- 10 minutes ago
John and Chino examine the controversial longer ending of Mark 16 and the doctrine of "signs following" that has shaped segments of Pentecostal and charismatic history. They explore the manuscript debate surrounding verses 9-20, the historical development of snake handling and poison drinking movements, and how selective emphasis on a disputed passage influenced figures like Hobart Freeman and the broader healing and deliverance movements.
Rather than arguing for or against the longer ending, John and Chino focus on context, historical theology, and the central message of the New Testament. They contrast the five signs listed in Mark 16 with the core gospel message of Christ's death and resurrection, asking whether certain movements elevated secondary signs above primary doctrine. The conversation traces how "with signs following" became a defining slogan and why balance, context, and discernment matter when interpreting Scripture.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:31 Mark 16 And “With Signs Following” In Charismatic Culture
03:15 Shorter Vs Longer Ending: Why The Debate Exists
07:03 Early Codices, Manuscripts, And The Blank-Space Argument
11:22 Leaving KJV-Only Assumptions; Why Proof-Texting Fails
16:50 Reading Mark 16:17–18 And The Five “Signs”
18:31 Hobart Freeman’s Selective Use Of Mark 16
22:18 Guilt, Expectations, And The Evangelistic Context Argument
27:30 When Doctrine Produces Harm: Freeman’s No-Medicine Trajectory
31:06 Psalm 91, Temptation, And Misapplying Promises
34:21 Can You Pick And Choose Signs? The Serpent Problem
40:19 What “Gospel” Means Versus Healing/Signs As The Center
43:19 Acts 28 And Accidental Serpent Bites Versus Testing God
48:17 Why “Signs Following” Teaching Becomes A Different “Gospel”
52:15 Stanley Frodsham And The Book “With Signs Following”
54:01 Miracle Literature, Verification, And Discernment Over Hype
59:46 Closing Thoughts And Wrap-Up
______________________
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
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Rather than arguing for or against the longer ending, John and Chino focus on context, historical theology, and the central message of the New Testament. They contrast the five signs listed in Mark 16 with the core gospel message of Christ's death and resurrection, asking whether certain movements elevated secondary signs above primary doctrine. The conversation traces how "with signs following" became a defining slogan and why balance, context, and discernment matter when interpreting Scripture.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:31 Mark 16 And “With Signs Following” In Charismatic Culture
03:15 Shorter Vs Longer Ending: Why The Debate Exists
07:03 Early Codices, Manuscripts, And The Blank-Space Argument
11:22 Leaving KJV-Only Assumptions; Why Proof-Texting Fails
16:50 Reading Mark 16:17–18 And The Five “Signs”
18:31 Hobart Freeman’s Selective Use Of Mark 16
22:18 Guilt, Expectations, And The Evangelistic Context Argument
27:30 When Doctrine Produces Harm: Freeman’s No-Medicine Trajectory
31:06 Psalm 91, Temptation, And Misapplying Promises
34:21 Can You Pick And Choose Signs? The Serpent Problem
40:19 What “Gospel” Means Versus Healing/Signs As The Center
43:19 Acts 28 And Accidental Serpent Bites Versus Testing God
48:17 Why “Signs Following” Teaching Becomes A Different “Gospel”
52:15 Stanley Frodsham And The Book “With Signs Following”
54:01 Miracle Literature, Verification, And Discernment Over Hype
59:46 Closing Thoughts And Wrap-Up
______________________
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
– Subscribe to the channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBSpezVG15TVG-lOYMRXuyQ
– Visit the website: https://william-branham.org
– Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WilliamBranhamOrg
– Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@william.m.branham
– Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/wmbhr
– Buy the books: https://william-branham.org/site/books
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:31Hello, 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 channel.
00:00:51Cheno, I love it when you bring up topics that are going to make half the audience angry at me,
00:00:56and today is one of those topics.
00:01:00The ending of Mark 16, this is a big contention between a lot of different groups of Christians,
00:01:07and on the people who are in the Pentecostal Charismatic Movement,
00:01:12it actually became basically the foundational proof text of the entire movement.
00:01:20If you didn't believe this, you didn't believe the gospel.
00:01:23That's usually how it's presented to the people.
00:01:25And I've done a long series of research into the fallout from this.
00:01:32There's some good that came from it, and there's some bad,
00:01:34but in the bad with this belief set, there were these churches that would advertise
00:01:40with signs following.
00:01:42And this basically meant, we believe, the ending of Mark 16.
00:01:46And you'd walk into it, and one may be a healthy church.
00:01:48They're speaking in tongues.
00:01:49They're doing some things that, if you're Pentecostal, this is seen as a good thing.
00:01:54But you might walk into one in the middle of Kentucky, and they might hand you a snake.
00:01:59And not many people know this.
00:02:01There's a really famous snake handler in Cincinnati.
00:02:07I'm drawing a blank on his name.
00:02:09I've got his name on my website, but he was one of the more famous snake handlers,
00:02:13and he was deeply involved with Branham, Latter Rain, the Voice of Healing Revivals.
00:02:17In fact, you can find his name on the transcripts.
00:02:20And it was either him or his son who had to have a hand amputated.
00:02:25There's some weird history.
00:02:27Actually, it was a relative, I think.
00:02:29But anyway, weird, weird history.
00:02:31And I started piecing all of this together because there was one statement that I came across when trying to
00:02:39uncover Branham's hidden history,
00:02:41the ones that the stage persona they don't tell you about.
00:02:44And he mentions that he and his mentor Davis were holding a revival, and Davis started drinking poison in front
00:02:51of the crowd.
00:02:53And you know where this is headed.
00:02:55He's in a crowd of people that they have the with signs following.
00:03:00And the people in that movement would either drink poison to prove their faith or handle a snake to prove
00:03:06their faith.
00:03:07What all comes back to the divisive belief on the end of Mark 16.
00:03:11Well, you know, John, the last few podcasts, three or four or five, we've been looking at Hobart Freeman's death
00:03:18and the aftermath of that.
00:03:21And I still have more to say, but I thought maybe we ought to take a break from that and
00:03:26get on a lighter topic.
00:03:29Although maybe it's not lighter if you've got people handling snakes and drinking poison and dying from it.
00:03:35We're still back to the theme of death.
00:03:37But there are plenty of other things that happen after Dr. Freeman's death that we're going to return to.
00:03:45And a lot more doctrinal stuff with regard to his teaching that we're going to return to.
00:03:51But this is something that we have not talked about in his teaching before.
00:03:58And that concerns the shorter versus the longer ending of Mark's gospel.
00:04:04It's a New Testament scholarship issue.
00:04:08It's definitely a textual manuscript issue.
