Support the show:
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
Chino's YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@chinodross
John and Chino discuss the legacy of Hobart Freeman, exploring how his doctrines evolved from an encouraging message of faith healing into an authoritarian system of legalism, fear, and disinformation. Drawing from personal experiences and deep historical research, they trace the development of Freeman’s theology and its devastating consequences, including tragic stories of people denied medical care in pursuit of what Freeman taught as “divine order.” Chino also reflects on his own past involvement in Freeman’s ministry and how critical thinking, biblical literacy, and historical context eventually helped him and others disentangle from these damaging teachings.
The discussion broadens to examine the role of extra-biblical sources in promoting fringe doctrines. John exposes how William Branham and others used apocryphal texts and misunderstood ancient literature—such as the Book of Enoch and Dead Sea Scrolls—to construct wild end-times narratives, including UFO teachings. Both hosts critique the fear-based manipulation common to Freeman, Branham, and similar groups, highlighting how false teachings often hinge on misused scripture and pseudo-research. The episode concludes with promises of future deep dives into doctrinal extremism, spiritual abuse, and the misuse of ancient texts to justify modern cult ideologies.
00:00 Introduction
02:51 Hobart Freeman and the Rise of Faith Healing Extremism
09:13 From Healing to Condemnation: Anti-Medicine and Sorcery Doctrines
16:07 Biblical Misuse and Legalistic Indoctrination in Freeman’s Teachings
24:05 Alcohol, Communion, and Doctrinal Hypocrisy in Branham and Pentecostal Circles
31:15 Fear, Control, and the Psychological Toll of Cultic Religion
36:52 Invented Scriptures and “Rapturing Faith” in Branhamism
45:11 Hobart Freeman’s Misuse of the Apocrypha and Fake Scholarship
54:03 Extra-Biblical Sources, UFOs, and the Path to Theological Absurdity
1:00:01 Final Reflections and the Reliability of the Biblical Text
______________________
– 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
https://www.patreon.com/branham
Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts:
https://william-branham.org/podcast
Weaponized Religion: From Christian Identity to the NAR:
Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1735160962
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DCGGZX3K
Chino's YouTube Channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@chinodross
John and Chino discuss the legacy of Hobart Freeman, exploring how his doctrines evolved from an encouraging message of faith healing into an authoritarian system of legalism, fear, and disinformation. Drawing from personal experiences and deep historical research, they trace the development of Freeman’s theology and its devastating consequences, including tragic stories of people denied medical care in pursuit of what Freeman taught as “divine order.” Chino also reflects on his own past involvement in Freeman’s ministry and how critical thinking, biblical literacy, and historical context eventually helped him and others disentangle from these damaging teachings.
The discussion broadens to examine the role of extra-biblical sources in promoting fringe doctrines. John exposes how William Branham and others used apocryphal texts and misunderstood ancient literature—such as the Book of Enoch and Dead Sea Scrolls—to construct wild end-times narratives, including UFO teachings. Both hosts critique the fear-based manipulation common to Freeman, Branham, and similar groups, highlighting how false teachings often hinge on misused scripture and pseudo-research. The episode concludes with promises of future deep dives into doctrinal extremism, spiritual abuse, and the misuse of ancient texts to justify modern cult ideologies.
00:00 Introduction
02:51 Hobart Freeman and the Rise of Faith Healing Extremism
09:13 From Healing to Condemnation: Anti-Medicine and Sorcery Doctrines
16:07 Biblical Misuse and Legalistic Indoctrination in Freeman’s Teachings
24:05 Alcohol, Communion, and Doctrinal Hypocrisy in Branham and Pentecostal Circles
31:15 Fear, Control, and the Psychological Toll of Cultic Religion
36:52 Invented Scriptures and “Rapturing Faith” in Branhamism
45:11 Hobart Freeman’s Misuse of the Apocrypha and Fake Scholarship
54:03 Extra-Biblical Sources, UFOs, and the Path to Theological Absurdity
1:00:01 Final Reflections and the Reliability of the Biblical Text
______________________
– 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
00:00:30Hello, and welcome to another episode of the William Branham Historical Research Podcast.
00:00:37I'm your host, John Collins, the author and founder of William Branham Historical Research
00:00:41at william-branham.org.
00:00:43And with me, I have my co-host, minister, and friend, Cheno Ross, pastor and the voice of
00:00:49The Understanding Scripture and Truth by Cheno D. Ross YouTube channel.
00:00:54Cheno, it's good to be back.
00:00:55And today is a momentous day in world history because so many different groups said that
00:01:04this pope that we had was the Antichrist, and this was the coming end of the world, the
00:01:11doomsday was coming, the end-time army of Christians, the so-called end-time army of Christians was
00:01:18rising up.
00:01:19And so now the pope has passed, so I think that means if the Antichrist died, we have
00:01:25to be living in total bliss.
00:01:28You know, I didn't come prepared with anything on the Roman Catholic papacy, unfortunately.
00:01:35I am teaching this wonderful series that we all are enjoying on the book of Revelation.
00:01:39We're in the end of Chapter 6, so we haven't gotten to the Antichrist and the Mark of the
00:01:45Beast and all these things that people are so fascinated over.
00:01:50But, you know, it's nothing new.
00:01:53John Calvin and Martin Luther thought the papacy was surely somehow connected to the Antichrist,
00:01:58and that was 500 years ago.
00:02:02And the world is still continuing.
00:02:04I think there will be an Antichrist, but I do not think it's the Roman Catholic pope.
00:02:09Yeah, and if anybody has read my research, you understand that this all came from white
00:02:15supremacy.
00:02:17Even the focus on Israel that we have today, the positive focus on Israel, came from the
00:02:23negative focus on Israel, which is a conundrum.
00:02:25But the Christian identity movement, all of these things that we see, that all of these
00:02:31different various cults and cult-like groups point to as the end-time army to battle the
00:02:37– I don't know, I can't even put into words the fantasy world that they've created,
00:02:42but that's what it is.
00:02:43It is a fantasy world.
00:02:44I guess that is putting it into words.
00:02:46But if you take a step back in history to what we're talking about now, we're talking
00:02:52about Hobart Freeman, and he built off of the fantasy world that was created during the
00:02:58post-World War II healing revivals.
00:03:00And so it is a shift through time.
00:03:03If you think about what we're seeing today with all of the various nonsense that's happening
00:03:08in the religious and political world, you still had the political nonsense back then,
00:03:13but the religious things that we're talking about today build up and cascade over time
00:03:19into what we see in the geopolitics and geo-religion.
00:03:23I can't wait, John, until you and I in the future can talk some about this end-time army
00:03:28business.
00:03:28I know you've done that with some other guests.
