Why Are Pagan Ideas Doing So Well In Churches?

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

All right, let's jump into it today. An early Fight Laugh Feast episode, and, you know, part of the reason is because tomorrow's

Thanksgiving, but the other part of the reason is I've been kind of slacking on getting these out there on Thursday, so hopefully this will make up for it a little bit.

But I did want to jump right into it today. I've got an insight that I've got to be perfectly honest with you,

I did not create. So I'm going to edla in this one, but actually not, because I'm going to give him credit.

My brother, my biological brother, his name is Matthew. He's an elder in the

PCA. He's a ruling elder, and I don't like to give him a lot of credit for anything. In fact, pretty much every time

I'm on the phone with him, I'll insult him at least a few times. Just all in good fun, all in good fun. But in all honesty, he impresses me very often with his insights, and this is one of them.

We're going to get to that in just a second. But I did want to say this, you know, the response to the Jonathan Lehman video from Monday was very good.

I think a lot of people agree with me that this was a very good step in the right direction. I think a lot of people are very wary of Jonathan Lehman.

And I have to be honest with you, I was listening to some of my old content about Jonathan Lehman, some of the things that he said, some of the positions he's put forward, his appearance on cross -politic.

And I got to be honest with you, after revisiting some of his more recent things that he has not repented for, he has not changed his opinion on,

I'm quite leery myself. That's not to say I don't want to encourage Jonathan Lehman. I do.

Jonathan, I think you could be a powerful force for good. In fact, this article, as I said, is a good example of that.

Sorry about that. I'm playing with coins here, and it makes noise. But anyway, but I'm leery.

I'm wondering what's going on. Is it more the kind of thing where he's kind of sensing a shift in the winds?

Because a lot of smart people think that's going to happen. A lot of these big EVA guys are now going to sense that the winds are shifting in the other direction.

And so they're going to have to go and follow the other direction. I don't know, that's pretty cynical. But to be honest, nothing would surprise me at this point.

But in any case, I really appreciated the thoughts and the feedback, a lot of thorough responses to me. Some of them are calling me a little bit naive, and some of them are in total agreement.

I appreciate reading it all. So keep them coming. And all of that kind of thing. I am not infallible.

I get it. I'm not going to be able to exegete Jonathan Lehman's intentions perfectly. But But anyway, in any event,

I wanted to talk about some of the responses here and then give you some insights from my brother.

So this is a funny one. This is Joe Ash Thomas. I have no idea who this is. I don't care at all.

But this is so funny because he pushes back to Jonathan Lehman. And he's talking about how he's he's striving for unity, unity.

Let me let me just read you two of his comments here. This is really funny. This is this is where you lose me, brother.

I'm an errantist, too. But I would never classify a brother or sister in Christ who isn't one as, quote, taking a walk with the devil.

We can disagree and offer correction via fellowship. Inerrancy shouldn't be a shibboleth to fellowship.

So this guy said, well, you know, you can't say that someone who doesn't believe that the word of God is inerrant, like God didn't make an error when he gave us his word.

You can't say that those people aren't we can't have fellowship with them, right? Because those are brothers and sisters in Christ.

Like you can be a brother and sister in Christ and say, yeah, has God really said? And that's why

Jonathan Lehman says you're taking a walk with the devil, because that's what the devil's temptation was. God hasn't really said that.

And so there's a bunch of brothers and sisters in Christ that are also saying, hey, God hasn't really said that.

And Joe Ash over here is saying we have fellowship with them. They love Jesus, too. They just don't believe that his word is without error.

Like, that's pretty crazy. So then and then listen to the next one. He says, I agree. I know that Jonathan has the best of intentions and using such strong language, but I hope he realizes how difficult this makes it for folks who are genuinely trying to build unity and consensus around justice issues in the church.

Language like this has consequences. It's like, can you imagine trying to build unity and consensus around justice issues like morality that God has has given us without believing that the

Bible is without errors? Like, that is that is that is a shocking project.

