AD Takes On Jonathan Leeman - Epic Battle!

AD Robles

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

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Alrighty then, let's get started. It has been a fantastic seven days for the

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A .D. Robles YouTube channel, the A .D. Robles show on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network, and just really

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A .D. Robles' Twitter life in general. It's been a really good day. If you want me to set the stage for you,

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I've done a series of videos over the past seven days or so. One of them was in response to a

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Jonathan Lehman article. One of them was in response to a Joe Carter article. These are two key members of the

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Big Eva cabal, and if you know anything about Big Eva, they don't usually descend from on high to engage the peons like myself.

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I am an uninitiated. I am not in the guild. I am not someone that they think is worthy of time at all, at least typically.

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But in seven days, in fact, within like two days in a row, I got two of them to respond to me.

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Jonathan Lehman and Joe Carter decided to mix it up a little bit on Twitter. Now, these conversations weren't very long, but I highly appreciated them, because honestly, at the end of the day, people only learn so much from these monologues that I do and that typically

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Big Eva does. But when you go back and forth and you're able to compare notes and compare questions and answers and stuff like that, it's a lot easier to learn, you know, who's being more biblical, who's making more sense, who's more rational about these things.

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And so I appreciate it. And at the end of this video, which will probably be a two -parter,

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I'm going to offer that Jonathan Lehman or Joe Carter or both come on the show and talk to me and have a real conversation, you know, face to face, give and take, all that kind of stuff.

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You know, anyone who's ever talked to me like this knows that I am respectful and reasonable.

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There's just no question about it. I like to laugh, but at the same time, I also like to have legitimate conversations.

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So I'm going to go through the Twitter dialogue. Now, what makes this a little harder is that Joe Carter decided to delete a bunch of his tweets.

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But hey, guys, you know, you know, I'm on to that. You know, you know, this is not my first rodeo.

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As soon as I saw him interacting, I knew he would do this. And so, of course, I saved them all.

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So I have the whole conversation. We're going to go through it. And I'm going to tell you why I found these conversations so helpful.

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But just as a way of reminder, if you remember last time, last Thursday, we covered this

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Jonathan Lehman article about the government. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I do want to remind you of one key aspect about his argument.

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What he said was what makes the conversation so complicated as to whether or not to engage in civil disobedience.

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If the government is telling you not to meet, here's what he said about that. He said, here's why it's a difficult topic from a biblical perspective.

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Both the government and the churches have a legitimate biblical claim on the territory of gatherings.

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You might call it jurisdictional overlap. Here's what he says about government. Government possesses authority if for no other reason than to preserve human life.

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And then he refers you to Genesis 9, verses 5 and 6. Now, you can be excused if you don't have

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Genesis 9, verses 5 and 6 memorized. And I will just read it to you so that way you have it in your mind when you look at this

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Twitter conversation. This is what Genesis 9 says. And if you remember, he's referring you here because he's telling you that the government possesses authority if for no other reason than to preserve human life.

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Here's what Genesis 9, verses 5 and 6 say. He says, and for your lifeblood

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I will require a reckoning. From every beast I will require it from man. From his fellow man

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I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds blood of a man, by man shall his blood be shed.

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For God made man in his own image. I love this passage because it does give you a biblical foundation for the government's authority.

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But specifically, it's talking about the authority that he gives to the government to take life.

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Because regular people actually don't have the authority to take life. If you were to take somebody's life, that would be either a manslaughter or an accidental killing or a murder.

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We're talking a lot about murder this week and stuff like that and the differences between the two. But the government does actually have a bit of a monopoly on that kind of thing, on taking life.

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Now, not totally a monopoly, but for the most part it does. There are some exceptions when a regular person can take a life, like in self -defense or something like that.

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But the government does have the authority to take life. In fact, the Scripture requires it.

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If a citizen takes somebody's life inappropriately, the government can take his life.

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And that's what it is. Whoever sheds the blood of a man, by man his blood shall be shed.

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This is why I am 100 % for the death penalty for abortionists and women who procure abortions.

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I am for the death penalty for abortionists and women who procure abortions.

