- 3 hours ago
John and Chino discuss the theological framework that helped shape the Manifested Sons of God teaching, focusing on the way Hobart Freeman and others interpreted biblical promises, miracles, and passages about the last days. They examine the distinction between reading Scripture as written "to" modern believers rather than "for" them, and how that approach influenced teachings about divine healing, extraordinary miracles, prophecy, eschatology, and the expectation that end-times events would unfold within a believer's own lifetime.
They also explore Freeman's teachings about the 1970s, accounts of visions and supernatural experiences, his interest in predictions attributed to Gene Dixon, and the historical connections they see between Pentecostalism, Latter Rain ideas, William Branham, Gordon Lindsay, and later Manifested Sons of God theology. Along the way, they discuss the practical consequences of doomsday expectations, including decisions about finances, retirement, everyday life, and the dangers of building doctrine around extraordinary claims rather than the historical and literary context of Scripture.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
02:46 Manifested Sons of God and Hobart Freeman
06:54 Eschatology and Reading the Bible in Context
12:15 How End-Times Thinking Shapes Bible Interpretation
16:05 Anointed Handkerchiefs and Extraordinary Miracles
20:40 What “The Last Days” Meant to Early Christians
26:20 The Roots of Manifested Sons of God Theology
28:07 Hobart Freeman’s 1970s End-Times Prediction
33:44 The Financial Cost of Doomsday Theology
39:33 Visions, Dreams, and Freeman’s Theology
42:20 The Mysterious Blue Light Story
47:07 Supernatural Claims and William Branham
52:27 Freeman’s Fascination With the Occult
54:00 Jean Dixon and Freeman’s Antichrist Teaching
57:18 Giant Birds, Giant Ants, and Religious Legalism
______________________
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
They also explore Freeman's teachings about the 1970s, accounts of visions and supernatural experiences, his interest in predictions attributed to Gene Dixon, and the historical connections they see between Pentecostalism, Latter Rain ideas, William Branham, Gordon Lindsay, and later Manifested Sons of God theology. Along the way, they discuss the practical consequences of doomsday expectations, including decisions about finances, retirement, everyday life, and the dangers of building doctrine around extraordinary claims rather than the historical and literary context of Scripture.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
02:46 Manifested Sons of God and Hobart Freeman
06:54 Eschatology and Reading the Bible in Context
12:15 How End-Times Thinking Shapes Bible Interpretation
16:05 Anointed Handkerchiefs and Extraordinary Miracles
20:40 What “The Last Days” Meant to Early Christians
26:20 The Roots of Manifested Sons of God Theology
28:07 Hobart Freeman’s 1970s End-Times Prediction
33:44 The Financial Cost of Doomsday Theology
39:33 Visions, Dreams, and Freeman’s Theology
42:20 The Mysterious Blue Light Story
47:07 Supernatural Claims and William Branham
52:27 Freeman’s Fascination With the Occult
54:00 Jean Dixon and Freeman’s Antichrist Teaching
57:18 Giant Birds, Giant Ants, and Religious Legalism
______________________
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.
00:00:35I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:00:40at william-branham.org, and with me I have my co-host, minister, and friend, Cheno Ross,
00:00:46pastor and the voice of the understanding, scripture, and truth by Cheno D. Ross' YouTube
00:00:50channel.
00:00:52Cheno, it's an exciting day for multiple reasons.
00:00:55We have a very interesting topic that we're going to get into, but also this marks one
00:01:00of the greatest events in our history together, and I'm certain you know what it is because
00:01:07you had to remind me right before this.
00:01:09Before we got into the podcast today, I was going to ask you if you had anything for me,
00:01:16and you would probably be, you know, confused, well, what would I have for you, and I was
00:01:23going to ask you, do you know what day this is?
00:01:27No, it's not my birthday, and no, it's not Christmas, but what is today for you and I?
00:01:33It is the 100th episode that we have done together, and to the audience who knows me well enough
00:01:39to know that my memory isn't that great, I actually forgot it, but I had been counting
00:01:43down to this time.
00:01:45I keep a folder that's got all of the episodes, and I was watching, and I was waiting to build
00:01:50big excitement for the 100th episode, and then I did not have enough coffee, so I've
00:01:56got my coffee going, and we're going to do a little bit better.
00:02:00Well, I was counting down too, John.
00:02:03It's just, it floors me to look at all of this that we have done together.
00:02:07I have often told people when, you know, they realized I was doing some interviews and podcasts
00:02:14with you that I thought we might do, honestly, two or three or four is what I thought, and
00:02:21I didn't know.
00:02:22I didn't know you.
00:02:23I didn't know how far you wanted to take this.
00:02:26I didn't know, I knew I had a lot to say, but I didn't know if you or anybody else
00:02:30would
00:02:30be interested enough to listen to me, but here we are, two and a half years later, and
00:02:35this is our 100th episode.
00:02:37And the irony is, they're more interested to hear you than they are me, so this worked
00:02:43out pretty well.
00:02:45The topic you have today, it actually fits with a lot of other things that I'm doing.
00:02:49I have been, as you know, looking at one, just one single stream that developed from
00:02:56the Pentecostal movement into New Apostolic Reformation.
00:02:59That's been Christian identity, which I've been heavily focused on, largely due to the
00:03:04fact that William Branham's mentor was part of the clan, was a leader in the clan.
00:03:09So that led me down that path of research.
00:03:11Now there are other paths of research, because what we see today is not the result of just
00:03:18one aspect.
00:03:19There are so many different doctrinal frameworks, ideological frameworks, political frameworks,
00:03:25all converging into this converging apostasy of mess that ended up into New Apostolic Reformation.
00:03:32One of the significant streams, however, is the manifested sons of God.
00:03:36So I've been researching that, and I'm actually getting ready to do a few videos talking about
00:03:43the New Apostolic Reformation from a historical standpoint, instead of, you see all these
00:03:49videos out there, what is the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR, what is it?
00:03:52And usually they attack it from a doctrinal position.
00:03:55I want to go back to the historical, because I think it might make a lot more sense for people.
00:04:00But anyway, some of those trails lead to the epicenter of what created Hobart Freeman.
00:04:06So if you think manifested sons of God, and then you think Hobart Freeman, usually you
00:04:11think those are two separate things.
00:04:12They're not.
00:04:13And so I'm really excited to get into this with you, because there's so much that we can
00:04:18explore.
00:04:19It was huge with Dr. Freeman, John.
00:04:21It was probably the engine that drove the machine for him.
00:04:26His teaching on deliverance, which we spent several weeks looking at, his teaching on divine
00:04:31healing, all of that was just a part, it was kind of like in his theology, the preparation
00:04:38for what the real goal of everything that they were working toward, that he had in his mind.
