Faith Assembly Turns Destructive - With Chino Ross - Episode 151 Branham Podcast

4 months ago

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John invites Chino Ross to discuss the events that happened in Faith Assembly after leaving the Glory Barn, as Hobart Freeman's cult of personality began to form and the group turned destructive.

Chino's YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@chinodross

00:00 Introduction
01:04 The Nature of Cults
02:13 Defining Faith Assembly
05:03 Personal Connection to Faith Assembly
07:00 Leaving the Glory Barn
11:00 The Move to a Tent
13:12 Life in the Tent
16:05 Moving to the New Building
20:00 Building the New Facility
25:02 Deaths and Medical Neglect
28:02 Sally Burkett’s Death
33:14 Jerry Burkett’s Role
41:00 Cult Dynamics and Control
47:01 Hobart Freeman’s Leadership
50:00 Cult of Personality
56:00 Impact on Members
58:01 Reflections and Sadness
1:00:04 Importance of Historical Documentation
1:02:02 Closing Remarks
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Transcript

00:00:00You

00:00:31Hello and welcome to another episode of the William Branham historical research

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

00:00:40Historical Research at william-branham.org, and with me I have my very

00:00:45special guest, Chinno Ross, pastor, Bible teacher, and voice of the

00:00:50Understanding Scripture and Truth by Chinno D. Ross YouTube channel. Chinno,

00:00:56it's so good to have you back. We have explored all things Hobart Freeman for a

00:01:01few times now, and now we're getting into the the nitty-gritty of the, you know, the

00:01:08downfall of what happened and the, you know, the very destructive nature of a

00:01:13cult. You know, there's so many ways in which a cult can go. It's like a train

00:01:18with no rails, but this one went in a very bad direction, and as we'll explore

00:01:25as we get further into this, it went into a direction that's somewhat

00:01:29familiar to people of the modern era. So I'm very excited to get into this and

00:01:34talk about the implosion of the Hobart Freeman cult. Well, thanks for having me

00:01:40on again, John. So you're ready to go down the rabbit hole with me again? I think

00:01:45you've been down a lot of rabbit holes. We have. There's just so much to this. You

00:01:50pull one little string out and the whole ball of yarn becomes to unraveling.

00:01:54And somehow they're all connected. I haven't figured out how all these

00:01:58tunnels and channels connect. I think you have that figured out better than I do.

00:02:02The money, man. Look for the money. Yeah, and as far as a cult goes, some people

00:02:08are maybe hesitant to call Faith Assembly a cult, and I think it all

00:02:11really goes back to your definition of a cult. Probably most people in the church

00:02:17today think of a cult along the line of Mormonism or a Seventh-day Adventism or

00:02:24Jehovah's Witness, where you've got groups that have doctrine, that

00:02:29have a doctrine, that is at odds with what we've always thought of as the

00:02:36essentials or the fundamentals of the historic Christian faith, like the deity

00:02:40of Christ or his virgin birth and the bodily resurrection. But you and I talked

00:02:46in another podcast or interview together that I think you could, again,

00:02:53depending on how you define cult, if you don't call it a cult, you could say

00:02:58it's got cult-like tendencies. But if the framework and the structure of the

00:03:04organization and the individual leading it tends to put people in extreme

00:03:10bondage to them and to their teaching, you know, at peril of losing their

00:03:17salvation or excommunication, I don't know what else you would call that but a

00:03:22cult, even if they hold to Orthodox fundamental Christian doctrine. Yeah,

00:03:29that's true. You know, the word cult simply means a group of people with a

00:03:33common idea. The early Christians were the cults of Jesus Christ. I

00:03:38mean, it's really not a bad word, but people like Jim Jones have made that

00:03:43word infamous. And so when you hear the word today, cult, you immediately go to

00:03:47Jonestown. But I think the proper term, as I understand it, is destructive

00:03:54cult. If the cult has a framework that allows destruction, and usually that

00:03:59framework, if it is most destructive, it consists of controlling and manipulating

00:04:04people. And that's where, really, it's where it gets problematic. And if you've

00:04:10explored any of the comments on my YouTube channel, anytime we use the word

00:04:14cult, immediately the people who are in the cults, the destructive ones, they

00:04:20immediately say, well, why aren't you attacking the Catholic Church? The

00:04:23Catholic Church has all these problems. And if you'll notice, every single cult

00:04:27that is being manipulated, they always go to try to find something that's

00:04:31worse and say, that's worse than us, not realizing that, well, there's a reason

00:04:37why you're going to the worst, because you understand that destructive nature

00:04:42of the group. Well, I know you've done a lot more study in this broad field of

00:04:46cults and cultism and cult-like groups. So yeah, I totally agree with that. And

00:04:51yeah, Faith Assembly definitely became, maybe it did not start off a cult, but it

00:04:59definitely became that, has all the earmarks of that. And there are still

00:05:04people out there, John, who are dyed-in-the-wool Freemanites. And what

00:05:09they have said to me all along is, you don't have any place to speak

00:05:13because you never moved to Indiana, you never lived there, you never were part of

00:05:17the church. And that's true, but they just don't understand how long my

00:05:24connection has been to Hobart Freeman and Faith Assembly back to, as I told you

00:05:28in an earlier interview, back to when I was a teenager. And I think in the last

00:05:33podcast, you put some pictures up of inside Hobart Freeman's home, and those

00:05:41came from my camera. That's me standing there taking the picture, and I bet

00:05:45there's not one in a hundred people at Faith Assembly who were ever in Hobart's

00:05:50home, not one in a thousand that followed him that were ever inside his

00:05:55home. And that's me in the kitchen, in the dining room, in his study where he did

00:06:01his recordings. That's actually, John, the back of my wife's head in one picture

00:06:06where June Freeman, Hobart's wife, Hobart had passed away by the time these

00:06:11pictures were taken, had put on rubber gloves to reach into a cabinet and

00:06:17bring out and show off some little carvings that Hobart had done. So, I

00:06:23mean, I've been out to eat with June. I've been out to eat with the other

00:06:27ministers. I mean, I know them. They know me. So, I do know a little about this,

00:06:33even though I was not a part of the church. Yeah, and the way the cults

00:06:38control their information, usually that's why the backlash happens, because

00:06:43you're exposing something that the rank-and-file member just didn't catch.

00:06:47They didn't see it. I get the same thing, and as you mentioned, I found all these

00:06:52spiderwebs, numerous spiderwebs, of how all of this intricate web of deceit is

00:06:57connected. And, for instance, if I publish something that's critical about A.A.

