Faith Assembly: Death Cult Exposed - With Chino Ross - Episode 154 Branham Podcast - video Dailymotion

William Branham Historical Research

Available on Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts: https://william-branham.org/podcast  Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/branham   Chino's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@chinodross  Chino and John discuss Hobart Freeman and his ministry, focusing on the serious consequences and controversies that arose from his teachings, particularly regarding divine healing. They examine the tragic outcomes faced by Freeman’s followers due to their adherence to his doctrines, including preventable deaths. They also discuss the absence of financial and moral scandals typically associated with such ministers, noting Freeman’s focus on control and power. They draw comparisons with other prominent figures in similar movements, highlighting a pattern of deceptive and manipulative tactics used to maintain authority and control over followers.  Chino and John recount specific instances of deaths within Freeman’s ministry, including the notable cases of Sally Burkett and Alice Rogers, and the subsequent media exposure that brought attention to these tragedies. They emphasize Freeman’s diversionary tactics, which shifted focus away from preventable deaths and onto external adversaries like the media. The episode also touches on the broader context of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, illustrating how Freeman’s teachings and actions fit into a larger pattern of control and manipulation within these religious groups. The conversation underscores the detrimental impact of such ministries on the lives of their followers and the importance of transparency and accountability in religious leadership.  00:00 Introduction 01:03 Overview of Hobart Freeman’s Ministry 05:01 Discussing Freeman’s Lack of Financial and Moral Scandals 09:59 The Control Aspect in Freeman’s Ministry 14:01 Freeman’s Claims of Divine Revelation 17:46 The Influence of William Branham on Freeman 21:40 Preventable Deaths in Freeman’s Ministry 27:07 Freeman’s Diversionary Tactics in Addressing Deaths 33:30 Raising the Dead and Faith Healing Claims 41:45 Media Exposure and Legal Scrutiny 49:03 Connections and Impact on Other Ministries 54:50 Conclusion and Future Topics ______________________ – 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

Transcript

00:00You

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

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

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

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

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

00:55it's good to be back again and talk all things Hobart Freeman. We have up until

01:01this point pretty well covered his entire ministry. We started, you know, as

01:06as he was rising to quick fame after William Branham died, and we can't say

01:12for certain, but it looks very much like he was being set up to be the next

01:16William Branham, and that didn't pan out evidently, so it turned into something

01:21entirely different, and we've went through his move into the glory barn, his

01:26move out of the glory barn, and I'm sad to say that today we're getting into a

01:31very serious side of the discussion, and this is the part that we really have to

01:36get to, but it is a very serious topic, and it saddens me. It deeply saddens me

01:42what happened to the people, because I can relate to each and every person that

01:48went through it. I, you know, in a divine healing cult, you were going to set

01:53yourself up for false hope in many cases, and in the case of what happened here,

02:00it's even so far worse than false hope, so glad we're getting to it, but I have

02:05to say that I am a little bit deeply sorrowed that we have to get to it. Yeah,

02:09John, I think you said that very well. I think one comment I might have made to

02:15you just in private conversation before is it's very interesting with regard to

02:20Dr. Freeman that unlike what we have seen so often with so many of these big

02:27ministers, and we just have seen it recently with this Robert Morris, pastor

02:32of a big church down in in Texas, but that there were no charges of immorality

02:41against Dr. Freeman, and that just seems to be what dominates the headlines today,

02:46and what's also very interesting is that there were no charges, allegations of

02:53financial misappropriation or impropriety, so I want to say that about

03:01Hobart, about Dr. Freeman, to be honest with our audience, it's very interesting

03:07that it seems to me like most of these ministers have fallen in one of these

03:11two areas. Either they are molesting people or they are stealing people

03:16blind, one or the other, and neither one of those was true with Dr. Freeman. There

03:23were no charges, none whatsoever, and granted he was kind of an old guy, but I

03:30still don't think there would have been any charges of immorality, and as you saw

03:35in the pictures that I had inside his home, he just lived in a very small and

03:40modest home. Right, and you know, I grew up in the Branham cult, so I can tell you

03:46each one of the key figures in Branhamism that they also lived very

03:51humble lives. If you went to my grandfather's house, you would see this

03:55home that's, you know, smaller than mine. It was well furnished, but grandpa, by all

04:01appearances, he did not have money. Now, after he died, we found out that it was

04:06quite a bit of money, more than I will admit on this podcast right now, but my

04:11jaw did drop when I found out how much, but these guys were trained to live very

04:16simple lives for the public. Not all of them had money, but some of them did, but

04:21they, you know, they were good at hiding appearances. Now, with Freeman, I

04:28can't say that he really hid it, but these guys usually wanted one of three

04:33things, sex, money, or power, and there's another aspect of power that a lot of

04:39people sometimes miss, and that is control. With power comes control, and

04:44towards the end of his life, I can say, from my examination at least, it looked

04:48like Hobart Freeman got a little bit obsessed with the control. However, he

04:54didn't go as far as some of the ones we see today. They want all three. They want

04:58the sex, the power, and the control. Yeah, you're so right. Actually, there was a

05:02wrongful death civil lawsuit that was filed after Hobart died by a couple up

05:09in Michigan to try to get to a determination of his assets, so all of

05:16that did go to court, and you know, you have to produce all of the documentation

05:21there, and the documentation was that, you know, unlike your story of your

05:26relatives, even after his death, Dr. Freeman just didn't have a lot. I mean, he

05:32might have had a couple of hundred thousand dollars, but you know, that is

05:35nothing compared to what we see in these big-time ministers today, so your

05:40third point of either money, sex, or power, power is definitely where he went, and

05:46that's what I said in our last interview, John, that I think what brought

05:51the downfall internally, what brought the downfall of Faith Assembly was when

05:56Hobart elevated himself to Pope Freeman. He drew a tight circle around himself.