00:04:48And it was, you know, everything was preparation for manifestation.
00:04:52He has tapes entitled that.
00:04:54I don't know that I know as much about the manifested sons of God theory and teaching
00:05:02historically as you do, or as other people do, but I definitely know intimately exactly
00:05:09what Dr. Freeman believed about it, and maybe more doctrinally and theologically, and you
00:05:15can help fill in when we get to that point where some of this came from historically.
00:05:20Although we've already seen through Dr. Freeman's connections with Gordon Lindsay and William
00:05:27Branham and all the people he referenced from his early days in Pentecost himself, which
00:05:35date to 1966, we know that there was a big manifested sons of God background to all of that.
00:05:46He had a lot of teaching about overcomers, was a favorite term of his, pull that out of
00:05:51context, obviously from Revelation 2 and 3.
00:05:55Those two chapters are not talking about any particular end time group of people.
00:06:00They're talking about seven historical churches that existed in the days of the Apostle John in
00:06:07what is today Western Turkey, Asia Minor back then.
00:06:13His interpretation of Revelation 12, the woman and the man-child and multiple raptures that
00:06:21he could see, at least three in that chapter, but a prophet, which was probably Hagen, said
00:06:27that he could see five in this chapter.
00:06:30And it grew to be something really bizarre.
00:06:34But I think we'll have plenty of material to talk about.
00:06:40It's going to take several weeks to really work our way through it so that I can explain
00:06:46what I understood Dr. Freeman's views to be about all of these things.
00:06:52But before we get to that, I wanted to talk, first of all, this is probably preparation today,
00:06:58what his views were about eschatology.
00:07:02Eschatology is just a big word you see in seminary that is a study of last things.
00:07:10So I think in everyone's mind, it would be those things that precede or follow, let's just say,
00:07:18the second coming of Christ.
00:07:20So the tribulation period, a rapture or raptures, if you believe in plural, a plurality of them,
00:07:28the millennium and, you know, the judgments, the resurrection of the dead, all of those
00:07:33kinds of things that have to do with the end of this current age of human history.
00:07:42And so what I saw with Dr. Freeman is when he read his Bible, he read his Bible as though
00:07:52it was written to him and not for him.
00:07:57And he trained all of his followers to do the same.
00:08:00And that is a grave mistake in hermeneutics.
00:08:03And he was certainly not the only one.
00:08:06I would say that's probably, I don't know, John, maybe the predominant way that the evangelical
00:08:13church has been taught to read the Bible.
00:08:16You know, you pick up the Bible and you want to hear God speaking to you about something
00:08:22in your life for that day.
00:08:24And I think that is really the way evangelicalism has been taught to pick up and read and interpret
00:08:31the Bible.
00:08:32That is not the correct way to read the Bible.
00:08:35The Bible is not written to us.
00:08:40I've often joked, my name is nowhere in the Bible because my name is Chino.
00:08:45Your name is throughout the Bible because your name is John.
00:08:48But I don't think you as John Collins are addressed in any particular place in the Bible.
00:08:54Unless it is some whosoever kind of passage.
00:08:57But we're not even talking about those.
00:08:59We're talking about just about everything on almost every page.
00:09:04Now, when you get into genealogies in First Chronicles, you do have to skip over that because
00:09:09you really can't find anything that applies to you.
00:09:12But what is one of the more famous verses of the Bible, more often used, is Philippians 4.19.
00:09:20It's a favorite verse for a lot of Christians.
00:09:23And they say, the Bible says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
00:09:29And I'm not denying that Jesus can't and won't help us accomplish whatever it is we
00:09:35need to accomplish.
00:09:36But actually, the verse was written by Paul.
00:09:40And Paul said that he could do it.
00:09:43He didn't say I could do all things.
00:09:44And he didn't say you could do all things.
00:09:46He said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
00:09:50Hey, that was the Apostle Paul who said that about himself.
00:09:54Now, again, I'm not denying that the Lord won't help all of us do whatever we're called
00:09:59to do.
00:10:00But we're going to need to find a passage that applies to us because that one simply doesn't.
00:10:05So, this calls serious problems for Dr. Freeman in his interpretation of the Bible.
00:10:12It has called no end of problems for everyone who reads the Bible because they're looking
00:10:19at this as a letter specifically written from God to them, to me, to you.
00:10:27And so, consequently, Dr. Freeman would say, you know, there's 1,000, 7,847 or something,
00:10:35he said someone in Canada had counted them, promises in the Bible.
00:10:39And all you have to do is just insert your name in there.
00:10:43And that's what got him into trouble when, remember, we've talked earlier about the account
00:10:49of Moses as recorded in Deuteronomy 34, that he was 120 years old, his eye was not dim,
00:10:57neither his natural force abated.
00:10:59So, Hobart read that and saw that Moses lived to this great age of 120 and still had perfect
00:11:08vision.
00:11:08And so, Hobart would say, that's a promise that we can claim for ourselves.
00:11:13Hence, no need for glasses, hence, no need for being weak in your life.
00:11:22His natural strength was not abated.
00:11:24In other words, you could have full strength, vitality, and full vision regardless of your
00:11:31age because Moses had it at 120.
00:11:34But I think any of us who read that passage know that's talking about Moses.
00:11:38And it is not a promise that tells us if you just have enough faith, you can claim that
00:11:46and that can be true for yourself.
00:11:48So, that's just one of, you know, 7,000 places in the Bible where Hobart and many others think
00:11:56they see a promise made to them, but it's just a statement made.
00:12:01And a classic example of someone else is Kenneth Copeland because of that verse claiming that
00:12:07he is not going to die until he reaches the age of 120.
00:12:12Pete I'm so glad that you started there because that is something that I have been thinking
00:12:18through and wanting to find a good way to put into words.
00:12:22As you know, the historical research that I do when I publish a podcast, it's usually
00:12:26about the history and I'll let other people talk through the doctrines.
00:12:28But that one aspect, it's a historical aspect of the movement that has almost like a virus
00:12:36infected mainstream Christianity, not just evangelicals.
00:12:40There are some other groups that aren't evangelical.
00:12:42I'll never forget, whenever I left the group that we were in, we were in a doomsday cult.
00:12:47We read the Bible from the perspective of doomsday and everything was written to me.
00:12:53So, I'm reading these passages to me and it implies doomsday, which gets really dangerous
00:12:59when you get into the book of Revelation because you start to see things that just simply aren't
00:13:04reality whenever you do this and your mind goes different directions that probably isn't
00:13:09healthy.
00:13:09I'll say it like that.
00:13:10But that way of teaching made it into mainstream churches.
