- 17 hours ago
John and Chino examine what happened in the days and weeks following the death of Hobart Freeman, leader of Faith Assembly. Drawing from firsthand experiences, newspaper records, and internal communications, they explore how high-control religious movements respond when prophetic certainty collapses and reality intrudes.
The conversation contrasts biblical models of leadership, death, mourning, and succession with the confusion, secrecy, and denial that followed Freeman's death. Along the way, John and Chino unpack groupthink, information control, faith-healing theology, and the human cost paid by families and followers when doctrine takes precedence over truth.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
06:36 Dream, Prayer, And Questioning The Deaths
14:57 Information Control, Satellite Groups, And Hearing The News
28:45 Dreams, Grief, And The Contrast With Biblical Death Narratives
45:54 Jerusalem Analogy And The Divine Healing Gospel Critique
54:48 June Freeman’s 1985 Letter And Expectations Of Resurrection
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
- Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
- Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
The conversation contrasts biblical models of leadership, death, mourning, and succession with the confusion, secrecy, and denial that followed Freeman's death. Along the way, John and Chino unpack groupthink, information control, faith-healing theology, and the human cost paid by families and followers when doctrine takes precedence over truth.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
06:36 Dream, Prayer, And Questioning The Deaths
14:57 Information Control, Satellite Groups, And Hearing The News
28:45 Dreams, Grief, And The Contrast With Biblical Death Narratives
45:54 Jerusalem Analogy And The Divine Healing Gospel Critique
54:48 June Freeman’s 1985 Letter And Expectations Of Resurrection
______________________
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
______________________
- Support the channel: https://www.patreon.com/branham
- Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
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 at william-branham.org.
00:00:42And with me, I have my co-host, minister, and friend, Cheno Ross, pastor and the voice of the understanding
00:00:48scripture and truth by Cheno D. Ross' YouTube channel.
00:00:52Cheno, it's good to be back and talk about the aftermath after Hobart Freeman died.
00:00:58And I mentioned this last time, but just to be a fly on the wall and see all of the
00:01:02things that happened in that aftermath, what people were saying, what they were doing, what they were thinking, the emotions,
00:01:10the actions.
00:01:10I have thought many times about the moments whenever William Branham was living out his last breath on the earth.
00:01:20My grandfather was there.
00:01:21I had some family that was there.
00:01:23And the stories that they tell from the people who were involved, they're all different.
00:01:29And it's not I've learned this.
00:01:31It's not necessarily that one person or the other is lying, but their recollection of that memory is molded and
00:01:40shaped by their emotions as that memory is forming.
00:01:43So they may be experiencing something that the other person is not.
00:01:48They may see supernatural signs and wonders into whatever is happening, believing that by faith this this tragic thing is
00:01:57going to unravel.
00:01:58And then tragically, it doesn't.
00:02:02And what happens with this?
00:02:03What happens is you have a bunch of different memories about the same event.
00:02:07And today we're going to try to unpack that.
00:02:10But it's very difficult to piece that history back together.
00:02:12It really is, John.
00:02:13And I agree with you.
00:02:14I wish I could have been a fly on the wall just in this respect that I would have been
00:02:19an eyewitness of what was going on.
00:02:22So the accounts and stories that I tell, most of them, you'll be able to tell which ones I know
00:02:29personally because I was there or because I received a letter from Dr. Freeman or spoke with him on the
00:02:36phone.
00:02:36But everything else is obviously coming through some other report from another person.
00:02:42The closer we can get to the people who were actually there, obviously, the better we are.
00:02:49And there were a handful of people there that night beyond just the family members.
00:02:55And I'm speaking of the night of Saturday, December the 8th, 1984, the night that Dr. Freeman died in the
00:03:03following Sunday morning.
00:03:04So on a personal note, since we're talking about being a fly on a wall, people may wonder, how did
00:03:12I find out about it?
00:03:14I was not a member of Faith Assembly.
00:03:16I was never a member of the church.
00:03:19I first visited the church in August of 1976 when they were still meeting in the Glory Barn in North
00:03:27Webster, Indiana.
00:03:29And then I visited the Glory Barn a couple of times after that first Sunday morning visit.
00:03:36And I did visit the building, what they call the new building in Wilmot.
00:03:40I don't know.
00:03:41I could figure out exactly how many, but six or eight or ten times, something like that, over, you know,
00:03:50the next number of years.
00:03:51But at the time Dr. Freeman died, I was a minister of a church up in New England.
00:04:03And I've told a little bit, bits and pieces of several stories, and I just want to tie all of
00:04:09these together right now because these are all personal.
00:04:12These most definitely have to do with me, and then we'll talk about other things later.
00:04:17But in either the late summer or the early fall of 1984, I had gotten through preaching in my church
00:04:25on a Sunday morning, and a brother, an elder in the church, an elder man in the church, came up
00:04:33to me and said,
00:04:34Cheno, I had a dream last night, which would have been a Saturday night for him, somewhere in August or
00:04:40September of 1984.
00:04:42And he said, I had a dream, and I want to share it with you.
00:04:45And so, I'm always willing to listen to dreams.
00:04:49Some of them, you know, I believe.
00:04:50Some of them, I don't.
00:04:51The ones I really believe are the ones that come to pass when the person had no possible way of
00:04:59knowing the future.
00:05:00And so, his dream had two parts, John.
00:05:02And the first part was, Hobart Freeman's going to die.
00:05:06And I was really shocked and surprised because at that time, Faith Assembly ministries and publications, based on what Hobart
00:05:16had asked of them or told them to do, had put me on the outside.
00:05:20I was blackballed.
00:05:21I was not allowed to get any tapes from there because, as I will mention here in a moment, because
00:05:27I had written Dr. Freeman a couple of letters asking him some questions.
00:05:31They were just questions and concerns on my part.
00:05:35So, as a result of that, I was not allowed to know anything going on at Faith Assembly.
00:05:41So, we did not know.
00:05:42I did not know personally, and people in my church certainly didn't know.
00:05:46They knew way less about Faith Assembly and Hobart Freeman than I did.
00:05:49I was the one who introduced them to Dr. Freeman's message.
00:05:53So, they would not have known anything apart from me.
00:05:55So, for someone in my church to say he had a dream that Hobart Freeman was going to die, we
00:06:01didn't know he was sick.
00:06:02We didn't know about this gangrene in his left foot.
00:06:06We didn't know anything about that.
00:06:07That was something I found out after the fact.
00:06:10And so, it was just a very interesting moment, that moment on Sunday morning.
00:06:15And then he had a second part to the dream, and I won't go into that.
00:06:21But somewhere around that same time, and, you know, again, this is 41 years ago.
00:06:27So, I remember a lot of the details, but no one's memory is perfect from four decades ago.
00:06:33Somewhere around that period of time, I felt a real strong leading or urge to myself personally pray to go
00:06:46into a time of prayer for Dr. Freeman.
00:06:48Now, that may sound a little odd, but, you know, I am still at that time connected to Freeman's message.
