Faith Assembly’s Cover Up: What Really Happened When Hobart Freeman Died

7 hours ago

John and Chino examine the final weeks of Hobart Freeman’s life, the circumstances surrounding his death, and how Faith Assembly leaders responded in the aftermath. Drawing from coroner reports, medical findings, eyewitness testimony, and contemporaneous newspaper coverage, they contrast Freeman’s public claims of divine healing with the documented medical realities he faced at the end of his life.

The discussion explores delayed reporting of his death, alleged attempts at resuscitation, suppression of key facts, and how movements centered on a single charismatic leader often intensify, fracture, and radicalize after a failed miracle. This conversation addresses accountability, false prophecy, and why confronting documented evidence matters for survivors of high-control religious environments.

00:00 Introduction
02:45 Hobart Freeman’s Background and Final Illness
10:19 The 12-Hour Delay and Alleged Resurrection Attempts
20:06 Public Healing Claims vs. Medical Reality
34:33 The Coroner’s Report and Severe Health Conditions
52:06 Diabetes, Gangrene, and Contributing Causes of Death
1:00:00 The Alleged Cover-Up and Leadership Silence
1:08:39 Why Examining the Facts Matters

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Transcript

00:00:31Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.

00:00:36I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research

00:00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host, minister, and friend, Cheno Ross,

00:00:46pastor and the voice of the understanding scripture and truth by Cheno D. Ross' YouTube

00:00:51channel.

00:00:52Cheno, it's good to be back, and I'm freezing cold.

00:00:55This episode will come out a little bit later than this, but it's like, I don't know, two

00:01:00degrees here, and I'm chilled to the bone, so I've got a heater running beside me.

00:01:04Hopefully it's not too loud for the audience, but we're talking today about something that

00:01:09I said last time we recorded, it fascinates me.

00:01:13You have somebody who has risen up to be a central figure in a cult that is literally

00:01:18teaching you that you can overcome all health issues, and then suddenly he's exposed for

00:01:24health issues to the extent where the person dies, and today we get into the massive cover-up.

00:01:30Now, in the Branham cult, our cover-up, we had the same exact scenario, sort of.

00:01:36Our covered-up was so much more extreme than yours.

00:01:40I don't know if you know this or not, but Branham died in December 1965 was his death.

00:01:48Well, what happens when you die and you've got this whole movement that can't stop, and

00:01:54all of these leaders who are just raking in the money, and suddenly the reason, the very

00:01:59cause of their income disappears.

00:02:02What do you do with this?

00:02:03And so in our cult, we invented this story that Branham was going to rise from the dead,

00:02:09and they pushed the burial back from December to Easter of the next year, and kept his body

00:02:16on ice in the funeral home, which isn't quite – I think there's some laws broken there.

00:02:21There has to be.

00:02:22But – so they could reorganize, and what it did was powerful.

00:02:26It distracted the focus of the people from the death to the resurrection.

00:02:30So instead of thinking, oh my gosh, this cult just imploded, he's dead, it was all for

00:02:35nothing, they think, oh, he's coming back, and they just totally lost focus of the death,

00:02:41right?

00:02:42Well, Hobart Freeman's death changed a few things, too, because there's this little bit

00:02:46of cover-up, and we'll get into that today.

00:02:48But it's interesting to me what happens when a cult leader dies.

00:02:52Yeah, you're in a really bad situation, right, when you are so dependent on that leader,

00:02:57because he's the locomotive that's driving the whole engine.

00:03:01So Hobart Freeman was born on June the 17th, 1920, in a little town, not an hour and a half

00:03:10from where I'm sitting right here, in northeastern Kentucky, a little place called Ewing, Kentucky,

00:03:16population 300.

00:03:19I mean, it was literally a spot on the map up in Fleming County, Kentucky, and he died

00:03:26on December the 8th, 1984, at the age of 64 and a half.

00:03:33And it is, to this day, a little unclear about the actual time of his death, because I don't

00:03:44think the people who knew the time of his death were or have been forthcoming.

00:03:51So what happened was he died on the evening of December the 8th.

00:03:58It was a Saturday, 1984.

00:04:01As we said last time, it had been his custom to take a month off in the fall from preaching,

00:04:07and he would normally go out west.

00:04:10This year, his time to take off was a little later.

00:04:14Because he had a lot of other things happening, and so we're up into November, where he had

00:04:20not preached in November, had not been at the church, or the first couple of weeks of December.

00:04:28And so around 8.45 in the morning on Sunday, December the 9th, the local funeral home, Titus

00:04:39funeral home received a call from the Freeman residence on Shoe Lake, saying that there had

00:04:47been a death.

00:04:48Whenever that happens, the funeral home calls the coroner's office, which was in Kosciuszko

00:04:55County, Indiana, and the coroner's name was Gary Eastland.

00:04:59Gary Eastland then, obviously, this is just how these things have to go down, got the local

00:05:07sheriff, Alan Rovenstein, and a detective, Lieutenant Tom Kitsch, and they made the drive out to

00:05:16the Freeman residence.

00:05:19And all of this you can find either in the coroner's report, or one thing I don't think people realize,

00:05:28John, is that the newspaper accounts were pretty accurate in reporting a whole lot of these

00:05:35details. Of course, Faith Assembly was trained to be wary and suspicious of the media. Dr. Freeman

00:05:44often said that the only time that the people from the media lie is when they open their mouth or

00:05:52write something down. In other words, all the time. You can't trust anything from them. But actually,

00:05:58they were getting a lot of good information from law enforcement, because that's what reporters do.

00:06:03They go around digging. And they were getting a lot of information from the medical authorities.

00:06:09You know, there was a woman there in that area who was a nurse. Her name was Barbara Klaus.

00:06:15She was an outspoken critic of the Glory Barn and a faith assembly, because as a public nurse in that

00:06:23area, she was well aware of a lot of the deaths that were happening. So, she was a very vocal

00:06:28critic

00:06:28of Dr. Freeman and of what was happening there. So, you could find out things from medical sources,

00:06:35whether the coroner's office or the funeral home or Barbara Klaus or just other people. There were

00:06:40other people that were in the know of what was going down at Faith Assembly and around this time in

00:06:47Dr.

00:06:47Freeman's life. And so, it's not just a medical report or a legal document that you have to have.

00:06:56You can actually just go back and check out the Warsaw Times Union newspaper articles that were coming

00:07:01out in November and December and then January of 1985. So, on the morning of December the 9th,

00:07:10a Sunday, whenever the coroner and the sheriff and the police detective arrived, they were ushered into

00:07:17the house and they talked with one of Dr. Freeman's daughters, Pam Hill, who said that it had been her

00:07:27turn to watch her dad. And I think we talked last time about the fact he had this terribly gangrenous

00:07:36situation on his left foot. And they were taking turns, the family members, just sitting by,

00:07:43wife, daughters, and changing the dressings. They were soaking this, you know, rotted part of his foot

00:07:54while everybody's praying for, you know, God to miraculously heal him. Pam said it had been her

00:08:02time to watch her father that evening. And she said at some point, she dozed off.