00:04:13Some people in the audience may not be aware of this, but I would assume that probably the majority of
00:04:19people are.
00:04:20If they're familiar with their New Testament at all, especially the Gospels and particularly the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark
00:04:29and Luke.
00:04:30They all end, you know, differently in some regards and similarly in other regards.
00:04:39And there's really not been any dispute about the ending of Matthew or Luke.
00:04:44And there's not been any dispute about the ending of John's gospel.
00:04:47But there's definitely been volumes and volumes of books and scholarly papers which have been written concerning the ending of
00:04:57Mark's gospel.
00:04:58And it's really, do you accept the theory of the shorter ending, which will end with verse 8?
00:05:07Or do you accept the longer ending, which is verse 9 to the end of the chapter?
00:05:15And people with their Bibles can pick it up and read what we're talking about.
00:05:20And I'll read the particular verses in the longer ending that we have reference to today here in just a
00:05:25moment.
00:05:27The manuscript evidence is almost, well, I won't say overwhelming, but the manuscript evidence for the important, what they call
00:05:38the early codices.
00:05:40These are the, not the little small fragments like a P45, anything with a P in it, it's a little
00:05:47papyrus scrap.
00:05:48You know, we have about 5,000 witnesses to the New Testament texts that are extant today.
00:05:55We don't have the gospel that Mark wrote with his own hands, what we call the autograph.
00:06:01Unfortunately, we don't have that.
00:06:02We don't have that for anything in the Bible.
00:06:05All we have are copies of copies of copies.
00:06:08And because we're English speaking, we have a translation of a translation of copies of copies of copies.
00:06:13You'll have little small pieces of papyrus material, the writing material that some of the early documents were written upon,
00:06:23like P45.
00:06:25Which might just be a little two-inch scrap, and it's literally torn, and you can only read a part
00:06:31of a verse.
00:06:32But it is old, like 2nd century AD.
00:06:36And so you get to see what the text was of that particular book and verse really close to when
00:06:44it was originally written.
00:06:46And we have to go several centuries, and we get up into the 4th century, and we have our big
00:06:52codices where you have a full volume, you know, of the New Testament that will have a full copy of
00:07:00books like the Gospel of Mark.
00:07:03So you have the one that's Vaticanus, which is in the Vatican.
00:07:07You have the one that was discovered by Count Tischendorf in the monastery on Mount Sinai, Sinaiticus, the one in
00:07:18Alexandria, Egypt, and you have others.
00:07:20So you have your, what they call codices.
00:07:23The codex was one of these bound, or not bound, but one of these large scrolls that had been discovered
00:07:30that go back to within a couple of hundred years of the time of Christ and the apostles.
00:07:36And you also have what they call versions.
00:07:39And the versions would be translations into another language, like Coptic or Ethiopian or Syriac or something like that.
00:07:49We obviously don't have any, you know, French or German or English.
00:07:53That was way too early to have those languages.
00:07:57And so in your early 4th century codices, they don't have the longer ending of Mark.
00:08:07What's interesting in one of them is the fact that they have a blank page or a blank section at
00:08:14the end of Mark's Gospel.
00:08:16And what's interesting in that regard is this material, this parchment or vellum material, which would be the animal skin
00:08:24upon which the text was written, was extremely valuable.
00:08:28You don't just take notes, wad up a piece of paper because you miswrote something and throw it in the
00:08:33garbage can like we do today.
00:08:34That was priceless material.
00:08:37So the fact that they had something blank that they didn't fill the text in on has always puzzled people.
00:08:43And you can't make any determination on why.
00:08:46But some scholars have looked at Mark's Gospel and have calculated the space that it takes in his, in the
00:08:56handwriting of the earlier portion of the Gospel in that codex.
00:09:01The space that it takes to write a letter, compose a word, and how many words fit on a line.
00:09:08And they've determined that, well, it looks like the longer ending of Mark from verse 9 through verse 20 would
00:09:15fit in that blank space.
00:09:17I think everyone would probably agree if they read Mark 16 in verse 8, that would be the last verse
00:09:25in the shorter ending of Mark.
00:09:27There's no way Mark ended his Gospel with that.
00:09:30There's just no way he ended his Gospel.
00:09:32Did he end it with what we have today?
00:09:34Or is there another ending that is now lost that we don't have?
00:09:39You know, that's, scholars have been debating that for a long, long time.
00:09:45So, I'm not here to pronounce, because I'm not a textual expert, I'm not here to pronounce whether the long
00:09:53ending that we have in most of our English translations today is original, that that actually came from Mark or
00:10:01not.
00:10:01I do feel fairly confident in saying I don't think he ended his Gospel with verse 8, because you're just
00:10:08missing all of the stuff that you would normally, that we find in the end of Matthew, and that we
00:10:14find in the end of Luke, and then to a lesser degree in the end of John.
00:10:22So, I'm going to end my little introduction with that, John, and let you say what you want to say.
00:10:27But there's the shorter ending, it ends with verse 8, the longer ending is verses 9 through 20.
00:10:33We are very interested in one section of the longer ending.
00:10:37The longer ending has some of Christ's post-resurrection appearances in a real abbreviated form.
00:10:44For instance, the longer ending does refer to Jesus appearing to these two unnamed disciples as they were traveling somewhere.
00:10:54Well, Luke's ending in his Gospel gives us the long account of those two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
00:11:01So, the long ending of Mark has other interesting stuff besides what we want to talk about.
00:11:07It has post-resurrection appearances, which more or less conform to what the other synoptic Gospels end with.
00:11:16But it's these particular verses that we'll get to here in a moment that are our interest today.
00:11:21I'll never forget whenever I came across the question, was the ending of Mark 16, as in the one that
00:11:28we have in the King James Bible, was it in the actual manuscripts?
00:11:32I never knew this could even be a question.
00:11:34We were taught King James only, and it was saved and preserved and written by God, penned by God through
00:11:41men.
00:11:42And there's different ways that you view this.
00:11:44I know that my opinion may differ with some people, but I've come to the opinion that God uses different
00:11:50individuals to speak through their voices, and the cumulative effect of all of those voices gives the bigger picture.
00:11:57But we were taught in such a way that suddenly they got struck with the empowerment of God.
00:12:03And like the spoken word that we have in the movement back in the latter rain days, instead it was
00:12:09a spoken word through a quill pen and a scroll.
00:12:13But I came to learn that this was actually a question, and I can't tell you how many months I
00:12:20spent on it.
00:12:21It drove me.
00:12:22We talked about text criticism.
00:12:23That's actually what drove me to that.
00:12:25I was trying to figure out, well, this just can't be.