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Let me say that again. I am for the death penalty, on the basis of this verse, for the death penalty for abortionists and women who procure abortions.

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I'm pretty sure that Jonathan Lehman would not be for that, which is interesting to me.

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But that's what Genesis 9, verses 5 and 6 say. And so, you would seem to think we're in some kind of agreement here.

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But here's the rub. He believes that that passage, which basically condones the death penalty for those who take human life, he wants to make that mean that, and also they can tell your church not to meet in the midst of a pandemic, and also they can require that businesses shut down, and also all these other things that the government is doing right now.

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And I don't know about you, but that seems like a stretch to me. That's a whole lot of work that you're trying to make these two sentences do, especially when the

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Scripture says a whole lot more about these topics. So let's go into this.

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I posted a video to talk about how submission to authority doesn't mean you outsource your authority.

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It requires that you actually keep your authority. So you can't say, well, I'm submitting to the government because they say they're asking in my best interest, and therefore

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I'm going to let them decide whether or not I meet for worship. The government doesn't have that authority. And so you can't outsource your authority to the government.

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Now, Jonathan Lehman starts off the conversation. He says, hey, RealAD, I agree with you 100 % here.

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That's my whole point about jurisdictions. You should never submit in those areas where God has not given an authority figure jurisdictions.

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Blessings. Oh, that's so cute. He doesn't agree with me, obviously, 100%.

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But maybe it depends on how you interpret the two -minute video that I posted, because on Twitter you can only post two -minute videos.

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So I'll give him credit for that. So I asked him the obvious question. He's saying that the government does have biblical jurisdiction to cancel

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God's worship of his people. And so I asked him, I said, show me where God gives the state authority over how and when the church worships.

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That would be very helpful. It's the obvious question, right? I mean, if you think that the government does have the authority to decide how and when your church worships in the midst of a pandemic,

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I thought that was obvious, the context, but apparently it wasn't, then you should be able to show us where that is.

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He responds. He says, I don't say it has authority over how and when the church worships per se.

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It has the authority to help preserve lives. And he puts in parentheses the implication of Genesis 9 .5

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.6, which involves in it a few things, building codes for the sake of zoning, abuse reporting laws, etc.

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Blessings. Oh, that makes me feel very good inside. So what he's saying is they don't really have the authority over the church, but they do have the authority to preserve lives.

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And so in this case, they can tell the church what to do because it's about preserving lives. And he draws that from Genesis chapter 9, which we just read.

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And man, that's a stretch. That's a whole lot of work. You're trying to make those two passages do that seem to be about something else entirely.

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But that's fine. Okay. Okay. Let's see. Let's see where he goes here. So I respond.

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I said, so in a pandemic, in the name of safety, it does have authority over when the church worships.

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Where in the Bible do you get this? Do you really think Genesis 9 does the work you need it to do here?

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Because we have a huge book of case laws in the scripture. So which one of those would apply here?

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And what I'm saying here is, you know, sorry about that. What I'm saying here is that, you know, Genesis 9 is pretty broad.

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And so, like, I don't think it does the work that you need it to do. But luckily for us,

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God didn't just give us Genesis 9 and expect us to just figure it out. No, he actually gave us a huge book,

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Leviticus, Deuteronomy, some parts of Exodus, Numbers, all that kind of thing.

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A huge book of different case laws, which give you examples of how the government can and cannot use its authority.

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It gives you sample cases. So in this case, this is what happens. In this case, this is what happens.

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That's what a case law is. And so God gives us a whole bunch more meat. And so what

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I'm asking him here is, I don't think Genesis 9 can do all the work you're asking. So you must be referring to a case law, right?

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Because God gave us a lot of more information that we ought to use. There's a lot of meat there, and we ought to use that meat to figure out what the government can and cannot do.

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Because certainly Jonathan Lehman's not saying the government has endless authority so long as it's in the name of public safety, right?

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So here's what he said to that. I asked him, which case laws apply to Scripture? And I want you to really feel the weight of this.

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Listen to what he says. He says, hey, bro, I don't think we should read

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Scripture politically like that. See chapter 4 of How the Nations Rage, Bible, not case law, but a constitution.

