Committed to Fighting Each Other

Hello there, this is AD Robles, and you're listening to AD on the Fight Laugh Feast Network.

Alright, well, let's just jump into it today, and we'll do the promotional stuff at the end, because I think it is really relevant to the topic today.

Don't worry, if you're watching it on video, you might see your boy Ruslan KD, B -Rabbit, you know what

I'm saying, you might see him on the screen. This video isn't going to be about him per se, but he definitely did inspire the thought in my mind that I want to talk about today, because, to be honest with you guys,

I've been thinking a lot about my content, and my channel, and what

I want to do, and all that kind of stuff, and I was talking to my brother, my biological brother yesterday, and he was asking me, why is it that he doesn't care about the social justice stuff anymore, when so many people still do?

Like, he's just over it, he's sick of it, he doesn't want to hear it, every conversation's the same, it's the same nonsense all the time, and I kind of told him at the time that, you know,

I've kind of wondered that myself, like, I enjoy doing the content, guys, don't get me wrong, but it is very repetitive, and I'm sure you guys feel the same way, it's like, well, yeah,

Ruslan's a new guy that I'm talking about, but every argument he says is the same nonsense that's been refuted since the beginning of my

YouTube channel, and even before that, of course, I mean, people were addressing this stuff way before I was, and it's not new, it's not an interesting take on an old argument, it's just all the same, and so, like, why do

I still do it? And again, don't misunderstand me, I do enjoy doing it, and so I hope you guys enjoy listening to it, but it got me thinking, like, why are we feeling that way?

And maybe some of you are feeling that way, in fact, I think some of you are. There's a few commenters, and guys,

I love you, and keep commenting, you know, but, you know, whenever I do another video about Jamar or Ruslan or whoever, they're like, oh, again, you know, like,

I think some of you are feeling this, and I just, I want to encourage you guys to love your brothers, love your neighbors, and love your brothers, and to keep going, because this content that we do,

I truly do believe that it's driven and it's motivated by love, because if I didn't care about Ruslan KD, and I didn't care about Jamar Tisby, if I didn't care about Eric Mason, I would just forget they existed, you know what

I mean? Like, I would just stop, because there'd be no point to it, I mean, let them go destroy themselves, if they want to be, you know, if they want to be preaching covetousness as if it's a good thing, then let them destroy themselves, you know, that's how

I would act if I didn't care about them, but I have a word from the

Lord about what I'm supposed to do in these kinds of cases, right? And listen, the reality is, and this might shock some of you, but I don't think it'll shock all of you, if I was a pastor of a church, which

I'm not, maybe that's a good thing, but if I was a pastor of a church, and Eric Mason walked in and wanted to take communion with us,

I would not let him, I don't believe him, I don't believe his profession, I don't.

Ruslan, I probably would, just because I don't know him very well, but there are people who

I don't believe their profession of faith anymore, and that's just the reality of the situation, and so, this is a serious thing, it's a serious matter, and if you get sick of this content, you know, nothing wrong with taking a break from it, but don't leave people high and dry, man, don't leave them high and dry, you know, not being able to have normal fellowship with someone does not mean that you don't give them the gospel, you don't try to plead with them to come back.

Even Paul in 1 Corinthians 5, when he handed over that pervert to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, even in that situation, that guy was far gone, don't get me wrong, he was far gone, but he was obviously broken about his sin, he was obviously repentant, and in 2

Corinthians, Paul says, let's bring him back into the full, let's not leave him forever, you know what

I mean? And I would imagine that that didn't just happen in a vacuum, right? Like, I don't think

Paul said, okay, well, you know, six months has passed, so that's enough time, he can come back. No, I bet you there were conversations,

I bet you there were, like, you know, hard conversations, and probably some yelling and raising of voices, and because the thing is, the people in the

Bible were people, man, like, they had emotions, they had feelings, they had, there was oomph behind what they said.

And so, I want to read to you from Leviticus chapter 19, and Leviticus chapter 19 is amazing, it's one of my favorite passages in the entire

Bible, because it contains, you know, verses that are very popular to evangelicalism and people that have an ishy -squishy faith, but it also contains verses that are very unpopular and aren't, you know, ishy -squishy, and so it's great because it has that dichotomy there, and if you're going to really believe it, you're going to have to accept it all, and you can't pick and choose and stuff like that.

This is where we get love your neighbor as yourself, right? From Leviticus, the book of the law, chapter 19, that's where love your neighbor as yourself comes from, because the entire book of Leviticus is teaching you how to love

God and how to love your neighbor. And so, if we're going to carry over love your neighbor as yourself into the

New Testament, then we're going to have to carry over the law of God into the New Testament, which is exactly what I think we ought to do, and if we want to love our neighbor, we got to listen to Leviticus 19.

But here's what I want to read to you. This is a very important passage.