00:06:55You know, I'm beginning to depart, but I have no idea, you know, where I'm going or what's next.
00:07:02I'm just analyzing what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing, you know, from the previous tapes I was able to
00:07:07receive.
00:07:08And from some of his responses to me that did not seem like they were coming from a good, godly
00:07:15pastor or shepherd's heart.
00:07:19And so, this probably won't be believed by anybody out there who is still a follower of Freeman or who
00:07:25does not like what I'm doing.
00:07:27But it is the honest truth that I felt the need to pray for Dr. Freeman.
00:07:33And so, you know, this was rare for me because here's what I did, John.
00:07:36You know, I had a wife and a couple of children.
00:07:39I was very busy in my church.
00:07:41I always taught Sunday morning, Wednesday evening, and Friday evening.
00:07:45So, I've got three messages a week I'm responsible for that I did year after year after year.
00:07:52But with this sense that I needed to pray for Dr. Freeman, I committed myself to rising way before daylight,
00:08:01set my alarm clock.
00:08:02You know, I have to disturb my wife, wake up, get up, go into my study, pray, and then go
00:08:09back to bed.
00:08:10And I don't know how long I did that.
00:08:12I mean, I didn't do it for months and months.
00:08:13I might have done it for a week.
00:08:15I can't really remember.
00:08:16But I specifically remember doing that.
00:08:19And what was good for me in thinking back on that, and of course, this doesn't mean anything to those
00:08:28people who are still in support of the church.
00:08:32But what was meaningful to me was I knew that my heart was right.
00:08:38I wasn't coming at him or I wasn't coming at that church or that movement or that message.
00:08:45I wasn't coming at any of them just for the sake of being critical.
00:08:51You know, I was sincerely and honestly seeking the scriptures and trying to figure out what the truth was in
00:08:59these areas.
00:08:59And that's why my conversations with the people there were so frustrating, because if you raised a question or you
00:09:07had an objection or you just had, you know, an observation or a concern, you were always just immediately shut
00:09:15down.
00:09:15So I guess what I'm saying is, as I continue to navigate through and then out the back door of
00:09:24Freeman's ministry and message, I feel pretty comfortable that I had maintained a good spirit toward everyone through it.
00:09:36I didn't just say, you know, I hate this guy, I hate this movement, I'm going to see if I
00:09:43can unravel it or destroy it or do any kind of damage.
00:09:46That was not my motive at all.
00:09:49So it just gave me personal comfort.
00:09:51And that's good enough for me.
00:09:52It doesn't prove anything to anyone else, but it proved a lot to me.
00:09:55And so during that same time period, maybe a little earlier in the summer of 1984, I had found out
00:10:03from the big newspaper articles, all the deaths that were happening at Faith Assembly, we didn't know that.
00:10:09I didn't know that personally.
00:10:10My church was totally unaware of that, that they had had person after person, child after child, adult after adult
00:10:19die.
00:10:19And when I saw those articles, I was just floored.
00:10:24And so I wrote Dr. Freeman, tried to get him on the phone, and that didn't work, even though I
00:10:30did have his home number.
00:10:32June wouldn't always let me through to him, depending on what the time of day was and what my question
00:10:37or subject matter was.
00:10:39So I wrote a series of letters.
00:10:43And we have played this before, but I'm just trying to put all these pieces together, John.
00:10:48So on a message entitled, Conflict Between Christ and Satan, this was a part of the Exhortations from Exodus series.
00:10:56That was the last real series of messages.
00:10:59It was nine or 10 or 11 messages in the book of Exodus that Hobart was teaching during the summer
00:11:05of 1984.
00:11:07And so from the 30-minute, 20-second mark to the 30-minute, 52-second mark, it's only about 30
00:11:16seconds.
00:11:16A man who got the faith message from Faith Assembly before he ever went into ministry and has written me
00:11:24at least three times.
00:11:26And I think the last letter, especially three critical letters, the last one asking questions.
00:11:32Why is the media reporting this or that and the other?
00:11:35Well, obviously, they are not in the papers for their practices.
00:11:40I could have written and told him that if he'll just do what the Bible says, live a godly life
00:11:46in Christ Jesus, you'll suffer persecution.
00:11:48Well, the person he has reference to in that clip is me.
00:11:52He said, this young man, this man who got the faith message from here before he ever went out on
00:11:59his own, has written these critical letters of me wanting to, and they really weren't critical.
00:12:06They were simply asking, why is it that the media is reporting that they are reporting so many deaths there
00:12:17by people who are saying they're trusting God and yet they end up dead?
00:12:21I just, that was a huge problem in my mind because when I pick up the New Testament, again, as
00:12:29we have said on these podcasts, I always found when people got prayed for, they got healed.
00:12:34Nobody in the New Testament gets prayed for by Jesus or the apostles or the early church and then goes
00:12:40out and dies the next day.
00:12:42So there's something not right.
00:12:44I didn't know what it was at the time.
00:12:46I didn't, I just didn't know, but I just knew there's something not right.
00:12:50And can we not ask questions about that?
00:12:54And as you heard there, you know, he takes a stab at me saying, well, obviously this man and his
00:13:01church, they're not living a godly life in Christ Jesus because he, you know, he misapplies that verse in 2
00:13:08Timothy 3.
00:13:09All that live godly, all that live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution.
00:13:13That is true.
00:13:15But proof of your godliness is not the number of people who have died trying to trust God.
00:13:21That means there is a problem there.
00:13:24And so I was, yeah, personally offended by that.
00:13:29And I think I had the right to be personally offended because I was simply seeking some understanding and some
00:13:36help in explaining what was going on.
00:13:39And rather than give that to a young man and to a young minister, you know, he just throws me
00:13:45under the bus.
00:13:47And I began to realize through that that he loved getting letters from people as long as it was a
00:13:55confirmation of his message.
00:13:57And my previous ones had been like that.
00:14:00So he might, and he told stories of mine on earlier tapes because I was in support of the ministry.
00:14:06So in other words, John, if you could send a letter or make a phone call or something and say
00:14:12that you had a vision that his foot was going to be healed, then he would just throw that in
00:14:17the pot and say, yeah, now we've got 21 visions that have confirmed my feeling, my healing.
00:14:23As long as you were willing to do that, then he would use your information in a positive way.
00:14:29But if you had a question about anything, then, you know, you were thrown, you literally thrown under the bus.
00:14:36And it was, it was just very hurtful to me as a young minister, knowing that I had just spent
00:14:41time praying for him, getting up when I did not want to get up early in the morning, setting my
00:14:46alarm, praying, and then going back to bed.
00:14:48And to be treated like that, I just did not think was a good sign from the leader of that
00:14:53church.
00:14:54What you've just described is actually the most fascinating part of all of this to me.
00:14:58So when you're in a high control group, especially a group that has different splinter groups, the people who are
00:15:07in the main branch of the, the main, the main group, the main high control group, they have a different
00:15:13set of information than the satellite groups do.
00:15:16And so whenever the, whenever the information is just a little bit critical, the main group won't let all of
00:15:23the satellite groups know everything because it's critical.
