go down these long tangents of constantly talking about the healing of the body and not, in my opinion,
00:22:37and not balancing it with the salvation of our soul.
00:22:41It wasn't balanced.
00:22:42And the focus was just not on the gospel, as you would expect in a Christian church.
00:22:48You would expect if you're a Christian and you go to a Christian congregation, you're going to be hearing the gospel.
00:22:54For 37 years of my life, I never heard it.
00:22:57Because the gospel took backstage to this divine healing message.
00:23:02And people would focus more heavily on stories of what was than the gospel itself.
00:23:09I can tell you countless sermons that I heard where I knew every detail of William Branham's life from start to finish,
00:23:19not because William Branham said it, but you'd go listen to these sermons,
00:23:22and they would talk about hunting stories and fishing stories and things that I'm trying to picture a person walking in off of the street.
00:23:30They're on vacation.
00:23:31They say, hey, honey, let's go try this church around the corner.
00:23:34And they walk in and they hear some guy talking about hunting a squirrel in the woods.
00:23:39What in the world are they going to think?
00:23:41Is this a Christian church?
00:23:42Is this some kind of a lodge?
00:23:43What is this?
00:23:44But that's the way it was.
00:23:46And what had happened is once the cult started to form, the mythology of the cult became the new gospel.
00:23:55It replaced the actual gospel from the Bible.
00:23:58And that mythology was deeply rooted in divine healing.
00:24:02So if you were an outsider and you walked into this church, you're going to hear the mythology,
00:24:06all of the weird stories that are focused solely upon the central figure, not upon Jesus,
00:24:12and its relation to the divine healing.
00:24:16Because in its original form, in the cult that emerged in latter rain that developed into Hobart Freeman's cult,
00:24:24divine healing was called the gospel of divine healing.
00:24:28And it was deeply rooted into the – your salvation included the healing.
00:24:34It came one and the same.
00:24:35In other words, if you were sick and you accepted the gospel, you had to show the fruits of this by being healed.
00:24:44The sad part is some people had diseases that they just – there is no cure for.
00:24:49So these people sadly thought that they were unsaved.
00:24:52I think Hobart evidently thought that the gospel was just getting people saved, John,
00:24:58because he was very critical of the denominational churches and denominational church Christians,
00:25:05and he just called them John 3.16 people.
00:25:09You know, whoever believes on the sun can have everlasting life.
00:25:12That he just – he always downplayed anybody who he categorized as a John 3.16 Christian.
00:25:20Like there are – like that there are these different levels.
00:25:24And I'm not saying that there aren't different maturity levels among believers,
00:25:28but at the end of the day, everybody who is a believer is a believer.
00:25:33And yes, some people walk their Christian life more satisfactorily than others.
00:25:40And yes, there's a degree – varying degrees of reward in the next life.
00:25:45But we're still all believers regardless.
00:25:48We are still all saved by the same blood of the same son of the same God on the same cross,
00:25:54and it's the same sacrifice.
00:25:56I remember hearing one of my favorite all-time preachers, Dr. R.C. Sproul, say – he would
00:26:02give this analogy.
00:26:03He would talk about on a long line of a continuum, you would have – way over on the far right
00:26:10side, you would have the Lord Jesus.
00:26:13And over on the far left side, you would have Adolf Hitler.
00:26:16And then Dr. Sproul would say, and where do I fall on that?
00:26:22He said, in comparison to the Lord Jesus and who he is, he said, I'm only about a millimeter
00:26:30this side of Adolf Hitler.
00:26:33And I thought that was so appropriate because all of us who are fallen, even all of us who
00:26:40are redeemed from a fallen life, we're a lot closer.
00:26:46If we really want to look at our life and be honest with ourselves, we're a lot closer
00:26:52to Hitler than we are to Jesus.
00:26:54We just are.
00:26:55And for a person not to be willing to admit that or not to acknowledge that probably shows
00:27:02that they have been preoccupied with some of these peripheral matters like divine healing
00:27:08instead of studying some of the things we really need to be studying in the Bible.