00:03:32Hobart had his own twist on that, which I'm not going to get into today, and it wasn't
00:03:37Joel's army.
00:03:38It was Gideon's army from an alleged prophecy he had.
00:03:42But all of that is easily traceable back to latter rain movement, that there's going to
00:03:47be this great end-time army and so forth.
00:03:51Um, uh, but I can't wait till we can get to some of that, but where we have been, you
00:03:59know, you're an expert on William Branham's background and you probably didn't know as
00:04:04much as you now know about Hobart Freeman, but now you kind of an expert on Hobart Freeman
00:04:08and people that have followed him, um, over the years or for myself earlier in my life, I
00:04:17was a regular, um, follower, devotee of Hobart Freeman.
00:04:22And I, that's full disclosure.
00:04:25I believed everything that he said when I first heard him when I was 17, 18, up into my early,
00:04:31maybe even up to my mid twenties.
00:04:32You know, it was a process of time.
00:04:35I have tried to explain through these podcasts, how some of that came about, but we all heard
00:04:42his story.
00:04:43I was a bard in 1952 and I just heard that story literally a hundred times in the messages
00:04:50that I listened to.
00:04:51And I didn't recognize what was going on back then, but I, I do now anytime that, because
00:04:59I didn't have the experience, I didn't have anything to judge or filter things with, but
00:05:04any, now if I hear a minister and he tells the same story too many times about himself,
00:05:10I go, uh, there's not, there's an issue here.
00:05:13I, I always come to church to hear about Jesus and God in the Bible, not about you.
00:05:18And we've had this conversation before, but in looking back, Hobart city got saved on the
00:05:24way home from a nightclub in 1952 in Tampa, Florida.
00:05:28And I don't know exactly when did he get saved?
00:05:33Was it on the road in the car?
00:05:36It could have been, I don't know.
00:05:38I just think he told that story because it sounds like a Saul on the road to Damascus kind
00:05:44of story.
00:05:44It just sounds like a, a, a radical conversion.
00:05:49And I'm not saying that it wasn't.
00:05:52I'm just saying the story was told the same way he was on the way home from a nightclub.
00:05:58It makes it sound like, what were you doing at a nightclub?
00:06:01When you hear all the stories, he was a photographer and he was trying to sell some glamor shots to
00:06:06some of the starlets there and business wasn't good.
00:06:10They declined to make any purchase.
00:06:12And so he went home dejected and somehow God used that experience to bring him to Christ.
00:06:18And I'm, I'm not doubting that, but it's just the stories.
00:06:22And so then he's teaching this healing message and he believes that this is the message that
00:06:28God has given him.
00:06:29And early on, as we discussed last time, John, it was a very positive message.
00:06:35It was something new that I had not heard.
00:06:39Neither had a lot of people that perhaps God would heal you.
00:06:44That's the kind of the way that it was.
00:06:47Perhaps he has provided healing for you.
00:06:49And perhaps all you need to do is ask him to heal you and he will heal you.
00:06:55And that was wonderful.
00:06:58That was good news, especially for people who were really sick.
00:07:02I wasn't because I was a teenager and I didn't have anything wrong with me at the time.
00:07:07But it was good news for people who were sick.
00:07:10And unfortunately, it was a trap and even a death trap.
00:07:13It became for people who had serious illnesses.
00:07:17But as you follow Hobart from 1974, two years after they moved in the glory barn, to 1984,
00:07:27the year that he died, just a 10-year period, you'll see a drastic shift in the tone of the
00:07:32message.
00:07:33It went from, thank God he's provided healing for us in Jesus and we can ask him.
00:07:40And I don't have anything wrong with a simple message along that line.
00:07:44Pray to God for your healing and ask him to heal you.
00:07:46It went from that to, you better trust God, not a privilege, but an obligation.
00:07:57Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.
00:07:58Romans 14, 23, they love to quote, out of its context, by the way, as they did everything.
00:08:05You better trust God.
00:08:06If you don't trust God, you're going to have a judgment come upon you.
00:08:10And then it went from that, you're thinking, oh, wow, I don't, man, I've got to trust God.
00:08:16Well, what about medicine and the doctors?
00:08:19Then that became the last part of his healing message.
00:08:23It wasn't a healing message.
00:08:25It was an anti-doctor message is what he'd become.
00:08:29He did not teach about the wonder and privilege and glorious opportunity that the believer has
00:08:35to trust Jesus.
00:08:36It was all about the medical statistics.
00:08:40It was all about doctors are evil.
00:08:43They're bad.
00:08:45He began doing his pseudo research on Greek terms like pharmakia in the New Testament.
00:08:54And that was never, you could never find a reference to that.
00:08:57I challenge anyone on any of the tapes in the 1970s.
00:09:00That was purely early 80s after they were in the new building when he is trying to bring
00:09:08the hammer down hard on this healing message and trying to force people.
00:09:16I mean, put it out there as an option that God has provided healing and invite people.
00:09:21Why don't you trust him to heal you?
00:09:23And leave it at that.
00:09:24But, you know, Hobart was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, and he was not going to leave well
00:09:28enough alone.
00:09:29He was going to force you to follow his method.
00:09:34And so you were warned of the fact that drugs, pharmakia, really means sorcery, and that all
00:09:43medicines and all medicinal herbs and any kind of thing that could possibly be called medicine,
00:09:50because the word for sorcery in the King James has as his Greek pharmakia, oh, then that somehow
00:09:59has to do with pharmacy and pharmacology, and that has to do with drugs.
00:10:04And so that means this was just pseudo research and pseudo science on his part, that anything
00:10:12that has to do with pharmakia is definitely demonic evil spirit in origin.
00:10:19And so then it got so bad, John, by the very end, because people were continuing to have
00:10:25so many struggles in their lives, his message of healing didn't deliver people.
00:10:32People still had it.
00:10:33They were claiming that they were delivered, but they weren't.
00:10:36So the search was always on for what is the problem?
00:10:43What's the missing ingredient?
00:10:45What have we not done right?
00:10:47Oh, Hobart found it.
00:10:49You need to go back to even your childhood days when your parents put you on penicillin when
00:10:57you were five years old.
00:10:59You need to find the names of all of these drugs, and you need to name those as a demonic
00:11:06spirit and take yourself through deliverance, casting those demons out of you or away from
00:11:14you or whatever the terminology would be, in effect, closing those open doors, which had
00:11:21allowed demons access into your life, which had prevented you from experiencing your healing.
00:11:27And of course, I smile when I say this, because at the end of the day, after all that had been
00:11:32said and done, the people still had the same sickness.
00:11:37So the proof was in the pudding that deliverance did not deliver them.
00:11:40You know, Cheno, I study things to no end, and it is to my downfall in many cases, because
00:11:47I go down some pretty good rabbit holes.