00:15:26We don't want the critical information out, but yet at the same time, those who are in the main group
00:15:31are connected in this group think mentality.
00:15:34So they have all the answers for what is the critical information, the satellite groups don't, as such, the people
00:15:41who are in the main group, they evolve their memories of what happened based off of the information that is
00:15:48in that mind, that group think that mindset and the people in the satellite groups have no idea.
00:15:53So I will never forget, I, I realized this whenever I was in the cult, but I didn't know the
00:15:59significance of it because in Branhamism, Branhamism just splintered into a thousand different splinter groups.
00:16:06No two groups believe like each other or even get along with each other, but every once in a while,
00:16:12especially at Easter time or big events, these different groups would come together for some sort of a collaboration or
00:16:20a revival or something.
00:16:21And we, I remember coming to Jeffersonville and we would hear stories about the people who were close to the
00:16:27inner circle in their satellite groups.
00:16:30And I remember scratching my head thinking, well, that sounds nothing like the cult that I'm in.
00:16:35I didn't use the word cult back then, but the mentality was exactly the same.
00:16:40My family was directly connected to the central figure.
00:16:43So my family's information was one step, not better, but more in-depth information than the satellite groups, right?
00:16:52Right, right.
00:16:53So the satellite groups, when they tell their version of the story, it's not even the same story.
00:16:56It kind of evolves into this other story because they're not in the same hive collective mindset.
00:17:03So what you're describing is fascinating to me, but in Hobart Freeman's case, there weren't as many satellite groups.
00:17:10And the fact that they didn't share information just among the people, the body as a whole, it's a little
00:17:16bit interesting to me.
00:17:17Why was that?
00:17:18And so if people wonder, well, how did you find out that Dr. Freeman died?
00:17:22Because I'm not a part of that church.
00:17:23He dies on Saturday night.
00:17:25We talked last week, John, on what happened the next morning, Sunday morning.
00:17:30Um, Jack Farrell was scheduled to preach.
00:17:33He was supposed to preach part two of a message entitled abstain from all appearance of evil.
00:17:38He wasn't able to do that until the first Sunday in January of 1985.
00:17:43But that's when everyone else found out the people there.
00:17:46And then, of course, as I said last week, as soon as people got home, I mean, it was a
00:17:50race to the telephone because you needed to call all of your closer friends and relatives who were not a
00:17:58part of the main mother.
00:17:59They weren't part of a church.
00:17:59They weren't part of Rome.
00:18:01They were part of one of the satellite churches out there.
00:18:04And it was a race.
00:18:05But nobody's calling me because I'm on the outside.
00:18:09I'm a black sheep.
00:18:10You know, General Rawls has dared to criticize Hobart Freeman.
00:18:16How dare he do that?
00:18:18And so I'm a black sheep.
00:18:19Nobody's picking up the phone at Faith Assembly and calling me.
00:18:23And I did not know people there anyway.
00:18:25I had always been in ministry.
00:18:27So anybody I knew was a minister.
00:18:30And the only minister that I knew was Bruce Kinsey.
00:18:35And Bruce had already had already quit Faith Assembly.
00:18:39And Hobart had already that's his son in law.
00:18:41And Hobart already prophesied over him and said right in the middle of the message, right with Bruce sitting there.
00:18:47If thou dost not repent, I shall remove thy lampstand from thy place, except thou repent.
00:18:54Thus saith the Lord in a message to the whole church, but directed to your son in law out there.
00:19:01Because Bruce was high up.
00:19:04Bruce was second in command.
00:19:06I was like one millionth in command.
00:19:08I was unheard of.
00:19:10You know, I was just a speck of dust in the wind.
00:19:14And, you know, for me to have challenged him, it's one thing.
00:19:17But for Bruce to have challenged him about sodomite shoes and prostitute purses, Hobart had this whole list of things
00:19:25you couldn't eat, couldn't wear, you couldn't do this, couldn't go there, couldn't associate with them, couldn't, couldn't, couldn't, couldn't.
00:19:33And Bruce challenged some of that.
00:19:35And Hobart couldn't stand it.
00:19:37So, no, no one told me on Sunday afternoon, you know, so it's really interesting.
00:19:43I've got my, I know exactly what I was teaching, man.
00:19:47I need to go back now in light of this podcast today and find out what was the message I
00:19:52taught in my church on Sunday morning, because I would have had no idea what's happening at Faith Assembly.
00:19:58The mother church in the new building at Wilma, it'd be very interesting.
00:20:02I'll do that maybe later today.
00:20:04And then I preached Wednesday night in my church.
00:20:07Again, all of us, we're just living our life.
00:20:10You know, we're just serving the Lord, studying the Bible.
00:20:12We have our own church.
00:20:14We're going about our own business.
00:20:17And we're not a part of Faith Assembly.
00:20:19And so we're oblivious to what's going on.
00:20:22However, however, the only way I had been able to try to stay up with things is to take out
00:20:29a newspaper subscription.
00:20:31One to the Warsaw Times Union, which was the local closed paper.
00:20:37And another one I took out in the Fort Wayne News Sentinel, which was a little further away north, northeast
00:20:44of the building.
00:20:45So I was getting these two newspapers to my house.
00:20:49So here's the story of all stories, John, for me and for this whole episode, something I'll never forget.
00:20:55So Hobart dies Saturday night.
00:20:59The people in the room obviously know that he's died.
00:21:03Before they go to bed, they probably call their closest, closest confidants and tell them.
00:21:10But then I don't tell anybody else.
00:21:11You know, this is secret information.
00:21:13And then the next morning at church, an announcement was going to be made that Dr.
00:21:18Freeman had died.
00:21:19So now all they know, all those people know, they go home, call their friends.
00:21:24All those people know.
00:21:25All of people like myself, we're still on the outside.
00:21:27We don't know.
00:21:28So I go out on Friday.
00:21:31That's the Friday after the weekend that he died.
00:21:35I'll never forget.
00:21:36I go out to the mailbox Friday afternoon to get the paper because I had subscribed to these papers and
00:21:44they were literally mailed to me.
00:21:46And I go out and I still have the paper.
00:21:48I go out.
00:21:49I have all of these things to the mailbox.
00:21:51I open the mailbox and I see I've got, you know, it's a newspaper.
00:21:55You see how yellow and from from all these 41 years this newspaper is.
00:22:02I go out there.
00:22:03I've got a newspaper addressed to me and I open it up.
00:22:07And here's what I find.
00:22:09And I was absolutely shocked.
00:22:14I mean, this is Friday.
00:22:16I'm going to end up teaching Friday night.
00:22:19Now I need to go find out what message I taught that Friday night.
00:22:21But I'm sure I relayed this information.
00:22:24You can see up here in the top right hand corner.
00:22:28There's the address label sent to me where I lived in Paulette, Vermont.
00:22:32But here was the newspaper.
00:22:34You know, our box was across the street from our house.