00:27:13And so Hobart didn't preach the gospel because he thought the gospel is just getting saved.
00:27:20But to whom are the New Testament epistles written?
00:27:24They're written to believers.
00:27:25And look at all the wealth of teaching.
00:27:28Paul's not telling people, now here's how you get saved.
00:27:31Those people are already saved.
00:27:32That's why he's writing them these letters.
00:27:35These are, as J.B. Phillips said in his translation, letters to young churches from James and from
00:27:43Peter and from Jude and especially from the Apostle Paul.
00:27:47And if you look through those letters, look for the teaching or instances of divine healing.
00:27:54You don't find very much.
00:27:56You don't find very much at all.
00:27:58The stories of healing are in the Gospels and in Acts.
00:28:01And what the people need who are now believers, that would be from Romans on through the end
00:28:09of the New Testament.
00:28:10They are being taught all of these things about now that you are a believer, how should I live
00:28:18my life?
00:28:19What is the Christian life about?
00:28:21It's all about our service to God and the Christian virtues and our prayer life, our service to
00:28:29and love of one another.
00:28:31That's what the epistles are telling.
00:28:33They're unwrapping and unpacking all of this Old Testament typology and doctrine that was
00:28:39realized in Jesus' earthly life and ministry and death and resurrection and ascension.
00:28:45The apostles are interpreting all of that and applying that to the lives of the early church.
00:28:50That's what we should be hearing.
00:28:52Instead, at a communion service at the Glory Barn, we are again hearing, I'm going to give
00:29:01you a message on your full, total, whole redemption, and we're going to talk about divine healing.
00:29:06And then the next step in Dr. Freeman's progression, this is the frog in the warm water in the pot on
00:29:14the top of the range.
00:29:16The next progression, and it's just inevitable.
00:29:20If you stay with this, you run out of things to say is basically what happens.
00:29:26You run out of things to say.
00:29:28So your next step is how bad doctors are.
00:29:33You don't hear that in the early messages.
00:29:35Zero.
00:29:36You do not hear that.
00:29:37As I said, Freeman had doctor friends, and he praised them, and he never said, oh, that's
00:29:43evil to be a doctor, or they need to get out of that profession.
00:29:47No, this is the natural progression as you go down this path.
00:29:52He ran out of things to say about healing.
00:29:55He had, in his mind, taught all that he knew about it.
00:29:59So now he has to talk against doctors.
00:30:07He begins using scare tactics.
00:30:10He begins using shame tactics.
00:30:12The scare tactics are to scare you away from these doctors because they're bad, they're
00:30:17evil.
00:30:19He began doing that by giving all of these, and he's got lots of tapes on this, the medical
00:30:27statistics tapes, where he would give, and he got it all, by the way, out of Reader's
00:30:33Digest, Newsweek, and Time Magazine.
00:30:35That was the extent of his research.
00:30:38But he would find some articles that some surgeon had operated on the wrong leg.
00:30:41You know, when you go in to have a leg operated on, I think the nurse marks the one that you
00:30:46either are to be operated or not.
00:30:48I don't know how that works, but they mark it.
00:30:51And so he would give a statistic that somebody had the wrong leg amputated, and they had a
00:30:57sponge left inside their internal parts after they were operated on.
00:31:03And then he would say, there were 10,000 unnecessary operations.
00:31:08And you've got to see, this is coming from your leader, a leader of 2,000 people.
00:31:12He's given these statistics.
00:31:14You're not allowed to read anything or watch TV or go anywhere.
00:31:17You don't know anything.
00:31:18You're totally dependent on what this man is giving you.
00:31:21And those statistics are probably viable statistics.
00:31:25He is probably telling the truth.
00:31:27But what people aren't processing is, so what a sponge was left in somebody.
00:31:32There's 100,000 cases where the sponge wasn't left inside the person.
00:31:37Yes, doctors are fallible.
