Hobart Freeman - Early Life

Early Life

Hobart Edward Freeman was born in Ewing, Kentucky, and grew up at St. Petersburg, Florida, where he became a successful businessman after studying at Bryant and Stratton Business Institute, despite being a high school dropout. He also contracted polio, and in later years "... walked stiffly ... with an obvious limp."

Freeman was converted to Christ in 1952 at the age of 31, and baptized into a congregation within the Southern Baptist Convention.

Shortly before Freeman received "the baptism in the Holy Spirit", he survived a heart attack. He "claimed" his healing, disposed of his medications, and almost immediately suffered a series of angina attacks, which eventually subsided.

Freeman was called to the ministry, and educated at the Georgetown College with a Bible and History major, and then at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (A.B., Th.M.) with an Old Testament major. In 1961, he earned a Doctorate of Theology from Grace Theological Seminary in Winona Lake, Indiana with a thesis entitled "The Doctrine of Substitution in the Old Testament", and was appointed a professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Studies, and Philosophy and Ethics.