00:22:40So I have to open the box up, get this paper out, open to see that race back across the
00:22:46highway, run inside and go, oh, my goodness.
00:22:51Hobart Freeman is dead.
00:22:53That was it was a Friday afternoon when I found out, you know, everyone else in the movement
00:23:00had already known a week.
00:23:01And I'm a day late and a dollar short before I find out.
00:23:07And of course, what comes to my mind is the dream that this brother had had about four
00:23:12months earlier.
00:23:13And my mind starts going, well, what do you know about that?
00:23:17That dream just kind of out of left field.
00:23:20I mean, someone comes up to you in church and says, I had a dream last night.
00:23:23You go, yeah, right.
00:23:25And that wasn't my approach.
00:23:27I was always, OK, I would like to hear it.
00:23:29But if it's something, you know, too bizarre or something, you know, I go, no, that's just
00:23:33too much pizza you had the night before or something like that.
00:23:35That didn't have anything to do with God or the Holy Spirit.
00:23:39But for someone to say what this person said in that dream, Hobart Freeman is going to
00:23:43die and then such and such is going to happen.
00:23:46And here a couple of months later, I opened a newspaper and I would never have expected
00:23:51that.
00:23:52I mean, nobody there was expecting it.
00:23:57And I wasn't expecting it.
00:23:59Of course, I didn't know that he had these illnesses and all these problems, these medical
00:24:04and physical conditions that he had.
00:24:06But I'm sure, John, even had I known that, you know, I just would not have expected Hobart
00:24:15Freeman is going to die.
00:24:16You had just heard so many times you never die believing, only doubting.
00:24:20You know, I've claimed 70 years, Moses lived to be 120, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, on
00:24:26and on and on all these examples.
00:24:29We're the overcomers, first fruit rapture.
00:24:31I'm not going to die.
00:24:32I've got the spirit of the law of life in Christ Jesus living in my body like John G.
00:24:38Lake had bubonic plague couldn't live on him and death can't take a hold of me.
00:24:42I just, you know, I was probably living a little bit in non-reality too, I'm sure, because I've
00:24:50heard this man say all these things.
00:24:52And then for him to just fall over dead and not fall over dead, but progressively die the
00:24:59death of a horrible person.
00:25:02No, that is not something I would have expected to happen.
00:25:06And so, you know, what I did, you know, what we did in our home, as soon as I, as
00:25:12soon
00:25:12as I opened this paper and saw that, I thought, well, there is finally vindication for, for
00:25:19me asking questions, you know, there's vindication.
00:25:22So surely somebody will listen.
00:25:25So in our home, I no sooner opened that paper.
00:25:28I don't even know that I read the article when I saw that the, um, when I saw the headlines
00:25:34that faith assembly's leader was dead immediately, we picked up the phone and called June as Hobart's
00:25:41wife.
00:25:42You know, I had their personal home telephone number because I had talked to Hobart and
00:25:46to June on various occasions before immediately picked up the phone and called June.
00:25:53And I don't remember what all was said, but I know the point of my calling and I'm probably
00:26:01said something along the line, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm sorry to hear about the loss of your
00:26:05husband, but that was really not the point of my call.
00:26:08The point of my call was, will you, will you people please listen to some reality?
00:26:16Will you please listen to some right now?
00:26:18You know, if there is a time now is the time.
00:26:21If there is a time now is the time, you know, I thought.
00:26:25Well, maybe catch people when they're a little bit vulnerable and I don't mean catch them
00:26:32in a, in the wrong sense, but catch them in the right sense when they're a little bit
00:26:37vulnerable.
00:26:38And because all I'm wanting to do is have their eyes open and say, look, this is not the
00:26:43way it happens in the Bible.
00:26:45So we need to figure out what we have wrong in our doctrine and wrong in our message.
00:26:50And, um, I won't say everything that June said to me, but she was obviously highly displeased
00:26:57and, and I didn't expect that.
00:26:59I mean, had I expected that, I never would have called.
00:27:01I obviously thought I would get somewhere.
00:27:04Um, 41 years later, I don't have the same naivete.
00:27:09Now I know, you know, a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion.
00:27:13Still, you're not going to get very far with people without a long process of time.
00:27:19And, you know, I'd already tried with Dr.
00:27:21Freeman with letters and that didn't get anywhere, but just his death was so, um, was
00:27:28so monumental and so unexpected.
00:27:33I really thought that maybe this will be a wake up moment.
00:27:37I mean, if anything could have been the death of your leader should be a wake up moment.
00:27:41So I just really called assuming that June would maybe say something like, well, you know,
00:27:50you have a point and, um, I've been speaking with some of the ministers and we have been
00:27:56talking this situation over.
00:27:58That's probably what I was expecting to hear.
00:28:02Um, now I would never make the call because I would know it'll do no good, but I never did
00:28:08expect to hear what I got.
00:28:10And that was just, you are a horrible person, you know, how can you believe anything except
00:28:16what my husband faithfully taught?
00:28:18And I'm just like scratching my head, but he just died contrary to everything that he
00:28:24taught.
00:28:24How can you still be defending that?
00:28:27But as I said, about 41 years of living life gives you some, some gray hairs and some
00:28:35maturity and now, you know, if I make this call, this is probably what I have to expect.
00:28:41Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern
00:28:46Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other fringe movements
00:28:52into the new apostolic reformation?
00:28:54You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website,
00:28:59william-branham.org.
00:29:01On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins,
00:29:07Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper,
00:29:13audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:29:15You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those
00:29:21movements.
00:29:22If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the
00:29:27contribute button at the top.
00:29:28And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening
00:29:34to or watching.
00:29:35On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:29:40You know, every time we do a podcast together, I learn more about my former life and more
00:29:45about myself and my beliefs because I had so many, I still have so many unanswered questions,
00:29:51things that I'll just never get an answer to.
00:29:53And each time I talk to you, I pick up another one.
00:29:55And what I learned just now is that our group apparently ate a lot of pizza.
00:30:02They had a lot of these kind of dreams.
00:30:04In fact, when I talked earlier, I was mentioning coming together in these groups where, and I
00:30:09clearly remember this.
00:30:11I'm sitting in these rooms.
00:30:13They had rented out buildings, and they would fill a room with people and have some guy come
00:30:18speak and talk about their time with the prophet.
00:30:21And all ears were just so intent.
00:30:23If we can just hear one detail that we didn't know before, that was a bigger blessing than
00:30:28reading the Bible.
00:30:29That's literally the way it was, right?
00:30:31That's right.
00:30:32Well, these people would tell their dreams, and some of the dreams were the ones who were
00:30:39with Branham's inner circle at the time he died are frequently talking about dreams of
00:30:44things that will happen when he returns.
00:30:47And, you know, whenever your mind is so solely focused on something, your brain gets overwhelmed
00:30:55and it has to process it.
00:30:57And whether you process it yourself or it processes it off to the side, it's going to
00:31:01process it.
00:31:02Usually what happens is it processes it at night, and your mind kind of works these things
00:31:08out.