00:07:01Allen, I'm gonna have the Allenites contact me. Well, you weren't in this cult,

00:07:05man. But, no, the information's out there. I'm just simply, you know, stating the

00:07:10facts and spreading them. So, I see no harm in that, especially if people can

00:07:14learn and grow from, you know, from the history. It's good to understand the

00:07:19history so we don't make the same mistakes. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Well, let's

00:07:23return to Faith Assembly. I think the last time we had talked about them

00:07:28leaving the Glory Barn, it was a rainy day, April the 23rd of 1978, when, after

00:07:36having a several-hour meeting between Hobart and Mel and Mary Beth Greider,

00:07:41Mary Beth and Mel had realized the direction the church was taking was

00:07:48not just a church going to teach on healing, but it was gonna be a church

00:07:53teaching against doctors. And that, if you go to doctors, or you wear glasses, or you

00:07:59use a cane, or have a wheelchair, or take your insulin, or have a baby born in the

00:08:04hospital, all of the above-mentioned would all be off-limits. That's gonna be

00:08:11grounds for shunning, if not excommunication. And I just know that Mel

00:08:17and Mary Beth didn't want to be a part of that. So they decided to start

00:08:21charging rent, $425 a week. And on April the 23rd, Hobart in a sermon said,

00:08:28that's extortion, we're out of here. And on that very day, they began picking up

00:08:34the chairs and dismantling the Hank Platt's Upper Room bookstore that sat to

00:08:40the right of the Glory Barn. And, you know, that was the end of a whole entire

00:08:47era. I think I've told you before, I don't know if my camera is pointing over

00:08:51towards the rock on the, but that actually, that blue piece of concrete

00:08:57came from the chimney of the Glory Barn. And something else I didn't mention, and

00:09:02John, you just got to stop me or corral me if I go off in too many directions. I

00:09:07can talk ad nauseum on Faith Assembly, but when I say one thing, as you know,

00:09:14it reminds you of something else. But that picture that I took out my car

00:09:19window in August of 1976 of the Glory Barn that you put up in an earlier

00:09:24podcast, if you look closely and look at the chimney, you will see a white dove

00:09:32painted on the chimney. There are a lot of colors going on in that. It was an

00:09:36interesting place for them to have a church and it was wonderful. Everyone

00:09:40loved it there. But a couple of years later, that white dove is gone because

00:09:46someone had pointed out to Hobart, you have taught, based on the Second

00:09:50Commandment of Exodus 20 and other passages like Romans 1, no representations

00:09:55or images of God. And I think he was right on that, but he had the Holy

00:10:01Spirit dove on the chimney. So they had to go and paint over that,

00:10:07I think before they even left there. Well, so once they left, what are you

00:10:12going to do? I mean, there goes your building. They had sunk a lot of money

00:10:16into that place, the air conditioning and all the remodeling, all the lumber bills.

00:10:21As far as I'm aware, Mel just handed the bill over to Hobart and the church wrote

00:10:25a check. So Mel and his, what prior to Faith Assembly using it as a church, all

00:10:34he had was a rundown sheep barn that he was wanting to use as a coffeehouse. So

00:10:39he was able to get a nice air conditioned, remodeled, painted, fixed up

00:10:43building. And Faith Assembly, which was the name of the church, the group of

00:10:48people, not the building, Faith Assembly was able to meet there from October of

00:10:541972. And if you want to hear the first message ever preached there, Hobart did

00:11:00a four-part series entitled Submission to Authority and Non-Resistance. Tape

00:11:07number one in that four-part series is their first meeting in October of 1972

00:11:12in the glory barn. Their last meeting was April the 23rd of 1978. So once they left,

00:11:20Mel and Mary Beth were, I think, glad that they were gone. But within a year of them

00:11:27leaving, Mel had gone back to, according to the reports, had gone back to, even his

00:11:33wife said this, to drinking too much. He was really depressed over how everything

00:11:41turned out and he died of a heart attack. And the year following in 1980, on the

00:11:484th of July, the glory barn burned down under suspicious circumstances. They did

00:11:53an investigation. They said they believed it was arson, but that was

00:11:59before the days of surveillance cameras and videos, and they were never

00:12:04able to determine who did it. Yeah, I've looked at that a bit, and it's really

00:12:09hard because, right, you can't prove that the cult did it, but once people become

00:12:14that radicalized, there's really no guardrails as to what they will or they

00:12:18won't do. And once you become an outsider in a group like this, the

00:12:23destructive nature of the cult is that, well, the people who aren't with us and

00:12:27who have turned away from us, they become the enemy. And they're, you know, the

00:12:32workers of Satan or whatever is the cult mythology. So it's

00:12:37easy to say that it could have easily been the cult. So I'm not blaming Hobart

00:12:42or Faith Assembly for Mel Grider's death, but it is just a terrible combination of

00:12:47circumstances where you've had this wonderful arrangement between you and

00:12:52Dr. Freeman and the people, and they just pull out and leave and ended up

00:12:59dying of a heart attack the next year. So they have no place to go. So they applied

00:13:07for a permit and got it granted fairly quickly to set up a big tent. You

00:13:12mentioned A.A. Allen, and that was the A.A. Allen and Jack Coe and Oral Roberts

00:13:19and William Branham and Gordon Lindsay. I mean, those were the days of the big

00:13:24revival tents. So there was a big tent that went up on the north side of

00:13:29Warsaw, Indiana. It only stayed there for a short period of time, and then they

00:13:34moved it to Goshen, and it stayed there the rest of the time. So any of the

00:13:40messages that you hear from April the 23rd, say the late spring of 78, all

00:13:47through the summer of 1978, and all through the fall of 1978, were preached

00:13:54in the tent. The series on the Book of Galatians, which was a turning point

00:14:02series in the church, because I think, I mean, it just brought down, it was so

00:14:09hard on the people. I'm going to give you a quote from one of those messages

00:14:13before we're done today, but I think the people, you know, there was some

00:14:18enthusiasm over the fact that we are no longer in a building that we have no

00:14:23control over, you know, that we are just, you know, basically tenants here. And I

00:14:27think they also probably interpreted that as persecution. You know, anytime

00:14:31anything bad happens, it's persecution. And I can remember in my youth going

00:14:37through the same thing. When I was a young pastor in Minnesota, we were

00:14:41meeting in a big building, and we really wanted to go back to the New Testament

00:14:47church house, you know, the house in thy church. And we left that building. We had

00:14:54a big group of people, and we actually moved into, I opened my house, I was the