00:12:28And the deeper I went, the more I realized how wrong I was in my view of what the Bible
00:12:34actually was.
00:12:35And when I began, I won't rehash what we talked about when we did the episode on text criticism, but
00:12:41the end result was I learned that I have a lot more to learn.
00:12:46That's really where I ended up.
00:12:48And, you know, the way it ends without that section, I can understand why somebody might want to add it,
00:12:57because it really ends if you read it and stop without the section that was potentially added or not added.
00:13:04It ends with, and they were very afraid.
00:13:07But the thing of it is, if you read other literature from that era, that phrase, that way of thinking
00:13:16was part of the culture.
00:13:17It wasn't so much that it was an abrupt ending like we would read it today, but that's just how
00:13:23people thought, talked, viewed religion, etc., and they were very afraid.
00:13:28But I can understand why somebody would want to add it.
00:13:31However, if you read other parts of the Bible, and I'm speaking now from my Pentecostal-y background, there are
00:13:38other parts of the Bible that support the idea that's being presented.
00:13:42So it's not that it's necessarily wrong.
00:13:45Where I draw the line between what I believe now and what I did believe, I do not believe that
00:13:53you should take one section of the Bible, not even a full chapter, but just one section of it, and
00:13:59then make a whole doctrine off of it and make it the primary focal point.
00:14:03Because when you do that, you're always going to end up into an error.
00:14:06And I agree with that, John, and you would probably agree with me on this, even in a non-disputed
00:14:12section of the Bible.
00:14:14No, I don't think you should ever take one section, one chapter, even one chapter, and let alone one small,
00:14:21what we call a pericope, just a collection of a couple of verses, even if it's found in a non
00:14:28-disputed text.
00:14:30Even if it's witnessed in all of the manuscripts, for a person to take one passage and build everything on
00:14:39it, as Hobart would try to do with things like Romans 10, 17, faith comes by hearing and hearing by
00:14:47the word of God.
00:14:48He never taught that in the context.
00:14:50He just used that verse and would say, now, the more you listen to my sermons, and people then would
00:14:58listen to his tapes, you know, ad nauseum, the more you listen to the tapes, the more you hear the
00:15:03word of God, the more faith will come, the more your faith will grow.
00:15:07That is not what the two preceding verses say at all.
00:15:10It's talking about hearing the word of God in an evangelistic setting.
00:15:15Paul is saying, how can these people believe if they haven't heard?
00:15:19How can they hear if they don't have a preacher?
00:15:23How can you have a preacher if no one has been sent by God?
00:15:26And then he's quoting the Old Testament passage where he said, how beautiful on the mountains are the feet of
00:15:32them that bring the gospel to us.
00:15:34So he's not talking about listening to faith messages and listening to healing messages.
00:15:37And the more you listen to those, the more faith you'll have.
00:15:41So there is a passage, Romans 10, 17, that's not disputed in the manuscripts.
00:15:47But to your point, no, I don't believe that God ever intended for any of us to isolate a passage
00:15:53and then build a doctrine on it.
00:15:56And even less so a disputed passage like the longer ending of Mark.
00:16:01I will say these verses that I'll read here in a moment so people can tell exactly where we're going
00:16:07and exactly what we're talking about.
00:16:09There's nothing heterodox or heretical that's found in in these verses.
00:16:16There are two things and one of them in particular that are a little unusual.
00:16:24The one is not found anywhere else in the New Testament.
00:16:28You'd have to go to the old for that.
00:16:30But it doesn't teach that, you know, Christians are supposed to have three heads on their body or something.
00:16:38It doesn't teach anything weird or heretical or unorthodox.
00:16:45It just it says what it says.
00:16:47So let me just read these verses so we'll know what we're talking about.
00:16:50And I'm not reading the whole longer ending.
00:16:52It's just the, as you said, with signs following.
00:16:55It's the signs following portion of this ending that has become, you know, the hot topic.
00:17:03So I'm really just looking at verses 17 and 18 of Mark 16.
00:17:08Now, these signs shall follow them that believe.
00:17:14And then he lists five signs.
00:17:16And we kind of want to we're going to talk about all five of them.
00:17:19So there's the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth.
00:17:22The first one, in my name, they shall cast out demons.
00:17:26That's not unusual.
00:17:27That's found throughout the Gospels.
00:17:29It's found in the book of Acts.
00:17:30But just think about that as we continue to read the signs.
00:17:35The second sign, they shall speak with new tongues.
00:17:39Verse 18, the third sign, they shall take up serpents.
00:17:44The fourth sign, and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them.
00:17:49And then the fifth sign, they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.
00:17:54And that last one is presents no problems at all.
00:17:58The laying on of hands for the healing of the sick was done throughout the four Gospels and done in
00:18:05the book of Acts.
00:18:06And then you have a maybe not a laying on of hands, but unless you're going to say laying on
00:18:12of hands in the sense of anointing with oil, then you have that way over in James little epistle in
00:18:17James chapter five.
00:18:18Right. And my point in discussing this today, John, is not so much to argue yes or no for the
00:18:26longer ending or yes or no for the signs.
00:18:28That's really not my point at all.
00:18:30My point is to talk about Dr. Freeman's use and reference to Mark 16.
00:18:35And where I would start is here, he never taught the Gospel of Mark as he taught some other books.
00:18:44He taught Romans, he taught 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Colossians, 1 John.
00:18:53He taught a lot of books.
00:18:54He never taught the Gospel of Mark.
00:18:57He never taught this chapter.
00:19:00He never exegeted these verses, these particular verses, although he made reference to them, at least part of them.
00:19:08He doesn't talk about the snakes and poison very often at all, but he talks about those three other signs.
00:19:14And he talks in so many of his messages, literally countless times, he would refer to those that believe will
00:19:23have signs following.
00:19:24He only references this section in passing.
00:19:29So he would pull out a phrase and it would be something about, well, it says in the Word of
00:19:37God in Mark 16, that if you believe, you'll speak in new tongues.
00:19:40And it does say that there, but he would just pull that out in passing and insert it into a
00:19:48sermon.
00:19:48He never referenced, by the way, verse 15, he never referenced verse 16, which could present a little problem when
00:19:58it said, he that believeth and is baptized will be saved.
00:20:02You know, it's almost, you'd have to deal with that and say, is that teaching that you can't be saved
00:20:07unless you're baptized?
00:20:20Of course, Dr. Freeman believed that verse and believed the teaching of that verse, but what a glorious verse.
00:20:27This is the ascension and what theologians call the session of Christ.
00:20:33The session means he's currently sitting at the right hand of God.
00:20:37That, that is a huge theological statement made that, of course, the rest of the New Testament confirms and supports,
00:20:46but it doesn't give me anything.