00:08:09And when she woke up, she looked and thought he had probably passed away and checked on him and

00:08:17sure enough, he had died. And let me just say, when it comes to watching someone who is on their

00:08:25deathbed, that is an exhausting endeavor to be involved with. My father passed away, it's been

00:08:33more than a dozen years ago now. And I'm from Mississippi. He had an accident down south and

00:08:41he ended up dying in Mississippi. But we took turns, we being family members, sitting by his bedside the

00:08:50last days of his life. Now, most of my relatives are in Mississippi. So, it was easy for them to

00:08:56go

00:08:56and, you know, take turns. For me, it was a big deal. I had a family, had a full-time

00:09:01job. I live in

00:09:02Kentucky. It's a seven or eight-hour drive down there. But thankfully, I was down there on the

00:09:08last weekend of his life because it was kind of my turn. And I knew death was imminent and I

00:09:14wanted

00:09:14to be there. And so, I was there all of that last weekend. Ended up dying on a Monday morning.

00:09:21But I

00:09:21was there all of that last weekend. I just slept on a cot beside his hospital bed in a hospital

00:09:27in

00:09:27Tupelo, Mississippi. And I remember when I woke up early Monday morning, there were monitors right

00:09:35over my head that would give his respiration and his heart rate and give you those vital statistics.

00:09:41And when I would go to sleep at night, I would look at them so I would see what they

00:09:45were.

00:09:46And when I woke up on Monday morning, those statistics had dropped dramatically. And I knew

00:09:54this is probably the day. I literally got up, called the relatives that were close by and said,

00:10:01this is going to be the morning. Went and took a shower and got ready. And within a couple hours,

00:10:07my father passed away. So, I'm just saying that sitting there by a bedside with someone that you

00:10:12know is dying is exhausting work. In the coroner's report, Pam said that it was somewhere between

00:10:228.30 and 11 p.m. on Saturday evening. Well, I doubt it's possible, but I doubt that Pam in

00:10:33a sitting

00:10:34up position went to sleep for two and a half hours. I'm sure she dozed off at some point.

00:10:41And as I said, that's that anybody is going to doze off when you have been kind of round the

00:10:47clock

00:10:47vigil beside someone's bed who was as bad off as her father was. But it's really unclear exactly what

00:10:57time he died. That was just what she gave. But as I said, I don't think she was asleep for

00:11:03two and a

00:11:04half hours. The funeral home did not hear from anyone until 8.45 on Sunday morning. So, obviously,

00:11:14there was the question and the question is addressed and then left unanswered in the coroner's

00:11:19verdict. Why a 12-hour delay before reporting the death? We also talked in our last interview,

00:11:28John, that the neighbors had testified that there was a flurry of automobile activity, cars coming and

00:11:37going the evening before. And one of the things that I do know, I think there are several things

00:11:43that the activity was about that previous night. And one of them had to do with the fact that Dr.

00:11:52Freeman had a large collection of research material on occult materials and on demonology. He had

00:11:59written a couple of books. He had written a tract. It was a favorite study of his, I'd say, in

00:12:04the late

00:12:0460s and early 70s. He got away from it to some degree. But whenever he was studying and writing,

00:12:13every wind of doctrine, every wind of doctrine, which was a book on American cults. And then he

00:12:20wrote another book entitled Angels of Light, which was more discussion of the occult and demonology.

00:12:27He had a lot of research material in his study that he used to write those volumes. And so,

00:12:35what I know from the reports that I have heard is that there was a pretty large amount of fear

00:12:43in the Freeman home Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening. They could tell the people who were

00:12:51present, the people who were physically, bodily present, knew he's not getting better. Of course,

00:12:58I don't think any of them in their mind had crossed the bridge. I think he's going to die.

00:13:02They're all expecting God to come down in a miraculous way and heal this man.

00:13:09But they're wondering why it hasn't happened and why this is continuing. And so, there was a huge

00:13:17suspicion that Satan had a presence in that home because of those books sitting on the shelf.

00:13:26And I said last time, I'll say it again now, John, I hope we can talk about Dr. Freeman's

00:13:30views on deliverance. Can a Christian have a demon? How do you get a demon? It's just fascinating

00:13:37what he believed. I think it was 100% unscriptural. He taught people pick up demons about the same way

00:13:47you pick up a cold. If you're just around someone who has one or around an object or a book

00:13:53or a movie

00:13:56theater or a false religious cult, then you could, this was the phrase, open yourself up to evil

00:14:03spirits. So, I know there was a big attempt to rid the house of the books. Now, whether they hauled

00:14:11them

00:14:11off, whether they burned them, they would definitely think they had good scriptural precedents for that

00:14:19with the burning of all the occult material at Ephesus in Acts 19. I don't exactly know, but I know

00:14:26there was a big effort to remove things. And there was something else going on on why we have this

00:14:3312

00:14:33hour time lapse. And you touched on that earlier in the introduction with what happened after Branham's

00:14:41death. There were obviously prayers and attempts to resuscitate him after he died. Sometimes people

00:14:51talk about it as though it were a resurrection. Well, they tried to resurrect Dr. Freeman. Well,

00:14:57technically, to be a resurrection, you have to be buried first, and he had not been buried.

00:15:02So, it would not have been a resurrection from the dead, which is a bringing the body out of a

00:15:08grave or

00:15:08out of the ground. It would have been a resuscitation. And I have heard, I won't give the name. How

00:15:18about

00:15:18just the initials? There was a particular minister whose initials are J-O, who actually stretched his body

00:15:29on top of Dr. Freeman's after the pattern of Elijah in 1 Kings 17. The child died, and Elijah stretched

00:15:40himself upon him, and then the child came back to life. And we have something probably similar in Acts

00:15:4920, when Eutychus falls out of the window, when Paul's been preaching all hours of the night,

00:15:54and Paul goes down, and it says he embraced him. It seems like Paul may have stretched himself

00:16:01on this young man's body, and Eutychus came back to life. That's what I have heard. Of course,

00:16:09I wasn't there, and people are quick to say, you weren't there, you don't know. And that's absolutely

00:16:13true. I wasn't there, and I don't know. But it makes sense. It sounds like something that

00:16:19could possibly have happened. Of course, what I would be quick to point out is the fact that both

00:16:25Elijah and Paul were successful whenever they stretched themselves out on a dead body,

00:16:32and those people came back to life. You beat me to it, man. There's something that I haven't really

00:16:40gone deep with this yet. I really want to do a full podcast on it with somebody, only I don't

00:16:45know who

00:16:45is my guinea pig. But in the Pentecostal movement, there is this weird thing where people claim that

00:16:51they can heal the dead, and they always claim that there was a resurrection in their midst,

00:16:57and so therefore, God is in their midst. That's usually how this plays out. Dowie did it. He would

00:17:03say, we raised a dead person, and you could never find accurate evidence that it was there. All you

00:17:08could find was somebody claiming, yes, this person's dead. Yes, he's now living. Look at him living.