06:02You know, he not only didn't listen to any other ministers, he disallowed the

06:10people from reading any other books, from listening to any other tapes. I even

06:15have this quote from a message of his done in 1976, entitled, Correcting

06:24Misconceptions About Faith, Deliverance, and Healing. It was a long message, and you

06:32can find this on the 1-hour, 16-minute, and 57-second timestamp. Listen to this,

06:41John. We could say more, I'm quoting Dr. Freeman, but to say it would sound

06:47boastful, but I'm going to say one thing while we're on the subject. God recently

06:53gave a sister a revelation and spoke to her directly and said that he had

06:57revealed the full faith message for the end time to only one man. I don't need to

07:06say any more because the rest of the revelation is obvious. There are things

07:10God has told me that I haven't even told my wife. So can you imagine the level of

07:20arrogance needed to make a statement like that? I mean, it just absolutely

07:26takes my breath away, even if you thought it, or even if you hoped, or even if you

07:32wished that it might be true, to stand up before six or seven or eight hundred

07:38people and say God's given the full end-time faith message to one

07:42person. What's interesting is Hobart was crafty. He never said, I'm the

07:49one. He never said, I forbid any of my followers to go to doctors. He was very

07:57crafty. He couched it in terms where you knew that under no uncertain terms he

08:04was the end-time messenger and you were not allowed to go to doctors, but you

08:09couldn't quote him and say Hobart said that. You have this kind of quote

08:14revelation that was given to this woman, and you've, I'm sure, heard plenty of that.

08:19I was about to say, you mentioned this in shock, and I'm thinking, well, this

08:23sounds like a casual Sunday service when I was growing up, man. Oh my word. We had,

08:29you know, we listened to the tapes of William Branham, and he did what you

08:34described, which I'll get into in a minute, but then what happened is because

08:38in the cult mindset you take on the identity of the cult leader when you

08:42become fully programmed, and many of the ministers, not all, but many of them are

08:48fully indoctrinated. Some of them are just doing it for money, I'm certain, but

08:52some of them truly believe and are indoctrinated in what they're in, and

08:55what they become is miniature voices of God, and so they'll spout off random

09:01nonsense like this, and fortunately my dad was very skeptical of men like this.

09:08Now, he would give William Branham the full authority, you know, obviously, but

09:12we'd go listen to some minister who said he had some revelation and this and that

09:18and the other, and my dad would just, that'd be the last time we went to his

09:21service, so fortunately I was raised with just a bit of skepticism, but now William

09:27Branham, which, you know, Freeman would have learned from Branham, Branham never

09:32outright said many of the things that we have attributed to him. He would, when he

09:38started his ministry, he began proclaiming that this Elijah figure

09:41would come. He never said he was the Elijah figure, at least in the early days,

09:46and then once the people began to believe it was him through all of the

09:51different examples he gave of what Elijah would look like, I mean, the man

09:55literally, it would be, for you in the video feed who can see it, it would be

10:00like if I told you, now Elijah's gonna come and he's gonna arrange his room

10:04where there's a piano over here and guitars over here, a mandolin. I'm not

10:09gonna tell you who that Elijah is, my brother. That's how it would be, right?

10:14Well, once he convinced all of the people that he's Elijah, then he started

10:19attributing all of the, you know, the boisterous claims. He would say, now Elijah

10:24can do this, and Elijah has this power and this power, and he's the voice of God

10:28to you, and towards the end he said this Elijah is Jesus Christ, God in the flesh.

10:33So, you know, Freeman learned it from the best, and I look back at that

10:40part of my life, I'm a smart man. How did I fall for that nonsense? Well, you know,

10:45I look back on my life, and I wasn't a smart man. I was only a teenager. I was 17

10:50years old when I first heard this, so as we talked before, I didn't have the

10:54critical thinking skills, but I learned them pretty quickly, and by my early 20s

10:58I was beginning to question things. You know, Hobart, he never called himself

11:03Elijah, but in other messages he would talk about, you know, a

11:10end-time person, and not in exact terms of this revelation that this woman

11:16had given, but yeah, it definitely progressed, and I mean, it's just low

11:21level. That is low class. That is underhanded. That is dishonest. It's

11:27devious. It's manipulative. It's anything and everything that a Christian

11:33minister should not be. A Christian minister should value openness and

11:38forthrightness and honesty and transparency above everything, and to

11:44have these little sneaky comments, you know, there's this so-called prophetic

11:50movement going on out there now, the NAR. Maybe we can talk about this and some

11:55other connections later, John, but what I have said about that in one of the

12:00classes I'm teaching down in southern Kentucky, where some of these people

12:05will say, you know, I have a prophetic anointing, or I'm in a

12:11prophetic ministry, but they won't call themselves a prophet, and I would

12:16say, come on. You know, the Old Testament prophets did not hesitate to say, I am

12:23Isaiah the prophet. I am Amos the prophet. They did not hesitate to say that. To me,

12:28it's cowardice. It's as though they want the the adulation and following of a

12:35prophet, but they don't want the burden of having to actually be a prophet. Yeah,

12:42you know, I'm not gonna give the guy's name, but a very famous individual who's

12:47in the NAR began contacting me, and he wasn't quite on the up-and-up when he

12:53did. Ironically, I had no clue who this guy was, because my research kind of

12:59went until the 70s, and only recently have I switched to the NAR. Once I

13:03realized who this guy was, I'm like, oh my gosh. If I were to mention the

13:07ministries that he's associated with, everybody would just – their jaw would

13:11drop, but he posed as a person who was truly inquisitive as to what identifies

13:17a false prophet so he can avoid them, and I gave him the honest answer, and he

13:22started asking about, you know, life experiences. You know, when you're in

13:27these things, you get caught up in it, and especially as a child. You know, you were