00:11:49But I grew up in a teetotalistic religion.
00:11:53You know, we were not allowed any alcohol whatsoever.
00:11:56Alcohol was the devil.
00:11:58And I was indoctrinated to the extent that as a child, I thought, well, I'm sad to say
00:12:05this, even as an adult, I thought that even if you had like a little tablespoon, you'd
00:12:09just get fallout drunk, because it was so indoctrinated in my head, man.
00:12:14And the first time I got around somebody who was actually drinking, I was like, wait a minute,
00:12:18they're not fallout drunk.
00:12:19They're actually normal people.
00:12:22But I did a study because the medicine thing really bothered me in the cult of William Branham.
00:12:28We weren't to the level and extreme that Hobart Freeman was, but it was preached against.
00:12:34And they wanted to preach it in such a way where they couldn't come out and tell you,
00:12:39don't take the medicine, because, oh, by the way, they might get sued if they did.
00:12:43Instead, they wanted to project into your mind that it was wrong for you to take it, or it
00:12:49was dangerous for you to take it.
00:12:51So when they're preaching in the Branham cults, and this actually spread throughout all
00:12:55Pentecostalism, they would talk about the medicine, and then they would shift to God
00:13:00as the healer, and they would quote the scriptures, then they would shift back to, and look what
00:13:04we have today.
00:13:05You go to the doctor, and you take this little pill, and that pill, you read the little warning
00:13:09signs on it, and it's got a list of warning signs longer than this pulpit.
00:13:13I've heard, I can't tell you how many sermons.
00:13:16And so I remember, I was just thinking through my mind about that, and I was researching Branham
00:13:24and his history, and I found some weird oddities during Prohibition.
00:13:30In fact, I found another William Branham, and his mother had the same name as our William
00:13:38Branham's name, but they were running whiskey, and they got caught in Pikeville, Kentucky.
00:13:42So then my mind jumped from, okay, now we've got a whiskey dealer.
00:13:45Is it the same Branham?
00:13:46I don't know.
00:13:48Interestingly, I still don't know, but that led me to thinking about how medicine was made,
00:13:54because they were largely, during Prohibition era, they were running medicine, medicinal
00:13:59whiskey, and that's how the mob was getting their whiskey.
00:14:03So I got to thinking about that, and that led me to, whenever you get a cold, the old
00:14:08Kentucky people used to pour some honey and some cinnamon, and they would drink that,
00:14:13and it was a great whiskey cure.
00:14:15So then I did a study, a full study on just medicine in general.
00:14:19How much of it has alcohol in it?
00:14:21And everything from scope, you know, when you're taking mouthwash, to NyQuil, to some
00:14:27of it had stronger levels of whiskey than if you were to go buy a beer.
00:14:33It got to that weird extreme.
00:14:36And then I shifted over to, I got down, I got to thinking about the, all of the statements
00:14:43that they talked about, similar to what you just said about the evil sorcerers in the Bible,
00:14:49and how they would produce their own type of medicine, and that was evil, and today we
00:14:54have God, and God is our medicine.
00:14:56It was that kind of thing, similar to what Hobart would have said.
00:15:00So I did a study on it, and the ancient cultures did have medicine, and the witch doctors, the
00:15:07sorcerers, all of the different medicinal people had ways of coming up with it.
00:15:12So I'll give you an example, in ancient Egypt, they found that the bark of the willow tree,
00:15:17when scraped and purified, would cure common pain elements, like if you had a headache,
00:15:24you would take it, and it was the bark of a willow tree.
00:15:27Well, modern world, the aspirin originated from the bark of a willow tree.
00:15:33So if you're taking an aspirin today, you're actually doing the same thing as the sorcerers
00:15:37and the witch doctors of old. It's just in a different form of purification. The difference
00:15:44is, the ancient world claimed that it was an ancient evil deity that was giving them
00:15:50this power, and instead, they were just using bark of a willow tree, or different things
00:15:54like this. So every argument that I could find in the divine healing movement that applied
00:16:01to medicine and doctors, all of it, was complete fiction and mythology.
00:16:05And as you say all this, John, my mind races to all these different thoughts I've had in
00:16:10the past, and all of the things I've heard Hobart say. You started on alcohol, which took
00:16:16me to Paul's statement to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, drink no longer water, but drink a little
00:16:23wine for your stomach's sake and for your often infirmities. And it was so interesting how
00:16:30he would deal with that verse. And again, I always have to say, when you're 17 years old,
00:16:39everything you're hearing is new. You're hearing it for the first time. It takes a little time,
00:16:45and it takes a little growth and maturity to hear him explain that now for the third and
00:16:5315th time. And you go, no, wait a minute, something's not making sense. And there were
00:16:58two things about that. One, John, is he was very much, just like you said, you guys were,
00:17:04he was opposed to all alcohol for any reason. And the argument was, well, in American culture,
00:17:11we have a problem of alcoholism, and they didn't have that in Israel. And I thought,
00:17:20what, have you never read the Old Testament? How many drunkards and how many warnings there are
00:17:26against drinking too much? The warnings were against drinking too much. The warnings were not
00:17:31against drinking at all. It was just about drinking too much. So I thought, that's not even,
00:17:38that's not a true, accurate, faithful statement. So you're going to, even though Paul told Timothy to
00:17:46drink wine, and that's in the Bible, we can't drink wine because we live in America. So it just seemed
00:17:51like, number one, he was culturalizing everything. And number two, he was denying that they had an
00:17:58alcohol problem in Old Testament Israel. But then the other point about that was, what about Timothy not
00:18:06just claiming, by his stripes, I am healed? Why didn't he recommend Timothy to do that? Why didn't
00:18:15he rebuke Timothy for his lack of faith? Why didn't he get on Timothy's case for even being sick in the
00:18:22first place? And then finally, why, instead of doing those things, which he didn't do, why did he tell
00:18:31Timothy, here's what you need to do? You need to drink some wine, and that will help you with your
00:18:39stomach condition and with your often infirmities. That's what the text actually says. That's what it
00:18:47says. And I'm just not comfortable. This is where we all need to be in our life. We should not be
00:18:54comfortable taking the text and saying, well, let me see if I can make it mean what I want it to mean,
00:19:00or say what I want it to say. Just leave it there. And then it gives us the opportunity to change our
00:19:05own theology. And that's what we end up having to do. Anytime you read a verse and you're not
00:19:09comfortable with it, there's nothing wrong with the verse. There's something wrong with me. If I'm
00:19:14reading a verse and I'm not comfortable with it, the problem is with me, not with the text. So if I let
00:19:20the text stand, then I see an example of someone who was not told by the apostle Paul, just claim
00:19:28your healing. He was told, drink some wine. And then Hobart would go on. The other problem I had
00:19:35that I just, to this day, would shake my head over, Hobart still trying to get around anyone being able
00:19:44to use that verse against his healing theology and philosophy. And so he would say, well, now you
00:19:50got to remember, you know, because he would say, I've been to Israel. I've been over to the Middle
00:19:56East. And you got to remember, you know, water's bad over there. And those of us in America, we're
00:20:00not used to that water. And so when we go over there, you know, we can't drink the water. And so
00:20:06that's why Paul was telling that to Timothy. And then I'm saying to myself, Timothy's not from Indiana.