00:14:59pastor, but I also said, you know, I can host this group of people as well. We had

00:15:05a wonderful group of people. So we were in a little town called Waconia,

00:15:09Minnesota, and we moved in, moved the church from this big, I don't know, might

00:15:15have been a Lutheran Cathedral or something. We hated it. It was cold and

00:15:19echoey and hollow, and we didn't like it. We wanted a church in the home. So we

00:15:24moved into my house. Well, I think maybe the next Sunday we had the police

00:15:28knocking on the door saying we were making too much noise. And I'm sure in my

00:15:3420s, I thought, oh, this is great. This is persecution for the sake of Christ. Well,

00:15:40it's no such thing. It's just being an idiot. You know, there are laws that you

00:15:44have to abide by, and if you were, I mean, I wouldn't want somebody next door

00:15:49in a rock and roll band practicing. Well, a lot of people wouldn't want a church

00:15:54next door either. So we ended up having to move out. But I think what was going

00:16:00on with Faith Assembly is, wow, I mean, persecution. We've been forced out of our

00:16:08building, and now we're in this tent. It was a tent that would seat a thousand

00:16:14people. One of the messages entitled, Stealing the Children's Bread, you can

00:16:21actually hear a train, the whistle coming down the track as it's getting

00:16:27closer and as it goes by. So there's some funny things and fun times that I think

00:16:33a lot of those people experienced. And anybody in your listening audience, if

00:16:39they were a part of that, they will know that what I'm telling them is definitely

00:16:44the truth.

00:16:45You know, if you've been in a cult for any period of time, you've got some crazy

00:16:49stories. And we went to churches, you know, everything from – I think one of

00:16:53them was a – what was it? It was a rented Boy Scout facility. So here I am as a

00:16:59child, and you know, you can imagine all of the different things that you saw on

00:17:03the walls of the Boy Scout place while you're sitting there trying to think

00:17:07about Jesus. And me as a kid, that's forever burned in my mind. But the one

00:17:13that tops them all is the Branham Tabernacle. Right when you got off the

00:17:17interstate onto 10th Street to go to the Tabernacle, the very first thing that

00:17:21you saw or smelled was the sewage department. So I have forever burned in

00:17:27my head this memory of associating the Branham Tabernacle with sewage, which,

00:17:32you know, that's another joke for another day. I won't tell now. But so

00:17:36you've got some documentation on the moves in the facilities, right?

00:17:41So June, John, always sent out a newsletter. It was sent out from –

00:17:46actually from their home. So there's, you know, their mailing address in Leesburg,

00:17:52Indiana, Dr. Hobart and June Freeman. This one was sent out in August of 1977.

00:18:00So they knew that they were growing so rapidly in the barn. They did not know

00:18:06they were going to be kicked out or leave voluntarily. But they knew they

00:18:10had to have a bigger facility. So plans were in the works to do that. So in this

00:18:17newsletter that June would send out to people that were following the ministry,

00:18:23you know, all over the country. And I was 17 years old, 18 years old, living in

00:18:28Mississippi. And so I got this newsletter. And here's what she said in August of

00:18:331977. Work has already begun on the foundation for the new building, which

00:18:40will seat over 1,500 people. We have told you before how crowded we have been

00:18:45in the present facilities, many watching over closed-circuit TV and many more

00:18:51outside in lawn chairs, in their cars, listening over loudspeakers. People all

00:18:57over the world have been believing with us for this. One man in Illinois has

00:19:02offered to bring his equipment and some of his crew just to lay the floor.

00:19:06Already we have received over a hundred and thirteen thousand dollars toward the

00:19:12cost of the new building. So they already had this in the works. They're gonna put

00:19:18this new building up. It wasn't something that, you know, totally caught them by

00:19:23surprise. It's just the building wasn't ready on April the 23rd of 78

00:19:29whenever they had to leave the Glory Barn. So when cold weather got there and

00:19:34they were still waiting on their plumbing or sewage permit. So they

00:19:42moved into the building. There was a trailer or two outside that was just

00:19:48full of port-a-pots. Because we're talking about a thousand people, you know,

00:19:53out in a an evangelistic tent. I was at the Glory Barn. I was at the new

00:20:00building many times. Unfortunately, I was never there in 1978. I was actually in

00:20:06college down in Mississippi then. So I never got to experience what the tent

00:20:11was like. You know, but they moved in and cold weather began to set in. You know, as

00:20:19you get late in the fall, we're talking about not far south of Chicago. This

00:20:24is the north. It's gonna get cold up there. What the church had to do was

00:20:29break up and they just began to meet in a variety, many different homes with

00:20:35different ministers taking the lead and teaching those little groups of people.

00:20:41The whole time waiting and waiting on this sewage permit. Well, finally in

00:20:46December 1978, they got the permit. They moved into the new building. They had no

00:20:54heat, didn't have any heat that whole first winter. But I think everybody was

00:20:59so excited they didn't care. You could wrap up real well and be comfortable.

00:21:05And they called it, for lack of a better name, the new building. I don't think you

00:21:13could ever come up with a name as good as the Glory Barn.

00:21:17And that name stuck with them. Yeah, it really did. And I remember back in the

00:21:2470s, you may have even heard of this. There was a place way over in extreme

00:21:28western Kentucky called the Sheepshed. And I don't know if one copied from the

00:21:34other Glory Barn Sheepshed because the Glory Barn was a sheep barn before it

00:21:39was a Glory Barn. But no, you couldn't come up with a name as good as that.

00:21:44And so I think they just decided we won't even try. We just called it the new

00:21:50building. Very generic, very boring. But that's what the building was. It was just

00:21:56a big brown warehouse-like metal building that sat in the middle of a

00:22:03cornfield. It was so difficult to find that here is another newsletter of June's

00:22:10dated September of 1982. And there is the map that they had to draw because she

00:22:20says in this newsletter, we've had people show up from all over the country,

00:22:24couldn't find us, and turned around and went back home. That's how difficult it

00:22:29was to find. I think it was on the border of Kosciuszko and Noble County, but it

00:22:35was actually in Noble County where they met. So here brings up another

00:22:41interesting part of the whole story. Faith Assembly was not a normal tax-exempt

00:22:51religious organization. Hobart was completely opposed to any form of

00:22:57incorporation when it comes to something that has to do with the gospel. So the

00:23:03church didn't own anything because the church wasn't anything. I mean, there

00:23:10is no board. There are no members that vote. There are no articles of

00:23:17incorporation. But there was a couple whose name was Don and Betty Nye, N-E-I,