13:3117, you went through this. You have – you see these examples of the way prophecies

13:37work in these groups. None of them – usually none of them will come out and

13:41say, I prophesied thus. Instead, what happens is they will predict with random

13:47predictions, just pull it out of their back pocket, and if it comes true, then it

13:53was a prophecy. If not, well, I just said it. That was just me. That was a man

13:57saying that, right? Nonsense, right? So as a kid, you know, I had experiences that I

14:03thought were prophetic visions or whatever, and I learned that, you know,

14:08when it didn't come true, well, no way that was a prophecy, because God would

14:12know. He knows the beginning. He knows the end. He knows the right now, so it

14:16wasn't a prophecy. I never considered myself a prophet, but I had these things

14:20because you're in these groups, right? And so I gave the guy that example, and

14:25that was the last I heard from him, so I assume he wanted to find some kind of

14:29dirt or whatever. But then come to find out later, as I'm doing my research, this

14:35guy, this very, very famous guy, is blatantly copying Branham's sermons, almost

14:40verbatim, giving them as his own and then spouting off random prophecies, and I can

14:46I've put a few of them up now, some comparisons of the guy, and the moment it

14:51goes to my YouTube channel, he's yanked the video, and you can't—I had somebody

14:55write in, I want to watch that. It even had the same title that

15:00Branham used in his sermon, and he said, I want to see it, and I said, well, I got it

15:04right here, and I click on it, boom, it's made private. Yeah, I'm not gonna say any

15:09names either, John, because you obviously don't want any names, but I might could

15:12guess who that is, and you know, this is a future topic for sure, I hope. Whenever

15:19Hobart died, which maybe is what we can talk about the next time you and I get

15:24together, it's very interesting the direction that the Church Faith

15:28Assembly went. They went straight to Kansas City. They went straight to Paul

15:33Cain and Mike Bickle. It is very interesting, which it was just shocking

15:39to me, because that type of stuff is actually stuff that Dr. Freeman preached

15:43against. You know, we're the ones who have the message, and as soon as they lost

15:48their figurehead, you know, he was the stabilizing, intelligent, articulate

15:55foundation for that church, and once he was gone, I mean, it was just like dust in

16:00the wind. There was nobody there that could emulate him. Nobody had the

16:05teaching ability, the communication skills. They didn't have the intelligence.

16:10They didn't have anything, you know, which is remarkable that someone would have

16:15taught as much as he did, and you end up, I mean, we're looking at fruit. We're

16:20looking for fruit, right? Yeah. Like, I mean, if you trained all these ministers,

16:24there's 40 what they called word ministers. There's not one of them who

16:30could fight their way out of a wet theological bag. No, and I'm so glad you

16:35didn't mention any names. You know what's funny is these guys, they claim

16:39they're apostles, and they love to take... I was talking about this with a guy

16:43yesterday. They love to take Greek words and make it sound like this infinite

16:47mystery, because they've got the Strong's Concordance or whatever. You

16:52know, I've got a copy of that, too. I should do that and make money, but they

16:56love to do this thing, right? But the basic concepts of Christianity, like what

17:01is an apostle? It's a person who sent out to spread the gospel. You couldn't

17:05get these guys out of their plush homes and mansions, but they call

17:10themselves apostles. They have no idea what the word even means. No, no, no. You're

17:17totally right. The people under Dr. Freeman would use an occasional Hebrew or

17:23Greek word. I mean, I studied languages when I was in college. When I was in

17:27secular college, my freshman year, I was taking biblical Greek at a secular

17:31university. But these guys, they just had memorized a few things. They have

17:37Strong's Concordance. You know, they know how to say ecclesia. Oh, wow, that's a

17:42Greek word. That means assembly. That means assembly. So it's faith assembly,

17:47and it made them feel important, and they just snowed people under. You know, it's

17:52what they did. Now, Dr. Freeman, let's be fair. He did have a doctor's degree in

17:57Hebrew, so he taught Hebrew at the graduate level. So he knew what he was

18:02talking about, but the other guys didn't. But you know, John, I'm sure you found the

18:08same thing to be true. With us doing these podcasts, we're hearing from all

18:12kinds of people, and I heard from, and I won't give any names, and I won't even be

18:17specific so that we can hide everybody's identity, but I heard from one, I'll just

18:22say, young person, that they've been listening to these podcasts, and they are

18:29revelatory to them. Revelatory in the good sense of the word, not anything

18:34mystical. They're actually learning some facts, and not just a bunch of baloney

18:39and nonsense. And that's why I try to give some dates and quotes. You know, this

18:44isn't my, what I remembered when I was 23 years old. You can go online, find the

18:49message, find the timestamp, and there it is. But this person said, you know, I have

18:55gone back in recent years, and this is a second-generation Faith Assembly person.

19:00This person was not even alive or born or present at Faith Assembly. Parents

19:05were, and in-laws were, but not this person. And they said, I've gone back

19:10recently and listened to a bunch of Dr. Freeman's tapes, and they said, I swear,

19:1760%, conservative estimates, 60% of airtime is devoted to the sayeth the

19:26Lord, visions, dreams, revelations, personal stories, stories from William Branham,

19:34Jack Coe, A.A. Allen, T.L. Osborne, Oral Roberts, 60% of the airtime. And you know,

19:42when I, you know, here is my Bible, and I look at this and think, I've got, you know,

19:49there are 66 books. There's about a thousand pages in here. That's a lot of

19:54material. There's not enough time in my life, and I wish there was enough time.

20:00There's not enough time in my life to teach what's in here. There is so much in

20:04here. It is so rich and so deep. I don't have enough time in my life to teach

20:10that. Why would I want to spend half of every hour lecture or teaching talking

20:18about personal stories and dreams and vision? It doesn't make any sense.