00:17:13Branham went all through Canada. In fact, this was part of the thing that made him so famous. He went

00:17:20across Canada saying that he raised a dead man out of the morgue back in Jeffersonville. If you go to

00:17:26my website and you type in raised a man from the dead, you'll find all the newspaper articles where

00:17:31they actually, the reporters, went to the morgues to try to figure this out. Okay, this man raised

00:17:37somebody from the morgue. That's newsworthy. Let's find out. Not a single record of anybody being raised

00:17:43from the morgue. They finally found the person that Branham claimed that this happened to.

00:17:49And then there was some debate as to whether the person had actually died. The person, his life

00:17:54signs were low, limited, but he got back up. And so they said, well, that's raised from the dead.

00:18:00But technically, it's not. For you to be raised from the dead, you have to be dead, and you have

00:18:04to be

00:18:05pronounced dead. Now we have, I could go off on a tangent, and I'm trying to limit this, but I

00:18:12have

00:18:12examples of people who, in the Pentecostal faith, it's not like other churches, where you come in,

00:18:19it's calm, you sit down, you listen to a sermon, you stand up, you sing a couple songs, then you

00:18:25leave.

00:18:26I don't know how it was in your church whenever you were in this movement, but I felt like a

00:18:30yo-yo,

00:18:31up and down and up and down. For me, younger, that's fine. I can play yo-yo, but some of

00:18:37the

00:18:37elderly can't do this. And especially, we would get in the yo-yo state, and then somebody would just

00:18:43start preaching repetitive statements on and on and on for 30, 40 minutes. Well, some of the elderly

00:18:50people lock their legs, and you're going to pass out. That's just what's going to happen. Something

00:18:55to that effect happened in one of the churches that I was in, and we had a medical professional

00:18:59who came and pronounced them dead. And then they raised back up when the blood started flowing to

00:19:06them. Well, even the way that they pronounced them dead wasn't the accurate way that you would do as

00:19:12a medical professional. It was more of a show, look, he's dead, kind of thing. It wasn't the official

00:19:18take his pulse, check, you know, they might have checked his wrist or something like this.

00:19:22But you have to actually check and see, is the guy dead? You know, is it real? But because of

00:19:27this,

00:19:28what happens is they can claim that they can raise the dead until somebody actually dies. And you find

00:19:35time and time again that they keep trying it to no avail. It's not going to happen. And the people

00:19:41don't

00:19:41know what to do with this. Internally, you just kind of compartmentalize the fact that,

00:19:46well, we're told we can raise people from the dead. Why does it not work when we need it?

00:19:51Well, yes. And so Branham died and Freeman died. And both of them, I know, had told stories,

00:19:58many stories during their lifetime of, oh, yes, I read this account and brother so-and-so raised this

00:20:04person from the dead. Dr. Freeman himself never claimed to have raised anyone from the dead,

00:20:09but he told stories all the time of Smith Wigglesworth, of the people in Indonesia under

00:20:16Mel Tari and that book, Like a Mighty Wind, that the dead being raised was something relatively common

00:20:23and easy to do, where when you read the Bible, it's very, very, very uncommon. I mean, there are just

00:20:31a

00:20:31handful of cases of anybody truly being either resuscitated who had clinically died or even

00:20:39more dramatically like Lazarus and John 11 who had been physically raised from the dead after being dead

00:20:47for several days. You know, that is not a normal miracle that the church can expect to see. If you

00:20:54looked at how many times it happened in the Bible, it's like, you know, once every thousand years,

00:21:00we're in the Pentecostal circles. This is just something, if somebody dies, you just go raise

00:21:05them from the dead because you have the authority of Christ to do that. But that's, you know, Dr.

00:21:12Freeman, I'm sure there were attempts made, prayers offered up that evening. It would be absolutely

00:21:20fascinating to have a videotape of what was going on in that bedroom that night. But let's talk a

00:21:29little bit, John, about and give a few more facts and statistics about the condition, let's say, of

00:21:36Dr. Freeman whenever he died. And I want to preface that with this, that if someone down the street from

00:21:45you, a neighbor, or someone across the farm from where I'm sitting from our farm, if somebody died,

00:21:54that's a private matter. I don't go investigate it. I don't care. I mean, you grieve for the person,

00:22:01but were they sick? What caused it? Could it have been this? Could it have been that? Even if it's

00:22:07a

00:22:07big public figure, like when, you know, I don't know, Billy Graham died or when John MacArthur

00:22:13recently died, the pastor of Grace Church out in California, you know, these are big public figures,

00:22:21but, you know, they got old and they probably had some kind of illness or disease and they died and,

00:22:28you know, everyone mourns their death. Dr. Freeman put himself in a different category

00:22:35because of what he taught, that he was, had been healed at Calvary of all of these things from which

00:22:41he actually was never healed. And because he forced others to believe the same thing,

00:22:48then it very much should be in the public domain. What actually caused Dr. Freeman's death? What was

00:22:57he like the last weeks and days and hours of his life? And we have been told as a result

00:23:06of these last

00:23:06few podcasts that people who were actually there as a loyal and faithful member of Faith Assembly had no

00:23:17idea of some of these details that we've been sharing. They had no idea. That was their pastor

00:23:24and it was simply he died. We have a whole lot of mental struggle over how and why and, but

00:23:32we're going

00:23:32to put that under the rug and we're just going to keep on believing and we're going to keep on

00:23:37going

00:23:38down this path that we've been on. Well, the fact of the matter is we looked in one of our

00:23:44earlier

00:23:45interviews together that Hobart had had several heart attacks over the last couple of years and more

00:23:52prior to that, some of which we don't even know about. He had a serious heart condition and yet he

00:23:59said

00:23:59consistently when he received the charismatic experience in 1966 that he prayed for his healing

00:24:08of his heart. He threw away two kinds of medication he had been put on for life and he was

00:24:14healed and

00:24:15that was all there was to it. That's exact, that is, that is exactly what did not happen. He was

00:24:23not

00:24:23healed of a heart condition. The other thing that he said he was healed from where he had these problems

00:24:29with his feet. One caused by polio, one caused by an automobile accident and he was always saying,

00:24:37I was healed of that. This is already in the past tense. So, we do have a little clip. I

00:24:43don't think we

00:24:44have listened to previously, John. It's on a message entitled, Seven Channels to Faith or Doubt.

00:24:51It was done in the Glory Barn in 1974 from 18 minutes and 13 seconds through 21 minute and 10

00:25:01seconds. I preach faith. I teach faith. I guess I've got as much faith as anybody in the building

00:25:06and you don't have to boast to say that. If you know it, you know it. You ought to confess

00:25:09it and yet

00:25:11I'm still learning some things that where I'm doing something that isn't faith and I'm going to say

00:25:18this to help those of you because anybody in the building can pray for a leg to grow out if

00:25:22they'll believe. That's just one of those miracles God's working for everybody. People sit around in

00:25:28their boilers and watch legs grow up. Poilers, living rooms. I keep dating myself and people wonder why

00:25:38we young people get some of those old terms, but some of us are older than we look, but we're

00:25:45not

00:25:45confessing it. I appreciate what the brother said about all of we young people here, but praise the Lord.

00:25:59That's right. There's a student from Grace. I taught at Grace Seminary, I guess, 11 or 12 years ago now.

00:26:06And I get this all the time, so I don't care what anybody thinks because people tell me this.