00:23:22who were longtime followers of Dr. Freeman. They went back early on with him

00:23:28and they've got a big parcel of land. And so they don't donate the land

00:23:35because who do you donate it to? You know, there is no entity to whom it could be

00:23:41donated, but they allowed for the building to be built, erected on a part

00:23:48of their farm. And you can go through, and I'm not going to bore people with that,

00:23:53you can find the tapes where Hobart talks about the fact that none of that,

00:23:57all of that belongs to the Nyes if push came to shove because it's on their

00:24:02property. Although the expenses of the building and of the heating system and

00:24:08AC and everything that eventually went into the building were obviously, just

00:24:12like in the Glory Barn, here in the new building it was covered by the

00:24:17offerings by the ministry of Dr. Freeman. So Don and Betty Nye, then they bring up

00:24:24another interesting story. Don's wife Betty, a year after they moved into this

00:24:31new building that they had allowed the church to build on their own property on

00:24:36January the 14th of 1981, she died of untreated pneumonia. Don, a year later,

00:24:46married another woman whose name was Martha. He married her a year later, two

00:24:53years after their marriage, Martha died of untreated breast cancer in November

00:25:00of 1983. The next time you and I get to talk, John, I hope we can get into what

00:25:08really brought about all of the issues from the outside, and that was the

00:25:13attention brought by the legal and medical community on Faith Assembly that

00:25:19caused all kinds of problems, but there had been death leading up to this time.

00:25:25They just were becoming more and more numerous, and so whenever Martha died in

00:25:35November of 1983, the coroner was Dr. John Ramsey, and after noting that cancer

00:25:42had spread throughout her body and that her breast was completely decayed and

00:25:47gone, he had this to say and I quote, she must have been in incredible pain. Your

00:25:55heart goes out to these people. This poor woman must have endured the tortures of

00:26:02the damned. You know, and it does break your heart. Don's had two wives die. Betty

00:26:15and then Martha of untreated. Now, could the cancer have been slowed or cured?

00:26:22Probably not. Who knows? We don't know. It's so sad. We have people in our

00:26:28support groups who have family members who are not alive because they had been

00:26:33convinced not to get medical care, and you know, whether it's cancer and maybe

00:26:38at that time it wasn't treatable or whether it's something that could be

00:26:42cured, at minimum, you can go to a facility and you don't have to suffer,

00:26:46and I think that's really the, you know, the critical thing here. There are some

00:26:51diseases that the people get in these faith healing cults that they could have

00:26:54lived if they just got access to medicine, but at minimum, they can get

00:26:58help where they don't have to suffer. Betty's death of untreated pneumonia

00:27:03probably could have been taken care of. I don't know, but Betty, by the way, was a

00:27:10registered nurse, and Betty, Betty Nye, Don Nye's first wife, has a very

00:27:16interesting connection with one of the ministers, one of the main ministers

00:27:22under Hobart at Faith Assembly, whose name was Jerry Burkitt. Jerry Burkitt's

00:27:28wife, Sally, bled to death after the birth of a child back in 1976, so this is

00:27:36early on. Betty was the nurse midwife at the birth. Betty lost her license over

00:27:44that because Sally, let me just tell you, let me back up and tell you a little bit

00:27:50about Jerry Burkitt. Jerry Burkitt worked at R.R. Donnelly and Sons, which was a big

00:27:56publishing and printing firm in Warsaw. That's also where Bruce Kinsey, one of

00:28:02Hobart's son's-in-laws, worked, who was married to Kathy Kinsey, one of Hobart's

00:28:07daughters. Bruce got converted, shared the message with Jerry Burkitt, got Jerry

00:28:14Burkitt very interested. Jerry Burkitt, who, they lived in a nice home, John, that

00:28:19he had designed himself. He had a high-paying job. They were living a

00:28:24comfortable life, but once Jerry Burkitt and his wife Sally got involved in the

00:28:29church, Jerry was listening to Hobart say how he had gone through college and

00:28:34seminary and never worked five minutes, just went through by faith, totally

00:28:38trusting God. That's a complete misrepresentation of the facts, but all

00:28:43the young men there were hearing that, and what did they say? Well, I've got

00:28:48faith. Why should I have to go to work? So guess what Jerry did? Jerry quit his job

00:28:53and said, I'm just gonna trust God like my pastor did. I'm just gonna trust God

00:28:58to supply all my needs. So they lost their house, electricity's turned off,

00:29:03foreclosed on the house, bounced from apartment to apartment to apartment, and

00:29:09this is not an isolated story of one family. This happened over and over and

00:29:15over again there. The day before Sally Burkitt was gonna deliver this child,

00:29:21which was April the 2nd of 1976, the day before, April the 1st, they had just

00:29:28made what would be her last and final move of trying to stay ahead of the

00:29:32creditors and the bill collectors. So you've got this woman who's just moved

00:29:36the day before. She gives birth on this day, April 2nd of 1976. The baby was okay,

00:29:45but she never could expel the placenta, and she began bleeding, and she asked

00:29:52Jerry, her husband, to call a doctor, and he said, I've called the best one in the

00:29:57business, and his name is Jesus, and as the bleeding went on, there were other

00:30:03people there with Jerry, and they discussed what should we do. Should we

00:30:06call a doctor, and they all decided if we call a doctor, that's an affront to God.

00:30:10You know, that goes contrary to everything we've been taught, and so

00:30:15Sally's request for a doctor was denied, and Sally Burkitt bled to death.

00:30:22It wasn't the first death, John, but it was one of the early ones, and one

00:30:29of the big ones because of two reasons. Number one, it was completely preventable.

00:30:35All you got to do is get to a hospital, and you can stop the bleeding. Completely

00:30:40preventable, and number two, it was a wife of one of the ministers there, and to jump

00:30:46way ahead in this story, the reason this story maybe resonates with me more than

00:30:51others' stories have, or more than it would resonate with others, is because

00:30:56when I was a young pastor and minister in Minnesota, I had been in Mississippi. I

00:31:03had felt God calling me to the ministry. I felt that I knew where he wanted me to

00:31:08go, and I literally took off to Minnesota by faith. Ended up meeting a couple of

00:31:14people there, turned into a whole church. They said, we've been praying that God

00:31:19would send us a teacher, your answer to our prayers, and we just had a wonderful

00:31:23time and a wonderful group of people. I had only been in Minnesota about a year,

00:31:29and I lived in a little town called Waconia. A big Lincoln Town Car pulled up

00:31:37in front of my house, 317 South Elm Street, Waconia, Minnesota. Now gets this

00:31:44big huge dude, and he comes and knocks on my door. It's Jerry Burkitt, and he had

00:31:53heard that I was somewhere up there in the area. I think Hobart definitely knew

00:32:00because I could find, here is a letter actually dated. Hobart typed it.