This is Leviticus 19 .17. These are the words of God. That's an interesting law, because it says you shouldn't hate your brother, but you should rebuke him.

You should rebuke, you should contend with him. You should earnestly contend with him.

And it contrasts that with hatred. So, if you just leave your brother in his squalor, in his sin, in his evil beliefs, that's akin, according to the scripture, to hating him.

And so, I think that the reality is that we need to commit ourselves to fighting.

Yeah, that's right. We need to commit that we will fight with one another when the other person is dabbling with sin.

And I think that's what the woke church is definitely doing. Not everybody's in the same place, right?

Like, not everybody is as far along as other people. Jamar Tisby is well down the path to apostasy.

There's just no question about it. You know, Eric Mason, well down the path to apostasy.

But the thing is, like, not everybody's there. And so, we have to recognize that new people are hearing our content, new people are hearing our arguments for the first time, and they might not get it immediately, and it might not hit the right note with them immediately, but we do have a duty to them.

We owe it to them, if we're going to love them as a brother, as a neighbor, to contend with them earnestly, to rebuke them.

That's a duty that the law of God says that we ought to have if we're going to love our neighbor, right?

Love your neighbor is often used as a weasel word, and it's like, you know, you never explain it. You just say, oh, just love your neighbor.

And usually people use it when they want to promote some socialist policy that's nonsense, that's against the law of God.

Just, you know, just love your neighbor. You know, get the vaccine, love your neighbor. That's really not what love your neighbor means, obviously.

But I'll tell you one thing it definitely does mean. It does mean that you rebuke your neighbor for his sin.

In this context, it's talking about a brother. So, in the Old Testament, that would have been a fellow Jew. In the

New Testament, we're talking about people that are in the church, people that are in the visible church, right? That's who we rebuke.

We owe it to them, if we're going to love them, to rebuke them. And I'm starting to see Ruslan, you know, this isn't going to be about him, but he's a good avatar for the whole woke church movement.

I'm starting to see Ruslan as a bit of a tragic figure, because I watched this video here with Rick Caldwell. And Rick, brother, if you watch this video, thank you for this.

This was such a good example for me. And just, you know, considering my own content and the importance of what

I'm doing, but also how I need to take it a little bit more seriously when it comes to my communication, thank you for this.

This is just such a good example. But Ruslan, I'm starting to see him as a bit of a tragic figure. It turns out that,

I guess, he was abused by a priest in the Orthodox Armenian church or something like that, and that's very, very sad.

You know, obviously, he grew up, he says, with a lot of black people influential in his life. And probably it seems like if you put two and two together, that was right around the time that he was also being abused by this priest and stuff like that.

And so he's got a lot of influence from good black believers, this is what he says, all around the same time that his

Armenian priest was abusing him. And so there's a lot of tragedy in that.

There's a history there, and we ought to recognize that the past, of course, affects the present and your beliefs.

And so, you know, you don't want to leave a guy like Ruslan high and dry, right? You don't want to, because he professes

Christ. I believe him. You know, I've got some suspicions about some of his beliefs, right?

I think Ruslan's issue, and I think this is the issue of a lot of woke church people, this is not unique to him, is that he likes to talk, but he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.

Like, even in this conversation, they're talking, I guess they had agreed to talk about the woke church stuff and the

Eric Mason book and stuff like that. And Rick starts off, hey, have you read Woke Church?

Have you read this other book by Eric Mason? And Ruslan's like, no. And it's like, to me, that was confusing.

It's like, okay, so you think that his stuff is good and you would recommend him and stuff, but you actually haven't read this stuff.

And it's like, okay, that's fine. I guess you could recommend someone based on what you do know, and I can't hold you accountable for what you don't know.

But what happens here is then Ruslan says, well, I know Eric, and so I know he can't be that off.

So what ends up happening is Ruslan, and again, this is not unique to him, but the woke church will end up defending the man from attacks on the man's doctrine, all while he doesn't understand the doctrine.

He admits he's never read it, and he often will say, well, I don't know what I think, and I've never thought about this.

And it's like, but he talks, right? But he's talking. He'll promote

UBI, universal basic income. He'll promote school vouchers, but he doesn't know where that could come from from the

Bible. He's never thought about it, but he's promoting it. So he's chosen a side, right? And I think it's based on his history, right?

There's no question about that. Based on how he grew up and the things that happened to him and who he knows and who his wife is.

So he's promoting certain things, but he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about from a

Christian perspective. He's just talking. And it's like, I think that we can have sympathy for the backgrounds of Ruslan as an individual.

We can have sympathy for the backgrounds of a lot of people in the woke church and what they've gone through and what they've been through.

But at the same time, we must insist that that's all true.

I can affirm that that happened to you, but that does not change the reality of the situation that the only person in the entire universe that gets to decide what we do and what's what and how to see things and all that is

God himself. And so if it's not in the book, if it's not according to the good and necessary consequences of the book, you know, in other words, the light of nature and all that stuff, because God created nature too.