00:20:11Wait a minute. Timothy was a native. He was used to the water. Timothy's not from Indiana.
00:20:19He's a local person there. So Hobart was bringing up this argument based on his cultural context,
00:20:26living in northern Indiana, that has nothing to do with Timothy, nothing to do with Paul,
00:20:32nothing to do with the verse, nothing to do with the context. And it was just dozens,
00:20:38literally, John, of episodes like that, like you have experienced in your life, dozens and dozens
00:20:44of episodes like that told me, wait a minute, this guy, Hobart Freeman, does not know what he's
00:20:52talking about. He either knowingly is deceiving people and knows that he's doing it, or he is so
00:20:58confused and deceived himself, he can't help but teach deception. But one way or the other,
00:21:03this man is not right. You're bringing back so many memories, man, both in the cult and after the
00:21:10cult. We grew up, and this is common across Pentecostalism. So when I say this, I'm probably
00:21:16going to be laughing and poking fun. And this is important to Pentecostals. But please understand,
00:21:21I'm not making fun of you directly. Just the absurdity of it is kind of funny. But whenever I was
00:21:27in the cult, I read my Bible, I'm one of the few Christians who has read their Bible. Sadly,
00:21:34I'm learning that there's just so many that don't. And that's why we have the message that we have.
00:21:38They have no idea what is in it. But I'm reading it, and I'm understanding what is the communion
00:21:44that Jesus is talking about. And it's all about fellowship. He's given an example, come together.
00:21:51When you come together, think of me, and the examples he gives, like the foot washing.
00:21:57This is the lowest form of nastiness in all of the ancient world, because everybody wore the sandals,
00:22:04you're walking through the sand, your feet get nasty. So when he's doing this, he's literally
00:22:09showing them to humble themselves to the lowest possible servant, and be that way to other people.
00:22:16Give yourself freely to other people and be a servant to one another. And the wine, come together
00:22:22in your homes, in your small groups, in your churches. Whenever you come together, fellowship
00:22:27and drink wine. The greatest miracle of all the miracles was the turning of water into wine. And
00:22:33yet, we were not allowed to drink wine in the Branham cults. And largely throughout Pentecostalism,
00:22:40this is a thing.
00:22:41Yeah. So I'm sitting here, my mind was a curious mind growing up. I'm sitting here thinking
00:22:46of all of that. In a communion and foot washing service, they combine those two in the Pentecostal
00:22:53religions. So everybody lines up and they go wash everybody's otherwise clean feet that's
00:22:59under their socks. And I'm thinking, this in no way, shape, or form matches what they're
00:23:04doing in the Bible. It's becoming a ceremony. It's ceremonial, and it really doesn't serve
00:23:10the same purpose that Jesus was doing it. That's the thought that went through my head.
00:23:14Right or wrong? If you're Pentecostal, I'm not making fun of you. That's just my thought
00:23:18process. But then a step further. Right before we did this, we all lined up and we went to
00:23:24the pulpit and we drank wine. In a church that is telling you that when you get together outside
00:23:29of this building, you cannot drink wine. But oh, by the way, we're going to just ignore
00:23:35our doctrines entirely while you're in this building. For one time a month, we're going
00:23:39to do this. And I'm sitting here thinking about the absurdity of that. And I just started laughing.
00:23:46People next to me in the service are looking at me, why is John laughing in the communion service?
00:23:50But it's just absurd and it's kind of funny when you think about it. But the thought came to me,
00:23:58whenever you're talking about Timothy, drink a little wine for your stomach. During the times
00:24:04that this was, I was an adult. I was married. We were in the Branham cult and I was drinking wine.
00:24:11And I got to thinking about that first, drink a little wine for your stomach. And the thought
00:24:14actually came into my head, man, I sure wish I could drink a little wine because I have acid reflux
00:24:19disease. And my stomach is constantly upset at that point in my life. So this was, you know,
00:24:28I can't remember what year that hit me, but I was in the cult until age 37. So maybe it was 10 years,
00:24:3315. I don't know what it was. But for this long period of time, I had acid reflux disease and I
00:24:40struggled to eat anything. If I eat pizza, it was like eating broken glass when it went into my stomach.
00:24:46After I left the cult, I had, it's a long story, which I've told in other places. I won't hear,
00:24:52but long story short is I got convinced to drink a glass of wine and it cured all kinds of ailments.
00:25:01I had severe chronic depression due to anxiety and just a little bit of wine a week would cut the anxiety.
00:25:10And I want to say it was only three months. I was off of my, my, um, depression meds and anxiety
00:25:17meds because of this. Now I can't say it was 100% of the wine. I also left a cult. So it could have
00:25:23been that too, but long story short, I drank wine and I was able to get off of that. And also I have,
00:25:32so I have been off of my depression medication and my acid reflux medication since that day in,
00:25:41I think that was the year 2012 or 2013. Wow. Just from a little wine for the stomach,
00:25:48just by doing what Paul said. Wow. Well, John, I didn't know this would become, um,
00:25:54uh, an interview and podcast on wine drinking on wine bibbers. But you know, in our, in our country,
00:26:01we have obviously in our, in United States of America, we have a long confusing and checkered
00:26:07history with alcohol. You know, we had an amendment to the constitution that said, no, no more of this.
00:26:14Nobody can ever drink again. It was called the prohibition era. And then of course that got repealed.
00:26:20So we have obviously in our country struggled with the whole question of alcohol, but I don't think
00:26:26that's any different than probably any culture. And so as a result, what Hobart, you know,
00:26:34thought the best thing to do is just outlaw it completely. I find it interesting that in your
00:26:39communion services, you would drink wine, but of course it was outlawed outside. Whereas in most of
00:26:45the Freeman circles, of course it was outlawed outside the church, but they would use great juice.