00:31:08And then you wake up and you go, oh, I had a dream, my brother.
00:31:12And that's kind of how it was.
00:31:13All of these people, whenever Branham died, I'm certain it was the same when Hobart died,
00:31:19they're in that group think, and that's all they can think about is, oh, my gosh, our cult
00:31:24leader died.
00:31:25And what about all of the things that were supposed to happen while he was alive?
00:31:29How do we reconcile that?
00:31:31And none of them really processed that.
00:31:34So there were people that would go home and they were, their brains were processing it,
00:31:38but they themselves weren't.
00:31:40It spun off into dreams, visions, whatever people want to call it.
00:31:45Now, is that going to come true?
00:31:47Is Branham going to come back to life?
00:31:48And I remember people telling their stories of, when he comes back, I'm going to be standing
00:31:54right here, I'm going to be doing this, and he's going to walk up and say to me, and whatever
00:31:58is the phrase that means a lot to him, he's going to say this, and then I'm going to know
00:32:03that I have the answer that I was looking for.
00:32:05And they would end the stories like that, and the whole room would just, oh, praise God,
00:32:10praise God.
00:32:11And I look back, and, you know, he's not coming back.
00:32:14He's dead.
00:32:15You're only appointed once to live.
00:32:17The dream can't be true, so therefore it wasn't a spiritual dream.
00:32:20It can't be of God.
00:32:22How far do you go with that?
00:32:23How many of the dreams weren't of God?
00:32:25And I started going through those exercises trying to figure that out, but like I said,
00:32:30you answered it, pizza.
00:32:32That is the answer.
00:32:35Well, and for the record, I do believe God still gives dreams and visions, but I don't
00:32:43believe they're an everyday occurrence.
00:32:45And, you know, the best way to handle them is to let them prove or disprove themselves.
00:32:52You know, people's lives have been wrecked over some revelation that somebody had, and
00:32:57so they up and did something.
00:33:00But anyway, you know, another thought that I had as I watched those first few days and
00:33:07weeks and then months after Hobart Freeman's death is I saw such a huge contrast between
00:33:17his death and the deaths of godly men that I had read about in the Bible.
00:33:23So many of the godly men in the Bible knew that their death was imminent.
00:33:30You know, they made plans for it.
00:33:33When Joseph died, you know, in Egypt, God had providentially sent him down there to preserve
00:33:41the entire future nation of Israel.
00:33:43He got down there.
00:33:44His brothers got down there.
00:33:46He got his father, Jacob, down there.
00:33:48And Joseph lived to be 110 years of age, I believe, in the last chapter of Genesis.
00:33:56And he knew that Egypt wasn't the promised land.
00:34:00And so he made his brothers and the people around him swear by an oath that when God visits
00:34:08us and takes you people, I'll be long gone, but takes you back to the land that he swore
00:34:15to Abraham and Isaac and to my father, Jacob, swear that you'll carry my bones with you.
00:34:21And they did.
00:34:23And when you read in the Exodus account, some people, I don't even know that they realize
00:34:28this, Sean, it's in the Exodus account.
00:34:29Not only do we have the plagues on Egypt and the actual Exodus, but in preparation to leave,
00:34:36you know, before you go on a trip, you know, you look in your suitcase and make sure you
00:34:40got your toothbrush, your toothpaste, you know, an extra pair of shoes, a change of clothes.
00:34:44Well, one of the things that Moses was doing on his checklist is I got to make sure I got
00:34:51Joseph's bones that we're actually told that in Exodus 13, we've got to make sure we've
00:34:56got Joseph's bones.
00:34:58We're going to carry those back.
00:34:59And then we find out later in the account in Joshua, they did carry Joseph's bones back
00:35:04and they buried.
00:35:06They were not looking for Joseph to be resurrected from the dead.
00:35:09He'd already lived his life.
00:35:11That's the contrast that I see.
00:35:13When Moses died in the end of Deuteronomy, in chapter 34 of Deuteronomy, the people mourned
00:35:20his death.
00:35:20He was a great leader.
00:35:22He had served God and the people well, but now he's dead.
00:35:27They mourned him for 30 days.
00:35:30God buried his body somewhere.
00:35:33Moses had already made plans for succession with Joshua because that's the normal process.
00:35:41It's called birth, life, death.
00:35:44That's the normal process for all human beings.
00:35:47But when you are in a fantastically false faith cult, like Faith Assembly was, death was just
00:35:57something that is a negative confession.
00:36:00That is something that is horrible and evil.
00:36:04And if you have enough faith, you're somehow going to be able to escape it.
00:36:08Either just continue to live until Jesus comes back.
00:36:12Or if you die, then you will be resurrected.
00:36:15But when I look at the men in the Bible, the godly men in the Bible who died, think of
00:36:21Stephen,
00:36:22the first martyr of the church in Acts chapter 8.
00:36:25You know, he died for his faith and the early church mourned his death and they took his body
00:36:33and they buried him.
00:36:35I don't see this with Faith Assembly.
00:36:38It was, they didn't have the mourning.
00:36:42Now, I'm sure people cried.
00:36:43I am sure.
00:36:44Don't misunderstand.
00:36:45I'm sure Mrs. Freeman, the daughters, I'm sure many tears were shed over the loss of a loved one
00:36:51and rightfully so.
00:36:53But what I've also seen in Faith Assembly in particular is people did not really know how
00:37:00to grieve the death of a loved one because your loved one wasn't supposed to die.
00:37:05So, you are totally unprepared and everything about death is somehow just a negative confession
00:37:14because they're expecting either to continue to live or to be raised from the dead.
00:37:21But in the Bible, there's no rebuking.
00:37:24There's no decreeing.
00:37:26There's no claiming.
00:37:28It's just the people died.
00:37:30And many times, not always, I mean, Stephen was martyred.
00:37:34James, a brother of John, one of the three in the inner circle of the apostles of Peter,
00:37:39James, and John, you know, he was beheaded by Herod in Acts 12.
00:37:44Whether he knew that was coming right around the corner, I don't know.
00:37:47But here's one of the great apostles, Peter, James, and John.
00:37:51We know a lot about Peter.
00:37:53He wrote some books of the Bible.
00:37:54We know a lot about John.
00:37:56He wrote some books of the Bible, but his brother, James, who was so important in the earthly ministry
00:38:04of Jesus, didn't have a very extensive ministry afterwards because he's killed, he's martyred,
00:38:11he's executed relatively early in the book of Acts.
00:38:14And yet the church knew how to deal with that because there was none of this,
00:38:20oh, our leader is going to live forever, positive thinking, positive confession.
00:38:27I even want, if I can, John, read a passage from 2 Timothy 4.
00:38:33Here is the upcoming death of the apostle Paul.
00:38:37And as I look at this passage, and I've studied it over the years since Hobart died,
00:38:42and then I look at all of the fear and confusion and darkness and oppression that surrounded the
00:38:49night that Hobart was dying and the immediate aftermath of his death.
00:38:55So many unanswered questions, so much fear in the hearts of the people.