00:31:39And yes, doctors are going to make mistakes, obviously.
00:31:43But the mistakes they make are relatively few compared to the successful times that they
00:31:49operate on someone.
00:31:50And if you look at these statistics of death at Faith Assembly, those statistics were sky
00:31:57high of them dying from something that the doctor could have prevented.
00:32:02But in these people's mind, John, they are hearing, golly, these doctors are terrible people.
00:32:11MD came to stand for medical deities.
00:32:16And so they thought that was so cute that they were talking against medical deities.
00:32:23And people were so afraid.
00:32:27He was scaring them away from the doctors, scaring them towards God instead of the earlier message,
00:32:35which was just welcoming them to healing.
00:32:38Like, we didn't know healing was available.
00:32:40Isn't this great news?
00:32:42Now it's, you better not go to the doctor or the hospital because they'll probably cut the wrong arm off of your body.
00:32:49Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism
00:32:56transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the new apostolic
00:33:02reformation?
00:33:03You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:33:10On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley,
00:33:17Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:33:24You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
00:33:31If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top.
00:33:38And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
00:33:44On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:33:49There's a Seinfeld episode where Elaine, she loves these jujee fruits, and she's eating the jujee fruits,
00:33:57and they just happen to go to a medical observation where they're having an open-body surgery on one of the friends,
00:34:06and she's standing up in the balcony and drops a jujee fruit, and it goes down into his body cavity.
00:34:12And they sew him back up, and he's just not getting any better, and the whole story escalates from there.
00:34:17But when I saw that, the thought hit me, the one in ten million chance that somebody's going to drop a jujee fruit in somebody's body cavity,
00:34:30that statistic is about the same as these ministers do in these divine healing,
00:34:37because they want you to know that somebody somewhere in some random unorthodox way made a mistake,
00:34:44and therefore, you too, brothers and sisters, you are very much at risk for that same mistake.
00:34:50They want to put that fear in you, and they're not telling about the 999, you know, too infinite, 9%
00:34:58that you're going to go in and the church is going to be okay.
00:35:02And what that has done for me personally, after leaving, I no longer believe in that way at all.
00:35:09But in the back of my head, I always have that thought.
00:35:12When I go to the doctor, what if that mistake happens?
00:35:15And then I have to tell myself, okay, that bozo that was indoctrinating my head
00:35:20didn't tell me about the almost 100% times that it succeeded.
00:35:25He wanted to find that one little jujee fruit example.
00:35:29John, that is so true.
00:35:30And everyone who followed Hobart can identify with what you just said and what we're talking about.
00:35:37It was terrible bondage those people were in, and I felt so sorry for them.
00:35:43I recognize this, even when I was still somewhat of a follower of Hobart's,
00:35:48I recognized this pretty early, that something has happened.
00:35:52You've gone from a joyful message to a fearful message.
00:35:56You've gone from the privilege we have of trusting God
00:35:59and the hope we have of healing being available in this life.
00:36:03You've gone from that to it's just a purely negative message.
00:36:08It's just 100% negative.
00:36:10It's bondage.
00:36:11It's fear.
00:36:12It's condemnation.
00:36:14Hobart himself did not throw away his glasses, get rid of doctors, get rid of insurance.
00:36:19The first day, month, year of his charismatic walk, he definitely didn't
00:36:24because you hear him having those things on the early tapes.
00:36:28But at the end of his ministry, he's insisting that everybody follow him quickly and immediately.
00:36:34There's no grace period.
00:36:35He doesn't give anybody the same opportunity he had when he was new in the walk,
00:36:41and that's part of the shame tactic that I mentioned earlier.
00:36:45My word, he would scare you with the medical statistics,
00:36:49but then if he didn't scare you enough, he, through the church, would shame you
00:36:54because everybody else, they were his little Gestapo, little SS secret police,
00:37:01and they would be monitoring as anybody out here on any kind of medication
00:37:06or going to any kind of doctors.