00:13:16So, what happened to me when my family left the destructive doomsday cult, we started attending
00:13:22mainstream churches.
00:13:23I won't give their names.
00:13:25And they had the same type of teaching on the way that you read the Bible and I thought
00:13:30it was normal.
00:13:31So, I left abnormal and went to abnormal thinking that abnormal was normal.
00:13:38And granted, I'll guarantee everybody who's listening to this podcast, out of the people
00:13:43that are listening, I'll bet there's like 80% that are of the same mindset.
00:13:49That's just simply how they've been trained and they don't really know any different.
00:13:52So, it turns into this thing where if you are trained to read the Bible like this, it alters
00:13:59your perspective and it does not alter it in a healthy way.
00:14:03So, then we started experimenting other churches and a wide variety of different teachings and
00:14:11I began to realize, wait a minute, that's not quite right what we were taught and people
00:14:15working with me actually showed me how you correctly read the Bible and I fought it tooth
00:14:21and nail.
00:14:22I was like, no, they're wrong.
00:14:23These people are cold and formal, all of the stuff that we were taught against them.
00:14:29And long story short, it took me years to really get out of that mindset even after learning
00:14:35that it was wrong.
00:14:36I was so indoctrinated to read it that way, I couldn't read it any other way.
00:14:39And when I would read it, I thought, I don't know if I'm right or not.
00:14:42This sounds awful.
00:14:45But if you don't have that framework, you also can't have the manifested sons of God.
00:14:50It's building blocks of bad theology.
00:14:52And that bedrock really is what you just described.
00:14:56And I think reading the scripture that way, John, is actually demeaning to the biblical text
00:15:03and to the biblical authors.
00:15:05And I think it, I mean, we're such a self-centered society and generation.
00:15:11I think it unduly, unnecessarily, unscripturally elevates us.
00:15:17And that's why people think, oh, such and such person is a prophet in the Bible.
00:15:23Oh, you know, you'll test the wind.
00:15:25I think God's called me to be a prophet.
00:15:27You know, you just have unnecessarily elevated yourself because you're reading something that
00:15:32happened in the Old Testament or in the New, and you're just thinking, you know, they have
00:15:36all these false lines of reasoning.
00:15:39And one of them would go, God is no respecter of persons.
00:15:42That is a verse in the Bible.
00:15:43But they just lift it out of context and say, well, if the Bible says God is no respecter
00:15:49of persons, if he did that for Moses, surely he'll do that for me.
00:15:52That's not the way this works.
00:15:54That is not the way it works at all.
00:15:56And when people have tried to make it work that way, Hobart's a classic example.
00:16:01Guess what?
00:16:02They miserably failed.
00:16:03We've talked before about the practice of sending out anointed handkerchiefs.
00:16:11You know, this has a long history in the Pentecostal church.
00:16:15And when I talk to people about this and try to get them to focus on what does the text
00:16:24in
00:16:24Acts 19, which is the only place that this is mentioned in the Bible, what does the text
00:16:30actually say?
00:16:31You know, they become, they feel so threatened.
00:16:34And you have to be very patient with people and very loving and very slow in explaining
00:16:41to them because they are so fearful that something is being taken away from them.
00:16:46And, you know, they'll put this up and plead the blood of Jesus against you.
00:16:51I've had faith assembly people say, oh, I don't want to hear that, the blood of Jesus.
00:16:55And all I'm doing is like reading the verse.
00:16:59And what the verse says is that God wrought special miracles through the Apostle Paul.
00:17:06So when I see that, that tells me, hmm, maybe I should pump the brakes thinking that I can
00:17:14pray over a cloth and send it out and demons are exorcised from people.
00:17:21Maybe I need to slow down and practice a little humility there because it said that God did
00:17:26special miracles.
00:17:27So if they're going to happen through me, then God's going to do special miracles through
00:17:32me as well.
00:17:34I just think if we read the Bible in a humble, more accurate, more honest method, then when
00:17:44we see passages like that, they are truly amazing.
00:17:47And we praise God for what happened then, but then we are not so ready to say, well, anything
00:17:56that happened to Paul, Peter, James, John, Moses, Abraham, Daniel, David can necessarily
00:18:05happen in my life.
00:18:07Maybe there's an occasion where someone has prayed over a cloth, you know, and something
00:18:13has really happened.
00:18:14And you and I are all big on, I need some verification, you know, I need some confirmation in order
00:18:24to, you know, to really believe that just because everybody is so harem, scare them out there.
00:18:30So there's another example, the anointed clause.
00:18:34And Paul didn't pray.
00:18:37Another thing is, this has all been cast in a certain formula in the charismatic Pentecostal
00:18:45movement that's not in Acts 19.
00:18:47So even if you're going to do it, you at least have to be honest with the text and say,
00:18:52what
00:18:52we're doing is not what is said here.
00:18:54It just said that people took.
00:18:57Paul was a leather worker.
00:18:58He had some sweaty outer bands, wristbands and headbands and, and, um, aprons on him.
00:19:06And people took those to other people.
00:19:09It didn't say that they brought them to church.
00:19:11They were prayed over up front by the pastor.
00:19:14They were put in a little envelope and then sent to, uh, you know, aunt Daisy.
00:19:20And then whenever those things touched her, she was healed.
00:19:24That's not even what the text says anyway.
00:19:26So I know, I know, I realize people are just horrified because you are taking something
00:19:34away from them.
00:19:35You're robbing them of the blessings of God.
00:19:38I think the blessings of God are far beyond anything we could ever comprehend or ever deserve.
00:19:44But let's just make sure that we have a scriptural foundation for them.
00:19:49You know, the real problem with reading the Bible and the way that they're reading it
00:19:54to cause all of this to happen is that it takes passages that are meant to be something
00:20:00that's extraordinary and trying to make it common.
00:20:03And when you try to make it common, then you try to wedge it in and make it fit in
00:20:07your
00:20:07normal life.
00:20:08It just simply doesn't work that way.
00:20:10Think of the letters from Paul.
00:20:11This is a letter from Paul for a specific thing that happened to a specific people.
00:20:15And yes, it is shared among the rest of the church, and we read it today.
00:20:20And the things they want to take are the extraordinary things.
00:20:24You know, the fruit of the Spirit that, you know, living a victorious life is a growth.
00:20:33That is a process.
00:20:34They don't really want those.
00:20:35They want the miraculous, the instantaneous things.
00:20:38I think this method of reading the Bible as though it's written to us instead of for
00:20:46us, it's especially problematic for understanding things about the last days.
00:20:53So this is where I want to head now in the direction of eschatology, and that will lead
00:20:58us eventually into Dr. Freeman's views on the manifestation of the sons of God.