00:20:48I think Dr. Freeman would say it doesn't, you know, that's not really preaching material.
00:20:53I want to preach about speaking in tongues, casting out demons and laying on of hands.
00:20:59I don't really want to talk about verse 19.
00:21:01So, it was just a very selective use of the longer ending.
00:21:08And again, not the longer ending, just verses 17 and 18, and really just the portions of verses 17 and
00:21:1718 that he wanted to use.
00:21:20I would say that probably the, you would most often hear him refer and you knew, because if you, if
00:21:29you were a Bible student, you had read your Bible and you had read Mark 16 and you knew exactly
00:21:34what these verses were saying.
00:21:36But this is the way he would most often refer to it in verse 17.
00:21:42It said, these signs will follow them that believe.
00:21:45And I can hear his voice ringing in my ears and hear, I knew what was coming next.
00:21:49He would say, now it says, this is Hobart preaching.
00:21:52Now it says, these signs will follow them that believe.
00:21:56What do you believe?
00:21:57Are you a believer?
00:21:59Then if you're a believer, these signs should be following your ministry.
00:22:03And so, this was definitely, I'm not stretching at all to say this.
00:22:10This was definitely the message that he was giving to rank and file members.
00:22:18They were taught and encouraged to believe that if they were a believer, and that's from the beginning of verse
00:22:2717, these signs will follow them that believe.
00:22:29Are you a believer?
00:22:30Do you believe?
00:22:31If you believe and you're a believer, then he taught them to expect these signs would follow them in their
00:22:41daily witness.
00:22:42As the man goes to work and as the woman goes grocery shopping, that these are the signs that are
00:22:50to follow a believer.
00:22:53What I would say, and some pushback to that is, if you look at the preceding verses, like verse 15,
00:23:01go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation or to every creature, that these verses are
00:23:08given within an evangelistic context.
00:23:12And so, when you look at an evangelist in the New Testament, like Philip in Acts 8, who is called
00:23:19an evangelist, he did see at least some of these signs in Acts 8.
00:23:25I don't know that these verses should be preached in exactly the way Hobart did, because I know the feeling
00:23:34that it gave to members who didn't have some or all or any of these signs following their daily witness.
00:23:44They would feel guilty, and he preached this in the context of a local church setting, that if you're a
00:23:53believer, so if you're a Christian minister or a pastor or a teacher, then you should have signs following in
00:24:00your ministry.
00:24:01And again, I think if you read this in context, he's talking to the 11 apostles, it's in an evangelistic
00:24:09setting, and I'm not even here to dispute any of the signs, even the third and fourth one.
00:24:16I'm happy just to leave them there as they are.
00:24:20What I'm saying is, if the longer ending is the valid ending, and if those are five valid signs, I
00:24:29don't think that they are intended to be valid signs following the life of the rank and file member or
00:24:35your local pastor or your local Bible teacher who's doing a Bible study in your home.
00:24:42I think those would have been within the context of an evangelistic setting.
00:24:47When it ends in verse 20, saying the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word with signs following, of
00:24:58course, the word, in Dr. Freeman's opinion, was the end time message of faith that he was preaching, faith and
00:25:05healing and deliverance and deeper life and deeper deliverance.
00:25:09That was the word, but again, John, in the context here, I think the word that was being preached was
00:25:18the gospel, and the gospel is the death and burial and resurrection of Christ.
00:25:24That's what this whole chapter is about.
00:25:26He has died.
00:25:27He has resurrected.
00:25:30And that was the gospel message.
00:25:32So if these signs are going to follow, they're not going to follow you preaching some end time message of
00:25:39faith.
00:25:40They're going to follow the preaching of the gospel, which is all centered on the life and death and resurrection
00:25:48of the Lord Jesus.
00:25:50I mentioned before I was studying the snake handling, and I got off into a tangent when I started studying
00:25:56the poison drinking because there were, and I have looked and tried to find these articles, but there was this
00:26:02explosive court case where a company was selling commercial poison for churches, and it went into the court system because
00:26:11you just can't do this.
00:26:12This is not what you do.
00:26:14But back then, there was enough people who were in that type of mindset.
00:26:18They were doing it.
00:26:20And, you know, I got to just thinking about the repercussions of that type of mindset.
00:26:27I would never go into a church and handle a snake.
00:26:30You're just not going to get me to do it.
00:26:31In fact, there's a really good Ray Stevens song about that if you're a fan of Ray Stevens, but you're
00:26:38just not going to do that if you're a normal person.
00:26:40But people get so caught up in the hype of this movement that they kind of turn off common sense
00:26:47and critical thinking, and for me, that's a huge problem.
00:26:50But then I started thinking through the way that we were taught the healing doctrine, and yes, we weren't handling
00:26:57a snake.
00:26:57No, we weren't drinking any poison, but there were things we were doing that were putting ourselves at risk.
00:27:04Maybe not the same level of risk, but quite a bit of risk.
00:27:07And then some of the more destructive cults that emerge from it, like the Freeman cult, well, they're in full
00:27:12-blown risk.
00:27:13I mean, people are dying from this.
00:27:15So how different is that type of doctrine from handling a snake?
00:27:18And it all comes back to the fact that if you put the wrong emphasis on a section of a
00:27:23passage of Scripture, you're going to come up with all kinds of bad things happen from it.
00:27:27And I came to the conclusion, and I'm going to say this very clearly because I know people will be
00:27:33upset about this whole video, but I came to the conclusion that it isn't really for me to decide whether
00:27:40it was actually in the original manuscript or not.
00:27:43It's just that we shouldn't be putting so much emphasis on it, and especially when we see people dying.
00:27:49If you see people dying because of something you're doing with doctrine, your doctrine has to be wrong.
00:27:54And that's where Dr. Freeman's no medicine, no hospitals, no doctors, no medical science doctrine ended up, John.
00:28:03That's exactly where it ended up.
00:28:06I don't know that you can make a big difference between, no, they never handle snakes, by the way, or
00:28:13drink poison at Faith Assembly.
00:28:15But I don't know that you can make a big difference between those two of these five signs and the
00:28:23fact that, for instance, whenever he had this little sore on his left ankle because of an improper shoe fit,
00:28:30that he just ignored it, continued to wear the shoes, the little blister became a boil, became gangrenous, became a
00:28:45place where necrosis set in, and he ended up dying of that, among other things.
00:28:53We talked earlier, John, about Psalm 91.
00:28:56He always said Psalm 91 is your assurance policy.
00:29:00You don't need insurance when you have assurance.
00:29:03It's like the Affleck duck on TV now.
00:29:06You don't need insurance.
00:29:07You need assurance.