00:26:11And so someone came up and said that when you were there teaching about 11 or 12 years ago, said

00:26:16you

00:26:16look 20 years younger than you did 11 or 12 years ago. Younger, friends, not older, younger.

00:26:25And that is a fact because you get what you confess and I'm not, you've got nothing to lose to

00:26:31confess

00:26:32Psalm 103 verse 5 anyway. So we're still learning, and I haven't forgotten what I started to tell you,

00:26:38that as I've prayed for legs to grow out, generally they'll come right out in a matter of a few

00:26:45seconds.

00:26:45And you've seen that here, where you've seen the short ones and the long ones grow out.

00:26:51But, I've noticed on occasion, sometimes nothing happens.

00:26:56Now let me hasten to add, I can't believe for the other person, so that could be it.

00:27:01The person may be a backslider in sin, and that may be it.

00:27:04And so don't blame yourself if the leg doesn't always come out.

00:27:07You see, you have to learn that sort of thing, or you get a little frustrated, or the devil will

00:27:13rob you of your faith.

00:27:13So I'm not worried about why it's not growing out, generally.

00:27:18But here's something the Lord showed me, that sometimes we're looking at the leg and not to Jesus.

00:27:23We know it's going to come out, and it doesn't.

00:27:26And you've got all your concentration with the natural eye on the physical.

00:27:30And I have found, when I look away from the leg and look to Jesus and look back, it's happened.

00:27:34I never get to see those guys.

00:27:37Because it's not faith, you see.

00:27:39The person's watching the leg.

00:27:41It's going to come out, and it doesn't.

00:27:43But you're watching, as God's come out and doesn't, everybody's concentrating on the physical.

00:27:48And as we look to the Lord, it happens.

00:27:50Praise the Lord.

00:27:51I've seen it happen, friends, where you just look away to Jesus in faith and look back, and there it

00:27:57is.

00:27:57It's out, and nobody saw it.

00:27:59It just happened.

00:28:01You know, and what's interesting about this, Hobart's footloose and fancy-free back in the Glory Barn days,

00:28:07and he's just talking about healing, and he's talking about growing out of legs.

00:28:11That's what this clip is all about.

00:28:13This whole message, seven channels to faith or doubt, you know, they're not six or eight.

00:28:19They're only seven channels to faith or doubt.

00:28:22And he is just like a wild rabbit in a briar patch, talking about Norman Grubb, talking about Kenneth Hagen,

00:28:32talking about people at the Glory Barn.

00:28:35He said they just walk out broken bones like it was a mosquito bite.

00:28:39All of this is in this message.

00:28:41In this clip that we've just heard, he's talking about the growing out of legs.

00:28:47He said, well, that's just something that people sitting around in their parlors are doing, just watching legs grow out.

00:28:53Like you get together and play dominoes or play checkers or something, that you just get together, and everybody just

00:28:59prays for each other, and legs grow out.

00:29:03The reason Hobart was so fascinated over legs growing out was because of his own condition.

00:29:09You know, we talked about this probably a year ago.

00:29:12We did a little more than what we're doing right now.

00:29:15He had a personal, private reason for being so interested in the straightening of his feet and the lengthening of

00:29:23one of his legs to get them normal again.

00:29:26And that was because of childhood polio and being run over by a big factory truck.

00:29:33And I can remember, and I've said this before, when I first started listening to Dr. Freeman, I didn't know

00:29:39people had short legs.

00:29:40I mean, you can tell if a person does when they're, you know, limping terribly, but according to those preachers,

00:29:47everybody has a short leg, but it's just like a quarter of an inch or an eighth of an inch

00:29:52or three eighths of an inch.

00:29:55And so Hobart said, well, yeah, God just, he said, that's a miracle.

00:30:00God's just doing everywhere for everyone.

00:30:02He said, people are just sitting around in their parlors, watching legs grow out.

00:30:07And I just find that to be just such a ridiculous take on what the Bible talks about in the

00:30:15Gospels.

00:30:15And that's the healing of people who are truly lame.

00:30:18Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter

00:30:26reign, charismatic and other fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation?

00:30:32You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.

00:30:39On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,

00:30:47John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.

00:30:53You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.

00:31:00If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the

00:31:06top.

00:31:06And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or

00:31:12watching.

00:31:13On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.

00:31:18You know, when Branham first began, you can find this on one of the, actually the very first recording that

00:31:23we're allowed to hear, which would have been, I think it's April 1947.

00:31:27He says, I'll take any cross-eyed child in the audience without even praying for it.

00:31:33I'll just look at it straight in the eye like this, and you'll watch its eyes come straight.

00:31:37Now, to a person back then, maybe that was a good gimmick, but it's pretty easy for the average person

00:31:42to stand there and cross their eyes and walk up to the line and then uncross them and make them

00:31:48straight.

00:31:48I can do that.

00:31:49I can do that trick.

00:31:50My sons can do that trick.

00:31:51There were so many tricks involved in this scheme that, you know, I don't know whether Hobart actually believed it

00:31:58or if he just encountered it, but they were making these wild claims that you could heal this, that, or

00:32:03the other.

00:32:04And you take a step back, I heard the straightening leg story all the time growing up.

00:32:09I never really met anybody that had the crooked legs.

00:32:12So, as much as this happens, where do you find these people that need their legs to be straightened, right?

00:32:18And then you can search it online.

00:32:21I think it's on YouTube.

00:32:23If I remember correctly, it's A.A. Allen.

00:32:25You can find a video of how that trick works and watch him doing it.

00:32:29And then you're like, no, man, I can't believe that he fooled the crowds with this.

00:32:34The average person looking at it can see when the torso turns.

00:32:37But apparently back then, people, they just shut off their critical thinking.

00:32:41They were not thinking critically about the stage act that was in front of them.

00:32:45And then that part, for me, that's, you know, that's evil.

00:32:50They shouldn't be doing that in the first place.

00:32:51But what happened next is all of these people, what's the word, mythologicalized, turned it into a mythology.

00:33:00That's a better way to say it.

00:33:02And so all you did is you hear these myths over and over where you believe them because why would

00:33:06they lie to you?

00:33:07And believing the myth is actually easier than believing what actually happened had you been there.

00:33:13Yeah, and they were myths, Sean.

00:33:15They really were.

00:33:15That clip we just played, Dr. Freeman, actually, it's just so interesting.

00:33:20It's just so interesting how they progress down a road of deception because he firmly believed that everyone had a

00:33:28short leg.

00:33:29And I say everyone.

00:33:30I mean, nine out of ten people.

00:33:32And that every Christian had the power given by God to sit their fellow person down and watch their leg

00:33:41grow out by praying for it.

00:33:42But in that clip, what he says is, well, he's learned a healing secret.

00:33:47And he said, you know, when we're praying and we're just knowing the leg's coming out because it always does.

00:33:52And then it doesn't.

00:33:54And he said, God showed me a healing secret that we are too focused on the leg growing out and

00:34:00not focused enough on Jesus.

00:34:02So in that clip, he said, if you just look away for a moment and then look back, the leg

00:34:09grew out.

00:34:09Well, I mean, you don't even know what happened while you were looking away.