00:21:03It's very problematic.
00:21:04If you're reading the Bible as, you know, as though it is written to you today, so when
00:21:10you come across a passage that talks about the last days, there are many in the New Testament,
00:21:17but one I can think of off the top of my head is in the first couple of verses of
00:21:22the book
00:21:22of Hebrews, where the author said that in times past, God spoke unto the fathers by the
00:21:29prophets, but now in these last days has spoken unto us by his son.
00:21:35I was trained by Dr. Freeman to read that, forgetting about whoever the author of Hebrews
00:21:43was when he wrote that, he thought he was living in the last days.
00:21:48I don't even read it in that context.
00:21:49I read it as Cheno Ross now, and I'm reading this in 1976 when I first started listening
00:21:57to Dr. Freeman.
00:21:59Wow, I didn't know I'm living in the last days.
00:22:01How do I know I'm living in the last days?
00:22:04Because Hebrews 1, 2 says that I'm living in the last days, and we are living in the last
00:22:10days.
00:22:10But what I was never taught by Dr. Freeman is so were all the apostles in the early church
00:22:16members.
00:22:17They were living in the last days too.
00:22:18Now, are we later in the last days than they were?
00:22:23Well, just by virtue of the fact that it's been 1,900 years, yes.
00:22:27But living in the last days isn't something that started in Topeka, Kansas or Azusa Street
00:22:35in 1901.
00:22:37And that's the way I was trained.
00:22:40And so you see, this can be devastating for your understanding of eschatology, because you're
00:22:47not thinking that the first church, that our forefathers who founded the church in Acts
00:22:542, the day of Pentecost, we're not thinking of them as living in the last days, because
00:22:59that was 2,000 years ago.
00:23:01We're only thinking of ourselves.
00:23:03Another passage is in 1 John 2, where he said, little children, as you have heard that the
00:23:12Antichrist will come, even now are there many Antichrists whereby we know it's the last time.
00:23:21John said he knew that it was the last time, the last days.
00:23:27He knew he was living in the last days.
00:23:30And even though, I mean, even though that's what it said, and even though in my own mind,
00:23:37I should have been able to say, wait a minute, you know, John said that 2,000 years ago.
00:23:45And he was living in the last days.
00:23:47So, of course, I'm living in the last days as well.
00:23:49I never was able to process that as a young teenager in my early 20s.
00:23:54When I read the Bible, I read like everything is written to me.
00:24:00And so this is exactly the way Dr. Freeman trained all of his followers, myself being one
00:24:07of them early in my life, to think.
00:24:09He felt that all of the things related to the last days were going to happen in his lifetime
00:24:19because he, of all people, was living in the last days.
00:24:24And he would generally work his way around to either Topeka, Kansas, or Los Angeles with
00:24:32Azusa Street, 1901.
00:24:35And he would say the last days began the early years of the 20th century.
00:24:42And now we are living in the last days.
00:24:45And that's devastating for your understanding of Scripture because when you then go to read
00:24:50your New Testament, you really think everything is, it has to be in my lifetime.
00:24:57Everything is going to unfold right before my very eyes.
00:25:01It creates two significant problems.
00:25:04The groups that are trained to believe like this are trained to dehumanize people that
00:25:09do not believe like they do.
00:25:11And by dehumanizing that aspect, it's making them less than human.
00:25:15So it's an insulting way to look at other people.
00:25:18But yet at the same time, the people who are mentioned in the Bible or the authors of
00:25:23the Bible are dehumanized in that they become greater than human and they become more significant
00:25:28than human.
00:25:29And it doesn't allow for the human aspect as it's being presented.
00:25:33There were large numbers of Christians in the early days after Jesus had died that they
00:25:39thought this was the end time.
00:25:40And that's what they wrote.
00:25:41We're living in the end time.
00:25:43They did not know that they weren't living in the end time because that was their worldview.
00:25:48And then later they began to realize that time is still continuing.
00:25:51But when you are taught to read the Bible as though it's written to you, now you've lost
00:25:56the human aspect of this.
00:25:59And so mistakes that people are made, and there are many Bible passages talking about human
00:26:05mistakes, well now those become scriptures to you to read and you start making the same
00:26:10mistakes.
00:26:11And so it's this never-ending cycle of just bad theology producing error and more bad theology.
00:26:18But it all comes down to this.
00:26:21I've been thinking about, long before we even talked about this episode, I've been
00:26:27thinking about the manifested sons of God and its development.
00:26:30A lot of people point it back to the Feast of the Tabernacles book that was published by
00:26:35Warnock, who was Arne Baxter's secretary.
00:26:39Arne Baxter was William Branham's campaign manager.
00:26:41But it actually goes so far back beyond this because of, again, several different streams
00:26:48of ideologies.
00:26:50The people who were being trained in the early Pentecostal years were also being trained to
00:26:54read the Bible like this.
00:26:56The Bible's written to us.
00:26:57This is a new thing, a new day.
00:26:59And they were starting to say that we're coming to restore the church.
00:27:04And with that restoration, now we've got these key passages that talk about how it's going
00:27:09to be restored.
00:27:09They may not have had the entire manifested sons of God framework, but they started all
00:27:15of the building blocks of theology that was required to build it.
00:27:18And that's how it progressed forward.
00:27:20And it all comes back to what you said initially.
00:27:23If you're reading the Bible in this very incorrect way, you're going to get very incorrect theology
00:27:28from it.
00:27:29Darrell Bock Yeah, it all goes back to proper hermeneutics.
00:27:32And we've talked about that before, how to read the Bible for all it's worth.
00:27:36People need to have a class or two on proper hermeneutics.
00:27:42I think, how to read the Bible for all it's worth, I believe that's the name of a book
00:27:47written by, I'm going to have to pull this from memory, Doug Stewart and Gordon Fee.
00:27:53I think it's actually a great little primer book to explain with many, many examples of
00:28:00how easy it is to take passages out of their context and simply misinterpret them.
00:28:07When Dr. Freeman died the month after in January of 1985, they put out a tape list and there
00:28:14were 1,157 tapes on that tape list.
00:28:18When I first began listing Dr. Freeman, which was about eight or nine years prior to that,
00:28:23he did not have nearly that volume of tapes.
00:28:27There were not very many tapes under each of his categories.
00:28:31And so, one of his categories that concerned the deeper life had a series of messages,
00:28:37there were 11 in this, entitled Principles of the Deeper Life, Principles of the Deeper Life.
00:28:47But what it really was, it was a teaching on the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew's account,
00:28:52Matthew 5, 6, and 7 of the Sermon on the Mount.