00:32:06That's his signature at the bottom. That's his handwriting at the bottom

00:32:10discussing the fact that, wow, there's Jerry Burkitt up there. There was a

00:32:16meeting south of Minneapolis, and then Hobart said, Cheno, and there you are in

00:32:21Waconia. He said, now I don't know what to tell you guys, but y'all have to

00:32:25work it out among yourselves. Who's gonna do what or preach? I wasn't a part of

00:32:29Faith Assembly. Hobart knew I was there. That's why I got this typed letter

00:32:34signed, and then he said, I'll convey your thoughts to Jerry down here at

00:32:39the bottom. So Jerry pulls up at my house, but the thing is, John, I didn't

00:32:44know a thing about Sally Burkitt, his wife, bleeding to death before. I didn't

00:32:49know any of this stuff, and Jerry pulled up, wanted to talk about who's gonna do

00:32:54what, and you know, I said, I'm a pastor and a teacher in a church here, Jerry. You

00:32:59know, I'm doing what I call to do. You know, I don't, you know, I have no

00:33:03authority or influence or say so over anything, but what I'm doing. So, you know,

00:33:10you guys do what you want, but so that was my introduction to Jerry Burkitt,

00:33:16and it was years after that before I find out what happened to his wife, and

00:33:21the story with his wife was so sad because in her last moment, she had a

00:33:27friend. I don't know if her name was Susan or that's a pseudonym, but she had

00:33:32a friend named Susan, and she asked, will you please go get Susan? The reason that

00:33:38she asked for Susan was Susan was part of an underground network at Faith

00:33:43Assembly for any of the people who wanted medical help. You couldn't do it

00:33:50out in the open. If you wore glasses and you pulled up in the parking lot, you put

00:33:55your glasses in the glove compartment before you got out and walked inside.

00:33:59Susan was part of the underground, and Sally asked Jerry, would you go get

00:34:05Susan? And so he called Susan. Susan was at home. When she found out who it was,

00:34:12she did not want to go because she said, I just knew they wanted more prayer

00:34:16warriors. That's what they were calling me for. So she said, I didn't go. She said

00:34:22that wasn't good enough for Jerry. A little while later, his car pulls up in

00:34:27my driveway. He begins knocking on my door, and she said, I don't open the door.

00:34:32She said, I can't stand to go there and watch what's happening because she knew

00:34:36what was happening there. She said, I went and hid in a closet. Jerry broke the door

00:34:41down and went in the house. She tells this story herself, walked all around

00:34:47looking for her. She said, I heard his footsteps come right by the closet, and

00:34:52then he went on out and drove away. And Susan said, I look back with regret. I

00:34:59wished I would have had the courage to do something about it because it would

00:35:04have saved a woman's life. But you and I know what the mindset is whenever you're

00:35:09in one of these cults. Had Susan done that, she's excommunicated. You're gone

00:35:15from the church. And what does that mean when you're gone from the church? You've

00:35:19lost your salvation. You're gone from God. Because God and the church are

00:35:24coterminous. You know, it's not much different than Roman Catholicism. Isn't

00:35:30that pretty much what you've heard with the message?

00:35:34Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started, or how the

00:35:38progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign,

00:35:42charismatic and other fringe movements into the New Apostolic Reformation? You

00:35:47can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's website

00:35:52William-Branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find the compiled

00:35:58research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon, and

00:36:03others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each book. You can

00:36:09also find resources and documentation on various people and topics related to

00:36:14those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can support

00:36:18the podcast by clicking the Contribute button at the top. And as always, be sure

00:36:23to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to

00:36:27or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you

00:36:32for your support.

00:36:33It's like this is the recurring story for these divine healing cults. If you go

00:36:38back to the days of John Alexander Dowie, you had people who were dying left and

00:36:43right. And like you coming into it and not being aware of this. Well, they were

00:36:47slipping the bodies out under the cover of night. So the general rank and file

00:36:52cult member wasn't aware how many people were dying, but it just kept repeating

00:36:56and repeating and repeating. And they try to spiritualize any event, no matter

00:37:03big or small. So cases like this where Hobart Friedman really doesn't have

00:37:09anything to claim for the cult himself, he's renting or he's borrowing these

00:37:14things. Well, whenever the people decide they don't, they've had enough, they

00:37:19don't want to deal with this anymore. And like, you know, raising the ranch or

00:37:23whatever they do to get out of this thing. Well, it's always a black or white

00:37:27issue. They're either with us or they're against us as the mindset. So because

00:37:31they did this thing, they come down hard upon the people who really they just

00:37:36wanted out. They didn't, it wasn't so much, it wasn't so much that they, you

00:37:41know, good or bad with Hobart Freeman. They just wanted to go out of this, this

00:37:44arrangement that they had. So they get painted with a very black picture of, you

00:37:51know, among all of the cult members. It was the same for myself and my wife.

00:37:55Whenever we first left the cult, we had people, there were people who were

00:38:01actually telling other people that I knew, and these were high-ranking

00:38:06members in the cult, that they had seen a vision by God that within one year's

00:38:10time, my wife is going to leave me. And you get branded like that. So everybody

00:38:15who's in the cult, they start thinking of, well, here's John, he's the guy whose

00:38:20wife is going to leave him. That was 2012 or in 2024 now. But you get branded and

00:38:27what happens is after the branding comes in their head, because you're part of now

00:38:32this mythology, you're of the evil side of the mythology. So you become demonized

00:38:38and infamous. So it got to the level where, I kid you not, I could go into a

00:38:43grocery store and if I walked down an aisle where there were people from the

00:38:47cult, they would look at me and their eyes would get big and they would just

00:38:50scatter. Because I'm this demonic force, I guess, you know. But that's how the cult

00:38:54mindset works. So I'm certain that every person that you've mentioned was

00:38:58demonized, but then the people that the very bad things happen to, it gets

00:39:04shifted in the mythology where it isn't so bad, it was just a trial or

00:39:09tribulation they went through. But yet it happens again and somebody else dies

00:39:13because the history has been erased. Yeah, that is so true, John. And my letters

00:39:19that Hobart interpreted as critical letters, I could show you the tapes where

00:39:24he said, I got these critical letters. Well, it was like a week after I sent

00:39:28them, so I know they were from me. And they weren't critical letters. Critical

00:39:32letters is, you know, critical letters. These were letters asking

00:39:37questions. Why are so many people dying? I mean, they're dropping like flies. Why is

00:39:42the maternity mortality rate a hundred times in Kosciuszko and Noble

00:39:49County what it is in the rest of Indiana? Yeah, so it's exactly what you're saying.