00:34:14There is even another example of how none of this is verified or authenticated.

00:34:19So Hobart was desperate for legs to be lengthened, to be straightened, to be normal because of his own condition.

00:34:28But here I'm going to read the third paragraph from the official coroner's report, signed, dated, sealed, stamped by the

00:34:40coroner.

00:34:41And, you know, you get in a lot of trouble if you're a coroner and you write things in a

00:34:44coroner's report that aren't true.

00:34:46Of course, we've got these followers who won't believe anything, whether it's in the newspaper or whether it's in a

00:34:52coroner's report.

00:34:53They only believe what their leader told them.

00:34:56But here's the third paragraph.

00:34:58Apparently, Mr. Freeman suffered from severely deformed feet due to early childhood polio and an accident.

00:35:09Specially constructed orthopedic shoes were a must for the man to even get out of bed, according to Mrs. Freeman.

00:35:20An open sore had developed on his left foot, which progressed to the point of virtually keeping the man bed

00:35:28fast.

00:35:30Mrs. Freeman told of other occasions in which the subject had suffered medical problems, including at least one heart attack.

00:35:39And that this is a quote from June.

00:35:41God had healed him up.

00:35:44God had healed him up.

00:35:46Well, God did not heal him up.

00:35:49Because the medical report tells us what his condition was this last night of his life.

00:35:57And we've talked before.

00:35:59I'll just remind people for folks who haven't heard it before.

00:36:03Dr. Freeman said you're supposed to act your faith, which means you act as though you are healed.

00:36:09However, he didn't.

00:36:11He had a new pair of shoes for both feet that he always carried around in the trunk of his

00:36:17car.

00:36:17He was waiting for his manifestation of his healing.

00:36:22And then he would go out to his car and be able to get those new shoes and put those

00:36:27on.

00:36:28And here is one other clip I don't think we've heard before.

00:36:32It is from the series he did on Jeremiah, which he called Preaching from the Prophets.

00:36:39It was a message entitled, The Call and Commission of a Prophet, Part 3, done in 1982.

00:36:50It's interesting that he spent that much time on the call and commission of a prophet.

00:36:56And let me just say, Hobart never said, I am a prophet.

00:37:01He never claimed to be one.

00:37:02But he said everything leading up to that.

00:37:06He said everything just short of that.

00:37:10So for him to have spent the first, I think it's the first three messages in this series in Jeremiah,

00:37:17on the call and commission of a prophet, he's obviously wanting to compare himself to Jeremiah, show how Jeremiah was

00:37:26called and commissioned.

00:37:27Then people could look at Hobart's life and go, well, based on the stories he has told me about himself,

00:37:35he sounds to me like Jeremiah.

00:37:39So in this clip, 35 minute, 27 second to 36 minute and 50 second.

00:37:47We will take a moment to listen to that.

00:37:50There's a certain healing.

00:37:52Now, by the way, I've been healed supernaturally many, many times and many things.

00:37:56But there's one healing, I've been waiting a good 16 years for its manifestation.

00:38:00Now, it would be nice to have it.

00:38:02But you see, I know in my spirit, and others have even told me relating in vision, how others are

00:38:09going to be involved in the manifestation of that healing.

00:38:11I don't know exactly what that means.

00:38:13It may mean that others will get their healing when mine's manifested.

00:38:16Now, you can take that or leave it, it doesn't matter to me.

00:38:19You know, like, you know, that I'm something, you have to wait on me.

00:38:22That is what I'm saying.

00:38:23But from my side, there are bigger and more complex factors than just my personal comfort.

00:38:31And I'm willing to believe that and wait upon the Lord because I know that the almond tree will bloom

00:38:38at the right time for me.

00:38:40Because God is watching over his word to perform it.

00:38:44And so, there are just things sometimes that people don't understand.

00:38:47I don't understand it all, but like one sister said that the Lord showed her that particular healing I'm waiting

00:38:54for in a vision and said,

00:38:56He showed me that when you get your healing, the body of Christ enters into it.

00:39:00Now, I don't know what that means.

00:39:01I don't even begin to know.

00:39:03I don't have to know.

00:39:05My healing has been seen at least 20 times, I'm sure, and I've seen it myself in vision.

00:39:10I saw myself going through an airport healed.

00:39:13So, that's only about a minute long.

00:39:16And he's talking about, he calls it a certain healing.

00:39:21I don't know why he doesn't just say my feet because everyone knows what he's talking about.

00:39:25But he said, I've got this certain healing that I've been waiting 16 years for.

00:39:31That's how you're able to date these messages.

00:39:33He claimed that healing in 1966 plus 16 years is 1982.

00:39:39And in 82 and 83, that's when he was preaching this series on Jeremiah.

00:39:45And then he goes on, as I've also said before, John, to mention the fact that it's just so bizarre

00:39:52how ego-driven Dr. Freeman was.

00:39:57Because he goes on to talk about his own personal trial, and that is the fact that, you know, he

00:40:04needs his legs to be healed.

00:40:06And he said, there have been at least 20 visions confirming my healing.

00:40:12They don't have 20 visions confirming anybody else's healing in the church.

00:40:16But, of course, no one is as important as he is.

00:40:19So, there are 20 visions, and he said, one sister even said that somehow when my healing is manifested, then

00:40:28the whole body here will enter into it.

00:40:31Now, he's quick to say, I don't know what that means, but he said, it may mean that whenever I'm

00:40:39healed or I receive the healing of my two feet and legs, then some of you people will receive missing

00:40:46teeth and whatever things you have prayed for as well.

00:40:50So, that is just dark and disturbing to me on every front, that he is so wrapped up in his

00:41:00own self and that he keeps sharing about all of these visions.

00:41:06And I think what happens, John, is that people love their pastor, and they believe in their pastor, and so

00:41:12he's telling them this story, and they, quote, unquote, have a vision that he's going to be healed.

00:41:20It's just an emotional experience someone has, but it's in the moment.

00:41:24It's in the mood.

00:41:25It's what's happening right then.

00:41:26They go up and share with him afterwards and makes him happy.

00:41:30And so, the next time he can say, you know, no, there used to be 15, but now we're up

00:41:35to 20 different independent visions confirming my healing.

00:41:40The problem is the medical report.

00:41:42He wasn't healed.

00:41:43So, what are we going to do with these 20 visions?

00:41:46He wasn't healed.

00:41:48It was just an emotional experience that these poor people were having.

00:41:53And I just feel so sorry for them being dragged along.

00:41:58They knew that Hobart would relate visions or testimonies that were good, that fit his message.

00:42:07They knew he would relay those to the congregation because if they had them, because they had heard him do

00:42:14that for so many other people.

00:42:15So, I just think it was the thing to do, to say that you had a vision.

00:42:21And I know I'm going to hear from people who say, yeah, but they did have a vision.

00:42:27And obviously, they didn't have a vision because it didn't come to pass.

00:42:33When are we ever just going to let reality reign and let facts reign?

00:42:40You know, you have to give up your religious superstitions and nonsense if they don't line up with facts.

00:42:48And that's why the New Testament was so clear on the miracles that it gave, that these things were not

00:42:57done in a corner.