00:39:01I see a huge contrast between that and Dr. Freeman's death, or that and what we read here
00:39:09in the Bible.
00:39:09So here in 2 Timothy 4 and verse 6, this is Paul's last epistle.
00:39:15He's a short period away from his own death.
00:39:19And he said, I am ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.
00:39:27I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, and I have kept the faith.
00:39:34Henceforth, there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous
00:39:39judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but unto all them that love his appearing.
00:39:47He didn't die sick.
00:39:49He didn't die with just a straw to his mouth because he had refused all medical help, you
00:39:54know, as Dr. Freeman had, according to what Jack Farrell said in a newspaper interview,
00:39:59where he couldn't even drink without a straw to his mouth.
00:40:03Well, you know, it's just everything surrounding the night of Dr. Freeman's death, the days
00:40:11leading up to it, the days that followed that, there was a lot of darkness, there was a lot
00:40:16of oppression and depression.
00:40:19There were a lot of unanswered questions.
00:40:24And also, there was this, John, and I have provided a couple of pictures for you to see.
00:40:34Hobart died on Saturday night, December the 8th, 1984.
00:40:39It wasn't reported until Sunday morning, following Sunday.
00:40:42That afternoon, Dr. Patricia Newhouse, who was a Muncie, Indiana pathologist, did the autopsy
00:40:50Sunday afternoon.
00:40:51He was in the ground by Monday morning, December the 10th.
00:40:58And I've got a picture.
00:40:59We can share a couple of pictures here.
00:41:01I had visited the grave site.
00:41:03And so I found the spot.
00:41:05I took a couple of pictures.
00:41:07And what we all have, because it was made available in the newspaper, was his burial
00:41:13on a misty, rainy, cloudy, dark, gloomy Monday morning, December the 10th, 1984.
00:41:22And of course, I'm finding this out because I'm getting the newspaper.
00:41:26Of course, getting the newspaper, that would be a sin at Faith Assembly.
00:41:29You weren't allowed to read the newspaper.
00:41:31You weren't allowed to own a TV.
00:41:33You weren't allowed to hear any of what the media had to say.
00:41:37Because Faith Assembly wanted to control all the input of information.
00:41:41So as long as they outlaw everything else, you only know what your leaders are telling
00:41:47you.
00:41:47That is a horrible situation to be in.
00:41:49You only know what your leaders are telling you.
00:41:54So I don't know if the rank and file members out there in Faith Assembly even realize this,
00:42:00but that Dr. Freeman was buried alone.
00:42:04No one was there at his burial except the grave diggers and the cemetery personnel.
00:42:12There were no family members there.
00:42:15So I do want the followers of Faith Assembly to realize that.
00:42:21You know, I'm almost at a loss for words.
00:42:23It's sad for me, for the family, because this would have been heartbreaking for them.
00:42:29But yet at the same time, because of who they were, and being that close to the central figure,
00:42:36they also bore a responsibility.
00:42:39So I have to weigh in my mind how much is responsibility and how much do we allow for mourning.
00:42:45And all of that aside, just take a look at the people themselves and take a look at the
00:42:50nature of the religion.
00:42:53Hobart's dying.
00:42:54Nobody's at the grave site.
00:42:56Everybody is trying to figure out what just happened because he died, and he's supposed
00:43:00to do all of these other things that he didn't do, much like many other cult leaders in the
00:43:06same type of movement.
00:43:08I have often wondered what would happen if Jesus were to come back at that exact moment.
00:43:13Would they care so much about Jesus, or would they want the leader to come fulfill all of
00:43:18the things that they said that they would do before they died?
00:43:22I have come to suspect that a large number of them, and I'm not saying the Freemanites
00:43:27are this way, but there are a large number of them, that they would just simply ignore
00:43:31the return of Jesus.
00:43:32No, our leader is the Moses figure who's going to take us through.
00:43:35Without him, we can't get there.
00:43:37And what it turns into, we've mentioned this before, it's a mediator between God and man,
00:43:41and it's not the mediator that the Bible is telling you to watch after, right?
00:43:46So the whole thing becomes sad to me, and like I said, I'm at a loss for words for the
00:43:52family, but just think of all of the people that are following the wrong thing and don't
00:43:58even realize it.
00:43:59And another thing that I notice, John, I'm trying to always, as I look at events that
00:44:03happen around me in the church world, at the broad church world, and as we study the
00:44:11scriptures and read our Bibles, you just see so many analogies and so many comparisons.
00:44:17And one of the things I saw, I've already shared one, how different Hobart's death and
00:44:22just the lack of mourning, the lack of public anything compared to all the people in the
00:44:27Bible, they died happy, knowing I'm going to die.
00:44:30And Paul said, I've finished the course.
00:44:33I have fought a good fight, and I'm headed to glory to it for a crown of righteousness, where
00:44:39the night Hobart's dying, everybody's terrified.
00:44:42We can't let him die.
00:44:43You know, are there demons in the house?
00:44:45We need to get rid of these occult books.
00:44:48Paul and his group, they weren't worried about stuff like that.
00:44:51And Joseph wasn't worried about stuff like that.
00:44:54And Moses wasn't worried.
00:44:55When Moses died, it said the children of Israel mourned.
00:44:58They had a 30-day mourning period.
00:45:00That is so appropriate because Moses is not coming back, but he has served his purpose, and
00:45:07he was a great and faithful leader.
00:45:09And so you show due honor and respect by having a 30-day period of mourning.
00:45:15And then guess what?
00:45:16We got to get on with our life.
00:45:19We have a successor.
00:45:21Hobart had never worked out the succession business at all because he wasn't going to die.
00:45:27Succession is huge in all of the biblical narratives because that's just the way God works.
00:45:33None of us are going to live forever.
00:45:34So once the main leader is dead, whether it's Moses or Paul, Paul had Timothy, Paul had Titus.
00:45:43There were other people who were still there.
00:45:46Another thing that I've noticed, John, this is going to be maybe a little odd, but let me
00:45:50explain it, and I think hopefully it'll make sense to people.
00:45:54I see a similar, I could draw analogy from the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC, and here's what
00:46:02I mean by that.
00:46:05The northern kingdom of Israel had already fallen to Assyria in 722 BC, and so all you
00:46:13have is the southern kingdom of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin, but they're in the
00:46:21holy land, and they have the promised city.
00:46:23That's the city of Jerusalem, and that is where the temple mount was, and that is where God's
00:46:29holy temple was, that he had given specific instructions to David to hand down to Solomon
00:46:36to complete and to build.
00:46:39And God said, I will dwell there between the cherubim, over the Ark of the Covenant, above
00:46:45the mercy seat.
00:46:46That is where I will be.
00:46:48And however, in 588 BC, the city is being besieged by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians,
00:46:58and the population and all of the outlying villages and towns, they've raced to the city.
00:47:04They're all shut up.
00:47:06That's why they built these enormous walls around old cities, both thick and tall, high
00:47:13walls.
00:47:13It was impregnable, and this is the background of a lot of the prophecy of Ezekiel.