00:39:54So whenever they moved out of the Glory Barn, going into that new building, I

00:40:00think there was a lot of high hope and expectation, but they didn't realize

00:40:06you're really sealing your doom because now you're in your own building. Now

00:40:11the bully pulpit can totally take over and the attitude police like the SS can

00:40:19march in step with what the bully pulpit is saying. And that is exactly what

00:40:25began to happen. And you take that Galatians series that was taught during

00:40:30the summer in the tent of 1978. It was really at that point where it was

00:40:36announced that once we get to the new building, things are going to be much

00:40:40stricter. We're not going to allow every Tom, Dick, and Harry in here. This is a

00:40:47place for overcomers. This is a place for people who mean to go on with

00:40:54God. And so dissent was just not going to be tolerated at all. As a matter of fact,

00:41:03when you went in the new building, they had scripture

00:41:08verses, big ones, in big block letters up on the wall. If I remember correctly, they

00:41:12had Matthew 17 20, faith is a grain of mustard seed. They had Mark 11 24. And

00:41:20up front with that, they had 1st Corinthians chapter 1 in verse 10, where

00:41:27Paul is admonishing the Corinthians that they all be of the same mind and

00:41:33speak the same thing and have the same judgment. And that was harped upon. That

00:41:41was probably the big verse in the center up front in the church, which is a

00:41:46not-so-subtle reminder to everyone that dissent is not tolerated here. You got to

00:41:55get in line. Everybody has to march to the same beat. We have to have the same

00:41:59discernment and judgment about everything. No one slowed down to

00:42:05think, yeah, I grant that is an apostolic injunction in the Bible, but it's

00:42:10written to one of the most dysfunctional churches in the New

00:42:13Testament. That's the church at Corinth. And yes, it's the ideal, and yes, it is

00:42:19what we should strive for and what we should work toward, but nobody of their

00:42:26own can bring that about. That is a work of the Holy Spirit. You can't, you can try

00:42:32to force people to agree. You can force them to agree externally, but you can't

00:42:39change another person's heart. You can't make them want to be of the same

00:42:44mind. It's a verse worth teaching on and preaching about and

00:42:51encouraging your church. This is our goal. We want to be in unity, but the reality

00:42:59of the matter is good grief. We're all our own people. We've come from a

00:43:04million different backgrounds, and we bring with us our own baggage and our

00:43:09own presuppositions and to get, well, heck, you know, you're married. I'm married. You

00:43:15can't even get a married couple to agree on everything. You can't even get

00:43:21them close to agreeing on everything, so you're definitely not going to get a

00:43:26couple of thousand people to agree, but the bully pulpit, man, John, hammered away.

00:43:33We've got to all be together, and there would be attendants out in the parking

00:43:41lot, just old gravel with grass grown up, but the parking lot attendants with

00:43:45their little walkie-talkies reporting back and forth. You know, if you showed up

00:43:51there and were not one of the regulars, which I did on several occasions, so

00:43:56you're coming from another state with a different license plate. If you're not

00:44:00one of the regulars, you're viewed with suspicion. I mean, you're pretty much

00:44:05guilty until you can prove that you're innocent. Just as soon as you show up,

00:44:10you know, they're looking for members of the church. This was not a welcoming body

00:44:16at all. They talked a lot about faith. They needed to talk a lot more about

00:44:22love, which they just wouldn't do. Faith was the most important thing to them, so

00:44:27the parking lot attendants would look and see, and so if someone were to ask

00:44:31someone in your audience, well, how do you know if you're finding a faith

00:44:34assembly family? Well, most of the couples were in their late 20s or 30s. It was a

00:44:42husband and wife. He would have a Bible and a notebook in one hand. He'd have a

00:44:46diaper bag over the other. He's got one little small kid in the arm with the

00:44:51diaper bag, and behind him, has to be behind him, by the way, we need to talk

00:44:57about that at some point in this, but behind him, couldn't be in front of him,

00:45:00behind him is the wife. She has to be behind him, and they just got out of a

00:45:06van. You know, there's only vehicle that could hold all those people, so I know

00:45:11people never appreciated my dark humor, but there's so much tragedy in this. I

00:45:16was always looking for humor, and I would say, you know what? What is the standard

00:45:20vehicle? You don't know where I'm going with this, probably, John. What is the

00:45:24standard vehicle that kidnappers use? Well, it's a van where you can pull up,

00:45:29slide the door open, grab the young lady off the sidewalk, put her in there, and

00:45:33take off to do whatever you're going to do, and I'd say, guess what? There are no

00:45:37vans available for kidnappers in northern Indiana. They've all been

00:45:42purchased. They're all parked at faith assembly, and people hated me for saying

00:45:46that, and I do not mean to imply that anybody at faith assembly was a

00:45:51kidnapper. That is obviously not my point, but they never appreciated my

00:45:57humor on that, but if you look at some of the old pictures, they actually had the

00:46:01van rows, and there were just rows and rows of these vans, so the parking lot

00:46:08attendants knew what a faith assembly person was going to look like, and if

00:46:14you showed up and you're not a faith assembly-like person, then, you know,

00:46:18you're viewed with suspicion, so as I said earlier, whenever they got into the

00:46:25tent, and now they're coming into the new building, you know, everything changes, and

00:46:29I think, John, that really was the downfall of faith assembly when

00:46:35Hobart Freeman elevated himself to Pope Freeman. He was unreachable. He was

00:46:42unteachable. He was unaccountable to anyone. I told you in an earlier

00:46:48interview that one of his mentors at Gray Seminary, Dr. John Ray, R-E-A, had been

00:46:56very instrumental in introducing Dr. Freeman to the baptism of the Holy

00:47:01Spirit, and here is some correspondence I had with Dr. Ray. This was in December of

00:47:081990. Dr. Ray, who by then was teaching at a school out in California, said this

00:47:15to me, Yes, Hobart Freeman was a student of mine at Gray Seminary in his

00:47:20doctoral studies. My wife and I were instrumental in introducing him to the

00:47:26baptism in the Holy Spirit in 1966, and here's the point I want to get to. Later,

00:47:33we were saddened to see him become so extreme in his faith teaching. By the

00:47:39time he moved from Claypool to found and lead the Glory Barn in North Webster, we

00:47:47no longer were having any fellowship with or contact with him in June. In many

00:47:54ways, Hobart was an excellent Bible scholar and careful Bible teacher, but,

00:47:59and then he has dash, dash, dash, dash, exclamation point. You fill in the blanks

00:48:06yourself there. So that was his mentor that had been a professor of his

00:48:11whenever Hobart was working on his doctoral studies, and that was an

00:48:16intelligent, educated seminary professor who realized that Hobart had gotten to

00:48:23the place where he had drawn a circle so small around himself that he was the

00:48:30only one that could stand in it, and everybody else was on the outside, and so

00:48:36he began giving these threats and warnings against anyone who would

00:48:41challenge him or disagree with him. If anyone's heard any of his messages to

00:48:46any length, they'll recognize these are direct quotations. Here's some examples.