00:37:08There was just no grace in that church at all.
00:37:11It's a wonder it lasted as long as it did.
00:37:14I was so thankful when it all came to an end.
00:37:20I wasn't happy that Hobart died sick, and I'll tell all of the stories.
00:37:25We haven't gotten there yet.
00:37:27About his death, I did call June Freeman, his wife, that very week on the phone to talk to her,
00:37:33hoping that Hobart's death would bring this to an end.
00:37:37I kept thinking to myself and even saying to people in my own church,
00:37:42somebody has got to stop the madness.
00:37:45People were dying left and right, and the people who weren't dying, wow, he had done,
00:37:52he was very successful, as any cult leader is, very successful in getting people to buy into his message
00:38:00and creating such fear and suspicion.
00:38:04There was no way I, at that time, and trust me, I tried.
00:38:08I talked to June.
00:38:09I tried to talk to other ministers.
00:38:10I tried to talk to people.
00:38:13I mean, you are not getting through the armor they had on them,
00:38:17not even after Dr. Freeman had died as sick as he died.
00:38:22I thought, surely, that's going to upset this whole apple cart and bring these walls crumbling down.
00:38:30Man, it didn't do anything like that.
00:38:33If anything, people just circled the wagons even more and tried to figure out why Hobart died,
00:38:39but, you know, we're not giving up this message.
00:38:42And you're so right.
00:38:44To this day, people who are free, that's just the power that the manipulation of the mind has in a cult like that.
00:38:53To this day, people who are free still struggle with it.
00:38:56And you and I have talked before, if you were a part of a healthy Baptist or Pentecostal or Presbyterian church
00:39:05for two, three, four, five years of your life with a normal minister,
00:39:10no, maybe not preaching all the things that he should have or that you wished he would have,
00:39:15but at least he wasn't a cult leader.
00:39:16And you leave that, you don't have any long-term ramifications from that.
00:39:21You know, you just don't.
00:39:23You don't have any long-term ramifications.
00:39:25You're not.
00:39:26That minister's terminology and his words and his stories aren't embedded in your brain for the rest of your life
00:39:35so that you can hardly get away from them like they are with Dr. Freeman or William Branham
00:39:42or some of these other people.
00:39:44You made the comment on a recent video because I looked at a person's response.
00:39:51Someone who has been, who I don't think totally bought into this anyway.
00:39:56I'm not going to mention names.
00:39:57They will know who it is because when I tell the story, I don't think they totally bought in.
00:40:01They've been away from it regardless for years.
00:40:04But you made the comment that now that you're getting older or something,
00:40:09you have like old man's disease.
00:40:10And this person said, I thought to myself, oh, no, you can't say that because that's a bad confession.
00:40:17Oh, that's right.
00:40:18I don't believe in bad confessions anymore.
00:40:21You saying that triggered him into thinking that, oh, no, if you say that,
00:40:28it's going to bring all kinds of calamity on you because you can't confess anything about age or about being old.
00:40:36You just can't do that.
00:40:38And it scared him for your sake until he caught himself and realized, what am I thinking?
00:40:46I've been out of that cult for all these years, you know?
00:40:48I do have old man's disease.
00:40:50I got it early, and everybody's bound to get it.
00:40:53That's the thing about these cults.
00:40:55They try to offer a solution to the world's problems that everybody has
00:40:59because if they can be the answer to that problem, then you can join them,
00:41:03and you, too, can have a new body before you leave the earth.
00:41:07And it's just so weird, but the indoctrination sticks with you.
00:41:11I had the conversation with my wife just last night.
00:41:15Even if I get a headache, I struggle to take a Tylenol for it
00:41:19because that's the way I was brought up, man.
00:41:22I can suffer through this.
00:41:23I'm going to take the pain.
00:41:25And in the back of my head, I'm thinking, you know,
00:41:28you watch those commercials on Tylenol or Advil,
00:41:30and they've got that little sentence at the bottom of the page that says,
00:41:34or bottom of the screen, it's going to say,
00:41:36if you take this, you might have this random symptom, this other random symptom.