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Example, you don't go to the Old Testament on immigration and apply it directly to today.

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But yes, I think Genesis 9 gives government the ability to temporarily restrict human gathering.

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This is why I think this interaction was so important. There's a very big disconnect between how

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I read the Bible and how he reads the Bible. If you notice, he's trying to inject all kinds of meaning into Genesis 9.

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And say, Genesis 9, these two sentences, give the government all kinds of authority.

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All kinds of authority that he wants to put you under the yoke of, like you have to listen to the government when it takes its authority in a legitimate way.

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He's saying the government canceling your worship services, as long as they think there's a danger out there significant enough to warn it, that is biblically allowed and you should submit.

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And then the minute I say, okay, but we've got all these specific case laws that don't seem to jive with that, all of a sudden, well, hold on there,

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AD, we can't read the Bible politically like that. And I just have to wonder, why?

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Why? He, of course, does what most people do, and it's just a straw man where he says, we don't go to the

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Old Testament immigration and apply it directly to today. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm a general equity guy.

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We don't apply it one -to -one. It's not a one -to -one thing every single time.

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In some cases it is, like, for example, Genesis 9, where it says, if you take a life, government takes your life.

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That does apply one -to -one, but there are some things that don't apply directly. We look at the general equity of it, but why would we exclude pages and pages and pages and pages of case law that give us a window into what

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God was thinking when he said more general broad stuff like Genesis 9? Why would we want to exclude that from applying to today?

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That's a very weird way, in my opinion, to interpret the

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Bible. Very weird. So I just thanked him for interacting, and I said, this explains a lot of why we're disagreeing, and I think it really does, because if you want to make

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Genesis 9 do all that work for you to give the government all this authority, and then bristle when someone like me comes and says, yeah, but God said a lot of other things, too, and doesn't seem to jive with what you're saying, then you go, well, hold on,

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A .D., that's political reading of the Scripture. Yikes. That's a yikes from me.

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I don't know. I don't think that that's very convincing. Anyway, so here is what we are going to say next.

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I'm going to jump around a little bit, because there was something else that was very helpful here. Well, actually, let me just read the rest of his tweets, just so I'm being fair here.

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So he says to—I thanked him, and then he says, sure, you might ask yourself, can the government impose building codes on your church building for the sake of safety?

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If yes, I'd ask you. So you're saying the government has authority over how and when the church worships.

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Where do you get that? I -O -W, I don't know what that means. Oh, in own words, over how long the church—it's a broad label that's way too broad.

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Your second tweet specified, in a pandemic, for the sake of safety, which was, oh, he's saying my first tweet was too broad, and my second tweet said, in a pandemic, which is helpful.

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I thought that was obvious in the context of our conversation, but maybe it wasn't, so I clarified.

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Jonathan Lehman is saying, in a pandemic, they have authority over the church in these ways. He goes on, he says, now you might say you don't think the government has any authority of the gathering of citizens, even dangerous gatherings.

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Fine. My original point was, I agree with your point, that the government's jurisdiction is limited. I cannot ask us to do things that God hasn't authorized it to do, like worship

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Allah. But that's the point. That's the whole point. You're saying the government—God has authorized the government to ban church services if the pandemic is dangerous enough to the government.

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And I don't think Genesis 9 does that work that you're hoping for it to do.

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We're going to need something more than that because, presumably, this is a very serious thing. The Lord's Day is an important thing for the church, and so if you're going to grant to the government the ability to decide if it's too safe to worship

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God on the Lord's Day with your brethren, that's a very serious and solemn duty that you would be assigning to the government.

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So I'm going to need something more than a passage that seemingly just seems to indicate that the death penalty is okay for murderers, which actually you don't even believe because I'm pretty sure you don't advocate the death penalty for abortionists or for women who procure abortions.

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And so why is it that the specific meaning of Genesis 9 doesn't apply to Jonathan Lehman, but then he wants to apply all this other stuff that, according to the case laws, doesn't seem to apply?

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It just seems to be a very odd way to read the Bible. Now let's get to something else.