You couldn't possibly do it. And so we're starting to see like this is apparently this guy is a little bit more of a middle of the road deconstructionist.

But you can see like there's a fundamental chasm. We can't have a in -house debate with someone who believes that God's word, the breathed words of God, you know, it says that Scripture is breathed out by God himself.

These people think that that could have errors in it. And so they can correct God breathed words.

It's like you can't have an in -house debate like that because we don't have the same standard. We're not pointing to the same things.

And so that's an out of house debate. Those people are unbelievers. They don't believe in the breathed out words of God.

They don't believe that God's word is without error. They feel like they can correct some of God's word.

And that's a huge problem. There's a chasm of difference between someone who believes in the inerrancy of Scripture and someone who doesn't.

We can't have fellowship with them because it's not like we can't be friends, right? Like, well, it depends on what you mean by friends.

But it's not like we can't live together and not, you know, try to kill each other. That's not what I'm saying. Like if an inerrantist lives next door,

I can still treat him with respect and according to the law of God and all that kind of thing, right?

I still have to hold them to the same standard that I would hold myself. But the reality is though that we're not in the same religion.

If I point to the words of God and you have no problem saying, oh yeah, that's actually not true. That's a big problem.

So, you know, Joe Ashe here is trying to present this middle of the road position and he's like, oh, it's so dangerous.

We're walking with the devil. That's so mean. It's dangerous. It has consequences. And it's like, yeah, well, the problem is though that you're not actually a believer.

And so I'm not going to treat you like one if you don't believe in the inerrant word of God. Joe Ashe says he does here, but I'm willing to bet that that probably won't last very long.

Anyway, this one was really funny because this one is actually kind of what I want to talk about today. The article that we did with The Atlantic, that article was actually, if you look at the headline in the link, it's saying that Donald Trump is tearing apart the evangelical movement.

You see, this is the thing. A lot of these liberals, they always want to blame somebody else besides themselves.

They don't want to look at themselves. They want to blame somebody else. And so Trump is basically the catch -all blame for every problem that exists right now.

So you've got a problem, it's Trump's fault. Or white evangelicals. It could be either one. I mean, that's pretty much one and the same.

But they always want to blame other people. And this was a funny response. I don't know who Brent Print is, but he was responding to Jonathan Lehman and he was basically saying that Jonathan Lehman is all uppity about Christians writing books and how that's of the devil because they don't really believe in the word of God.

But there's evangelical influencers who deny Christ, and Jonathan didn't say anything. He's trying to catch him in an inconsistency.

Now, it's easy to catch Jonathan Lehman in inconsistencies. I've done this myself numerous times, and it's quite easy.

I mean, there's a lot of inconsistencies in what Jonathan Lehman presents as far as ecclesiology, as far as the law of God, and things like that.

But Brent here is trying to create one. And he says that Jonathan ignores an evangelical influencer who literally denies

Christ. But then he has this issue with this woman who wrote this book. What a jerk. He's such a patriarch.

This is crazy. And then you look at who he's referring to. It's unreal.

I mean, these people are sick. These are sick people. He's referring to James Lindsay, the atheist.

And he quote -tweets somebody asking him if he denies Christ, and James Lindsay says, yeah, I do.

I'm an atheist. Of course I deny Christ. It's like, that's not good. I mean, don't hear me saying that's good, but what would you expect?

He's an atheist. He's a known atheist. He presents himself as an atheist. He's never presented himself as anything but an atheist, as far as I'm aware.

And this guy's calling him an evangelical influencer. Unreal.

I mean, what a freaking lie. Like, why would you do this? Why would you do this? I don't understand it, but he's trying to catch

Jonathan Lehman. This is the thing. When you're an enemy, now Jonathan Lehman's now an enemy of Brent Print. It doesn't matter what you say about your enemy because they have no scruples whatsoever.