00:41:40And half the symptoms of those medications, if you look at it,
00:41:44they're symptoms that you would have for the causes that make you take the medication.
00:41:48And so they're, like, covering all their bases, right?
00:41:52But in the back of my mind, those sentences that they run at the bottom of the screen
00:41:56that says, you're going to get this and this,
00:41:58and it scares you to death because that's how the sermons were focused.
00:42:03And I had the conversation just last night.
00:42:06I ended up taking some Tylenol.
00:42:07I got pretty bad.
00:42:09But the thing of it is we were indoctrinated to focus so heavily on that.
00:42:13And how in the world did that become a sermon that's preached in a Christian church?
00:42:20It has no place or relevance, even if it's the opinion of the person who's preaching.
00:42:25He can have that opinion.
00:42:27He's welcome to it.
00:42:27But he doesn't preach that in a Christian church.
00:42:30Yeah, John, it would make me so mad.
00:42:33I told someone the other day, I can remember years and years ago,
00:42:37I was a young man, and I had not heard a few of Hobart's tapes,
00:42:41and I was missing a few, so I would order a few from John Abel,
00:42:44who was head of Faith Ministries and Publications.
00:42:48And I'd receive those in the mail, and I would be so excited,
00:42:52and I would open up that package, and I would pop in the first tape.
00:42:56That's when we were listening to cassette tapes.
00:42:59I'd pop in the first tape based on the title.
00:43:02Oh, this is going to be good.
00:43:04And I would start listening to it, and, you know, invariably, I would go,
00:43:09oh, no, not the same old healing and anti-doctor stuff.
00:43:14You know, I was really hungry, and I wanted to learn something about the Bible.
00:43:19And it would be a message with a long list.
00:43:23I'm talking about the message itself was taken up with anti-medical deity statistics
00:43:31that you could get from reading whatever article Hobart read
00:43:35that he gleaned those statistics from.
00:43:38And to your point, no, why are you talking about that in church?
00:43:41Even though I'm sure those statistics are true, who cares?
00:43:45That's not why I'm coming to church.
00:43:47You know, I'm coming to church, or I'm buying a religious tape
00:43:51because I'm wanting to learn something about Galatians or Philippians or Jeremiah.
00:43:57I don't care about these statistics.
00:44:00You've worn out.
00:44:02This is an old horse.
00:44:03You've beat him to death.
00:44:04It's all worn out.
00:44:06But it's almost like Hobart, he was just a broken record,
00:44:11and he was stuck, and he couldn't get off that.
00:44:14And he kept using the same examples from the Bible,
00:44:18like Moses in Deuteronomy 34, where we read that Moses was 120,
00:44:24and his eye was not dim, neither his natural force abated.
00:44:31That's, I think, in verse 7 of Deuteronomy 34.
00:44:35Deuteronomy 34, 7 is,
00:44:38eye was not dim, and his natural force or strength was not abated.
00:44:42And he just pulls that out of his context and throws it in to a message on healing.
00:44:49And what you begin to see, obviously, is a terrible hermeneutic,
00:44:55a terrible misuse of Scripture,
00:44:57where they took a Scripture, verse, that is true,
00:45:02that applied to Moses and tried to apply it universally.
00:45:06And I saw pretty early on, I mean, when I first heard Dr. Freeman,
00:45:11I thought, oh, yeah, this stuff is great.
00:45:14When I first heard him, shortly thereafter, you know,
00:45:18you've heard all this stuff, and then you're beginning to wonder,
00:45:21I don't think this is really the way it's supposed to be.
00:45:24Do you know, John, the very first time,
00:45:26I just thought of this the other day,
00:45:28because I have it on the tape list,
00:45:31the last one that came out right after Hobart died,
00:45:34a tape which was then entitled F under the faith heading 136,
00:45:41Our Family Physician.