00:28:55So, there were not many messages under the Deeper Life heading, and this would have been some
00:29:02of the very early ones.
00:29:05These would have been some of the early ones.
00:29:07And on the very first tape of those 11 tapes, he is talking about how short the time is.
00:29:18And these tapes would have been preached in, I'm going to say, the mid-70s, either 1974 or 1975,
00:29:30the Sermon on the Mount.
00:29:32The very first tape, he's talking about, we're very close to the return of Jesus.
00:29:37And because it's early in the 70s, he actually has a number of years as a buffer to make the
00:29:46statement
00:29:47that I'm getting ready to share that he made.
00:29:50But he said, and you've got to think, I am a 17-year-old teenage boy in 1976.
00:29:58These tapes are one or two years old.
00:30:01And I'm listening to them and just eating them up.
00:30:04And I hear the statement where Dr. Freeman said that the 1970s are pretty much going to wrap things up.
00:30:14Wow.
00:30:16You see what this does to a young, impressionable, no experience, not enough worldly living,
00:30:26not enough knowledge of the Bible to be able to say, hold on just a minute.
00:30:31Who are you to make a statement like that?
00:30:34And he made it based on a vision.
00:30:37And he's always saying, well, now that we're charismatic, we know that God gives dreams and visions.
00:30:42So that just preps you for, if you called into question any dream or vision, then what's wrong with you?
00:30:50Don't you believe God?
00:30:51God, it was a vision, some sister, and they were always an anonymous sister.
00:30:57Just anonymous sister left and right had a vision.
00:31:00And she saw the pages on a, like a desk calendar of the 73 and 4 and 5, just being
00:31:09blown over by the wind.
00:31:11And the view of the calendar was becoming more obscure.
00:31:16And you couldn't quite see the 78 and 79.
00:31:21And, of course, he said, well, the meaning is obvious.
00:31:26Meaning, he interpreted that.
00:31:28Who knows what that meant?
00:31:30Who knows, A, if the said sister had a vision?
00:31:34And who knows, B, what it even means?
00:31:37Maybe she did.
00:31:38Maybe he interpreted it incorrectly.
00:31:40But the way he interpreted it was, well, the 70s are just going to wrap things up.
00:31:45We won't even make it to the 80s.
00:31:48That is a dangerous type of theology to preach.
00:31:53And it is definitely dangerous because it's based on someone else's vision.
00:32:02And so, what it does is, you know, it just tells you, you know, why worry about tomorrow?
00:32:08We only have today.
00:32:09Why plan for next year?
00:32:11Why plan for old age?
00:32:13All we have is today.
00:32:16And if you challenge that or question that or, you know, you don't totally buy in.
00:32:21You put it on the shelf.
00:32:22Early on, he allowed people to put things on the shelf.
00:32:25But by the end of his ministry, he said, if you put it on the shelf, it becomes so hard,
00:32:29you can't chew it.
00:32:30So, he wouldn't allow anyone to put anything on the shelf.
00:32:33God is revealing this to his servants, and you need to believe this.
00:32:37And teachings like that, based on the Anonymous sister's vision, just had real serious consequences in people's lives.
00:32:46Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started?
00:32:49Or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic, and other fringe movements into the new
00:32:58apostolic reformation?
00:32:59You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website, william-branham.org.
00:33:06On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery,
00:33:14John McKinnon, and others,
00:33:16with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book.
00:33:20You can also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to those movements.
00:33:27If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the
00:33:33top.
00:33:34And as always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or
00:33:39watching.
00:33:40On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:33:47We want to thank you for your support.
00:34:15I was sitting down with the HR people as I'm filling out my paperwork, and I mentioned it casually.
00:34:21You mean you're 37 years old?
00:34:22You've never even thought about it?
00:34:24Well, it's hard to explain to people that you were in a movement that taught you to rob yourself.
00:34:30And that's really what was happening.
00:34:32I can't go to a lawyer or government officials and say they stole my retirement from me because they're just
00:34:40simply going to ask you,
00:34:41did they take it or did you just not save for your retirement?
00:34:45And so it's my fault, but yet at the same time, they indoctrinated me to be like this.
00:34:50So they taught me to rob myself, and now I'm so far behind the eight ball.
00:34:55I was sitting down with my financial advisor last week and trying to rack my brain,
00:35:00trying to find ways where I can come up with a good, at least a healthy living whenever I retire.
00:35:07That type of mentality is dominating the movement.
00:35:11Whenever we started the support groups, people were sharing stories of,
00:35:14and I'm talking people in their 50s and 60s, talking about they've got no nest egg at all.
00:35:21What are they going to do?
00:35:22And it's really sad because you can't, you've got to be open with them.
00:35:27You're probably going to have to work.
00:35:28There is no two ways about it.
00:35:30And it's because of that same problem that we're talking about all along.
00:35:34You read the Bible incorrectly, read it like it's read for you,
00:35:37read the things that aren't intended to be for you,
00:35:40and then you start doing things to yourself that are actually harming yourself.
00:35:44And I would say this is one of the biggest harms that is being done by the movement.
00:35:49And it is so perverted when you think about the ministers coming out on top in all of this,
00:35:55but the people didn't.
00:35:56And, you know, when Hobart died, we've looked, what's been a year and a half ago,
00:36:01his estate was around a million dollars.
00:36:03A million dollars back then is a lot of money.
00:36:06And so it's really wicked, and it's really perverse that the ministers teach these things,
00:36:11but they don't live it themselves because they have a big congregation that's contributing money.
00:36:17And they have a home paid for, they have vehicles paid for, and they have money in the bank.
00:36:24But that is, that's just not the case with the rank and file member.
00:36:28You know, I used to think as I would look over, you know, Hobart would teach from 1 Timothy 2
00:36:35and from Titus qualifications for a pastor or an elder or a bishop.
00:36:40And, of course, he fit all the qualifications, according to him.
00:36:45And, you know, you'd go through them all, and you go, yeah, well, you know, Dr. Freeman fits all of
00:36:49them.
00:36:49But, you know, one of those qualifications, John, that I didn't think about until years after that,
00:36:55one of them for a minister is he may not be greedy for filthy lucre.
00:37:02In other words, for money.
00:37:04And, of course, everyone would say, well, Hobart wouldn't.
00:37:06I said, no, wait a minute, did he insist on driving a luxury automobile?
00:37:14He most definitely did.
00:37:16He always had either an Olds 98 or Cadillac or Lincoln.
00:37:21I would classify that as someone greedy for filthy lucre.
00:37:25I never saw that early on.
00:37:27I just thought, oh, no, that's God, quote, unquote, blessing Brother Freeman.
00:37:31No, that's Dr. Freeman not being happy driving around a Ford Pinto, which was my first car.