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There's one more thing that I thought was interesting because I think I got him here. So this was a second thread because he felt insulted by something

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I said. I retweeted him and I said, I think this interaction is helpful in showing the different approaches here. In particular,

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I want you to see the work that Pastor Jonathan wants to make Genesis 9 do while downplaying the biblical case laws, which he's definitively doing.

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He's downplaying the significance of the biblical case laws for our situation today. Now, he took very much offense to the word downplaying, and I understand why he would take offense to that.

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He said downplaying, and he had that little thinky face, and I said, yes, downplaying its relevance for today in our current situations.

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You said that we shouldn't read the scriptures like that. Did I misunderstand? Jonathan explained why he took offense.

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He says, downplay implies disregard, which politely would be a misunderstanding. All the scripture is relevant in our current situation, but not all scripture is relevant in the same way.

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I assume you're not practicing temple sacrifices or wearing clothes made of one kind of cloth.

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I mean, you can tell someone's grasping at straws, a Christian especially, when they start to sound like a village atheist.

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Like, is this really where we're going with this? Temple sacrifices, stuff like that?

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Hold on one second here. I mean, is that really what we're doing? Temple sacrifices to try to catch me in an inconsistency?

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Come on, Jonathan. I know you pretend like you don't follow my stuff ever, but you know who

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I am. Obviously, you know who I am. I'm not a simpleton.

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So I responded, no, but of course I recognize the difference between laws from the Old Testament that are abrogated and those whose general equity still applies and obligates civil governments today, like the judicial case laws, with a smiley face.

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Now, I'm not one to use big words like abrogated and stuff like that, but this is language directly from the

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Westminster Confession. So yeah, this is a little flex. I'm not going to lie. It's a weird flex, but I wanted him to know that I'm not a lightweight here.

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I know what the Confessions say. I know he's not a Presbyterian, but he probably knows what the Westminster Confession says as well.

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So he tried to catch me in an inconsistency, but I know the language. I know what this is about.

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Come on, man. This is not my first rodeo, son. Well, I don't know what that was supposed to be, but whatever.

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He says, right, so you have a humanudic, which impacts how you interpret the relevance of different passages, but I don't turn around and suggest you're downplaying

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Scripture. I'd give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest we might interpret Old Testament case law differently.

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I'll say. Then he said this. He felt like he had me. This is where I got him.

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This is like a Bonson. I got him like Bonson. Do you remember Bonson when he debated that atheist? And he says, do you have an example of an immaterial?

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And then he just kind of calmly says, the laws of logic. That's good one, man. That's a good one. Whatever you think about Bonson, that was a thing.

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But anyway, further, he thought he had me here, guys. He thought he had me, but your boy, your boy was ready.

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He says, further, I would be genuinely curious to hear what you think of government -enforced building codes on church buildings.

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He thought he had me. And I think I know why he thought he had me, because he had mentioned this twice before, and I didn't say anything about it, because I was interested in other topics.

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You know, sometimes when you're on Twitter, people will ask you like six different questions, so you have to choose which ones you answer.

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And in this case, I chose to ignore that one. It wasn't really relevant at the time. But I think that's why he thought he had me.

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He thought I had no answer to this. What do you do? Does the government have authority over building codes of your churches?

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I said, I think there are case laws to be found in Scripture that are directly relevant to such codes.

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Now, I might be a nerd, and I might be the only one that finds that good, but he's trying to catch me in this weird place where, like,

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I don't have warrant to believe something that's obviously I should believe. Obviously, I should believe in building codes, and I think the government should have the authority to enforce building codes.

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But, you know, Jonathan wants to just say, well, that's something outside of the Scripture, huh, Adam? And it's not.

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We've got case laws for that stuff. So that's why I believe building codes are acceptable, because we have building codes in Scripture.

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And we have case laws, specific case laws that were specific to Israel about putting a roof over, you know, a fence on your roof so that people don't fall off.

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And it doesn't apply one to one. Well, obviously, if you had a roof like that or maybe a deck, you should probably put a fence around it.

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But you can take the general equity there, the principle there, and say, you know what? Governments should tell you to build safe buildings, right?

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And you should be liable if you don't build a safe building and somebody gets hurt, right?