00:42:58They were things that happened under Jesus in the early church that were easily documented and easily verifiable.

00:43:05And the religious leaders themselves admitted, big things have happened and we can't deny it, but we don't like this

00:43:15Christian message.

00:43:16And so, let's beat these men and find some way to silence them.

00:43:21They couldn't silence them by refuting that a miracle had happened because too many people knew that it happened.

00:43:28And why is it, John, that today in a place like Faith Assembly, we don't have any verification of anything.

00:43:35We have them saying hundreds of miracles and thousands of this and this sister was healed and that brother was

00:43:42healed.

00:43:43But as I have often said, it's either something internal, A or B, it's something that a week later went

00:43:51away and it would have gone away on its own anyway.

00:43:54Or C, it happened in a foreign country.

00:43:58I am all for miracles, but I want a miracle that actually happens where we know that person who was

00:44:05blind is now able to see again.

00:44:08You know, I feel sorry for the people too, because at this moment, you're faced with two real decisions.

00:44:16Either one, this man was delusional and he kept saying that he had these visions of these healings.

00:44:22And he was delusional thinking that he could do this.

00:44:26Or second, it was a fault.

00:44:28He's a false prophet.

00:44:29He had a false vision.

00:44:30It wasn't a vision by God.

00:44:32If you're a false prophet, you're leading people away from God, actually.

00:44:36So that has much larger, huger, more significant consequences.

00:44:40But you're faced with that decision and what do you do with it?

00:44:43And sadly, like every single other cult that we've examined, there's a subset of the people that will choose to

00:44:52ignore both sides of that and just keep on believing and ignore the delusion and ignore the false prophet.

00:44:59And in doing so, the sad part about it is, and the reason why I just really feel bad for

00:45:03these people, they continue in their own delusion.

00:45:07Yes, and it's difficult to say, and I'm not generally one who goes out on a limb and said this

00:45:13person is a false prophet.

00:45:14But, I mean, there was definitely serious personal delusion involved in Dr. Freeman's mind.

00:45:23He obviously died of all of these illnesses.

00:45:26He didn't seek treatment.

00:45:27He did have the disease.

00:45:29He did have the illness.

00:45:31And he did not seek treatment.

00:45:33So he quite obviously believed in his own mind that, as he said, I was healed at Calvary 2,000

00:45:42years ago.

00:45:43He said, I have no problem.

00:45:46I'm healed, even though I'm leaning on the pulpit or sitting in a chair.

00:45:50I can't stand on that left foot.

00:45:51But so the depth of Dr. Freeman's personal delusion was simply profound.

00:46:01I mean, he continued to believe things that he had confessed, even when not some of them, but none of

00:46:11them came to pass.

00:46:13None of them.

00:46:15That is a deep and a serious and a profound self-delusion to go to your grave that way.

00:46:25So false prophet or not false prophet.

00:46:29I did have Deuteronomy 18 opened up this morning before you ever said what you just said.

00:46:37Let me read the last two verses, John, in Deuteronomy 18, verse 21.

00:46:42Verse 21, the Israelites say, or God is saying to them, if you say in your heart, how shall we

00:46:48know the word which the Lord hath not spoken?

00:46:53Verse 22, when a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, and Hobart was famous for saying, thus saith

00:47:03the Lord.

00:47:04That means you are speaking in the name of the Lord.

00:47:07When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that

00:47:17is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken.

00:47:20I mean, that's, I think a seven-year-old could understand that.

00:47:25It doesn't take any advanced Bible knowledge or training at all.

00:47:29If someone says, thus saith the Lord, this is going to happen and that doesn't happen, then the Lord didn't

00:47:35say it.

00:47:35Or now we're blaming God for being confused about matters.

00:47:41If the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but

00:47:47the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously.

00:47:51Other passages say he just spoke it out of his own heart, and thou shalt not be afraid of him.

00:47:57And yet these poor people, whether under Paul Cain or Mike Bickle or John Paul Jackson or Hobart Freeman or

00:48:07William Branham or whomever, these poor people have been terrified of these ministers, terrified 40 years after their death.

00:48:17We're 41 years after Dr. Freeman's death.

00:48:21And he said that he had thrown away his glasses and claimed healing for his eyes, were his eyes healed?

00:48:28Absolutely not.

00:48:29People knew, more than one person knew because they saw it, that he had a giant print Bible at the

00:48:37end of his life up there on the pulpit because he couldn't read the small print.

00:48:41But, and it's okay if you can't read the small print, get a giant print one, or keep the small

00:48:48print and go get a pair of glasses.

00:48:50But to say, oh, I don't need glasses.

00:48:53God heals my eyes.

00:48:55No, your eyes aren't healed.

00:48:57Or you wouldn't need a giant print.

00:48:59Or you wouldn't need glasses.

00:49:00No, your eyes aren't healed.

00:49:02No, your heart was not healed.

00:49:03No, your feet were not straightened.

00:49:05No, that gangrenous hole in your left foot was not cleared up.

00:49:12No, here are what the actual facts are.

00:49:18And I'm reading from another medical report some things that people probably need to hear concerning Dr. Freeman's heart condition.

00:49:30So this is greater vessels of his heart.

00:49:34This is cardiovascular.

00:49:37Coronary atherosclerosis was severe.

00:49:42Subendocardial fibrosis was severe.

00:49:46The aorta atherosclerosis was severe.

00:49:51Pulmonary congestion severe.

00:49:53Liver congestion severe.

00:49:55Spleen congestion severe.

00:50:00This report goes on to say there are multiple factors that contributed to the death of Dr. Freeman.

00:50:07One of the most significant was the presence of high sugar in Dr. Freeman's blood.

00:50:15Isn't this interesting that I would say the majority of the people, I mean, more than 90% don't have

00:50:24a clue that Dr. Freeman had diabetes and died of diabetes.

00:50:28Now, there have been a couple of people that guessed based on how grumpy he was that maybe he did

00:50:35have something like diabetes.

00:50:37Well, here's a report.

00:50:39This suggests uncontrolled diabetes.

00:50:42Additional anatomic features consistent with diabetes include a gangrenous necrosis of the left foot.

00:50:53He also had early KW kidney disease.

00:50:57He had severe pulmonary congestion.

00:51:01He had severe bronchial pneumonia.

00:51:03The severity of the patient's vascular disease may have been associated with his uncontrolled diabetes.

00:51:13I mean, this is a person who was sick beyond imagination.

00:51:20And we just want people to see on the one hand and on the other hand.

00:51:25Here's a person who, on the one hand, is sick of, I mean, he is a walking dead man the

00:51:32last couple of weeks and a couple of days and definitely the last couple of hours of his life.

00:51:39He has so many problems physically.

00:51:43That's on the one hand.

00:51:44On the other hand, you have a person who is saying, I don't have any of those things.

00:51:51I don't have any of them because of Mark 11, 24.

00:51:55I don't have any of those because I already claimed my healing and I have been healed of those things.

00:52:02So the personal delusion was through the roof.

00:52:06If you want to be deluded, you know, that's okay.

00:52:10Keep it to yourself.