00:29:09And so he had people canceling their insurance because he said insurance is a negative confession.
00:29:18Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter
00:29:26reign, charismatic,
00:29:27and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation?
00:29:31You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:29:39On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,
00:29:47John McKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:29:53You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
00:29:59If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the
00:30:05top.
00:30:06And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or
00:30:12watching.
00:30:12On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:30:18You know, so much goes back to positive thinking in confession and negative thinking in confession.
00:30:24And that goes back to what?
00:30:27To lifting verses totally out of their context.
00:30:30Proverbs 6.2, Proverbs 18.21,
00:30:34Death and life are in the power of the tongue.
00:30:36Thou art snared with the words of thy mouth.
00:30:38Those were favorite verses of his that he said hundreds of times, pulled them out of their context.
00:30:45Doing that leads to pulling something else out of its context until eventually you have a completely unbiblical, unscriptural, unorthodox,
00:30:56heretical, twisted, misguided system of belief.
00:31:01And that's exactly where he ended up.
00:31:03Where when we talked earlier about Psalm 91, Psalm 91 makes a lot of beautiful promises to the child of
00:31:12God, but it has to be interpreted in light of everything else in the Bible.
00:31:16And when Jesus was during his period of temptation in the wilderness, the Psalm 91 was one of the passages
00:31:26that Satan actually quoted to him.
00:31:28Jesus is on the pinnacle of the temple and the devil says, throw yourself off because the Bible says that
00:31:35if you throw yourself off, you have a proof text.
00:31:39You actually have a proof text that you can claim.
00:31:43It's over what we said.
00:31:44He said there's 7,847 promises that you can claim.
00:31:50Some brother in Canada had counted them that there is a proof text that you can claim.
00:31:55And the Bible was not written.
00:31:57God does not intend us to go through the Bible claiming things.
00:32:01It is not piecemeal.
00:32:02It is organic.
00:32:04It is a seamless robe.
00:32:06It all fits together.
00:32:08And so when Jesus was challenged, the Son of God was challenged with a proof text from the Old Testament.
00:32:16He didn't say, well, you have misquoted, you know, you have jumbled up the language of, no, the passage was
00:32:24quoted more or less accurately that God will send his angels and they will bear us up lest we dash
00:32:32our foot against the stone.
00:32:33But what Jesus realized and what we are trying to help people realize and warn them to understand is you
00:32:41can't take verses out of their context and then presume upon God.
00:32:47Jesus knew that that is, yes, that is exactly what Psalm 91 said.
00:32:53Yes, God does promise protection, but that does not mean you aren't to use common sense and provide insurance for
00:33:04your family on your automobile and on your house because Jesus saw that Satan had misapplied that.
00:33:13He was misrepresenting the intent of Psalm 91 and in the process of doing that, he was encouraging Jesus to
00:33:22demand from God to put God in such a position where he has to respond because you quoted a verse.
00:33:31That's not the way God operates.
00:33:33It's not the way Christianity is and it's not the way the Bible was written.
00:33:37So, coming back to our text, we've got five signs here that will follow those that believe.
00:33:45I would ask people this question in my own thinking and meditating on this passage.
00:33:54Can we pick and choose which of the signs follow our ministry?
00:33:58I mean, I don't think we should be able to do that.
00:34:02Maybe we can.
00:34:02I don't know.
00:34:03I wouldn't think that we could pick or choose.
00:34:05So, if we can't pick and choose, must we include that third one and fourth one in our ministry?
00:34:15You know, it's almost like people want to have their cake and eat it, too.
00:34:20They want to say, now, I believe in signs following.
00:34:23Do you really?
00:34:25You mentioned Eastern Kentucky or you mentioned Kentucky.
00:34:30It's primarily in Eastern Kentucky.
00:34:32And I don't know why I live in Kentucky and I've lived here for 30 years.
00:34:36And I don't know why we have to have such a bad rap when it comes to religion.
00:34:40But we definitely do.
00:34:41William Branham was born in Kentucky.
00:34:44Hobart Freeman was born in Kentucky.
00:34:46And over in Eastern Kentucky, yeah, you do have some, to this day, maybe not as prevalent as it was
00:34:5550 years ago.
00:34:56But to this day, you do have churches who, what, John?
00:35:01Well, they're going to be even more faithful than faith assembly to the text of Scripture.
00:35:08And they're going to say, we believe in the longer ending and we don't believe you have the right to
00:35:16pick and choose what part of the longer ending you're going to accept.
00:35:19And, you know, you almost have to tip your hat to those folks if you're going to be this literalistic
00:35:26and this, yeah, can we pick and choose which ones?
00:35:29And let's make sure we just exclude that third and fourth one.
00:35:33Casting out demons.
00:35:34Yes.
00:35:35You know, we see that elsewhere in the gospel.
00:35:37Speaking in tongues.
00:35:38It's all in the book of Acts.
00:35:40There was a whole problem in Corinth in that church because they were speaking in tongues.
00:35:45Laying hands on the sick.
00:35:46We see that.
00:35:47But what about that third and fourth one?
00:35:50Are we allowed to drop these two from our theology so that if you don't have these signs following your
00:36:01ministry, then you fill in the blank.
00:36:04You know, if you don't have these signs following your ministry, this is a way Hobart would teach.
00:36:08But Hobart would never exegete the passage.
00:36:11He would just say, well, now, the liberal scholars have, of course, taken out the longer ending of Mark.
00:36:18But I would imagine, don't have any proof of this, I would imagine in Hobart's earlier seminary days, because he
00:36:26was trained, he did know some actual technical and doctrinal matters.
00:36:31I would assume that in his seminary pre-baptism in the Holy Spirit days, so this would be the years
00:36:40prior to 1966 in his life, that he might not have agreed with a longer ending, that he might have
00:36:47accepted the shorter ending of Mark.
00:36:49Or that he might have said, I don't accept the short ending of Mark.
00:36:53I think there is another ending which is simply lost to us today.
00:36:56It's not the longer ending we have than the KJV, but there was another longer ending.
00:37:02That would be my guess where he would go, because I think that's where most of scholarship was as far
00:37:08as the people that Dr. Freeman was listening to.
00:37:10You know, and that's just it, the people he was listening to.
00:37:14This doctrine was widely appealing to a large number of people for many, many years.
00:37:19And the movement, as it began to grow, it became popular as a foundational text.
00:37:24In fact, Branham would often, not often, but he would use the phrase, the gospel of divine healing.
00:37:30And that gospel developed from the with signs following belief set, developed basically from this passage.
00:37:37Whenever I was studying this out, I started looking through the number of times that Mark 16 was referenced.
00:37:44And it's almost every sermon.