00:26:50And always, we never, in my church, when I was, um, a pastor and a teacher and we'd had communion,
00:26:57we had wine, um, because I believe that's what they had in the Bible. And because there wasn't
00:27:02any reason not to. And I know the arguments, the arguments are what if there's a former alcoholic in
00:27:08the church and he has a little thimble full of wine and he's going to go back drinking. And of course
00:27:13that's always possible. And, and of course we don't want to do anything that would cause a brother
00:27:18to stumble. But I just don't think that's a weighty enough argument to, to bring grape juice
00:27:25into the service. Um, I just think that obviously Paul and they, as you just said, in the first
00:27:34miracle that Jesus performed was turning water into wine. And that was after they had already
00:27:39consumed all the available alcohol. And then he turns the water into wine. I think this is in the
00:27:46early chapters of John's gospel in John two. You know, that, and that would, to me also was a
00:27:52fascinating story and I couldn't get past. That's what our Lord and savior did. And I couldn't get
00:28:01past that to agree with Hobart that all alcohol is wrong and use this. Well, we live in America and
00:28:10we have alcohol, alcohol problems. And so that's why it needs to be outlawed. I just saw, no,
00:28:15they had huge alcohol problems in Israel. Just read the old Testament prophets. They had huge
00:28:21problems and there were constant warnings. Um, there are constant warnings in the book of Proverbs
00:28:27of not over drinking, but to be a teetotaler. No, that was never taught in the old Testament. It was
00:28:35never taught in the new Testament. And looking back on our struggle as an American society with the
00:28:43whole problem. And then you mix in with that, the holiness Pentecostal movement that just wanted to
00:28:50make sure nobody had any way to have any measure of fun regarding anything. Um, I mean, it was like
00:28:57the Puritans all over again. That's the old definition of the, a Puritanism, the secret fear
00:29:02that someone somewhere might be having fun in their life. You know, God forbid that happened. That's what
00:29:08Puritanism was all about. That's probably, um, a caricature of Puritanism, but it's similar
00:29:14to the Pentecostal holiness movement. Let's make sure women are covered from head to toe
00:29:21where you can't see any skin because God forbid a man may see some skin and lust and it'll be her fault
00:29:29that he lusted after her. You know, that is just the most bizarre, crazy stuff. I mean,
00:29:36how could anyone teach and believe nonsense like that? Lust comes from within the heart.
00:29:42You as a man have to deal with that yourself. It didn't have anything to do with her. Quit putting
00:29:46all that on her. So you, so you take, you take all this away from people, which is what we spent
00:29:52some time earlier talking about John with Hobart. He was a master at that, taking away your games and
00:29:59your clothes and your jobs and your education and your bank loans and your medicine and your wine and
00:30:07your beer. And he just took everything away. Just so you're laser focused on him, his church, his
00:30:16ministry, his message. And we know that does not produce a healthy situation. That is the most unhealthy
00:30:25social environment you could possibly find. The poor little boys and girls, they couldn't date.
00:30:31It's almost like an arranged marriage. And if you ever had as a young boy, you know, kind of a thought
00:30:37about sex. Oh, that you're damned to hell for that. That's a normal thought when you're 18 and 21 years
00:30:45old. That thought doesn't damn you to hell. You need to be, they needed to be instructed how to handle
00:30:52that, how to deal with that. And they say they were, but they weren't. It's just everything was spooky,
00:31:00spooky, no, no, demon, demon. Everything was. And those poor people did not have, they did not have a chance
00:31:08to grow up normal and turn out normal. And consequently, when some of them finally did get out of the faith
00:31:18assembly cult, they might have gone a little too far the other direction. And I don't blame them.
00:31:25And I can't fault them for that. And I don't think, you know, as long as you rebound back to the middle
00:31:31of the road where you need to be, I think that's fine. That's a normal human experience. When you have
00:31:37been in a religious cult that has literally said no to everything except Bible study and prayer on your
00:31:45knees, they've said no to everything. Then people come out of that and maybe they have never even had
00:31:53alcohol before. Some of them haven't. And, you know, just a small amount, they're probably underneath
00:31:59the table over that. And then they feel terribly guilty. That's not the unpardonable sin. You're simply
00:32:06trying to navigate your way out of a very dangerous and destructive religious cult. And some people did it
00:32:13better than others. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement started or how the
00:32:18progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the latter reign, charismatic and other
00:32:24fringe movements into the new apostolic reformation? You can learn this and more on William Branham
00:32:30Historical Research's website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find the
00:32:38compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John McKinnon and others with
00:32:45links to the paper, audio and digital versions of each book. You can also find resources and
00:32:51documentation on various people and topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the
00:32:57cause, you can support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as always,
00:33:03be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're listening to or watching.
00:33:09On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we want to thank you for your support.
00:33:13I know it seems I'm getting off topic a bit, but there's actually a method to my madness.
00:33:19So I understand that the Hobart Freeman cult had different rules, but in Branhamism, we had a set of
00:33:27rules that developed into the Hobart Freeman's rules. The medicine doctrines that we had,
00:33:33obviously, were not nearly so crippling as they were with Hobart Freeman. The alcoholism, that,
00:33:38you know, it may have stayed the same to some extent. However, in the Branhamite cults,
00:33:45what happened is they came up with these sets of rules, and they're trying to build the notion
00:33:52in your minds that if you can get enough, we called it rapturing faith. If you can get enough faith,
00:33:58you can make it into the rapture. You too, friend, can make it into the rapture. And they would preach
00:34:04these sermons that would just make you scared to death that you was going to miss it. One in a
00:34:08million. There's only one in a million. And even Branham invented Bible verses by combining and merging
00:34:17and manipulating multiple verses, smashing them into one, and then coming up with a new verse that
00:34:24would scare the bejesus out of you. And it reminded me, I don't know if you remember the Super Bowl
00:34:28commercials. I think it was a Budweiser commercial. One guy would say, I want to watch ballet. In other
00:34:34words, I want to watch sumo wrestling. Let's do both. And they'd smash the beer down, and you'd see a
00:34:39sumo wrestler in a ballerina outfit, right? That's what Branham did with Bible verses. And the one that
00:34:47was the most problematic, he used a verse, and I'm drawing a blank off of where these come from,
00:34:53but you can type it in on my website. But one passage was talking about the family of Noah,
00:34:58and it said, wherein God was so faithful that one single family out of the entire face of the planet,
00:35:04he cared so much about them that he protected them and saved them through the flood. That's
00:35:10essentially what the verse is saying, if you read in the proper context of that verse.