00:47:21The people in the city knew that, hey, we've had problems before.
00:47:28They were delivered from King Sennacherib, who had tried to attack the city of Jerusalem
00:47:34150 years earlier, and God had supernaturally prepared, had delivered them from Sennacherib.
00:47:43But the population is 150 years further down the road of sin, and the Jewish people then,
00:47:50according to Ezekiel's prophecy, were just entertaining all sorts of misinterpretations
00:47:55of the Old Testament and just popular misconceptions about God, about the covenant, about God's love,
00:48:04God's mercy, about how important were the Jewish people on the scene at that time.
00:48:09And so they felt this is the holy city.
00:48:12This is God's temple where he promised to dwell, and they just thought it's inviolable.
00:48:19It's impregnable.
00:48:21There is no way.
00:48:23And if you read Ezekiel carefully, you see this.
00:48:26You see that Ezekiel is warning them against false ideas that they have, which are being furthered
00:48:35by the preaching of the false prophets of the inviolability of the city and of the temple.
00:48:41They just knew there's no way the city of Jerusalem can be destroyed, and there's no way that God
00:48:48would allow his holy temple to be destroyed.
00:48:52And we know from reading our Old Testament, that's exactly what God did allow.
00:48:59And when you read the prophets, you find that for many Jewish people, their faith was just shattered.
00:49:05And for many people at Faith Assembly, their faith was shattered.
00:49:09You know, as long as Hobart remained alive, this is the inviolability of God's man and his message.
00:49:16As long as he remained alive, as long as he was allowed to continue to rant and rave from the
00:49:22pulpit,
00:49:23even if he's sitting on a stool up there, nothing was going to change.
00:49:27Nothing was going to change for Israel as long as the city was standing and the temple was there,
00:49:32because they just said, look, it doesn't matter how wrong we are in our theology.
00:49:39Proof that God's on our side is just look behind me and the temple's still standing.
00:49:44And so, as I meditated on Ezekiel, his prophecy, and have looked at what happened with Faith Assembly,
00:49:53you know, there was no way anything was going to change there until God removed the man.
00:50:00And what better way to remove the man than through sickness?
00:50:05When he had preached a message that was not a biblical message,
00:50:10but it was a message of complete divine healing.
00:50:15And I'm always reminded when I look at Hobart's tape list,
00:50:20and I look at the titles of some of those, and I mentioned this before, John,
00:50:24and it was just such a travesty of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
00:50:29that every time they were going to have communion,
00:50:33every single time that I'm aware of,
00:50:36every tape that I know of, where I know references made to the fact we're going to have communion
00:50:42after this service, every single time he preached on divine healing.
00:50:47He never preached on forgiveness of sins, never preached on salvation.
00:50:52It was like he was proud of the fact that, well, the Baptists and the Presbyterians,
00:50:58they have that old lowly salvation message,
00:51:01the cross of Christ for salvation.
00:51:03That's that lowly message.
00:51:04But we have the higher message that Jesus also died for our healing.
00:51:11With his stripes, we are bodily and physically healed.
00:51:14And so he was proud of the fact we have that message,
00:51:18and we're going to preach.
00:51:20I'm going to preach on divine healing.
00:51:21And I just don't think it was biblically balanced or biblically true at all.
00:51:26And so how appropriate for the man to die of so many different sicknesses
00:51:31when he had a message that was simply not a true faith message.
00:51:36And I've often wondered how compatible these groups that believe divine healing
00:51:42to the extent that they believe it,
00:51:44I've often wondered how compatible that actually is to Christianity.
00:51:48Separating that from the fact that the Bible says that God does heal,
00:51:51I am fully separating that, but there are people that turn,
00:51:56they literally turn the divine healing into worship.
00:51:59You can join us, but you must believe that you're going to be healed if you get sick.
00:52:03I was in one of those groups, and I watched what happened when people left.
00:52:07They didn't advocate for their belief in Christ after they left.
00:52:12They actually advocated for their belief in the divine healing after they left,
00:52:16which tells you that it's so tightly integrated into their worship.
00:52:20And it is directly as a result of what we had talked about,
00:52:24F.F. Bosworth, William Branham.
00:52:25It was the gospel of divine healing.
00:52:27They taught that healing was part of the atonement.
00:52:30And therefore, if you are saved, you must be healed.
00:52:33Well, is that really compatible with Christianity?
00:52:36And then you see something like this,
00:52:37where somebody who is teaching this is taken off the scene,
00:52:41like you said, directly defying what they've been taught.
00:52:45But are they not a false teacher?
00:52:48That's the question that I raise.
00:52:49Yes, it's an interesting question.
00:52:53And people are going to come down on different sides of that.
00:52:56I have definitely said and have felt that Dr. Freeman was a false shepherd.
00:53:02I think that's just so clearly obvious.
00:53:06To be a shepherd, the pastor of the group, means you love those people.
00:53:11You are with those people day and night.
00:53:14And we know he wasn't.
00:53:15You know, he just totally isolated himself.
00:53:20Definitely his emphasis on healing was not the same New Testament emphasis.
00:53:26You don't find Paul preaching messages on divine healing in the epistles.
00:53:31You see him talking about the cross of Christ and the redemption that God has given us through that.
00:53:39That's what you see him in Ephesians and Corinthians and Romans and Galatians laboring over.
00:53:47And Paul talks about it all the time.
00:53:50What he doesn't talk about all the time is positive thinking and confession.
00:53:55And you can't wear a certain garment and you can't eat a certain food and you can't celebrate a certain
00:54:01day and watch out for your negative confession and watch out for your negative thought patterns.
00:54:08And you can't join this group and you can't join this group and don't do this and you can't borrow
00:54:12money and you can't be a part of a labor union.
00:54:14And I mean, there were so many things wrong with faith assembly.
00:54:20It does not look like a true church.
00:54:23And yes, there were true people there.
00:54:27100%.
00:54:27There were true godly people.
00:54:30And what drew them to that church was what they thought they were going to get and they didn't get.
00:54:36And that was a better understanding of God's word so that they could walk a deeper walk with the Lord.
00:54:43They were just led astray in so many different directions.
00:54:46I'd like to close today, John, with something else that is a public record.
00:54:52And it's a letter that June Freeman sent out just a couple of weeks after Dr. Freeman died.
00:54:58June was of the practice of regularly, more or less, sending out newsletters.
00:55:06And I have all the newsletters, at least since I was a follower of Freeman's from back in 76, when
00:55:12she would, you know, periodically send out a newsletter to catch everyone up to date with what was going on.
00:55:17And, well, right after Dr. Freeman died, and there are just so many revealing things in this.
00:55:24I'm going to read this, but people may can just look at it on the screen and kind of process
00:55:28it themselves.
00:55:29But she sent this out on January 1st, 1985.
00:55:36So this is just a couple of weeks after Dr. Freeman died.
00:55:39And there are so many, what should I say, there's so many telltale signs in this.