00:52:11But not only was he deluded, he was forcing other people to deny, to fail to recognize, to not acknowledge

00:52:22the reality that they themselves were going through.

00:52:26I know, John, that you did an interview here recently with someone from one of the satellite groups that will

00:52:32air here in a couple of weeks.

00:52:34And maybe you need to have him on again.

00:52:37He told me, he said, I didn't get to tell all the story I wanted to tell.

00:52:41But one of the hilarious stories he tells, and he's a funny guy, and he just tells it openly and

00:52:46honestly, was he shot himself in the foot.

00:52:48He said, I shot myself in the foot and the injury was severe.

00:52:53I was going to lose that foot.

00:52:55And, you know, so we had to make a decision.

00:52:58Dr. Freeman had to make a decision.

00:52:59Dr. Freeman was not going to any medical help at all.

00:53:02And what was the result?

00:53:04He died.

00:53:04This brother said, you know, I had to make a decision.

00:53:08Either I'm going to trust the Lord.

00:53:11And, you know, Dr. Freeman had already died when this happened.

00:53:14So there's not a good track record to follow there.

00:53:17Or he's going to go seek medical help.

00:53:19Thankfully, he went and sought medical help.

00:53:21And he's been fine and been able to walk and jump and play and live ever since then.

00:53:26So here's a problem.

00:53:27You've got a false shepherd.

00:53:29I will call Hobart Freeman that 100% because he did not care about the sheep.

00:53:35He just cared about himself.

00:53:36But here you have this leader who has his personal beliefs, which everyone is entitled to.

00:53:42But then he's forcing this belief on other people to the point where once this brother shot himself in the

00:53:50foot, he was not a member of faith assembly.

00:53:53He was a member of a satellite group.

00:53:55But if you go to the doctor and you're a member of faith assembly, you're under church discipline because you

00:54:01have leaned to the arm of the flesh.

00:54:02You've opened yourself up to evil spirits and the church doesn't want to have anything to do with you until

00:54:08you repent.

00:54:09The good news is people like this brother lived and the people who have tried Hobart's way and tried going

00:54:16down that path simply never made it.

00:54:20There's something else I want to say, John, before I'll let you throw in your comments and then we can

00:54:25wrap it up about the cover up that I want to talk about.

00:54:28I had mentioned a long, long time ago of something else that I have heard from someone who was there

00:54:35the last night of Dr. Freeman.

00:54:37I don't have a second way to corroborate it.

00:54:42But one of the things you do as a researcher or as a detective, you ask yourself the question, does

00:54:50this sound reasonable?

00:54:52Is this something, is this a statement likely to have been said by Dr. Freeman?

00:54:58And so let me put it in this context.

00:55:01I have mentioned many times his reference to the fact that he studied 14 to 16 hours a day.

00:55:09We've got a lot of mileage out of that claim because he talked about it all the time.

00:55:15And it gave him a certain status among the members of the church.

00:55:19It put him on a pedestal.

00:55:21It made him unapproachable and unchallengeable.

00:55:25You know, how can I know anything if I haven't studied anything like this man?

00:55:30He's in his study 14 to 16 hours a day.

00:55:34So he definitely knows it all.

00:55:36And who am I to challenge something that he said?

00:55:40So that last night of his life, from what I have been told, he did make an apology to his

00:55:48family.

00:55:48He made a deathbed confession.

00:55:50And I've had people for the last year ask me, what was the confession?

00:55:54What was the confession?

00:55:56And I said, I'll get to it when we get there.

00:55:58And that confession was this, that he apologized to his family for not spending enough time with him.

00:56:07Now, I didn't hear that myself.

00:56:09That's what I have been told.

00:56:11But as I said a moment ago, when you are doing research on something, you're looking for, does that?

00:56:18I remember J.B. Phillips, who was a Bible translator, I think, in the mid-1900s.

00:56:23And he did a translation of the New Testament.

00:56:25And J.B. Phillips had this favorite phrase that he called the ring of truth.

00:56:31And it's probably other people have used the same thing.

00:56:34Does it have the ring of truth?

00:56:37Does it sound like that it was said, that it could have been said?

00:56:41Does it sound truthful?

00:56:43Does it sound reasonable?

00:56:44Well, in light of what we know to be a fact, 100%, that he said he spent 14 to 16

00:56:52hours a day in his study, then, yeah, it does have a ring of truth to me that here, this

00:56:59man on his deathbed realized, I didn't live my life exactly the way I should have.

00:57:05And I should have spent more time with my family.

00:57:08I have very little to add to that, but what I do want to say and point out, which we'll

00:57:14probably get into in the future episodes, once this happens, once the leader dies, once they've been, once they have

00:57:22duped the people and the people are starting to understand that they're duped.

00:57:25And like I said, you go into this phase of cognitive dissonance and you, you basically, you ignore what is

00:57:32right in front of you.

00:57:33Well, that is whenever this gets really, really sad, because what happens is there are some people that will just

00:57:40accept whatever it is that they're told as is the reason why this happened.

00:57:44And they accept it blindly.

00:57:45And that's the doctrine.

00:57:47You've got others who they're not going to double down no matter what you say.

00:57:52And so they have to kind of recalibrate.

00:57:54They're not going to leave the movement, but they recalibrate what they believe.

00:57:58And then that's your first schism.

00:58:00You have one group that goes this way, another group that goes this way.

00:58:04And over time, as this continues to happen, within each schism, you're going to have people who there's, there's just

00:58:12something in the back of their mind that's just not sitting right.

00:58:14And they realize that this new group that I have, that I'm in that has schism, they're, they're half right,

00:58:21but you can't really answer everything with their new version of the doctrine.

00:58:24And so you also can't make it work with the original people who double down on exactly what they're told.

00:58:31So then another schism happens and another and another.

00:58:34And what happens in the end is you have, rather than this cohesive unit of people who are like mind,

00:58:42like faith, now you have people who are actually creating divisions.

00:58:46And it becomes a movement of divisions.

00:58:48And you're right, John, we'll definitely get into what happened the following morning, Sunday morning, and what happened that summer

00:58:55with Jack Farrell.

00:58:56And yes, I mean, you nailed it on the head that you do have divisions begin to happen, because different

00:59:03people are wanting to hold to different elements of what they've been taught.

00:59:07What I would like to raise a red flag about here at the very end of this discussion is the

00:59:15deception by the leadership, the deception, which was thorough and effective.

00:59:21It was fostered by the leadership at Faith Assembly, and I say that because of this, June Freeman, the wife,

00:59:32knew exactly what her husband looked like when he died.

00:59:37Dr. Freeman's daughters and his son-in-law and the top aides and ministers in that church knew exactly they

00:59:46had been there that night.

00:59:47They had seen that man, and did they come back to the church and say, we need with full disclosure

00:59:55and transparency to explain to everyone so that we are all on the same page, so that we are all

01:00:02operating with the same degree of knowledge and the facts.

01:00:08Here is what happened to our beloved pastor last night.

01:00:13Absolutely not.

01:00:15There was a massive cover-up.

01:00:19That massive cover-up continues to this day.

01:00:25I know, John, a little more than a year ago, we had been not even a year into our podcast

01:00:32together, and someone put on a Facebook page a big, large defense of Dr. Freeman saying, Dr. Freeman wasn't sick.