00:37:40And I was happy to have it.
00:37:42And it actually had a hole in the passenger's floorboard where you could watch the ground go underneath you as
00:37:49you drove along.
00:37:50We had to put a piece of tin over it and then put a piece of carpet over that.
00:37:54And I was happy to have that.
00:37:56Yeah, I think these ministers who want Gulfstream jets and say, God told me that he's going to give me
00:38:03that.
00:38:04Well, God's not giving it.
00:38:05It's coming through the offering of the followers.
00:38:07And it's just horrible that ministers have gotten away with this.
00:38:12And I don't see that in the first century minister.
00:38:16I don't see it in Jesus.
00:38:17He said, you know, the birds of the air have nests and the foxes have holes.
00:38:22The son of man hath not where to lay his head.
00:38:24He did not have any real estate.
00:38:26You know, he didn't own anything.
00:38:28And the apostles weren't much better.
00:38:30And you know what?
00:38:31They didn't care.
00:38:33I mean, they just didn't care.
00:38:35God met their needs.
00:38:36He told them, if you forsake all, I'll give it back a hundredfold.
00:38:41And that's not giving them their own houses and donkeys.
00:38:45It's giving them the Christian community that was able, in many regards, to take care of the needs of the
00:38:52early ministers.
00:38:53And as I've said so many times, even on this podcast, even though they were willing to do that, people
00:38:59like the Apostle Paul, who was such an example, such a godly man, he abstained from taking up offerings for
00:39:08himself.
00:39:08Even though he said, I deserve it because of what I have done for the Christian faith.
00:39:14He said, I don't want to be accountable to anyone.
00:39:17So I have worked day and night with my own hands.
00:39:20This is all in Acts 20.
00:39:22You can read it toward the end of Acts chapter 20.
00:39:24And I've not only earned money to provide for myself, but for my traveling companions as well.
00:39:30But anyway, John, to go back to this so-called vision a woman had of the 1970s, that was so
00:39:37characteristic of Dr. Freeman basing doctrine and theology.
00:39:42And you are manipulating the lives of your people based on some alleged vision that someone has had.
00:39:53I've got a little clip I want to play just to show people how strange these alleged visions and dreams
00:40:01are that people have had that Hobart would tell as though they're gospel truth.
00:40:07I mean, he never really put a distinction.
00:40:10He never said, now, I don't know whether this is really valid.
00:40:13He'd tell it in the context of reading a chapter in the Bible.
00:40:18Well, when you do it like that, then we as the listeners, we can't tell the difference.
00:40:23We think it's all inspired.
00:40:24It's all true.
00:40:25It's all from God, whether it's the written word or some vision that someone had.
00:40:30So on, he had a series where he was going to teach on the gifts of the spirit in 1
00:40:35Corinthians chapter 12 or maybe 12 through 14.
00:40:39And he had an early message.
00:40:41It used to be number 276, but it was entitled, God reveals himself through creation.
00:40:49And it has a long title and through providence and other things.
00:40:53And it was taught in 1973.
00:40:57And we have just a small clip from early in this message, from the six minute and 50 second mark
00:41:06to about eight minutes.
00:41:08Like a brother in Dallas, Texas, several years ago, I remember him telling how they'd received the baptism of the
00:41:16Holy Spirit.
00:41:16And I was one night lying on his bed praying when the room suddenly lit up with a, well, a
00:41:25supernatural blue light.
00:41:29And he didn't have any proof text for this being the Lord.
00:41:31He never had a vision.
00:41:33He never saw a thing.
00:41:34But he knew the Lord was that light.
00:41:37And the Lord said, I'm calling you to get on the radio with my word.
00:41:43Well, he said, Lord, I can't even read the Bible.
00:41:45Well, he was educated, but he said, I can't even pronounce half of those words.
00:41:49He wasn't a good reader at all.
00:41:52So the Lord impressed upon him to go to school and learn how to read.
00:41:56And God sent him to school, to seminary out on the desert, on his knees.
00:42:02He stayed out there for months and just read the Bible.
00:42:05And the Lord taught him how to read the word.
00:42:07He got on the radio and that's all he did.
00:42:09That's all his program consisted of, reading scripture.
00:42:12And people were blessed and saved and ministered to and counseled and called in and tremendous.
00:42:19It's interesting that he starts this clip off by saying, referencing, yeah, a brother down in Dallas, Texas, shared this.
00:42:29This has only been seven years since Hobart's trip to Dallas, Texas.
00:42:34He was there in 66 and this and he's given this in 73.
00:42:38You know, we've documented this.
00:42:42This is easy to document.
00:42:43He ate up with a spoon like it was going out of style.
00:42:47Everything those crazy people down there said, whether it was Lindsey, Hagan, W.V. Grant, Kenneth Hagan, the whole group
00:42:56of them down there.
00:42:57He was flabbergasted by what he heard.
00:43:01Did he prove anything?
00:43:05Did he check anything out?
00:43:07Absolutely not.
00:43:09So, as we just heard, this is a brother, you know, again, an anonymous brother down in Dallas, Texas, who
00:43:18was praying one night in his bedroom and this blue light appeared.
00:43:24And Hobart goes on to say, you know, God often appears in light in scripture.
00:43:28See, that's just enough to pull you in.
00:43:32God does appear in light in scripture, but I've never seen a blue light in the Bible.
00:43:37But that's just enough.
00:43:39And it's so damaging and it's so dishonest for a minister to ever teach like this and pull these stories
00:43:46in.
00:43:46But this man was praying.
00:43:49He had a vision.
00:43:50There's a blue light appeared in his bedroom and God's called him to the radio ministry.
00:43:58The brother couldn't even read, couldn't even read.
00:44:02And so, Dr. Freeman tells the story.
00:44:05God sent him to school, sent him to school.
00:44:08You're thinking, oh, OK, which school did he go to?
00:44:10Sent him to the school of the desert.
00:44:13Sent him out into the desert on his hands and knees.
00:44:16God taught him how to read.
00:44:17This is showing just a complete lack, a total lack of any discernment.
00:44:24Dr. Freeman had no discernment.
00:44:26He had no ability to discern anything.
00:44:30It's just this vision said what he wanted to believe.
00:44:35And so that's what he believed.
00:44:37It tickled his ears.
00:44:39God is not going to send a guy out into the desert.
00:44:43He might tell the guy, go to school, and I'll provide funds for you to learn how to read and
00:44:48write.
00:44:48He's not going to send a guy out into the desert, at least I don't think so, and then teach
00:44:53him personally.
00:44:54You know, be his private tutor.
00:44:55How does that work?
00:44:57How did God privately tutor an individual to teach him to read?