20:23You know, when we began our research, my wife helped me a lot with the early

20:27website, putting it all together. And one of the exercises we did, I wanted to, I

20:32just came to the understanding that when a person says, thus saith the Lord, it

20:37means that it's not his voice that's speaking. It means that God is speaking

20:41through him. In other words, this is not the human being. Whatever comes next,

20:46after thus saith the Lord, is God Almighty speaking to you. And so we did this

20:51exercise. I just simply wanted to know how many there were. And so she was putting

20:55together this spreadsheet. Well, once it got to about 4,500-ish, or I can't

21:01remember how high. It was in the thousands. And once it got that high, I

21:04realized it's completely useless, because unless we have details and

21:09categories of what these are, we just have this massive number. And so it

21:12actually never got published. But some of the things, man, were like, thus saith the

21:17Lord, it's like pinto beans and cornbread. Well, no, God is not telling you that

21:22this sermon is like pinto beans and cornbread. Oh, my. Well, I guess I better

21:30get into what I wanted to talk about today. I think you and I could talk

21:34about these type of topics forever. But what brought about the downfall of Faith

21:41Assembly externally was definitely when the state and local news officials, legal

21:49officials, health department got a hold of what was going on inside the church.

21:53Internally, I think Hobart had already set the course by setting himself up, and

21:58something like that is not, you know, for you to be the Pope and the final

22:02authority, that's not sustainable. And if you don't have a successor, which he

22:08didn't, it doesn't seem like William Branham really had a successor, you know,

22:12on the same level and of the same degree, it's not

22:17sustainable. But the downfall was just the increasing media attention and

22:22spotlight and the legal system shining their big spotlight on Faith Assembly

22:28because of all of the preventable deaths. So back in the 1970s, you know,

22:35the church was small. The larger the number of people, you're increasing your

22:40odds of people dying in the church. You have 10 people, maybe not no one dies. You

22:45have a thousand, some people are going to die. So there were a couple of deaths in

22:50the 1970s that I'll just mention real quickly. The first one that we were aware

22:55of was in 1973 on Christmas Eve. So this is way back. They've only been in the

23:01Glory Barn two months by the time when this happens. A seven-month-old died who had

23:07a liver ailment, and this child died of the liver ailment and pneumonia that was

23:14associated with that. Didn't make any headlines at all. It's hard to find any

23:19details about it. It does seem to be, however, that the family, the parents,

23:25kept the body for 36 hours before contacting the funeral home. So that was

23:33probably due to their attempt at a resurrection from the dead. The next one

23:39was in 1976, April the 4th, which was Sally Burkett. And I won't go over that

23:46again because we discussed that last time. The only thing that I would say

23:52just to remind everyone regarding Sally Burkett, she did bleed to death.

23:58She had a baby. The placenta, you know, you deliver a baby. I have delivered a

24:05couple of my children, so I know exactly what it's like. You deliver the baby and

24:09the placenta is delivered afterwards. She could not deliver the placenta. She was

24:14bleeding critically. Betty Nye, who was the wife of Don Nye, and that was the

24:20couple that had donated land for the new building in Willamette to be built on,

24:24she was there. She was a registered nurse, still had her nursing license. Because of

24:29the death of Sally, she had to surrender her nursing license over that. But Sally

24:34had been bleeding for several days, and they couldn't stop the bleeding. And I

24:40don't know. I'm not a doctor. My daughter-in-law is a doctor, and my son is

24:46a critical care paramedic. They would know more about this than me. But I don't

24:50know what it would be like to bleed to death. To bleed to death, I mean, that's a

24:57slow, agonizing death. To bleed to death, not on an isolated highway where there's

25:03no one around to help you, but in a town where you can get to a doctor or a

25:08hospital and stop that. And what made Sally significant was she was the wife

25:14of one of the important ministers there. The minister who later came up to visit

25:21me in Minnesota where I had a church. And I didn't even know that something like

25:25that was in his background, that that was one of the things that he had

25:30to deal with in his background. And then thirdly, John, the same year, just a

25:34couple of months later, 1976, on July the 2nd, which was a Friday, this was a big

25:42deal. The woman's name was Alice Rogers. She was 23 years old. She was in the

25:48process of childbirth, and both she and the infant died. And she had been

25:53bleeding critically for hours prior to that. The news media got a hold of this

25:59one. It's the 4th of July weekend, July the 2nd in 1976 was a Friday.

26:06You probably don't remember this because I'm so much older than you are, but I'll

26:11tell you something that was big on the 4th of July weekend in 1976 that I've

26:15never forgotten. And that was that the Israeli commandos raided the Entebbe

26:21Airport in Uganda and freed all of those hostages. And if you remember just four

26:26years before at the Munich Games in 1972, the Palestinians had gotten into Olympic

26:31Village and had murdered some Israeli athletes. Well, the Israeli people weren't

26:37going to have that happen again. So that happened on Sunday, the 4th of July in

26:421976. This woman's death happened on July the 2nd, a Friday. And then two Sundays

26:50later, Dr. Freeman preached a message. He was going through the Book of Romans, and

26:55he preached a message entitled, Adoption. It was message number 725. And he talks

27:04about the death in detail from the 40 minute and 48 second mark through 46

27:12minute and 46 second mark time stamp there. And here's where you can really

27:19see what I would call Dr. Freeman's diversionary skills become apparent and

27:27legendary. He doesn't address the death of two people, members of his church, a

27:3623, a young woman, barely past adolescence herself. He does not mourn

27:46the death of this woman and her child. He does not address the death in the way

27:53that I would think a normal Christian minister or pastor should do it. Feeling

27:59sorry for this husband who is a survivor. I don't know if this woman had any other

28:04children. Surely she had parents. Surely she had friends. But here's what he did.