00:35:15And then the other one had a different context, but talking about the same story,
00:35:20talking about how the world back then was evil, and only so many people were spared in Noah's family,
00:35:27right? Well, Branham combined those two to say that he took another verse, which was,
00:35:33as it was in the days of Noah, so also shall it be in the coming of the Son of Man. Well,
00:35:40in the manifested Sons of God doctrine, Branham was the coming of the Son of Man. You had to believe
00:35:45this nonsense. And he combined those three passages to invent the saying that as it was,
00:35:53as it is going to be in the coming of the day of the Son of Man, it will be the same that it was in
00:35:59Noah wherein only eight souls were saved. And so you're sitting there literally thinking there's
00:36:05only going to be eight people. And that I think his, it was one of his more famous sermons. I think
00:36:11it was called One in a Million or something like this. It was literally projecting the idea that
00:36:15it would be just this little, little tiny elite group. And oh, by the way, they must believe me as
00:36:20the prophet. That's how this worked. What happened was they didn't have the rapturing faith. They
00:36:27didn't make it into heaven like he claimed. And they were trying to earn their way into heaven by
00:36:33piling all of these rules on the heads of the people, added weights on their shoulders. And so
00:36:39what happened when they didn't make it? Well, let's add a new rule. Maybe we don't have enough rules
00:36:44to earn our way into heaven, to earn our salvation. And it turned, it basically flipped the gospel
00:36:51upside down, where you're no longer looking at Jesus as the means for your salvation. You're
00:36:56looking at what you can do off of the own sweat of your back. That's literally how this comes out to
00:37:02be. And that thought really didn't hit me until after I left. And I was thinking through, in fact,
00:37:09you mentioned the skin. I was thinking through just simply that. So God created all of the human race.
00:37:17And you really think that God is going to find the skin that he created objectionable. And that led
00:37:23me down one of these other rabbit trails of study. I was studying, what does it mean? The Pentecostal
00:37:30faith likes to use that passage. I can't remember what book it's from, but it's basically,
00:37:35be adorned in modest apparel. And what is modesty? So I got to thinking about, we had,
00:37:41at that time, I was in a different church than my family goes to now. They were sending out
00:37:47missionaries into, I think it was Haiti, right after the big tornado hit, or big monsoon had hit
00:37:54there. So they were helping to rebuild, and they were going down there. And the pastor told the people
00:37:59that were going, now don't dress fancy. Don't wear a bunch of jewelry. We're going to a bunch of
00:38:04really poor people. And we don't want to show ourselves like we're the rich elite. We just
00:38:10want to wear casual, everyday clothes. And it suddenly hit me what Paul was saying in that
00:38:14passage. As you're going out, don't dress like you're better than the people you're going to
00:38:19witness to. Had really not, I don't think it had anything to do with skin, because you can't really
00:38:25say that God doesn't like the skin that he created.
00:38:28Yeah. And we've talked about this, John. That is just a hallmark of Freeman's ministry,
00:38:33especially the last five or six or seven years. It became law upon law upon law. And we have had
00:38:41this discussion before that it definitely did obfuscate the gospel, where you couldn't even
00:38:47see the gospel anymore. All you could see were all of those legalisms. And he would tell the stories
00:38:54to frighten people. So as I was saying earlier in our discussion today on this message of divine
00:39:01healing, which became not a message of divine healing, it became a message against medical
00:39:09science. He talked about that all the time. He would go to a healing verse or a healing passage.
00:39:17And as I said last week, they would have a communion service. And he would say, we're going to talk
00:39:21about the redemption of the full man. And you'd think, okay, we're going to hear something about
00:39:25salvation. No, it's about the body again. He never gave a message on the full man. He was always on
00:39:32the healing of the body, not the healing of the soul at all. And I, again, as I began to hear these
00:39:37things that over the years, I thought something is way out of balance here. And so rather than talk of
00:39:44the positive side of healing, he would tell stories, which he did not do early on, of people who had gone
00:39:51to the doctor and who had died. So those are those fear tactics that you just, you should not be using
00:40:00as a Christian minister. And, and so if someone did go to the doctor, they're basically under the,
00:40:07the disfellowshipping eye and attitude of the church. I told the story of the family who was a part of
00:40:15Jeff Barnett's group down in that Whiteland or new Whiteland area, South of Indianapolis.
00:40:21And Jeff Barnett was a Freemanite. He's no longer that today. He wears glasses, goes to the doctor,
00:40:27celebrates Easter, Christmas, everything, you know, but has never apologized to everyone for
00:40:34being so mean spirited toward people who did those things earlier in his ministry.
00:40:40So he had a family where the husband, he had ruptured, he had ruptured his, um, insides and
00:40:49he was in the hospital for 21 days. He was going to die. It was a terrible situation. And rather than,
00:40:59you know, run to the aid of the family, the family from the pulpit, because the wife of the husband has
00:41:09told me this story and I have told this before, but it comes to my mind again, because it's such
00:41:14a glaring example from the pulpit, the, the family and the man in particular are mocked rather than
00:41:24mourned. If going to the doctor is a sin and he committed a sin, those of you that are spiritual
00:41:31in the spirit of meekness should build up the brother and build up the family and encourage them
00:41:36and get them back on the right track and right path to serving God. That's what the Bible says.
00:41:41If that is a sin, if that is a sin, you should do everything you can to restore and encourage and
00:41:49build them up. Of course, that's not a sin to go to the doctor when your intestines or your appendix
00:41:55rather has ruptured and you're going to die. Of course, that's not a sin to go to the doctor,
00:42:00but when they did go to the doctor, then from the pulpit, they're mocked. It's, it's, um, it's an,
00:42:07they are made fun of. Well, now we just want to warn all of you brothers and sisters out there.
00:42:13We've, we've had a brother who has turned to the arm of the flesh in his time of need. Instead of
00:42:21seeking God, he has gone and sought the medicine man instead of the son of man. Hobart had stupid
00:42:29sermon titles on things like that. Instead of following the son of man, you're following the
00:42:34medicine man. And this poor family almost lost their husband and their father. This is not a
00:42:42Christian group. I'm sorry, people. This is not a Christian group who would have someone go through
00:42:49an experience like that. And rather than if they sin, mourn for them and restore them. If they haven't
00:42:55sinned. And if they have regardless, be right there beside them as Christian brothers and sisters
00:43:02be there for their aid. And the pastor, the leader, Jeff Barnett of all people should have been at the
00:43:11hospital ministering to the man should have been with the family, making sure the wife and the kids
00:43:19are taken care of. So my point is, I know I'm belaboring it, but my point is Hobart would use
00:43:26these stories. His little underling ministers would use these stories of doom and gloom, dire threats
00:43:35and judgment and punishment and illness and death and demons are going to possess you. This, this was
00:43:43the message. It was not a happy message of let's hold hands and trust God for our healing together.
00:43:49It was, you better not go to the doctor. And then later in his life, you know, then he began to look
00:43:55for the medical statistics, which became just a joke. It was just a complete joke, but it was a scare
00:44:02tactic of his where he would read the number of times a doctor had misdiagnosed something, the number of
00:44:09times that the left leg was to be amputated and they amputated the right one. Whoops, my bad. Sorry.