00:45:43That was taught on a Sunday morning, August the 15th, 1976,
00:45:48first time I ever showed up at the Glory Barn.
00:45:51I am 17 years old.
00:45:53We had driven from North Mississippi.
00:45:56We were headed to Niles, Michigan,
00:45:58to visit some friends of my friends that I was traveling with.
00:46:02And we stayed up in Niles, Michigan.
00:46:03And that weekend, but then drove back down early, early Sunday morning
00:46:08to North Webster, Indiana,
00:46:10to attend the Glory Barn.
00:46:12October 15th, 1976.
00:46:14First time I was ever there.
00:46:16First time I ever met Hobart.
00:46:18After the message, I went up and shook hands with him.
00:46:22And it was on Our Family Physician,
00:46:25which then, to me, I thought,
00:46:26oh, yeah, this is great.
00:46:28You know, because before we all had our family physician.
00:46:31It was Dr. Smith, Dr. Jones.
00:46:34But now Jesus is our family physician.
00:46:37So we can get rid of all those guys.
00:46:39And we're not going down that path anymore.
00:46:42And he even talked, this was the very first time,
00:46:45he mentioned the ORC plan of health.
00:46:51You know, he would talk about how people have Blue Cross or Blue Shield.
00:46:54He said, now, we used to have that, but we now use the ORC plan.
00:46:59This was the first time he mentioned the ORC plan of health.
00:47:03So everyone's on their edge of the seat.
00:47:06I'm in the second floor of the Glory Barn.
00:47:08There's hundreds of people on the second floor of this barn.
00:47:11We're way back at the back.
00:47:13We didn't know you had to get there early to get a good seat.
00:47:16And we're hearing this,
00:47:17Our Family Physician and the ORC health plan.
00:47:22Well, it stood for the Old Rugged Cross.
00:47:26He loved these little abbreviations.
00:47:28He later taught against abbreviations, remember.
00:47:31But he loved these little abbreviations to help make the sermon cute.
00:47:38And, of course, to those of us who are new there,
00:47:41and we think, wow, this is great.
00:47:45Moses was 120 and still had great vision.
00:47:51And he was 120, and he was just as strong as he was when he was a young man.
00:47:57And he would tell the story of Caleb and Joshua.
00:48:00Caleb was 80 years old.
00:48:02He said, I'm just as strong to go in and go out as I was in the day Moses promised me this mountain.
00:48:0880-year-old man, just as strong.
00:48:11It was a very poor hermeneutic where Hobart would take something that was meant for a specific individual and just universalize it.
00:48:21Just it's a blank check for everyone.
00:48:24And then they would use rationale by pulling other scriptures out of context.
00:48:30Well, God is no respecter of persons, right?
00:48:32So why would God do something for Moses that he won't do for you?
00:48:36That's the way Hobart's theology was, pulling all of these verses out of context.
00:48:42God did this for Moses.
00:48:43God's no respecter of persons, right?
00:48:45Right, because the Bible says that.
00:48:47So God will do that for you.
00:48:49And, after all, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
00:48:53So, you run all those together, and then it's like I said last time with Kenneth Hagin's famous sermon.
00:49:02You pretty much could just write your own ticket with God and get anything that you wanted to get.
00:49:07Another thought I've had recently is that the irony of this faith healing movement is that they strongly condemned medication,
00:49:16and they would point to the examples.
00:49:18The world is getting into a worse place because of all these doctors and medicine.
00:49:22And you take the medicine, and it makes you worse.
00:49:24You've got to take the blue pill so that you can remember to take the green pill and the green pill.
00:49:29Because you take that, you've got to take the yellow pill.
00:49:31They go through all those scenarios, and they convinced masses of people.
00:49:36We're talking, I would say, in the tens of thousands of people that taking medicine was causing the decline of health in the world.
00:49:46Yet, if you look at the statistics, I don't know if you've done this,
00:49:48the average life expectancy of the 50s and 60s when this movement was in its steam is, it's like 20 years less than it is today.