So he wrote that book also. If it's not there, then we can't do it.

Well, we can't make other people do it either. And so we need to find a way to communicate with—and

I'm talking to myself here, so please don't hear me preaching at you. I need to find a way to communicate in a way that acknowledges and sympathizes with people's history, while at the same time being, you know, rock -solid, immovable on what the

Word of God says and what God's worldview is and how we ought to interact and treat each other according to God's world.

And so that's kind of my challenge, and I think that, you know, the channel itself, it doesn't have to change,

I don't think. I think the topic is still very relevant in the Church. This is tearing up communities and stuff like that.

There's just no question. I get emails like that every day about, you know, oh man, I think my church's youth group pastor is going, whoa, what do

I do? How do I handle it? And stuff like that. And it's just heart -wrenching, because I know—because obviously

I'm not in that situation myself anymore, but I know that it's heart -wrenching when you are in that situation, and so I feel bad for people that are like, oh man,

I don't want to have to leave my church. And you don't have to leave your church. There's other things you can do, but it's just a tough situation for a lot of people right now.

It's very discombobulating, and Gospel Coalition is no help at all. They're just—I'll leave it at that for now.

But you get my point, right? So it's just, you know, I have a lot of sympathy for people that are flapping their gums, and they're very—I mean,

Russell's a very emotional man. There's just no question about it. There's nothing wrong with being emotional, but this is why we get so many warnings in the

Scripture that we shouldn't lean on our own understanding, right? There are certain things that seem good to us that aren't good at all, you know what

I mean? And Jesus addressed this, and the prophets addressed this, and all of that kind of stuff. And so we need to be one -track mind, you know, one -track mind.

Is it in the Scripture? Does it make sense according to the good and necessary consequence of the

Scripture, the way God has created the world, natural law? We understand how to read natural law in a way that doesn't disregard the

Scripture, you know what I mean? Like, we have to figure that stuff out. That's totally legitimate, but we can't do it in a way that turns the

Scripture on its head, obviously. We need to be one -track mind on that stuff. We do. We need to be one -track mind.

It's not the case that we can use illegitimate means and methods to accomplish

God's purposes. No, no, we have to follow God's law in every area of our lives, whether we're communicating the gospel to someone, or we're at work, or something like that, or we're interacting with our families.

That's how it has to be, no matter what happened to us in the past. There could be tragedy in the past, but we have to follow

God's law now. You can't obey God's law by breaking God's law.

You understand what I'm trying to say? And that's kind of the point. And so I think that I've kind of been a little bit reinvigorated for this content.

And I think all that to say, I really do believe that the book that I wrote is kind of striking that chord, because in the book,

I don't assume that you already agree with me on everything. I don't assume that you've heard all my content.

In fact, I rehash some of the stuff that I've covered in videos in a little bit more of an organized kind of way.

And I hope the book blesses you. If you've ordered it, it's coming. I sent a bunch out this week, and I've never done order fulfillment in my life like this.

It's just been chaotic. So if there's any problems with your shipment, let me know. But I think you'll find it helpful in this way, how to talk to someone who's never thought about this before, but they're yapping.

You know what I mean? They're talking. They're talking like Ruslan doesn't have a clue what he's talking about, but they're talking. How to bring simple -to -understand scriptures to bear.

These Bible verses that I cover in this book, they're easy. That's one of the things

I was looking for. I didn't want to find verses that were too complicated or too nuanced.

I wanted to find verses that were easy to understand, and they apply directly to so much from what you hear from wolves like Eric Mason.

Yeah, Eric Mason will cry, and he'll be, I'm so broken about this, as he's preaching heresies, as he's preaching division in the church.

He'll cry about it, but he's preaching war. And that's something that we should have no quarter for, no quarter whatsoever.

And the book doesn't. The book doesn't pull back at all, but it is in a more organized way, in a more palatable way for a lot of people.

And I think that if you've got people in your life that are going woke, let's just say this, that it wouldn't be a bad idea to buy this book for them, give it to them to read through, because it's not going to be as abrasive as sometimes my channel can be, and I'm not going to pull back from that too much.

I do think I need to find a little bit more of a balance sometimes between how

I speak and what I speak, not because I think it's like a sin or something like that, but I do think it can be less effective if I'm always kind of hot, that kind of thing.

But yeah, I think my book hits this tone exactly right. If you've got people in your life that you're worried about them dabbling in this white supremacy, whiteness, this kind of everything's racist kind of mentality, the book will be very helpful for that.

If you want a copy, please consider emailing me at ad at ad robles .com.

Let me know how many copies you want and I'll send you an invoice and we'll get it over to you as soon as we possibly can.

I hope you found this podcast helpful. Reach out to me with any questions. I love hearing from you and all that kind of thing.

I hope you found this podcast helpful. God bless. Bye.