00:44:15You know, now you've got no legs. He would tell these stories and people would go, wow, that's what
00:44:20they do at the hospital. You know, cause people hadn't been in a while because they had been warned
00:44:25and threatened. You better not go. And so their only source of information, the pipeline was Hobart
00:44:32Freeman's mouth. And he was getting that from Reader's Digest, from Newsweek and from Time Magazine.
00:44:38That was the extent of his research. And they would say, wow, I didn't know they cut off the wrong
00:44:45limbs when you go to the hospital. I'm never going to go to the hospital if that's what they do.
00:44:51He would talk about them butchering people. And of course, the doctors occasionally make a mistake,
00:44:59but they're in the minority or they would not be in business today. All humans would be dead if that
00:45:06was the track record of all doctors. And so then I stumbled across another little interesting
00:45:14statistic that I'm going to have to set the scene for to make sure people understand this. But you've
00:45:21got to follow my train of thought is I'm working my way through, first of all, believing everything
00:45:28Hobart said, because he's got all these verses in the Bible, to looking at the Timothy and his wine,
00:45:34to looking at all of these situations that I don't think Hobart did justice to, to hearing
00:45:42all the terrible stories of people dying in the hospital, to him turning a healing message into a
00:45:50bad medical statistics message, to pharmakia being sorcery, and so all drugs have demonic origins.
00:45:58And I'm just saying, this is not at all what the Bible has to say. And it's not even what Hobart
00:46:05had to say 10 years earlier. And so then, you know, I am really paying attention. And so in a message,
00:46:12John, entitled, people can look this up themselves, in a message entitled, Strange Fire, Part 4.
00:46:20Let me set the scene. Hobart was teaching a new series of messages in 1982
00:46:25that he called restoration of divine order. You know, everything's out of order, everything's in
00:46:32disorder. And God is, in these last days, restoring divine order. The first four messages were entitled
00:46:40Strange Fire. And many ministers have preached messages on strange fire. It has to do with Nadab and
00:46:46Abihu, the two older sons of Aaron, who offered an unauthorized incense on their censer that was strictly
00:46:54prescribed exactly how that incense was to be made. They offered a strange incense, which was strictly
00:47:01forbidden under the Mosaic law, and they both died as a result of that. And so Hobart took that type
00:47:10and said that ministers today who are teaching shepherdship, bondage, the JDS, heresy, whatever
00:47:18strange fire you're offering to the Lord, he was going to correct that. And then in the next tapes,
00:47:24he went on with divine order in the home. And, you know, you know where that went. That was
00:47:28Hobart's order. That wasn't divine order. So on the fourth tape, he gives a quotation from the
00:47:38apocryphal book known as Ecclesiasticus. Now, we all know in the Bible, there's a book called
00:47:45Ecclesiastes. If you were raised Roman Catholic, and you have a Roman Catholic translation such as the
00:47:53Jerusalem Bible, and I even taught some messages on all of this, so I'm fairly familiar with this.
00:47:58The Catholic translation, one of them is the Jerusalem Bible, and it has books that the
00:48:05Protestant Bible does not have in it. It has a list of books called the Apocrypha,
00:48:10things like 1 and 2 Estrus and 1 and 2 Maccabees, and one of the books is Ecclesiasticus,
00:48:17not Ecclesiastes. And so I'm listening to this tape. It's the fourth one entitled Strange Fire,
00:48:24and Hobart comes across a verse from Ecclesiasticus, and it's chapter 38 and verse 15.
00:48:33And I'll just read his quote, and then I'll tell you what is the insurmountable problem with him
00:48:42bringing this up and trying to use it in the way that he does. Ecclesiasticus 38, 15.
00:48:50This is Hobart's quote. If you have an Apocrypha, you can go read it yourself. He that has sinned
00:48:58against his maker, let him fall into the hand of the physician. And then he laughs afterwards.
00:49:06People wonder about what Israel's opinion was. You can get it from the Bible. You can also get it
00:49:15from some extra biblical books. They thought that was sufficient punishment. The worst punishment they
00:49:22could think of, just let him be sent to the doctor and let him practice some medicine. Oh boy, I like
00:49:30that. So he's got this quote, if a man sins against his maker, let him fall into the hands of the
00:49:38doctor. And Hobart said, see, that's even an extra biblical proof of what the Jewish attitude was
00:49:46towards medical science, that they were opposed to medical science. But guess what? I just so
00:49:52happened, when I heard that later, I just so happened to be teaching a long series in our church
00:49:59on biblical and extra biblical literature. I think I spent five years on it. I have over 240 messages
00:50:07where I was simply working our way through biblical languages. How do we end up with our canon of Old
00:50:15Testament and New Testament? What was the process and principles behind canonicity? To the manuscripts,
00:50:23you know, we didn't have books. We didn't have paper and pen. So what were the methods and materials of
00:50:30writing? So we looked at parchment. We looked at papyri, what those materials were. We looked at the
00:50:36unshules, the codices, the minuscules. We looked at all of this technical stuff. And then we got into
00:50:42Bible translations. And then I did some study on the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha. And so I have a
00:50:49message. It was done on August the 16th of 1985, where I am teaching on Ecclesiasticus. And I was
00:50:58able to share this complete misrepresentation of the text by Hobart Freeman with the people I was
00:51:05teaching. The first half of Ecclesiasticus chapter 38 is in praise of medical science, their skills and
00:51:14their blessing and their wisdom and the tactics and the techniques. It is all in praise of medical
00:51:22science. It is not against medical science. And so when my people were wondering, well, how in the
00:51:30world was Hobart able to come up with that verse? I said, I can only guess. But what I would guess,
00:51:40how he pulled that and used it against medical science when the whole chapter is in favor of,
00:51:47he obviously wasn't reading it himself or he would have read it in the context. I mean,
00:51:51if he did read it himself and in the context, and he's just blatantly lying. But my guess is he came
00:51:58across that quote in somebody's writing somewhere. And he read where it said, he that had sinned against
00:52:05his maker, let him fall into the hands of the physician. Oh, that'll be a great thing I can
00:52:10bring into my message to prove to the people that the Jewish point of view was always anti-doctors.
00:52:17And that's not the context at all. So when I saw that, these are the things that are the building
00:52:23blocks in my theology leading me away from Hobart. You are so sketchy on your scholarship that you read
00:52:34a quote from somewhere. And it sounded good. And you never did the research yourself to find out
00:52:42where is that? What is the context? Let me make sure that I'm not misrepresenting this. That's what
00:52:48it told me, John, that he had seen this in somebody's literature somewhere, pulled it out of context,
00:52:55and then used it in a sermon. And of course, when the people hear that, they go, wow, even the books
00:53:02between Malachi and Matthew in the Jewish time period, wow, even those books are anti-medical
00:53:09science. He used that as one of his statistics. And it was completely wrong, completely deceptive,
00:53:16and not true to the context at all. And it just set up such a red flag to me.