00:37:46It may not be directly quoted in every sermon, but every single sermon went back there.
00:37:51And again, I can't stress this enough.
00:37:53If you emphasize one passage above the rest, you're not even putting the book into balance.
00:37:59So I started looking at that, and then I went beyond that.
00:38:03How many other groups were doing the same thing?
00:38:05And it's back as far as you can go.
00:38:08And then the thought hit me.
00:38:10You know, I still had not yet decided.
00:38:12Do I believe it's there?
00:38:13Do I believe it wasn't?
00:38:14And I never made that decision because there's no way to prove it.
00:38:19But what if it wasn't?
00:38:21What if it wasn't?
00:38:22And you built this entire, I mean, literally the entire movement is based on that.
00:38:28The entire movement.
00:38:29What if it was wrong?
00:38:31Does that mean that the movement itself was wrong?
00:38:33And I had to come to terms with the fact that there's just so much gray in between the black
00:38:41and white that there will never be answers to any of this.
00:38:44And I finally came to the conclusion, I'll never answer that question.
00:38:47But for me, I'd rather have balance.
00:38:50And so if I've tried many different churches, if I go into a church and they start saying, now we
00:38:56believe if signs following, that's when I hit the door.
00:39:01Well, you know, you just said there, John, that you have done some research and they might not refer to
00:39:08it directly.
00:39:09But there's an allusion to it with, you know, with signs following or signs following or confirming the word.
00:39:17The Lord, they went everywhere.
00:39:19The Lord working with them, confirming the word.
00:39:22You know, is your word confirmed?
00:39:23Do you have a confirming word?
00:39:25You know, there's some type of phrase that they're pulling out of that.
00:39:29And I would say the reason that they go back to it so often is because it's the text that
00:39:34supports the doctrine they want to teach.
00:39:37So that's the same with Proverbs 6.2, Proverbs 18.21, John 10.10, the abundant life.
00:39:45The reason that they use the verse is because it teaches a pet doctrine that they have.
00:39:51And this is never right.
00:39:53I don't care what the pet doctrine, the pet doctrine can be a true doctrine.
00:39:57But there's more than that one true doctrine, which happens to be your own personal pet doctrine.
00:40:04There are more doctrines in that.
00:40:06And you need to give equal space.
00:40:09I won't even say equal space.
00:40:10You need to exaggerate the amount of time given to a doctrine based on its significance in the Bible.
00:40:18And as we keep stressing, the significant doctrine in the New Testament, the most significant doctrine is the death and
00:40:27resurrection of the Lord Jesus.
00:40:29That is the gospel.
00:40:31And Paul identifies in 1 Corinthians 15, in the first, I don't know, five or six verses of 1 Corinthians
00:40:3815, which will be his big magnum opus on the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of Christ.
00:40:45He tells us what the gospel is.
00:40:49And the gospel, the Greek word is a euangelion.
00:40:52And that's translated in the King James Bible as gospel.
00:40:57Well, neither one of those words tell you anything unless you know what euangelion means.
00:41:02Euangelion is transliterated in English as evangelism or evangelistic.
00:41:08But neither euangelion, unless you're Greek, means anything to you.
00:41:13Neither does gospel.
00:41:14What is gospel?
00:41:15Well, euangelion means the good news.
00:41:18That's what the meaning of the word is.
00:41:20And we kind of know that from going to church, that gospel means the good news.
00:41:26That's what the word, English word gospel means, because it's translating the Greek word euangelion.
00:41:32What is the good news?
00:41:34The good news isn't speaking in tongues.
00:41:37It's not snake handling.
00:41:38It's not divine healing.
00:41:40It's not casting out demons.
00:41:42As good as those things may be, definitely healing is good.
00:41:48And if you have a demon cast out of you, and now you are demon free, that is very good.
00:41:54That is wonderful.
00:41:56But that's not the good news.
00:41:58The good news in the New Testament is everything about the Lord Jesus.
00:42:03And that's my problem with Hobart's ministry from start to finish.
00:42:07And I'm sure it's your problem with William Branham and the rest of the ministry.
00:42:11If you have some teaching on healing, I'm totally fine with that.
00:42:15And if you have some teaching on casting out demons, I'm totally fine with that.
00:42:19But that's not the gospel.
00:42:22And if we're going to put emphasis where emphasis needs to be, then we need to major on the majors
00:42:28and minor on the minors.
00:42:30And I have messages I preached literally, John, in the 1980s against Dr. Freeman and against Faith Assembly.
00:42:37And they were entitled majoring on the minors because I thought that's exactly what they were doing.
00:42:44I was willing to admit and give them, yes, there is divine healing.
00:42:49Yes, there is exorcism in the New Testament.
00:42:52And I'm all in favor of that.
00:42:55I want to see people demon free and I want to see people walking in healing.
00:43:00I know what it's like to be sick.
00:43:02I don't want to be sick.
00:43:03I don't want you to be sick.
00:43:05I don't want any Christian to be sick.
00:43:07But I still think there's something higher than that.
00:43:09And that is learning about the person and work of the Lord Jesus.
00:43:16So back to our signs, John.
00:43:19Let me just look at this third and fourth one for a moment, because those are the hot, hot button
00:43:26topics.
00:43:27The first one said they'll cast out demons.
00:43:30We're all fine with that.
00:43:32Although, you know, although there are a lot can be said about people and their deliverance ministries.
00:43:38And hopefully we will have some opportunities in the future to talk in our podcast about Dr. Freeman's deliverance ministry.
00:43:46The second sign is they will speak with new tongues.
00:43:50Well, they did in Acts 2 and Acts 10 and Acts 19 and 1 Corinthians 14.
00:43:55So speaking in tongues is not a heretical, a barren doctrine.
00:44:00It's a Christian doctrine.
00:44:02It's found in other places in the New Testament.
00:44:04And the last of the five signs, they shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.
00:44:11That's also a Christian doctrine.
00:44:13There's nothing wrong with that.
00:44:15What about verse 18 and this third sign?
00:44:20Notice the way in which it is written.
00:44:23The other sign said they shall cast out demons.
00:44:27They shall speak in tongues.
00:44:30They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.
00:44:34Verse 17, verse 18 says they shall take up serpents.
00:44:39Well, are you taking up serpents?
00:44:42It says you shall.
00:44:43I only know of a handful of churches that take up serpents and they generally end up without a hand.
00:44:52The handful of churches that take up serpents no longer have a hand or an arm because they've been bitten.
00:45:02And Dr. Freeman didn't believe in taking up serpents.
00:45:04I mean, he didn't or they would have brought a box with rattlesnakes and cottonmouths and copperheads in there and
00:45:13they would have reached in there and picked them up.