00:45:03How did those things even work?
00:45:05People are listening to that story going, oh, wow.
00:45:08Praise God.
00:45:08No wonder people did things like not wanting to change the tires on their car or doing whatever it is
00:45:16came to their mind because this is the proof of our faith.
00:45:19They were raised.
00:45:20I was raised on stories like this.
00:45:23I think it tickled Dr. Freeman's ears to hear these stories, and the Bible warns about ministers who tickle your
00:45:33ears and listen to stories that tickle your ears and then repeat stories that tickle your ears.
00:45:39I honestly, John, don't think that the followers of Dr. Freeman really paid attention to what he was saying because
00:45:50they would see this man lacked complete discernment in every area of his life.
00:45:56He believed hook, line, and sinker everything that he was told, and I volunteer myself as case example number one
00:46:05of being the same kind of fool.
00:46:07But it didn't last my whole life, and I wasn't a seminary-educated 50-something-year-old man.
00:46:14I was just a kid when I heard this stuff and believed it, and it didn't take me long to
00:46:20begin to see just the problems, the inconsistencies, the contradictions in what he was saying.
00:46:28And I just have to say the people that listened to him must not really have listened to him because
00:46:34had they listened to him, they would have said,
00:46:36Dr. Freeman, you don't have any ability to discern anything because you have told so many stories of other people's
00:46:47visions and dreams.
00:46:48You have no idea whether any of that is true or not.
00:46:51You don't seem to care when any of it can be validated.
00:46:55It just sounds like what you wanted to hear, and so you believed it, you know, hook, line, and sinker.
00:47:02I have actually spent a long time trying to find out when the doctrine shifted because it's very eerily similar
00:47:12to what Branham taught in that when Branham had the thing that looks like a halo,
00:47:16the photograph was taken. We've debunked that. You can go on the website and see the debunking of it.
00:47:22It was from that point forward, the idea that God comes in the form of a light is widespread.
00:47:28I don't see it widespread before this, so I don't know if that's where it came from.
00:47:33What's interesting is I remember the same types of things being said.
00:47:38God comes in the form of a light, and he always goes back to his halo, right?
00:47:42But if you read the first few passages of Genesis, there is no light, and the Spirit of God hovers
00:47:48over the waters in the darkness,
00:47:50and then God said, let there be light.
00:47:52So there's at least one example where God is not light, and we always went back.
00:47:58This is really interesting if you think of the implications of this.
00:48:01When we heard that statement about God being light, he would always go back to how Satan disguises himself as
00:48:09an angel of light.
00:48:10And so what it was trying to be in the sermon was a contrast.
00:48:15Here's God, who is the real light, Satan disguised as an angel of light, but it's an angel of light.
00:48:22And at the same time, Branham taught that Jesus was an angel, the archangel Michael.
00:48:27So all of the theology is just so off, so wrong, and it seems to be that his halo photograph,
00:48:34if it wasn't the beginning of this doctrine, it was at least the one that made it explode and go
00:48:39widespread.
00:48:40I'm certain that I've heard that outside of the cult, too, in one of the churches.
00:48:45So this doctrine is widespread, but it comes back to this.
00:48:49The movement had the theme of taking anything that they could claim was extraordinary happening to them.
00:48:57They would try to find a Bible passage that matched what happened to them and say, look, we just read
00:49:02this in the Bible.
00:49:02This Bible was written to us today and totally ignore the context of where that passage actually went to.
00:49:09We've mentioned this before, I think, a few times with you, reading the passage from Nahum saying that Outer Drive
00:49:16in Chicago was being described in the book of Nahum.
00:49:19There's no way that's possible, but that's what they were claiming, because if we can take this passage and make
00:49:24it familiar to the people,
00:49:25those with itching ears will enjoy what we say.
00:49:29And I think that's really the problem, that it was a message that was intended to entice the itching ears.
00:49:35You know, Dr. Freeman's followers who knew a little bit about Branham, they thought William Branham was nutty.
00:49:42They really did.
00:49:43They just thought William Branham was nutty.
00:49:44And what I, for the life of me, can't understand is why they didn't think Dr. Freeman was nutty.
00:49:51Because he's got the same story, some of them even more bizarre, some of them directly borrowed from Branham.
00:49:57So how is, you know, how is the master nutty, but the disciple not nutty?
00:50:03How is Branham wrong, but Freeman not wrong?
00:50:06Well, again, I almost have to say, I just don't think people paid careful enough attention to what Dr. Freeman
00:50:12was saying.
00:50:12He was a smooth operator, and he had a craft of being able to reuse a Bible verse.
00:50:21He always would say, you know, turn to such and such, and he'd read a verse, and you're lucky if
00:50:27you ever got back to the Bible the next hour.
00:50:29And he would just tell stories, tell stories from his own life, and, you know, maybe they were true, maybe
00:50:36they weren't.
00:50:36You know, at least they were stories from his own life.
00:50:39They weren't, like, third-hand removed.
00:50:42But most of the time, tell things that he had read and that he had heard Branham say, that he
00:50:47had read in other people's books.
00:50:49And how is it that a seminary-educated 50-something-year-old man just falls for all of that stuff
00:50:59and doesn't just use just a little bit, just a tiny bit, you know, a mustard seed of common sense
00:51:08and discernment to say,
00:51:10No, I don't think God appeared in a blue light to an uneducated man, called him to the radio ministry,
00:51:18took him out in the desert, I guess appeared to him or spoke to him audibly, taught him, here's A,
00:51:26here's B, here's C, here's D, taught him the alphabet, taught him how to read, taught him how to write.
00:51:32That's just not the way God is, you know, but it's supernatural.
00:51:36Anything that's miraculous and supernatural is what they want to believe.
00:51:39If God urged that man with an inner voice of the Spirit, you need to go back and finish your
00:51:46high school diploma, first of all, before you try to become a preacher, you know, that would be much more
00:51:52believable in my book than Dr. Freeman's story.
00:51:56And I didn't even tell the end of that clip that we played, and the man got on the radio,
00:52:02you know, this God called him to a radio ministry, and you know what his ministry consisted of?
00:52:07He just read the Bible.
00:52:09That's all he did.
00:52:10No preaching, no commentary, just reading the Bible.
00:52:14I don't know.
00:52:16I mean, you know, I'm always a perpetual doubting Thomas on all of these stories like this, but that just
00:52:23doesn't have the ring of truth to me.
00:52:25Let me tell you one other story from Freeman, Freeman's story in conclusion here to John that today, John, that
00:52:35is shocking.
00:52:36We just finished up four or five weeks talking about Hobart's fascination with what he called the occult, even though
00:52:44it's the occult with the pronunciation on the second syllable.