28:12Yeah, someone died and the news media got a hold of that. But how about all of

28:19these successful births that have happened here at the Glory Barn? Why don't

28:24we get any headlines over that? You know, in other words, it was his effort to

28:29shift attention on to their enemies, the media, who had exposed this death and

28:36take it off of this sad, sad affair of this woman losing her life in childbirth.

28:43So, you know, when I heard that and there's a whole newspaper article of a

28:51newspaper reporter who made it into the service around that time and is hearing

28:56that message, but then I was, this was back in 1976, I was receiving the tapes

29:02from the Glory Barn then. Of course, I'm hearing this, but I don't know the

29:07circumstances. I can figure out, I can deduce that someone has died in the

29:13church, but I don't know an age. I don't know a gender. I don't know that it's a

29:17mother and a child. But you can clearly see his diversionary tactic kicking into

29:23place here. Let's don't talk about anything that's negative. Let's don't

29:27talk about a death, a preventable death, probably, you know, get them to the

29:32hospital. This is a preventable death. Let's don't talk about that. Let's talk

29:36about that terrible news media that's out there hounding us and that won't be

29:42fair. They won't come in here and do a report of the 10 good births that have

29:48happened in the last week. Terrible, I think, just terrible. Yeah, it is, and it's

29:55a bit ironic, too, because one of the sudden deaths that happened in the

30:02Branham cult happened during the preaching of a sermon called Adoption.

30:08There was a minister. There was an evangelist. Yeah, and there's an Indiana

30:12evangelist. He was semi-famous, and you can go look it up. I think it's May of

30:171960. Branham preaches the sermon called Adoption. At the very end, he says,

30:21while I was preaching this, and he doesn't give the name, but this semi-famous

30:26evangelist just dropped dead in the pulpit. Then he goes on, and it's a series

30:32of sermons, so it starts into the prayer line, and it goes with that. But the

30:38people who are in a divine healing cult, and something like this happens when

30:43their faith is so wrapped up in being healthy. It's a weird gospel, right? Your

30:49faith is wrapped up on whether or not you can remain healthy. Then here's a

30:53preacher who just falls dead on the platform while he's preaching. Well, what

30:57does that say about your gospel? So you've got to kind of bring it all

31:02back together, which he did. He held healing lines, and like Hobart did, he

31:07said, look at all these great healings that happened in the past, not focusing

31:11on the guy who's preaching who just falls dead. But the irony is just, it's

31:15really significant. Have you ever wondered how the Pentecostal movement

31:19started, or how the progression of modern Pentecostalism transitioned through the

31:24latter reign, Charismatic and other fringe movements, into the new Apostolic

31:29Reformation? You can learn this and more on William Branham Historical Research's

31:34website, william-branham.org. On the books page of the website, you can find

31:40the compiled research of John Collins, Charles Paisley, Stephen Montgomery, John

31:45MacKinnon, and others, with links to the paper, audio, and digital versions of each

31:51book. You can also find resources and documentation on various people and

31:56topics related to those movements. If you want to contribute to the cause, you can

32:01support the podcast by clicking the contribute button at the top. And as

32:05always, be sure to like and subscribe to the audio or video version that you're

32:09listening to or watching. On behalf of William Branham Historical Research, we

32:14want to thank you for your support. Yeah, and one of the other tactics that he

32:18also used, and I don't know if you heard this or not in your circles, but he

32:23would point out the fact that, he said, people die in churches all the time. You

32:27know, there are people that die in the Baptist Church, the Pentecostal Church, the

32:31Catholic Church. But you know, that wasn't the point. The point wasn't that

32:37someone had died, but how they died. I'm sure the people that died in those other

32:42churches died of cancer, died of, you know, kidney failure, died in a car

32:47accident, or something. Not something that can be prevented, right? Yes, exactly.

32:53Something that can be prevented. You know, he was skilled, and it's what's

32:58frightening when you look back on this. He was skilled in this diversionary

33:02tactic of getting people's attention off the fact, hey, we've just had, you know,

33:0714 deaths here in our church in the last, maybe 10 of them, 11 of them

33:13preventable. Maybe all of them preventable. I don't know. I don't have

33:16all those facts, but to say that people are dying in churches everywhere, and you

33:23should hear the congregation, you know, amen, that's right, brother. Like, yeah,

33:27preach it. You know, there's nothing wrong with us. There's just something wrong with

33:31the media for calling attention. You know, Hobart actually did a message. It was

33:37entitled, Raising the Dead and Natural Childbirth. It was also done during this

33:44same time frame in 1976, and I remember calling it the no-comment message

33:50because the media had gotten a hold of Alice Rogers' death and had contacted

33:56Hobart, sent him a certified letter, even showed up at his house on Shoe Lake

34:00trying to interview him, and you know, his comment, he didn't see them. He actually

34:05wasn't there when they showed up, but he came back to the church to tell the

34:09people, look, the church policy is no comment, so your comment is no comment,

34:18and what is just, it just grates on me when I think of that message, John, in

34:231976. They were having people die, and they were having members trying to raise

34:30the dead. When Sally died, Hobart was called, and Hobart came over to the house,

34:35and Hobart said, I think you need to call the funeral director. Other people

34:40were trying to raise all of these people that had died, and the message that he

34:45taught with regard to raising the dead was, I would say, fairly good because he

34:50does point out the fact that people died in the Bible. People died in the early

34:54church. Nobody tried to raise the dead. You know, that is a rare special

35:00circumstance where someone is going to be raised from the dead. I thought that

35:04part of the message was fairly biblical and accurate. The part that I didn't like

35:08was the no comment because of the passages he used. He went to Jesus' trial

35:15before Pontius Pilate, where Pilate is saying, don't you know, I can release you,

35:21I can kill you, and it said Jesus made no comment, and I thought, this is our Lord

35:27at his passion before his crucifixion and death. That has nothing to do with

35:34news media. That has nothing to do with these preventable deaths in your own