00:55:49You know, she would not have recognized this as she's writing it, what she's revealing by the sentences that she
00:55:56writes and by her choice of words.
00:55:58But it's very telling and it's very troublesome.
00:56:01But here's what she said.
00:56:03Dear ones, when I think of the responsibility which has so suddenly and unexpectedly been placed upon all of us
00:56:13who are left behind since Brother Freeman went to be with Jesus, it seems to be almost overwhelming.
00:56:20However, my spirit says we are a people well prepared in God's word to pick up the mantle, finish the
00:56:29task set before us, and to prove to each other and to all who know us that God is true,
00:56:35and he is true to his word, and soon he will vindicate his word.
00:56:41That's just the first paragraph.
00:56:44You hear that vindication at the end of it.
00:56:47That's what Hobart was teaching in Exodus and in Comfort for Troubled Times.
00:56:52God's going to vindicate the burning bush, Faith Assembly, basically meaning he is going to disprove all the medical science
00:57:02statistics, all what the law enforcement authorities have done, what the courts have done, and he's going to show us
00:57:10to be his special people.
00:57:12Did that happen?
00:57:13Absolutely not.
00:57:14Faith Assembly just crashed and burned after this.
00:57:18But June is saying soon he's going to vindicate.
00:57:23She says in the third paragraph, we've appreciated the many calls and letters and cards telling us of your love
00:57:31and your appreciation for the pure, uncompromising word which has gone forth from here.
00:57:40Hobart was all about, this is a pure word.
00:57:45No minister, in my opinion, has a pure word.
00:57:48It's some truth mixed with some error.
00:57:52And the better the minister you are, the more the truth you'll have and the less the error you will
00:57:59have.
00:58:00Freeman didn't believe that.
00:58:01He believed his message was pure and it was uncompromising.
00:58:07She says in the next paragraph, there's so much, there's such a peace and rest.
00:58:11Yes, even joy and rejoicing and knowing God is sovereign and has permitted the circumstances we are in at the
00:58:19present time.
00:58:21And look at this next sentence.
00:58:25We know Brother Freeman has, not had, this is present tense.
00:58:32We know Brother Freeman has a great faith.
00:58:36We know Brother Freeman has a great faith.
00:58:39One of the other things I noticed in reading this letter is she never says, Hobart, or my husband, or
00:58:47my dearly beloved husband, or she is just a member, John, of that congregation who has been deceived with the
00:58:56same deception every other member has.
00:58:59She's a loyal and faithful wife.
00:59:01There's no doubt about that.
00:59:03But she calls him, Brother Freeman, what everyone else called him.
00:59:07She is just a member in that church.
00:59:11Everyone was, if not physically, mentally, bowing down before Dr. Freeman.
00:59:19And she says, we know that Brother Freeman has a great faith.
00:59:24I'll never forget the first time I read that.
00:59:27You know, I got this newsletter from June and I thought, I don't think he has because he's no longer
00:59:34here.
00:59:34But she said, well, God has allowed or permitted these circumstances that we are in at the present time.
00:59:42But here is something that was regularly reported by numerous people.
00:59:48And that is this, that for the next number of weeks, and I cannot say how long no one would
00:59:57know this except June.
00:59:58And she died back in 2000.
01:00:00But for the next number of weeks, June laid out at the end of the bed, Dr. Freeman's church clothes,
01:00:10his suit clothes, ready for him to be resurrected from the dead and come back in that house and put
01:00:17those clothes on and go preach.
01:00:18And you know, John, 100%, that is what those people were expecting to happen, even though when you look back
01:00:27on it, you think how foolish of a thought that was.
01:00:30That was not foolish to them at the time.
01:00:32The man was buried in a pine box in that cemetery on that Monday morning of December the 10th.
01:00:39But June was continuing to put his suit coat out, according to people that have told me what they knew.
01:00:47And that means he's going to come out of the ground in a resurrected.
01:00:53This is phenomenal.
01:00:55A resurrected and healed body.
01:00:58Not for sure how he was going to get from the cemetery back to his house on Shoe Lake.
01:01:03But God can handle those details.
01:01:05Come back to the house, put those clothes on, and go back to church to preach.
01:01:10But 41 years later, and as of today, that's not happened.
01:01:15That story has all the makings of a good zombie movie, but none of a good Christian story.
01:01:22You know, like I said, I feel really bad for all of the people involved.
01:01:26I know exactly how it is.
01:01:28And you touched on something else that I wanted to end with.
01:01:32When you're in one of these groups, it rips the family part out of your life.
01:01:38You said she would say, Brother Freeman.
01:01:41Anytime, I've not mentioned this, I don't think, on the podcast.
01:01:44Anytime I was around my grandfather, I wasn't John.
01:01:46I wasn't grandson.
01:01:47He would say, Hello, Brother Collins.
01:01:50And I was always, I was brother.
01:01:52I was never associated in a family way.
01:01:56The family units are just ripped apart.
01:01:58And the cult takes precedence over the family, any family.
01:02:03If you have family that don't believe, you can't associate with them in the same way.
01:02:08If you have family that leave because they question, you can't associate with them the same way.
01:02:13And it shouldn't be that way.
01:02:14If you're in a normal church and somebody questions Christianity, you go all the harder after them and say, Hey,
01:02:20we really want you to believe.
01:02:21That's what a Christian does.
01:02:23And I, you know, I hate to say it, but if you're in an atheist home and your atheist son
01:02:30or daughter turns against you and leaves, the atheists will go after and try to make amends and try to
01:02:35bring them back in.
01:02:36The atheists actually act more human, humane than the people in the cult, because it's just destroyed the internal concept
01:02:44of what it means to be human.
01:02:46And that's really, I hate to say it, but that's where we end with, with the story, because he's dead.
01:02:51The wife is saying, brother Freeman, she's, she's not, she's not mourning in the same way that a human would
01:02:59mourn her husband because she is manipulated to think we must think our priority is to hold the integrity of
01:03:07the group.
01:03:07Think together.
01:03:08That's really what this comes down to.
01:03:10So this is a, this is a moment in time where group think group integrity takes priority over humanity.
01:03:19And that's a really sad note to end on, but what do you do with this?
01:03:23That's where you end, right?
01:03:25Yes, John, unfortunately that's where it ends.
01:03:27But I think you're a hundred percent accurate in that the family unit was, was relegated to the sidelines and
01:03:35normal, normal human emotions and sympathies and sorrows and fears and regrets.
01:03:42And, you know, you, none of that was tolerated because all of that's negative and that's just not allowed.
01:03:49But as you said, that's a part of humanity of being human.
01:03:53And it was simply stripped away from so many of those people.
01:03:57Well, this was a painful one.
01:03:58So I'm not going to say if you enjoyed our show, but I guess I'll say if you felt the
01:04:02show was interesting and you want more information about this or any of the other topics we've talked about, you
01:04:09can check us out on the web.
01:04:10You can find us at william-branham.org.
01:04:12And for more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity
01:04:19to the NAR.
01:04:20Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:04:55And we'll see you next to our next podcast.
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