00:45:15It is kind of hard for me to get my mind around the fact, John, but I've seen the videos.
00:45:22I mean, I have literally seen the videos and the documentaries of the snake handling churches.
00:45:29They are in their mind trying to practice what the Bible teaches.
00:45:34And you couldn't ask for more literal practice of a verse and what they do.
00:45:39But do any of us who aren't a part of a snake handling church, do any of us really think
00:45:45that's what this passage is saying?
00:45:48That is what it says.
00:45:50But is that what it means?
00:45:51It says they shall.
00:45:52It doesn't say you might accidentally have a snake bite you.
00:45:57That's the New Testament example in Acts 28 where Paul accidentally had a serpent bite him.
00:46:06And assuming that the longer ending of Mark is valid, Paul was able to experience the deliverance by God of
00:46:15the effects of being bitten by a poisonous serpent.
00:46:19It said he literally just shook him off in the fire.
00:46:21And while all the other heathens on the island were watching, they're saying, yeah, he's escaped shipwreck, but vengeance suffers
00:46:30not this man to live.
00:46:31The gods have found him.
00:46:32He's going to die.
00:46:33They kept watching him, watching him.
00:46:36And Paul just kept gathering more sticks and building a bigger fire.
00:46:40And then they changed their mind and said, no, I don't think God's after him.
00:46:43I think he might be a God because he was bitten by the serpent and never died.
00:46:49I see an accidental case of this, assuming the longer ending is a valid ending or just at that idea.
00:46:57And that idea is certainly valid that God can and will protect his people.
00:47:02He did definitely protect the apostle Paul in Acts 28.
00:47:05But that's not what this passage says.
00:47:07This passage says you shall pick up serpents.
00:47:12And, of course, the meaning of that would be and they would not cause you any harm.
00:47:18I don't know anybody except, as I said, someone who is a part of a snake handling church that even
00:47:26though they say, oh, I believe I believe the longer ending of Mark.
00:47:29Do you really believe it?
00:47:30I'm not saying go test it, but do you really believe it?
00:47:36If you have some common sense, go, no, I don't believe that I should actively do that.
00:47:44What do you believe you should actively do the other thing?
00:47:46Should you actively go lay hands on the sick?
00:47:49Or is that just something that accidentally happened?
00:47:52No, you believe you should actively do that.
00:47:55Why not actively do the third thing?
00:47:57And I'm not encouraging actively doing this, this third sign.
00:48:01I'm just asking people to look at your own theology and say, why is it that I believe what I
00:48:07believe?
00:48:08And why is it that I pick and choose?
00:48:10And maybe it's common sense.
00:48:11And common sense is wonderful.
00:48:13You always beat me to my main points, man.
00:48:17I was headed to the same exact point that whenever you hear the word gospel in these movements, they never
00:48:25really explain the full details of what the gospel is.
00:48:29And I've mentioned this a few times.
00:48:31If you really want to know what the gospel is and you're in one of these movements, go to a
00:48:35church that is not Pentecostal charismatic, whether you are still Pentecostal or charismatic or not.
00:48:40Just go to one that's not and ask them, what is the gospel?
00:48:44The first time that I did this, I got this nice little book, which was really thin.
00:48:48You know, it might have been, I don't know, eighth of an inch thick.
00:48:52It says, clearly, what is the gospel?
00:48:55And the pastor handed me the book.
00:48:57And I thought, there's no way you can explain the gospel in this little thin book.
00:49:01And he said, what do you mean?
00:49:03And I said, it's more complicated than that.
00:49:05And he says, well, you've got the wrong gospel, John.
00:49:09I began to understand that the problem is, because they have put so much focus on one little section of
00:49:19one chapter of one book of one of four gospels, because so much emphasis is put on that, they have
00:49:26to pick and choose and try to find other passages that support that as being the foundation.
00:49:31In other words, it wasn't a foundation, it was just a passage that casually mentioning this, but because so much
00:49:38is built on top of it, you have to look at it, and you literally have to read it through
00:49:43other verses to make it say the complicated thing that they're trying to make say.
00:49:49So then when you ask, what is the gospel?
00:49:51Well, now you've got to quote Peter, you've got to quote Corinthians, you've got, you basically have to reconstruct what
00:49:57the gospel is.
00:49:58And in doing so, you've made a new gospel.
00:50:01So I've come to the conclusion that I don't want something that's so complicated I can't even explain it.
00:50:07I did like that little book, but even that book I'm learning was too thick.
00:50:12The gospel is really simple.
00:50:14It's not meant to be so complicated.
00:50:16And the average person doesn't have to be a theologian to understand the gospels.
00:50:20The good news, Jesus has come.
00:50:22He died for your sins.
00:50:23I mean, it's very, very simple, right?
00:50:25But it's so complex that I think, in my opinion, working with all of the people who have escaped these
00:50:31cults, some of them leave Christianity, some for a time, some for a long time.
00:50:37It's because they have been misrepresented what the religion actually is.
00:50:41And this is a huge part of that misrepresentation.
00:50:45It certainly is.
00:50:46I said earlier that Hobart never spent any time exegeting this.
00:50:51This, the fourth sign, John, is the only one that places a conditional statement.
00:50:58It is given in a conditional context.
00:51:00And all of this is important.
00:51:03And this is even assuming that you accept the longer ending of Mark as it is in the KJV.
00:51:09This is so important to your study of Scripture, to study it exactly for what it says and exactly in
00:51:19its context.
00:51:20And the fourth sign says that if you drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt you.
00:51:25That's the only one of the five that is in a conditional context with the word if.
00:51:31It doesn't say they shall go do these things.
00:51:35It's the only one in a conditional context, and it's the only one that we don't have an actual example
00:51:41of in the New Testament.
00:51:42We'd have to go back to the days of Elijah or Elisha to find something similar to drinking something poisonous
00:51:51and it not hurting you.
00:51:52And the only snake example in the New Testament that we have is, of course, the one with Paul in
00:51:59Acts chapter 28.
00:52:00Okay, let me conclude, John.
00:52:04We've gone just about our full time.
00:52:06Let me put this in a little bit of a historical context.
00:52:11There was an early Pentecostal leader, by early I mean late 1800s, early 1900s, whose name was Stanley Fraudsham.
00:52:22He was not one of the founders of the Assemblies of God denomination, but he was one of the early
00:52:30superintendents of AG.
00:52:32He was born in England.
00:52:33I think he moved maybe and lived in Canada, but he was probably best known by the people that are
00:52:41in the circles.
00:52:42You and I came out of Pentecostal, charismatic, NAR, that kind of mindset that puts so much of an emphasis
00:52:52on signs following.