35:37church. I just thought that was very suspect to try to use a passage like

35:45that and teach your people no comment to the media. Yeah, it's so wrong, and it's a

35:51pattern. It's a history that repeats itself. If you go back to John Alexander

35:55Dowie, who was literally the prototype for all of these divine healing con

36:00artists, there were people dying left and right in his commune, and it was the

36:05same way, no comment to the media. He would vilify the media because if they

36:09published the deaths, then they're the bad guys, not him. Many of those

36:14were preventable as well. But on raising the dead, so Dowie made the claim that he

36:20raised the dead, and there would be people in his cult that would proclaim

36:23that Dowie has raised the dead. Well, there was never any solid, provable

36:29evidence that the dead was raised. But what happened was because so many cult

36:34members could testify that, yes, I saw this person dead, whether he was

36:39pronounced medically dead or not, I saw it, so therefore it's true. Well, that

36:44spread, and so all of these divine healing cults, they copied

36:49the same pattern. And early in William Branham's ministry, he was bragging about

36:56bogus raisings of the dead. In Canada, he was saying that, he said, basically, I

37:01rescued a guy who was in the morgue dead, and he was already dead, and he came back

37:06to life. And so news media there, they realized, well, wait, that's a verifiable

37:10statement. Let's see if it's true. And they wrote back to Jeffersonville. I've

37:14got all the newspapers on this. Completely bogus, completely false. And so

37:19then the news media starts contacting the Branham Tabernacle, and the cult

37:23members defend the false claim, which is very much like what you're saying.

37:27But I don't know if you have been in a meeting where the claim was made that

37:33they raised the dead. It's very, very suspect, the way that it happens, because

37:38these people stand for hours on end, and a lot of times they'll up and down and

37:44up and down, sing with us and stand, sit. Some of the older people,

37:48especially those who are on blood pressure medications, etc., they get

37:52lightheaded as they rise up really quickly. And some of them have very faint

37:58pulses anyway, because they're taking blood pressure meds. So sometimes

38:03they'll even have somebody who's a nurse or somebody who's in the medical

38:07profession come and say, well, I can't feel a pulse. They must be dead. And they

38:12count that as a death, even though that is not medically dead. There's a series

38:17of steps you have to go to prove somebody's dead. But I've been in sermons

38:22where people were raised from the dead, man. And looking back, I just, again, I was

38:27a smart man. I can't believe I fell for some of that nonsense. Well, you

38:32know, your religious upbringing had blinded parts of your brain. I don't have

38:38experience with raising the dead. But now that you mention that, the only thing

38:42that I can remember, I have never raised the dead. The only thing that I can

38:47remember is when our church, when God sent me from Mississippi to

38:52Minnesota, and I established a church, and we had a wonderful, just an awesome

38:58group of people there. But early, early on, you know, I was teaching some on faith

39:05and healing. And there was an older couple who had, when I say older, I'm in

39:13my 20s. They're in their late 40s or early 50s, probably early 50s by that

39:18time. So that was old. That was old, really old. That was over the hill for me back

39:22then. They had 10 children. And I can remember two things about them. One is

39:26their youngest child, and I won't mention any names, but I remember getting a phone

39:32call from them early. This would be early in the 1980s, saying that he had fallen

39:39from a second level in their house, all the way down, hit the floor, and had died.

39:45And they had raised him from the dead. And they wanted me to, I was their

39:50minister, they wanted me to come over to their house. So I did, and the young man

39:56was alive and fine. But I never, I don't think you could ever find a single

40:02message, and I've got over 2,000 of them online. I bet you can't find a single

40:07message where I ever reference that as anybody being raised from the dead in

40:12our church. Because I didn't feel like I had facts. I had, you know, the parents

40:18word, maybe, you know, and I wouldn't say they didn't. I wasn't there. Maybe they

40:24raised him from the dead. Maybe they didn't. That's all I could say. But I

40:28think so many of these ministers are anxious for, you know, another notch in

40:33their gun, that they'll grab anything, you know, even if it's a suspect story, or

40:41even if it's one that's not provable. And, you know, and so no, we never had

40:47anyone, to my knowledge, that was raised from the dead in our church. And whether

40:51that, and that young boy is still alive. He's a grown man. He's still alive to

40:56this day. And if he died and they raised him from the dead, all glory to God for

41:00that. And I wouldn't say that it didn't happen, because who am I to say that it

41:05didn't happen. But I definitely, you know, I just, I just would feel, I would feel

41:13shady. I'd feel very shady. It takes the focus off of Jesus, right? Because if

41:20you're telling people somebody raised from the dead in our church, well what

41:24you're doing is you're saying that God values our church over this other church

41:28in the city where somebody died in it. Now that I've left this thing, I see

41:33how wrong this is. And it's just, it's awful. Right, right, right. So those were

41:40the deaths in the 70s. If I can wrap up here with you, John, if we have enough

41:45time left for 1983. 1983 was a critical year for Faith Assembly because a series

41:55of newspaper articles came out. First of all, in May of that year by two young

42:02reporters who worked for the Fort Wayne, Indiana, News Sentinel. This was a four

42:08part series. This was just the first of the four part series where you can see

42:1552 deaths tied to the sect. And then they tell you how many in each state and

42:24relative to the state in what county these were. So this was a an expose. Of

42:30course when Dr. Freemans saw that, found out about it, I mean the wagons really

42:38circled the camp tighter and tighter and tighter. And then you have not armed

42:45guards, but you have guards, they called them parking lot attendants, but they had

42:50walkie-talkies. And their responsibility was to sniff out someone who doesn't

42:57belong at Faith Assembly. And you could generally tell who belonged at Faith

43:01Assembly and who didn't. And someone with a big camera on his shoulder and a big

43:05pack with all kinds of equipment probably doesn't belong. So they would

43:10find those guys in the parking lot, you know, and and just run them out. Because