00:48:52God doesn't give you the right to sit out there and pick and choose which

00:48:57things you want to obey. Here's another one. If you can find things out on your

00:49:04own, then why did God raise up anointed faithful ministry? I mean, isn't that

00:49:10setting the scene for being able to tell people anything you want to tell them?

00:49:15Right, and you know, we talked earlier about the qualifications for determining

00:49:19whether it's just a cult of people or a destructive cult. Well, now we're getting

00:49:24into the cult of personality. Once a person has reached that level of

00:49:28authority where he can say anything he wants, he or she do anything they want

00:49:34over the people and take that level of control over them, well then the people

00:49:38are just beaten down into submission, and they begin to assume the identity of the

00:49:44central figure because they're being just, they're almost going into the state

00:49:48of mind of a child, and they see this parent-child relationship, but it's a

00:49:53very, very bad parent, and so they take control, they hijack their minds, and now

00:49:58you have a cult of personality that has developed. He would pronounce a curse on

00:50:03anyone who left Faith Assembly. He says those people are biting the hand that

00:50:08fed them. He said if you want to go, go. There are already two waiting for your

00:50:16seat. Don't bother going to another church after leaving here. You'll fail,

00:50:24and he screams at the top of his voice. In the Galatians series, he says if you

00:50:31leave Faith Assembly, you are not saved. So, I mean, these are, and then he would go

00:50:41on to tell horror stories of people who opposed him and then died. You mentioned

00:50:51that before. You're branded with the scarlet letter, or you're branded with a

00:50:58Nazi swastika or something, and as soon as that's put on you, I mean, it's hard

00:51:04for you to get away from it because anybody who, by virtue of the fact that

00:51:09Hobart said or someone else said this person is, you know, taboo, they're

00:51:14excommunicated, I mean, that mark goes on you whether you want it or not. It goes

00:51:19on you, and you're right. As soon as those people had that mark, they couldn't even

00:51:25go to the grocery store without being shunned. That's a tight-knit community,

00:51:29and we're talking about the new building sat 2,300 people, and they had as many as

00:51:36probably 21 or 2,200 people there at one time. That's a small rural area in north

00:51:44central Indiana, which means, you know, pretty much everybody up there knows

00:51:49somebody who is a part of Faith Assembly, which pretty much means any gas station

00:51:55or diner or grocery store or car dealership you go to, somebody's going to be

00:52:02there who is a part of Faith Assembly or knows someone who's a part of Faith

00:52:08Assembly or who was a part of Faith Assembly, and it just created incredible

00:52:13distrust among the people. They begin, you know, because it made you appear to be a

00:52:20true and loyal member if you could spy on someone else in the church and report

00:52:26that, hey, when they go home, they put their glasses on or when they go home,

00:52:30they watch TV, or when she goes home, she takes a dress off and puts man's pants

00:52:36on. She puts blue jeans on. As soon as they saw that and they could report that

00:52:42back to the authorities, well, you know, maybe that'll help them in their time of

00:52:47judgment in the future, you know, with the church.

00:52:49You know, you mentioned the favorite verses that they have. Once a group has

00:52:54radicalized to the point that you're talking about, they also have favorite

00:52:58themes, and often you'll find they're talking about Noah's Ark. It came right

00:53:04down to the flood, and then the door closed. And then they'll have a whole

00:53:08series of door closed themes, right? You know, whenever I left the church, I was

00:53:13really shocked when I heard the Gospel, and I started understanding. I started

00:53:18reading the Bible over and over and over to wash this out of my head, and there

00:53:24wasn't a door closing on the Gospel, you know. The Gospel was to everyone, to

00:53:28anybody who believes Jesus. But we had this mentality that we were the elite

00:53:34group, and the door had closed. And so I can remember clearly while sitting in

00:53:40the church, I would be wondering, well, why aren't we spreading this to the

00:53:44city? If the city's going to die, let's go tell the city. Let's help them so

00:53:47they can be saved too, right? Well, because of my family's position of

00:53:53quote-unquote cult royalty, which I have branded it, I get to see both sides of

00:53:59it. And you would hear these sermons where they're preaching at the people and

00:54:03saying, look at us right here in this evil city, and none of the people in the

00:54:07city will even come to hear the true Gospel. Well, they're not telling the

00:54:11people who's listening that the deacons are actually closing the door in the

00:54:15faces of people who are the outsiders, because like you said, they can recognize

00:54:20the cult members and the non-cult members. And I've actually stood there

00:54:23whenever they were casting the people out of the church who were curious

00:54:29people who came from the streets. So you've got this mentality that the door's

00:54:33closed. We're right at the last days. This is the end. Stick with us. And once you

00:54:39get in that mindset, it gets really, really destructive and dangerous.

00:54:44And you're saying that you saw that with your background, and we are certain that

00:54:51Hobart was a big follower of William Branham. He said, I believe he was God's

00:54:56prophet. So, I mean, there's a common source to all of this. And cult people,

00:55:07the way you recognize them, they talk the talk and walk the walk. They have a

00:55:12certain walk. They have a certain talk. So you can spot who is a part of our group

00:55:16and who isn't. And God helped those that came in off the street looking for a

00:55:23drink of water, of spiritual water, because the terminology being used is just

00:55:29way out in left field. And you see, wow, everyone's marching. It's like the SS.

00:55:36Everybody's marching to the same beat. I've got to pick my foot up and drop it

00:55:39down in the same step with everybody else. If not, I don't stand a chance.

00:55:45How horrible is that? Oh, yeah.