00:53:23You know, I said, you cannot trust anything that comes out of this man's mouth. If he's quoting a
00:53:28statistic, I need to know where it came from. So when he's telling me, as we've said before,
00:53:33that John G. Lake and his church in Washington State had 500,000, had 100,000 confirmed authenticated
00:53:43healings over a five-year period, I want to see where that's authenticated. And of course, it's not.
00:53:49You know, I go through a funny exercise. Whenever people leave the cult, and they really get to
00:53:53thinking about things in a very analytical way, I always recommend that they go back and read some
00:53:59of the books written by Plato. I've read, maybe not all of them, but I've read most of them. The
00:54:05ones that come to mind are the Apology and the Republic. When you read it, first off, if you don't
00:54:12understand the world that he's describing, some of it reads like nonsense. You're thinking, what was
00:54:18this guy thinking? But if you really, if you're a critical thinker, you start to understand that the
00:54:24worldview that he held is different from the worldview that we understand. And what he's
00:54:30writing, some of it he truly believes, and that he's talking about religion and politics and all
00:54:34kinds of good stuff. But what it did, it taught me the different styles of literature from the ancient
00:54:42world that existed. And if you can critically think about that, and then understand that the Bible
00:54:48itself isn't meant to be read in the way that we think about reading a book today. It was written
00:54:56by the ancients in the ancient styles. And you start to understand the ancient styles. And I'm heading to
00:55:02actually a good point that doesn't offend everybody, hopefully. But we were taught to read the Bible in
00:55:10such a way that every single passage was meant to be some way of God instructing your life.
00:55:21And when I got to the old Mosaic law, and I'm reading about, there's a whole section of how not
00:55:27to grow mold in your hut. And I thought, you know, that doesn't really, it's good that they had it back
00:55:33then, but that doesn't really apply to me. It was mold in their hut. I can go buy some bleach and I can
00:55:39kill the mold. It's, it's, it's different styles of literature. I began to understand that there's
00:55:44different genres of literature. And then I went through the process of understanding how the Bible
00:55:49canon came to be how they chose the books all enough stuff that it's for another another podcast,
00:55:55not this one. It's led me down all kinds of paths. But it got me to thinking about the extra biblical
00:56:04sources. Because in the Lateran movement, William Branham, especially, like Hobart Freeman was going
00:56:11to extra biblical sources as confirmation of his doctrine that he couldn't say by just reading the
00:56:17Bible. And so I got to studying that that'll lead you down all kinds of paths. But the biggest of which
00:56:22is you find that the Dead Sea Scrolls, they, I can't remember what year was like 1945, they found that,
00:56:30that cave in Nag, Nag Hanai, I probably pronounced that wrong. But it wasn't until the mid 50s that
00:56:37those came into the United States. And when it came in the mid 50s, they started getting these weird
00:56:43doctrines coming out of Lateran, with different confirmations, and they're studying all of the,
00:56:48you can tell that they're obviously studying the Gnostic books. And Branham introduced one of the,
00:56:55I don't think this is Gnostic, but the book of Enoch, had fragments of the book of Noah, and the
00:57:01fragments of the book of Noah, talked about Enoch living for 500 years. Well, that became a doctrine in
00:57:08Lateran, that the Bible was incorrect on the lifespan of Enoch on earth, which was 365 years in the Bible,
00:57:17Branham started claiming that it was 500. So he was clearly reading from these sources. And also, along with this
00:57:25came the notion of Enoch's watchers. Because in the 50s, they started talking about all of the UFOs and
00:57:33all the UFO scares that you're talking about. Well, this became mainstream doctrine. And you can go find
00:57:40like from coast to coast, if you have a newspaper subscription, you can find these Lateran guys
00:57:45preaching Jesus and UFOs. That's how far you can go away from the Bible and the gospel, if you go to
00:57:53these extra biblical sources. And that's the danger that I see that these guys are doing. So hopefully,
00:57:59if you have a critical mind, you can take some of this that I've said, and hopefully it will satisfy
00:58:05some of your curiosity. But there's so much more that could be said, and I think I'll save the rest
00:58:10for the next episode. John, yeah, we will have to. Because just things you just said right then,
00:58:16oh my goodness, there's so many things that people don't know about Freeman. Hobart did teach
00:58:23that the UFOs that they were seeing, these are on his late 60s and 70s tape, that those are some of
00:58:30the signs of the times predicted in Matthew 24. I can give you the exact tape, the exact timestamp,
00:58:38where he says, so he believed in UFOs, that they were literally signs of the times. He even says on
00:58:45one tape that man landing on the moon has something to do with the moon turning blood red.
00:58:54And that was a sign that we are in the last days. I kid you not, that is on a Hobart Freeman tape.
00:59:02And we will not go down that path today. And the stuff about the Dead Sea Scrolls is actually very
00:59:08fascinating. If I could just add that historical thing. Yes, they were discovered by some Bedouins in
00:59:14the caves there, not far from Masada in the late 1940s. And they did have some extra biblical works,
00:59:21like what you're talking about. The great thing for Christian people and for biblical scholars is
00:59:27there were books and at least, and also fragments of Old Testament manuscripts, like the book of Habakkuk
00:59:35and Ezekiel and different prophecies, that day that predated the Christian era, where prior to the
00:59:44discovery of those manuscripts, the Hebrew Bible that people use today is based on what we call the
00:59:49Masoretic text. And that only goes back to the 900s AD. And what was so fascinating with the Dead Sea
00:59:58Scrolls is they were dating 200 BC. And when you took the Dead Sea Scrolls and compared them with
01:00:05the Masoretic text, a thousand years apart, we found out that Masoretic text was pretty darn reliable,
01:00:13that not a lot had changed over the thousand years of the scribes doing that. So that was the benefit,
01:00:19the glory of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls for what it's worth.
01:00:23It's all fascinating to me. You can tell, I'm like itching to get into that, but we'll do it
01:00:28another time. So if you've enjoyed our show and you want more information, you can check us out on
01:00:33the web. You can find us at william-branham.org. For more about the dark side of the New Apostolic
01:00:38Reformation, you can read Weaponized Religion from Christian Identity to the NAR. Available on Amazon,
01:00:45Kindle, and Audible.
01:00:53So if you've heard we've never seen one more than one more than one more than five years old, you can count on 10 seconds.
01:00:58That's all you can tell, you can go on 10 seconds, all that are very ends And if you've heard that you're
01:01:21We'll see you next time.