43:15this series of articles exposed a high number of preventable deaths among

43:20Freeman's followers. Not only at Faith Assembly, I guess that number circled

43:25here is 30. Somewhere in that general area of Warsaw, North Webster, Wilmot,

43:33Indiana. Not only in the immediate vicinity, but his followers, you know, in

43:39the surrounding states. So it set off alarm bells for state officials and for

43:45the health department and for the legal officials. Because up until that time,

43:54Indiana had a law that protected parents from any kind of prosecution. As long as

44:03they're rendering, I can't remember how it's worded, but rendering a certain type

44:08of service for their child, then that was legal. Because of these articles, and

44:14again, let's be clear here, the articles aren't the problem. You don't blame the

44:19media. Let's blame the 52 deaths. The articles came about because of the 52

44:25deaths. And by the next year was over a hundred that they had documented. So

44:31let's don't talk about the articles. Let's talk about the hundred deaths. All

44:36Faith Assembly wanted to talk about was the news media and these terrible people.

44:41Hobart, in a famous sermon, described the news media as a couple of blind men

44:48searching for a black cat in a completely dark basement and finding it.

44:55That was the news media to him. And so, yeah, I mean, he's getting the focus off

45:02of what's really going on. And good grief, John, we as Christians should care

45:06about human life at least as much as secular society around us, right? If not

45:12more. Oh yeah. We are Christians. We should care about and value human life at least

45:19as much as the news media around us who's reporting the deaths in our church.

45:24Oh yeah. And convincing somebody not to take medication. The 52 doesn't tell the

45:30complete story, right? Those are just the 52 that died there. I mentioned blood

45:34pressure meds. Well, think about diabetic medications, blood pressure medications,

45:39kidney medications, all these different things. If you're avoiding that, well, ten

45:43years from now, you may die whereas you may have lived had you taken your

45:47medication. And we've seen, you know, in the Branham cult, the, I will say this, the

45:52ministers, at least the ones that I have attended, not all of them, but the ones

45:56that I attended, they would tell you to take your medication. But then you would

46:02listen to these sermons by William Branham, and he's blasting the medication,

46:07you know, all of the doctors and medication. He will make these random statements

46:12that say, and look, these people are taking this medication for whatever's the

46:16health, and they don't even know what's in it, the doctors. They may die because

46:19they took it. Well, in doing that kind of thing, you're convincing people that it's

46:24a bad idea to take medication. Try the faith thing instead. That's what

46:28essentially boils down to. But people, you know, 52 isn't the whole story is the

46:33point I'm making. Yeah, you're right. So, I guess there was probably more

46:38consistency with Faith Assembly. They would preach against it, and they would

46:43also, in private, never, never tell anyone, never advise anyone that you should take

46:50your medicine. You know, you would see people, and I saw it happen, pulling up

46:55in the parking lot and taking their eyeglasses off and sticking them in the

46:59glove compartment, because they knew if I go inside, I'm not a faith follower, and

47:04you know, I'll be ostracized, or if not ostracized, at least I will be recognized

47:09as one of the lower-level people in the church. You know, there was a tremendous

47:15amount. I'd walk into the door jam when I was walking in, if I were to try that. I think some people

47:22probably did. There was a tremendous amount of peer pressure there. So, but

47:29what was interesting about these stories, I can tie this into myself, it's, I am, I

47:35am flabbergasted that 40 and 50 years later, I have so many connections to

47:40Faith Assembly. Never having gone there, never having lived there, I visited, but

47:44never having been a member, never having been sent out by Faith Assembly, never

47:48having been approved of Hobart, I'm just shocked at all of the connections. I was

47:55pastoring our little church in Minnesota, in Waconia, Minnesota, when this article

48:01came out. We were in one of those periods, you know, we were up and down in our

48:06relationship with Faith Assembly, and we were on the down. We were, they didn't

48:10like us. Back up, and I'll tell you why. Jerry Burkett, you know, had been

48:15traveling up there and teaching in someone's home. Their name was Chuck and

48:20Allison Dotseth. They lived in southern Minnesota, and we were in Waconia, which

48:26is due west of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. That's where

48:30our church was, where I was a pastor and teacher. When the Dotseths found out

48:36that there was another Freeman-like, some connection to Faith Assembly Church,

48:44somewhere in that state, guess what? They decided, they started coming to our

48:49meetings. I can remember they were a nice little family, husband and wife,

48:54and just a gaggle of kids behind them. They started coming to our meetings,

48:58but that only lasted so long. I wish to this day I could remember what I said,

49:05and I don't remember, but I know it was small and insignificant. I might have

49:10spelled a word differently than Hobart did. It was so small, but I said something

49:16that was different than what Dr. Freeman ever came back again. So that was my

49:22connection to them and some more to Jerry Burkett. So we were on the outside.

49:30I'm sure they might have reported, well, Cheno's not in agreement with Hobart.

49:35Cheno differs with Hobart. His church does not agree with Faith Assembly.

49:39So we were on the outside. So I didn't have any way of knowing what was going

49:43on at Faith Assembly. So I did not know. I was 100% unaware of all of these deaths.

49:52So these articles came out in the newspaper, and I got these papers later, by the way.

49:59I'll tell you how that came about. And as soon, I mean, like a day after these

50:06hit the Fort Wayne paper, a television station from the Twin Cities was knocking on my door.

50:13Somebody, a relative of somebody in our church had tipped them off that, hey, this guy and this

50:21group may be similar to Faith Assembly, and you need to go out there and talk to them.

50:28And so they came to interview me, and they told me about these, you know, like,

50:35why would a television station in Minneapolis, St. Paul even know I exist? Why would they care

50:42anything about me? It's because of how explosive these articles had been. They're finding something

50:49in their neck of the woods that may be a similar. So let's go snoop around out there.