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So establishing those codes is something that the case laws specifically address.

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And likewise, quarantine situations and stuff like that, the case laws specifically address.

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But for some reason, Jonathan Lehman doesn't think that that's really that relevant for today in the midst of a pandemic.

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And that's a problem. That's a real problem. Here's what he tries. I think he—let's continue to read.

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I said, to be clear, I am not against such codes, and I think that they are required by God according to the case laws that he gives us.

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I didn't want him to misinterpret that. I think at this point, he knew that, at least in this conversation, he didn't have an easy mark on his hands.

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I'm not saying that he thinks he was outmatched here, but I wasn't an easy mark. He tried to trip me up intentionally, which we'll see in the next part.

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Joe Carter tries to do the same thing, except a lot more ham -fistedly. Joe Carter is not as intelligent as Jonathan Lehman, in my opinion.

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But anyway, we're going to see this. This is something that Big Eva does. They try to trip you up with their extreme knowledge.

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I think he found that it was not an easy mark, so here's what he said. He said, okay, if I'm going to take your route,

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I'd say let's look at Deuteronomy 22 .8. And I'd say that doesn't apply to us directly because it was given to Israel, my original point.

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The Bible gives us a constitution, not case law. But I'm also happy to say it's an excellent illustration of why and how the government should care about the safety of its citizens, including how and where they gather.

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It illustrates why we should care about building codes and the general safety of our gatherings, including in the time of pandemic.

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Do you see how he wants to play fast and loose here? I'm saying this case law, it doesn't apply one -to -one, but there's something there.

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There's a general equity there that we can apply to today, not only to show us where the authority of government lies but also to show us where the limitations of that government are.

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The building codes are a great example because if you notice in the scripture in Israel, when

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God gives Israel these building codes, there's actually no penalty attached to not doing it.

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So if you had a house and you didn't have the fence around the top of the roof of your house, they couldn't fine you or anything like that.

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And likewise, I would say the government doesn't have the authority to fine you for not building correctly. But if somebody gets hurt in your house and you don't have your house up to code the way the scripture said in Old Testament Israel, well, there are accidental death penalties that need to be enforced.

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There's other case laws we can look at. What happens if there's a negligent death? What happens to the person that was negligent?

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We can go to those case laws and say, well, that should apply here as well. That takes a little bit of work, but it's there.

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And so Jonathan Lehman, he wants to say, well, it's a good illustration, but it's not really directly relevant, but we can inject all this meaning.

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He wants to take that case law of Deuteronomy 28 about building codes and make it apply to banning church in the midst of a pandemic.

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Can you imagine the kind of intellectual gymnastics you have to do to try to ramrod that in there?

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Jonathan Lehman's trying to ramrod into scriptures that have really nothing to do with what he's talking about. All kinds of meaning that essentially amount to, ready, do what the progressive state has told you to do.

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That's the real trick here. Big Eva, all of their love your neighbor think pieces, all of them end up with the conclusion that you should do what your progressive neighbors tell you to do.

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That's how you love your neighbor. Whatever the socialist Democrats are saying, that's how you love your neighbor. And that's going to be a problem, boys.

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That's going to be a problem for me. Anyway, I hope you found this video helpful. Part two, I'll try to drop it tomorrow.

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I'm not going to wait another week and I have to tune in on Thursday. Tune in tomorrow on the Fight Last Feast Network and the 80

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Robles YouTube channel to get the give and take with CIA asset

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Joe Carter. Allegedly, allegedly no evidence of that. That's a conspiracy theory. But he went back and forth with me, too.

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It's a lot more spicy. In fact, he deleted a lot of his tweets and your boy has them. So that one's going to be interesting.

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I hope you enjoyed this one. I think it was helpful. If you found this video helpful to see the two approaches, the scripture, how

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Jonathan Lehman wants to hamfist all kinds of meaning into text that have nothing to do with it while ignoring the more specific text.

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If you think that's interesting and want to hear more about that, or even if you don't want to hear more about it, but you found it helpful. Let me know in the comments below, because I think this is amazing.

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This is the kind of stuff I live for, baby. Anyway, hope you found this video helpful. God bless.