00:49:59Medical science has actually helped us progress in a good way, not in a bad way.
00:50:03But these guys, ironically, the same people that are saying, you don't need the health because doomsday is right here around the corner.
00:50:12The rapture is coming.
00:50:13We're going to be carried away.
00:50:14You don't need the health.
00:50:16Yet, we're going to force you to believe this and not to take medications.
00:50:21And all the while, the medical science is actually progressing in a better way than what their plan was.
00:50:28You're so true on that, John.
00:50:31It's just a, it's a very strange scenario.
00:50:35You know, I did not, honestly, as people can tell from my testimony, I did not recognize this early on in my life.
00:50:44And none of these other people did.
00:50:46You did.
00:50:47None of the people that followed Branham.
00:50:48And you're in it as a teen, as I was, 17 years old.
00:50:52I didn't have health issues, so healing or not healing, doctors or not doctors, wasn't a life or death issue for me.
00:51:01But it is a life or death issue for a lot of people.
00:51:04And we've documented plenty in these podcasts, people who died following Hobart's method.
00:51:10It wasn't a life or death issue for me, but I thought it was interesting that I had never heard that Jesus had died for the whole man.
00:51:20But I just knew as a Christian that my struggles in my life as a Christian, they were due to spiritual issues.
00:51:31They were not due to physical issues.
00:51:35And that the growth that I wanted to see in my own personal life was spiritual growth.
00:51:42And, of course, all of us want to feel okay.
00:51:45But I was smart enough to realize whether you are in pain or not in pain doesn't have anything to do with your eternal destiny.
00:51:55Your standing with God is just the most important thing to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and soul and mind and strength.
00:52:04And then, secondly, which we just were not taught, we were not encouraged, we were actually directed away from this, and that is to love your neighbor as yourself.
00:52:16You know, there was so much elitism and isolationism in Faith Assembly and the circles that followed them.
00:52:25There was so much shame involved.
00:52:28People were scared to go to the doctors.
00:52:31They were ashamed to anyone who did.
00:52:34They would try to hide it.
00:52:36If it was found out, you were cut off.
00:52:41If it was found out by the minister, you became a topic of the next sermon.
00:52:49There was no Christian love.
00:52:52And yet Hobart talked about 1 Corinthians 1.10.
00:52:55We need to all speak the same thing, believe the same thing, have the same doctrine.
00:52:59It was an absolute cult effort to get everyone to agree with everything he said and believed, and there would be no differences at all.
00:53:12And that's just not reality.
00:53:14And the differences that people wanted to have would be in areas where Hobart didn't want them to have it, and so he just would come down even stronger.
00:53:25And like the case I gave with Moses and his eyesight, I can remember looking at that passage and thinking, yeah, that's true about Moses, but guess what?
00:53:41I'm not Moses.
00:53:43And to even look at the face-to-face contact that man had with God.
00:53:51God said, I'll talk to Israel through you, but with my servant Moses, I will talk to you face-to-face.
00:53:57He said, I'll talk to other prophets in similitudes and dreams and visions, but it's not so with my servant Moses.
00:54:04I will talk with him face-to-face.
00:54:07I don't compare to Moses.
00:54:08If I did not have that ministry and that calling and that burden, and for this man to have accomplished what he did in Pharaoh's court and to lead millions of people who were slaves out of slavery across the desert right to the very threshold of entering the promised land, he needed his strength and he needed good vision, you know,
00:54:35in a way that the rest of us in a way that the rest of us don't need, and therefore we're not going to have.
00:54:41And I've said on these podcasts, I'm 66 years old, and I want to continue to say I am so thankful to God for my health.
00:54:49But I've had my own health issues.
00:54:51I've gone to a doctor.
00:54:52I've taken medicine.
00:54:53It's not been often, and I'm very thankful for that.
00:54:57But it doesn't make me a better Christian, closer to God, closer to an overcomer, because my trips to medical science are less often than someone else's.
00:55:10It doesn't have anything to do with that.