50:54So it was actually from the news media that I found out what was going on at Faith Assembly.

51:03So I quickly got a hold of the newspaper down there and was able to get, these are back issues,

51:08you know, was able to get copies of all of those articles. And then I began subscribing.

51:15Once I found that out, I thought, wow, there's a lot of stuff that unless you were at Faith

51:21Assembly, you don't know anything about. And here I am in central southern Minnesota. I don't know

51:28anything at all going on down there. And probably the only way I'm going to find out is I'm going

51:35to have to ask the media. And the media was going to do a pretty good job. So I began subscribing to

51:43the Warsaw Times Union paper and the Fort Wayne News Sentinel paper just to be able to stay up

51:50with what was going on. And sure enough, that was in May of 83. In September of 1983, this huge

52:01four-part series came out in the Warsaw Times Union and it was done, John. This is just amazing.

52:10It was done by Dr. John Davis, who was a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament

52:19at Gray Theological Seminary and who had been one of Hobart's students.

52:26He had actually done his doctoral work under Hobart's supervision before Hobart was fired

52:34from Gray Seminary. And so the newspaper in Warsaw contacted Dr. Davis to get him to write a

52:45series of articles on his mentor and his former professor, Hobart Freeman. And so here it is. This

52:53is called Faith Assembly Haven of Rest or House of Fear. And what was interesting was he was a part

53:03of the media. He listened to so many of Hobart's tapes. He read all of his books. He attended the

53:10service, interviewed Dr. Freeman after one of the services, and then went to his home for a follow-up

53:18interview. The next one entitled Inspiration for Living or Inventation to Death. And he told Hobart

53:29what he was doing. He told him all along, I'm going to write a newspaper series of articles

53:35about you. I always thought that was contradictory, that Hobart had said, no comment, you don't ever

53:43talk to the media, your comment about anything is no comment, and if they want to comment on your

53:48no comment, then it's no comment. And then he gives a four-part, he gives this interview and

53:54ends up being a four-part series. I don't know if he was just, I don't really know what his motive was,

54:00but that was done in 1983. To my knowledge, Dr. Davis is still alive today,

54:09and Hobart was going to be dead within a year. Now, Dr. Davis may have died in the last couple

54:15of years, but he was a longtime, well-known, conservative, evangelical, respected theologian

54:21and professor there at Grace Seminary. But he said in his last interview of Hobart there at Hobart's

54:28house, he said, as I turned to leave, Hobart said, I just want you to know that other people

54:34who recently have written negative things against me in this church have suffered car accidents and

54:41death. And John's Dr. Davis said, I assumed he meant that for my benefit as I walked out the

54:49door. And I find it interesting that within a year, Hobart Freeman was dead, and here we are

54:5640 years later, and John Davis is still alive. How do you like those apples?

55:02Yeah, I have heard those type of idle threats. And it's, you know, I told my wife, I received

55:07one of those threats whenever we left the cult. And I told my wife, it's no greater, no more

55:12powerful than if they were standing in our front lawn with a water hose and spraying our windows.

55:17Yeah, it kind of annoys me that they're doing it, but it really doesn't affect me that much.

55:23But it's, you know, I think probably what happened was Hobart definitely

55:31was affected by the control, the level of control that he could have. And once the news,

55:36once these things hit the news for any cult, I don't care, even if they're doing everything,

55:42you know, somewhat right, but yet destructive, the destructive aspect is going to make the news

55:49because that's the way the news media works. So once this starts to come out, then I think

55:54Hobart probably realized that he was about to lose that control. So can I control the media?

55:59And that's probably why he changed his mind. But it's so sad, all of the deaths, and

56:06even Hobart dying, you know, even though he was a victim, he was a victimizer and a victim,

56:13in my opinion, he was part of this Branham movement. He was probably indoctrinated himself.

56:18I can't say to what extent, but I know very good people who have entered the ministry and

56:25have done very bad things. I'll just say it like that. Hobart might be in that category. I don't

56:30know him. I never knew him, but he might be in that category. And the whole thing makes me sad

56:36because it doesn't have to be this way. If you take all of this mystery, this divine healing

56:42nonsense, all of these things away and just focus on the gospel, it's so much better and it's so

56:48much more healthy and people can grow and become better people. But when you focus on these things,

56:53there's death. That's really what it comes down to. Yeah, absolutely, John. You know,

56:57and I didn't know how much you knew about Hobart. I knew I knew I probably knew a lot more than you

57:03did. But I hoped in sharing all of this in chronological order and succession, I think

57:10you've got a great appreciation and you with your background, you're seeing all of the connections.

57:17You're seeing where things came from that I would not be as aware of because I was not a Branham

57:24follower at all. You know, for me, this was just Hobart Freeman. You know, this is what Hobart's

57:29like. But, you know, hopefully in sharing this with you, you and your followers who know more

57:36about the message than I know can go, oh my goodness, you know, this man and some of his

57:43teachings and some of his tendencies are just a reflection of what they have seen at an earlier

57:50time in their life. Yeah, it took me a while to grasp it, but you've got all of these different

57:56ministries, movements, sects, splinter groups, and Branham is like the zipper pull that just

58:01as you pull it together, they all just kind of fit like a zipper. It's really crazy. But

58:07so glad you did this with me today, and we'll have to get together and do some more there.

58:12This is just the beginning of the story. There's so much more that we can tell.

58:15So if you've enjoyed our story and you want more information, you can check us out on the web.

58:21You can find us at william-branham.org. For an overview of the historical research of William

58:26Branham and the healing revivals, read Preacher Behind the White Hoods, a critical examination

58:31of William Branham and his message. Available on Amazon, Kindle, and Audible.

Faith Assembly: Death Cult Exposed - With Chino Ross - Episode 154 Branham Podcast

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