01:00:41Dr. Freeman didn't die unhealthy.

01:00:45Dr. Freeman just died naturally and healthily.

01:00:50Well, you know, of course, and people came, you know, not to his defense, but came to his rebuke, the

01:00:58person who put that on by saying, and I've said it myself, well, then why does a church go on

01:01:03a three-day fast the week before for a perfectly healthy pastor?

01:01:07Why is he himself leaning on the podium and saying, I have this huge hole in my foot?

01:01:14You know, no, obviously, Dr. Freeman was not healthy.

01:01:18But this individual said that there was a minister.

01:01:23There were a couple of brothers, a Joe and Jim Brenneman, who were early followers of Dr. Freeman and who

01:01:32were rabid followers of him from the beginning.

01:01:35And they continued that for a few years.

01:01:40I don't know exactly how long for each of them after Dr. Freeman's death.

01:01:44But the person who put the post on Facebook said that Jim, I'm sorry, that Joe Brenneman had told him

01:01:55he had a copy of the autopsy and had told him that Hobart died naturally.

01:02:02That his heart simply stopped beating, and that's what caused his death.

01:02:08But what's funny when you look at this is your heart stopping to beat is not what causes death.

01:02:15That is death.

01:02:15When your heart stops beating, you are dead.

01:02:18There is something normally that causes that to happen.

01:02:23Now, I don't, Joe died in the summer of 2024.

01:02:27I don't know whether Joe had a copy of the coroner's report or an autopsy.

01:02:36I don't know whether he said he did and he didn't.

01:02:40I don't know that he ever told this man anything.

01:02:42Maybe he didn't.

01:02:44Maybe this man dreamed it up.

01:02:46I don't know if Joe did say he had a copy and falsified the information.

01:02:53I don't know if Joe had a copy and didn't read it carefully enough.

01:02:57You know, I don't know.

01:02:58I just know this, that there was a massive cover-up and that people like Joe, as well as any

01:03:06of the higher ministers, knew exactly what had happened to Dr. Freeman.

01:03:12And if they didn't know, all they had to do is go ask June or ask one of the daughters.

01:03:16But the top aides and ministers knew they had seen him that last evening, but they all kept their mouths

01:03:24shut because they had to keep that message and keep that church and keep that ministry and keep Dr. Freeman's

01:03:32memory going.

01:03:34Because you know what would happen if you say he died of diabetes, he died of severe pneumonia, he died

01:03:45of severe cardiovascular disease, he died of gangrenous necrosis.

01:03:52Neither one of his legs were lengthened or straightened.

01:03:55In other words, none of the things this man had ever claimed that he was healed from was he, in

01:04:03fact, healed from.

01:04:04And I'm just going to conclude, John, with this little bit of interesting statistical material.

01:04:14On October the 17th, Hobart of 1984 received information that he had been indicted by this grand jury and he

01:04:23was going to need to turn himself in to the local jail, which he did the next day on a

01:04:30Thursday, October the 18th, where he was booked and fingerprinted at the jail.

01:04:36You know, at that time, they look at your driver's license.

01:04:40At that time, Dr. Freeman's driver's license said he weighed 182 pounds.

01:04:47If you want to know where you get all this, it's in the newspaper and it's in the medical reports.

01:04:52This isn't something we dreamed up on our own.

01:04:55His driver's license said he weighed 182 pounds.

01:04:59Of course, when you're checked in at jail, they weigh you.

01:05:02Dr. Freeman weighed 158 pounds.

01:05:07On October the 18th of 1984.

01:05:14When Dr. Freeman died on the evening of December 8th, 1984, he weighed between 125 and 128 pounds.

01:05:32One of his daughters, when she found out that I had made that statement, said, Cheno's lying about dad's weight.

01:05:40Cheno's acting like he actually weighed my dad himself.

01:05:45Well, of course, I didn't weigh him.

01:05:47I have no way of doing that.

01:05:49But we all have a way of doing this.

01:05:51You just get the coroner's report.

01:05:53And here's the coroner's verdict.

01:05:54And here's what it says.

01:05:56The said deceased, being a white male of the age of 66 years, 6 feet and 0 inches in height,

01:06:08hair, blonde, eyes, blue, complexion, fair, weight, 125 to 128 pounds.

01:06:20Cause of death, severe cardiovascular disease and pneumonia, contributory factors, gangrenous necrosis of the left foot.

01:06:34Now, the next thing that you'll read in a medical report is the manner of death.

01:06:39And it says natural.

01:06:42I don't know if Joe Brenneman or if not Joe, the person that reported what he said, Joe said to

01:06:54him,

01:06:55simply took that part where it said manner of death and said, oh, he died naturally.

01:07:01I don't know how you could do that and not read the whole report.

01:07:07It's just so easy, John, for little bits of information, which are true.

01:07:13It does say manner of death natural to be spread out there.

01:07:16And then people build this whole theory on that.

01:07:18But when you look at a coroner's verdict, which is not a medical document, it's a legal document.

01:07:26There are only five possible manners of death.

01:07:31If you've watched enough Dateline TV or 2020 or anything else, it's either natural, accidental, suicidal, homicidal, or undetermined.

01:07:43Those are your five causes of death.

01:07:46So when they say the cause of death is natural, they don't mean he just died peacefully and naturally in

01:07:52his sleep.

01:07:53They mean it was not an accident.

01:07:55It was not a suicide.

01:07:57It was not a homicide.

01:07:59It means he died of natural causes.

01:08:01But the natural causes are the ones that they report just described above that.

01:08:09So it is simply unconscionable that the leaders of Faith Assembly, the family members of Dr. Freeman, his wife and

01:08:21his children,

01:08:22for all of these years, have hidden the facts of Dr. Freeman's death, have pretended that things didn't happen the

01:08:30way that they did,

01:08:31so that they could deceive the following.

01:08:33That should never have taken place.

01:08:36Absolutely.

01:08:37And things like this are the reason I do why I do.

01:08:41The cults try to create a mythology.

01:08:43The mythology is quite fictional.

01:08:45But the problem is there are people that get trapped in it.

01:08:48You know, there are people who will believe whatever they want to believe.

01:08:52And that may be okay.

01:08:54But the problem is they're deceiving other people.

01:08:56And so the deception is cascading.

01:08:59And you need somebody like you and I to balance this so that the people who are being deceived can

01:09:04answer the question for themselves.

01:09:06Is this real?

01:09:07Is this doctrine real?

01:09:08Or is it completely fake?

01:09:09And that's why I do what I do.

01:09:12So thank you so much for doing this.

01:09:15And I totally agree with what you do.

01:09:17Thank you, John.

01:09:18Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

01:09:21You can find us at william-branham.org.

01:09:24For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion,

01:09:28From Christian Identity to the NAR, available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

01:10:00For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.

01:10:33For more information, you can find us at william-branham.

01:10:33For more information, you can find us at william-branham.org.

01:10:37For more information, you find us at william-branham.org.

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Faith Assembly’s Cover Up: What Really Happened When Hobart Freeman Died | Episode 534

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