00:52:48But he loved the occult, everything about, you know, soothsayers and witches and warlocks and, you know, games like Kabbalah
00:52:59and, you know, anything with cards and fortune telling.
00:53:03You know, it just got out of control.
00:53:05You know, because cards have been used in fortune telling, you know, any type of card game is completely ruled
00:53:12out at Faith Assembly.
00:53:13And they were, cards were used in gambling, you know, so they're completely ruled out.
00:53:19And that never made any sense.
00:53:21I'm on a tangent.
00:53:22I'll get back to my story.
00:53:23That never made any sense to me because as I'm looking in Paul's writing about meats offered to idols, Paul
00:53:30said an idol is nothing.
00:53:31He said there's only one God.
00:53:33He said he could eat meat offered to idols.
00:53:36Now, he said, now, that might offend somebody who's just come out of heathenism.
00:53:39But Paul knew, at least Paul and his fellows could sit around and enjoy a nice steak that was leftover
00:53:47meat that had just come from, you know, the temple of Zeus or Jupiter.
00:53:51It didn't bother Paul one bit.
00:53:53And I think cards are the same way.
00:53:55You don't have to use them for fortune telling.
00:53:57You can play cards and have a good evening.
00:54:00Anyway, here's a story that is simply mind-boggling.
00:54:05And it has to do with eschatology, and it has to do with the appearance of the Antichrist.
00:54:14Hobart, as he taught on his early messages in the late 1960s and early 70s, firmly believed that the Antichrist
00:54:23had been born and that he was on the scene.
00:54:27And I don't think this was just unique to Hobart.
00:54:30I think other people believe this as well.
00:54:33But what is shocking, what is absolutely, I mean, it makes you lose your set of false teeth when you
00:54:42hear what he based that on.
00:54:44I mean, what would you think?
00:54:45How do you know that Antichrist, you know, John said, as you have heard, 1 John 2, 19, that the
00:54:51Antichrist will come.
00:54:53There is a definite article in the Greek in front of that.
00:54:56Even now, there are many Antichrist, small a, so the Antichrist, how would you know that he's already been born?
00:55:03How would you know that he's alive?
00:55:05Do you know how he knew?
00:55:07Because of this woman and because of this book right here, Gene Dixon, who was like in the middle of
00:55:15the 20th century, was one of the world's best-known psychics and mediums and spiritualists and fortune tellers.
00:55:24And he was enthralled with this book, A Gift of Prophecy, the phenomenal Gene Dixon, written by her biographer, Ruth
00:55:34Montgomery.
00:55:38And so, we can't play the clip, John, because it is 16 minutes long.
00:55:44But if people want to go and listen to Dr. Freeman's message entitled, World's Messiah, Antichrist, done in the mid
00:55:55-1970s, from around the 11-minute mark to around the 27-minute mark,
00:56:02he is reading the visions that have been given to Gene Dixon.
00:56:07And one of those visions is this.
00:56:11She has a little blurb here in the very beginning where she says, based on a vision that she has
00:56:16been given,
00:56:17a child born in the Middle East, and if you really read the whole vision, she identifies it as in
00:56:23Egypt.
00:56:24So, an Egyptian baby born of humble peasant stock on February the 5th, 1962, will revolutionize the world.
00:56:36So, here is Hobart, who is supposed to be opposed to things like this, basing his whole theology that the
00:56:45Antichrist was alive as of 1962 on this type of garbage.
00:56:52And, you know, his rationale is, well, you know, God gives visions to his prophets, so surely the devil gives
00:57:00visions to, you know, his soothsayers.
00:57:03And so, why shouldn't we believe it?
00:57:05And he said he firmly believes that this child that was born, and he's not basing it on anything in
00:57:10the Bible, nothing.
00:57:12He's basing it on something Gene Dixon said.
00:57:14That should just make your hair stand up on end, and should just make you throw Hobart Freeman out as
00:57:21being a junk scholar.
00:57:23And I'll go off on two tangents.
00:57:26One of the prophecies or doctrines, however you want to look at it, was that giant birds with 15-foot
00:57:32wingspans would attack us in the end days.
00:57:35And I found the propaganda book.
00:57:38It's one of those weird, not National Enquirer, but something similar from the 60s.
00:57:43He had apparently read this and thought, oh, my gosh, we're going to be attacked by giant birds.
00:57:47And the reason that I found out about it is because one of the splinter groups of Branham, it would
00:57:53be like the equivalent of Faith Assembly out in Arizona, they were teaching this.
00:57:57And it made the newspapers that they were expecting and living in anticipation of giant birds attacking, and also giant
00:58:04ants.
00:58:05I think if you go on my website, you can type in the prophecy of the giant ants or something
00:58:08like this.
00:58:09They were literally coming out of the old sci-fi movies, sci-fi books.
00:58:15And to further your tangent, there's this problem that exists.
00:58:20Whenever people go so legalistic that they totally lose the meaning of what the passage is saying, they're living by
00:58:29the letter of the law, basically.
00:58:30The doctrine went around exactly like you're saying, cards are evil.
00:58:34Well, they took it a step further, which may have matched you, I don't know.
00:58:38But dice are also evil, because that's what they use in the gambling halls and the casinos.
00:58:42You can't use dice.
00:58:44Well, if you understand what a die is for, it's to generate a random number between 1 and 6.
00:58:51And if you roll two of them, it's between 1 and 12.
00:58:54So what they did, they wanted to play their board games, so they had a cult-approved electronic device that
00:59:01was about this big,
00:59:02and you push a button, and it would give you a number between 1 and 12, and you could go
00:59:07continue playing your board games.
00:59:09I saw this, granted, I'm like 12 years old whenever this happened.
00:59:14My family didn't believe the dice thing.
00:59:16We thought it was absurd.
00:59:18I saw it, and I didn't even hear any of their theology or anything like this.
00:59:21My grandpa had it, and I was in his house, and I said,
00:59:24Grandpa, doesn't that generate the same random number that that set of dice does?
00:59:28And you should have seen the look on the faces of all the people.
00:59:31And it was apparently a widespread thing because they had just taken things so far to the extreme that in
00:59:38this way they're hurting themselves.
00:59:39Although it's trivial, they're hurting themselves like this, but there are other things like the retirement that they're hurting themselves
00:59:46so far to the extreme that it's doing damage.
00:59:48And I hope that something we said can help people wake up and not do damage.
00:59:53Thank you for doing this.
00:59:54Yes, I agree, John.
00:59:56Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.
00:59:59You can find us at william-branham.org.
01:00:02For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion, From Christian Identity to
01:00:08the NAR.
01:00:09Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.
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