00:52:56He wrote a book about Smith Wigglesworth entitled Smith Wigglesworth, Apostle of Faith.
00:53:03It's a little paperback book, had like a purple cover on it.
00:53:07In the 1970s, all of us were going around with our Smith Wigglesworth, Apostle of Faith.
00:53:13That was written by Stanley Fraudsham because Fraudsham knew Smith Wigglesworth personally.
00:53:20And Smith Wigglesworth, you know, Hobart references him often.
00:53:24He is still talked about today because of just these incredibly miraculous accounts, allegedly, that happened in Smith Wigglesworth's life.
00:53:34He was an English plumber, but he went around preaching the gospel, and he just raised the dead and did
00:53:40every conceivable thing.
00:53:43Not only did Stanley Fraudsham write that book in 1948, but in 1928, guess what he wrote?
00:53:51He wrote a seminal book, and the title of the book was With Signs Following.
00:54:00That's where this idea and that phrase, I know it came from Mark 16, long ending, but that's where it
00:54:08became popularized in Pentecostal circles and in the charismatic world that came after the early Pentecostal movement.
00:54:17With Signs Following was, and it's still in print today, was Stanley Fraudsham's attempt to document a lot of the
00:54:27miracles that had been seen in early Pentecostalism.
00:54:31He was one of the editors of the Pentecostal Evangel, the magazine that was a part of Assemblies of God
00:54:38literature in the early 20th century.
00:54:41And my point in mentioning Fraudsham is Stanley Fraudsham lived to be 87 years old.
00:54:50He died in 1969, just three years after Dr. Freeman had entered the charismatic Pentecostal world in 1966.
00:55:00So, that book made the rounds.
00:55:05That book is almost 100 years old with Signs Following.
00:55:09And then he, as I said, 20 years later, wrote the book on Smith Wigglesworth.
00:55:15Both of those were primary books in Dr. Freeman's library.
00:55:19They were a seminal influence on his early charismatic life.
00:55:26He read those books non-critically, as I certainly did.
00:55:32I think we all did early in my charismatic Christian life.
00:55:37You know, any book that you could get that gave stories to support your new beliefs,
00:55:45well, obviously, that went to the top of the book list in your mind.
00:55:49Because you had come out of some other kind of denominational church.
00:55:54Now you're needing some verification, some support for your charismatic Pentecostal beliefs.
00:56:01And you were unaware of these important figures in Pentecostal history.
00:56:08And then you find, wow, Stanley Fraudsham has written a book entitled,
00:56:13With Signs Following, Documenting All These Miracles in Early Assemblies of God Movement.
00:56:19But, of course, the problem that I came to realize later is that these were stories that had not been
00:56:27verified.
00:56:28They were simply stories.
00:56:30And I'm not saying that none of them happened.
00:56:32I'm not saying that they were all false.
00:56:35But I am saying that they were not verified.
00:56:38They're not verified like the New Testament documents are, for sure.
00:56:42And some of the stories are really fantastic.
00:56:46And so then you come to a new generation.
00:56:49We talked about this a few weeks ago with Mel Tari, the Indonesian evangelist, who wrote the book, Like a
00:56:57Mighty Wind.
00:56:58That's more like the modern version.
00:57:01You know, Stanley Fraudsham wrote, With Signs Following, you know, these are the signs that will follow the preaching of
00:57:08all of you Christian ministers.
00:57:10He wrote that way back in the 1920s.
00:57:12Now, in the early 70s, we have a more up-to-date account of what?
00:57:20Signs following the ministry of the church in Indonesia, where they are walking on water.
00:57:26They are raising the dead.
00:57:28They are turning the water into wine.
00:57:31And these books all played a major role in Dr. Freeman's life.
00:57:36All of these books did.
00:57:37And they were coming out early in his charismatic experience.
00:57:42And unlike some of us who got to the place where we were willing and able to go back and
00:57:49critically read these books and read them with discernment, not read them with criticism, but read them critically.
00:57:57Read them with discernment and say, Now, do I really think that the people in Indonesia changed water into wine
00:58:0530 or 40 different separate times?
00:58:08I find that hard to believe because I see the water being turned into wine.
00:58:13Jesus' first miracle at the wedding feast, Canaan, Galilee, at the request of his mother.
00:58:19I find so much Christological in that account in John 2 and that story there.
00:58:28I don't find that as some flippant thing that if you're having a party and you run out of Kool
00:58:33-Aid and all you have is water, well, you can turn the water into Kool-Aid for the kids or
00:58:38you can turn the water into wine for adults and have communion.
00:58:41I think there's so much Christologically being taught by John in telling us that story.
00:58:46I don't think that it's just something flippant that you can throw out there and do.
00:58:51And so I'll end with this.
00:58:53And then later, John, there was one other book that came out about Stanley Fradsham.
00:58:59And I remember this was an early book on my bookshelf.
00:59:02It was entitled Prophet with a Pen, and it was written by his only daughter, whose name was Faith Campbell.
00:59:11So you have this you had this legacy.
00:59:14You have Smith Wigglesworth, who was friends with Stanley Fradsham.
00:59:18So Stanley Fradsham wrote about Smith Wigglesworth.
00:59:22He is the one who documented, put in his book.
00:59:25When I say documented, he just narrated the stories of Smith.
00:59:29And then years later, Faith Campbell, who is Stanley Fradsham's daughter, comes along and writes this biography about her father
00:59:38entitled Prophet with a Pen.
00:59:41So there are just a lot of interesting things.
00:59:44But that title for the book with signs following came from Mark 16.
00:59:51And not only did the title, but this whole push for an emphasis upon.
00:59:57You need to have these signs in your life and church in order for you to be valid.
01:00:02That came through some early Assemblies of God ministry.
01:00:08Well, this has been a fun and interesting conversation.
01:00:11And like I said, you set me up.
01:00:13I'm going to get all kinds of hate mail because even just mentioning Mark 16, it has become so divisive.
01:00:19And honestly, that's really for me.
01:00:21It's telling because it's become so divisive.
01:00:25There are people that view it as such that you're not a Christian if you don't believe it like I
01:00:29do.
01:00:30And yet, many of them who believe it like that have no idea that the passage is even something that
01:00:36could be in question.
01:00:36So it's been fun, entertaining, scary.
01:00:40And who knows what hate mail I get?
01:00:42Thank you for setting me up like this.
01:00:44Oh, you're welcome, John.
01:00:46Anytime.
01:00:48Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
01:00:51You can find us at william-branham.org.
01:00:54For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to
01:00:59the NAR.
01:01:01Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
01:01:45Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
01:02:08Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR.
Comments