Early Timeline

I originally posted this on Factnet.org several years ago.  Please pardon the grammar, as I left it largely intact.

Timeline:

Parents joined in ’74, I was born in ’75

2 years old:told my grandpa that when he got saved, he would not drink beer anymore or need to wear his glasses. Horrified the grandparents, heh.

3 years old:

got ‘saved.’ Was the happiest day of my life at the time. Ran around in the yard celebrating barefoot till I stepped on a thorn. Ouch, damned satan! I have very vague memories of the glory barn in this era.

5 years old:

Went to stay at the Nei’s house while my mom had a baby. I was so excited too have a new brother or sister. When I came home to see the new baby, I found out it ‘went to be with Jesus.’ The baby was kicking 2 hours b/f birth and was born strangled by umbilical cord

6 years old:

started 1st grade at public school with ear infections in both ears. I’d had these for 2 years, and my ears would constantly ‘run.’

I took a handkerchief to school and wiped them when no one looked. The teacher caught me once and sent me to the nurse. Somehow they believed that it wasn’t too bad when I told them that I wasn’t sick (because I was healed, but it just hadn’t manifested itself yet, but I didn’t explain that to the noob teacher.

At school, several times an hour, I’d close my eyes and repent. I wasn’t always sure I had sinned, but I was super paranoid about dying w.o repenting for last sin sinned and therefore going to hell. My teacher asked me what I was doing once, and I told her the truth.

For instance, I knew that if I picked my nose, since my mom had told me not too, and since ‘Honor thy father and mother….’ that this was a sin.

I was about as guilt ridden as a kid as anyone could be IMO

General note. Since about age 3 had horrible vivid nightmares about the demons and demonic forces the Freeman talked about. I was scared to death. I have never had happy dreams since, and most are scary. I’ve done some research and found that this is not too uncommon, so I’m not really blaming the church/HEF here.

A girl on the schoolbus said ‘f*ck.’ I had never heard the word before, so I asked my dad what it meant. I got whipped for asking and was told to repent.
It was about this time that I got an ‘S’ for satisfactory on my report card. I ws scolded for not getting an S+. This pattern continued for any A-‘s and especially for B+’s.

9 years old: I was heartbroken that I wasn’t allowed to play on my 3rd grade basketball team. I was the 2nd best player in my class (knowing from gym/recess), but was not allowed to be unequally yoked with unbelievers.

This is when I considered telling on my parents to the authorities (about my ears, still running/infectious as ever, hearing pretty bad too).

Had I known at the time that my grandparents would have gotten custody, I would have turned them in so that I could play basketball. I was just a scared 3rd grader at the time so I never followed through.

However, this was the changing point. I ‘knew’ that it was okay to play basketball just like I ‘knew’ that 2+2=4. Logic was kicking in and I slowly realized how illogical my parents beliefs were, but this was the infancy of that.

Reminiscing About Faith Assembly

Such was the awe-inspiring persona of Hobart E. Freeman to his flock, that even people like Tomax7 who are “saddened” to hear of people neglecting personal hygiene due to the faith message, that even he still holds Freeman blameless.  He was literally put on a pedestal; his pulpit l was at least 8 feet higher than the rest of the congregation.  He had the persona of an old time Pentecostal revival preacher.  At times, he preached a positive faith message, but as time elapsed, he increasingly called down fire and brimstone upon the congregation.

On his website, Tomax7 wrote:

But does this mean the faith message and Faith Assembly were a cult or false? I don’t believe so. While one can “justify” a cult mentality crept in, I believe there was a divine happening going on where God was present at the meeting.

Also:

But I am saddened to hear about what happened to people there or even to this day how some cannot fellowship with other Christians or neglect personal hygiene like brushing their teeth because they think it is sin to go to the dentist. – heck I too thought that once

The scene was very much like the church depicted in the movie ‘Borat’.  There was a genuine sense of excitement, like nothing I’ve experienced today to this point.  The song leader, Jerry Irvin, was playing jazzed up hymns, accompanied by trumpets, pianos, bass, drums, violin.  Two thousand people were singing their hearts out.  People were dancing in the aisles overcome by the Holy Ghost.  The saints were ‘speaking in tongues’, hundreds of different tongues that no one on this earth could translate.

After the sermon, there would be a song or two, and people would line up at the sides of the stage where Freeman preached, to feel the Lord’s anointing emanating from him.  When a true believer was touched, he would often fall down, slain in the spirit.  Or some nights, they might line up for exorcisms.  We didn’t call it that, it was simply ‘casting out the demons’.  I witnessed seizures, people fainting, and a host of mass hysteria.

“In the name of JESUS, I CAST OUT THIS SPIRIT OF ASPIRIN!!”  Sometimes, the demons would talk back:  (Hissing) “She’s mine, you can’t have her.”  “In the name of JESUS, I CAST YOU OUT!!”  Eyes would roll back into heads, hands would shape into claws.

As an impressionable kid in grade school it was terrifying, and it was awesome.  At night I dreamed of demons attacking me.  Big black shapes, so black that I could not even see any face, just a vague form.  So macabre were these dreams that I would often wake up hyperventilating.  I was often scared to go to sleep.

Joseph Michael

Nearly three decades later, I vividly recall the upcoming birth of my third sibling, and second brother.  I was so excited. Myself, brother Jesse, and sister Leslie were staying at the Nei’s house because mom was having a baby. Mom and Dad looked sad when we got there, and we learned that it was because baby Joseph Michael ‘went to be with Jesus’.

I can still recall the crushing feeling that pervaded the room at that point.  It turns out that Joseph Michael was alive and kicking 2 hours prior to birth, but was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, easily solvable at the hospital.

But we believed that God spurned doctors (although I never did figure out ‘Luke the physician’ in the New Testament), and that even taking an Aspirin pill would possess your soul with demons.  I often wondered, in later years, just what was going through poor Mr. and Mrs. Nei’s heads as we rode in the back of their station wagon en route to meet our new sibling. We were celebrating as young children do, and surely they knew that Joseph was stillborn, but we were speculating his sex, name, hair color, and arguing over who got to hold him first.  It must have driven a chilling wedge right through their hearts.

Grandpa Wilson’s Glasses and Beer

When I was three years old, I startled my grandparents by proclaiming, “Grandpa when you get saved you won’t need to wear glasses anymore and you won’t drink beer.”

I was already indoctrinated.  In the Old Testament, Exodus 15:26 states, “I am the Lord, thy Healer”.

Little did I know, that in 4 short years, I would be afflicted with constant ear infections that lasted 7 years.  Neither the constant draining of puss from my ears, nor even hiding my handkerchief for wiping them, was not the hardest part; the hardest part was hiding it from the teacher at school.