00:55:13But that I am in good health, that I'm only half Moses' age, and I still don't wear glasses, I'm very grateful for that.
00:55:21But I can pretty much predict if I live to be 120, I bet you'll see me with a pair of glasses on.
00:55:29But I'm not going to live to be that old.
00:55:31I don't even want to live to be that old.
00:55:33I just think it's been such a terrible misuse of Scripture by all of these men to take these passages that are to a specific person and just universalize them.
00:55:48It's just cherry-picking.
00:55:50It's practicing that old childhood game of hopscotch.
00:55:56We just jump from square to square to square and hope we don't fall on the crack in between.
00:56:02It's just cherry-picking our way through the Bible.
00:56:07And, of course, we're all humans.
00:56:09I would like to have $10 million in the bank as much as the next person would.
00:56:14And I would like to be in perfect health just as much as the next person was.
00:56:19It's not that we don't all have the same wishes or aspirations as Ponce de Leon did.
00:56:27That's why he was searching for the fountain of youth.
00:56:29But we all need to live in reality, and we all need to major on the majors and minor on the minors.
00:56:37And I realize when a person is very, very sick and ill, that is a huge issue in their life.
00:56:44I get that, and I'm supportive of that.
00:56:46And we should do everything we can to help that person and aid in their comfort and their recovery and their healing from that.
00:56:56But at the end of the day, to die is gain.
00:57:01And I'm not wishing death on anybody.
00:57:03But I'm just saying, at the end of the day, our relationship, our daily walk with God, our life of prayer,
00:57:11our ability to love all of our brothers and sisters in Christ and have fellowship with all of them,
00:57:18we don't see eye-to-eye on everything.
00:57:21But let's focus on the things that we do see eye-to-eye on and the things that we don't.
00:57:25Let's be willing to work on those together, not in an argumentative way,
00:57:30but let's lay down the gauntlet and say, let's approach this, and let's see if we can figure this out.
00:57:38But, you know, in all things charity, as the Apostle Paul said,
00:57:41now abideth faith and hope and love.
00:57:45Dr. Freeman was all about faith, and he didn't really like to talk about hope much,
00:57:50and even verses that actually use the word hope, like in Hebrews 10,
00:57:55and let's hold fast to the confession of our, the Greek says hope, not faith.
00:57:59You would never know that from Dr. Freeman, because that was a let's hold on to our faith confession.
00:58:05It's not the Greek word there.
00:58:07Faith, hope, and love.
00:58:08And Paul said the greatest of these is love.
00:58:12You know, what they did in effect was they turned the blessings into a curse.
00:58:15The Bible talks about divine healing, and it talks about God can bless you with the healing of the body.
00:58:22And these movements took that, and they said, basically flipped it on upside down,
00:58:28and said that if, for whatever reason, God doesn't heal you, you're cursed, and we're not part of you.
00:58:34And if you're in a religion that wants to support the curse and take them to get medicine because God didn't heal them,
00:58:40for whatever reason, they're part of the curse.
00:58:43And so we're going to sever ourselves from them.
00:58:46We've, in effect, severed the body of Christ.
00:58:48That's what these guys did, and they totally avoided all of the passages that talked about the evil ones
00:58:54that would come to sever the body of Christ.
00:58:57So you can't really have both.
00:58:59You can't uplift part of the Bible that's giving the blessings and then totally ignore the rest of the Bible.
00:59:06And that's what they did in effect because, in the end, it was a different gospel.
00:59:10It wasn't the gospel of Jesus Christ.
00:59:13So, glad that I'm no longer a part of it, and I'm glad that I was able to take some Advil or Tylenol,
00:59:19whatever it was, from my head last night so my headache could go away.
00:59:23John, I'm glad you're feeling a lot better today.
00:59:26Well, good deal.
00:59:27Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
00:59:31You can find us at william-branham.org.
00:59:33For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation,
00:59:37read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR,
00:59:41available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:00:03Here we go.