00:55:47Yeah, the cult's loaded language keeps everything together. And so people can

00:55:51identify each other. I have I don't know if it's you I mentioned to or somebody

00:55:56else, but I have a hard time sometimes when I'm interviewing people from

00:56:00different splinter groups of the message because they'll have a different loaded

00:56:04language. And so as as they're talking, I'm I've got multiple monitors up. So

00:56:09I'm going over to this monitor and I'm typing in what they said so I can find

00:56:12what is that phrase that they just said, because I have no idea. But to them,

00:56:17to them, it's so common. They think everybody knows this phrase. Everybody

00:56:20who's a Christian should know what it means to be the midnight cry or whatever

00:56:26is the phrase that they've been taught. Yeah, or the or the man child that you're

00:56:30part of the man child company or the Manifested Sons company. John, there is

00:56:36a there are probably several sites, but there is one main site online that we

00:56:41ought to mention for people that want to go down the rabbit hole with us, because

00:56:47it is it is a it's a site where ex-Faith Assembly people who are maybe still in

00:56:55favor, maybe not in favor, are able to just voice and vent. And it's called

00:57:00Tomax 7, T-O-M-A-X, and then the number seven. And it goes back 20 years ago from

00:57:11now. And you can just I think the guy started it around around 2004, 20 years

00:57:17ago, and has and you can just see posts through the years. But there was one in

00:57:23particular from April of 2008. This person said, when I think of Faith

00:57:29Assembly, I feel great sadness. Sadness for my parents who were so young and

00:57:36enthusiastic and overjoyed to be part of what they thought was a great movement.

00:57:43Sadness for my mother who had to wrestle with untreated depression for so many

00:57:47dark and lonely years. Sadness for their heartfelt beliefs that began to crumble

00:57:53when the unthinkable happened, when Brother Freeman, as I always heard him

00:57:58call, died. Sadness for the youth my siblings and I never experienced, as we

00:58:05were taught so young to redeem the time because the days were evil. Sadness for

00:58:11all the family that we never knew and all the friendships my parents nipped in

00:58:15the bud because we could not associate with even very godly people who did not

00:58:22follow the teachings of Faith Assembly. Sadness for the years of feeling like an

00:58:28immigrant in my own country, of not understanding the cultural references

00:58:34around me, or the casual manner young people use to address their elders, or

00:58:40that wearing a bathing suit does not guarantee your eternal damnation.

00:58:46Sadness for all the times we barely had food in the house, but my father would

00:58:51scrape together a few dollars for the locked wooden box in the back of the

00:58:56church, even if it meant he did not eat or had to forgo his beloved coffee.

00:59:03My mother told me recently that in all those years of counting their deprivation

00:59:09all joy, they spoke with Brother Freeman one time, one time in all those years.

00:59:19They devoted themselves to this man and the message he preached and the God he

00:59:23served. They sat under his teachings Sunday after Sunday, Wednesday after

00:59:27Wednesday, borrowed stacks of his tapes in between services. They left family and

00:59:33friends and education and careers all behind for the sake of the gospel he

00:59:40preached, and likely he didn't even know their names.

00:59:46And it sounds so similar to what I hear in the support groups from people.

00:59:51I know families who their entire livelihood was in one state, but because the cult

00:59:58leader condemned that state or because they moved to another, the cult leader moved to

01:00:03another state, they would upend the whole family and they would go with them and

01:00:08actually had good lives, good businesses.

01:00:10And these people, they forfeit everything.

01:00:14And in the end, they have nothing.

01:00:16And it's really, really sad.

01:00:18That's why I've always kind of been against it and why I saved all these notes, John,

01:00:23about Freeman.

01:00:24I never knew I'd get to use it like this.

01:00:26I always thought I'd just write a book sometime, but it's not to get back at Hobart.

01:00:31Hobart's dead and gone.

01:00:33You know, it doesn't have anything to do with that.

01:00:35It's the fallout.

01:00:37The fallout is devastating from these groups.

01:00:41And if you can't provide some kind of, which you are obviously doing a great job of,

01:00:49reliable, documented, historical evidence and proof, you know, these people are just

01:00:56out there floundering, trying to figure it out on their own.

01:01:01So good job, my friend.

01:01:03Well, thank you.

01:01:04It is quite the history.

01:01:06And I'm with you.

01:01:07The history needs to be documented, good and bad.

01:01:10And what I've found is that after leaving the cults, you find these other groups that

01:01:15are not cult groups, and they value their history.

01:01:19You can go find entire archives.

01:01:21In fact, I've dug through some of them.

01:01:22They've opened the doors to me, and you can find the entire archive of everything in their

01:01:27history, good or bad.

01:01:29And they're proud of it because they say, look, we made this mistake back here, and

01:01:33here's where we corrected it.

01:01:35Versus in the cult, they hide the mistake and pretend it never happened.

01:01:39And history is bound to repeat itself whenever you do this.

01:01:43Yeah.

01:01:43As someone has said, the only thing that we don't learn, the only thing that we learn

01:01:48from history is that we don't learn from history.

01:01:50That's about the only thing we learn from history.

01:01:52But that's a really good point.

01:01:53Yeah.

01:01:53The cults have never made a mistake, but we know that's not true.

01:01:57We know we have all made tons of mistakes.

01:02:01And, you know, the mark of a good person is not that you've never made a mistake.

01:02:06The mark of a good person is that you recognize your mistakes and you've grown from them.

01:02:10That's the mark of maturity in a nutshell.

01:02:13Absolutely.

01:02:14And I must have grown an awful lot.

01:02:19Well, thank you for doing this.

01:02:20We'll get together again.

01:02:21And there's a path this is headed.

01:02:24And I'm getting really excited that we're getting closer to that path because there's

01:02:29a connection that I'm certain that almost none of our listeners are aware of between

01:02:34Hobart Freeman and the NAR.

01:02:37So we're slowly getting there.

01:02:39And there's so much more to unpack.

01:02:41And I feel it's important to unpack it and document it as we go so that we don't lose

01:02:45that history.

01:02:46So.

01:02:46You're right.

01:02:47Thank you so much for doing this.

01:02:49Thank you for having me, John.

01:02:50I appreciate it.

01:02:51It's always good.

01:02:53Well, if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out

01:02:56on the web.

01:02:57You can find us at william-branham.org for an overview of the historical research of

01:03:02William Branham and the healing revivals.

01:03:04Read Preacher Behind the White Hoods, a critical examination of William Branham and his message

01:03:10available on Amazon, Kindle and Audible.

Faith Assembly Turns Destructive - With Chino Ross - Episode 151 Branham Podcast

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