You can lie about your enemies. You can say all kinds of crazy things. It doesn't matter. I mean, people have said all kinds of stuff about me in media, you know, articles and things like that that aren't true.

But it doesn't matter. As long as you're the enemy, you can do anything to them. So this guy's saying that Jonathan Lehman refuses to call out

James Lindsay, the evangelical, for denying Christ. Well, obviously he doesn't call him out as an evangelical because he's an atheist.

Why would he do that? Of course Jonathan Lehman would be against atheists, at least I think so. But the whole point, though, here is that they want to blame other people for their problems.

And the reality is that Donald Trump is not tearing the evangelicals apart. Donald Trump is not tearing evangelicals apart.

You know who's tearing evangelicals apart? It's people like this. People that are refusing to stand up for any kind of truth in what

Christ is like, what he said, and stuff like that. Joe Asch here is one of the ones I think is responsible.

It's us. We have to look at ourselves if you want to know who the guilty party is. Because the reality is that people are sinners, right?

People want to pretend like they're in a position to put God in the dock and say,

God, what have you done? This is something that you always see, right? There are always people that are going to follow their father, the devil.

They're going to lie like their father. This is going to happen. There's going to be conflict in the church because we don't have, you know, goggles to be able to see who's regenerate and who's not.

So somebody can say all the right things for a time, but then secretly have this hatred of God in their heart, and then they're going to bring out their hatred, and it's going to come out.

And the way it comes out is either through violence or through lies, right? So lies or violence.

They start lying about God. Did God really say? And that's actually a big indicator when somebody's reading the words of God and saying, no, no,

God couldn't have said that because that's not helpful to me. It's like, that's a big indicator that what you're dealing with is actually an unbeliever, an enemy of Christ, and you don't put up with enemies of Christ, right?

And so I'm actually not even blaming them. I'm not even blaming the enemies of Christ, because at the end of the day, people that are unbelievers of course hate

God. I remember when I was an unbeliever and I didn't care one iota what God had to say. When I was thinking about what to do or whatever,

I did not reference the scriptures. I did not reference the way I was brought up. I was brought up as a believer, and when

I was doing, you know, whatever the heck I wanted to do, I just didn't even consider what God had to say. I just wanted to satisfy myself.

And so I remember what that was like. It just wasn't even a thought in my head. And so unbelievers are doing what unbelievers do.

It's blameworthy. Don't get me wrong, it's blameworthy. But in the context of the Church, if those people are taking over, you actually can't blame them.

They're doing what they're supposed to do. Who is to blame, though, are those who allegedly have the mind of Christ, who hold themselves to the standard that's put forward in the

Scripture and refuse to do what needs to be done. Joe Ash here is trying to make room for people who are following their father

Satan, saying, yay, has God really said? And he wants to make room for them in the body of Christ, even as they're denying

Christ with their actions and with their words every single day. If you don't care what Christ has to say, or if you say, no, no, he was wrong about that one, that's—you hate

Christ. You know how I know this? Because the words of Christ say so. What does God say, right? He says, abide in my love.

That's a coffee mug Scripture, if I've ever heard one. Abide in my love. Who doesn't love that?

I want to abide in the love of Christ. But how do you do it, right? How do you abide in the love of Christ?

If you ask a typical evangelical about that, you might get different answers, right? Well, you know, here's how you abide in the love of Christ.

Maybe you get your coffee, and you get your Bible, and of course you take a picture for Instagram, and then you spend some time in the

Word, you pray, that's how you abide in the love of Christ. And people might say that, but actually they'd be wrong.

That's not how you abide in the love of Christ. Do you abide in the love of Christ by listening to praise music, you know,

Hillsong, whatever it is, and just, you know, kind of getting in that zone, you know, that emotional zone where you start to feel warm, maybe you're weeping a little bit, is that how you abide in the love of Christ?

No, no, that's actually not how you abide in the love of Christ. We don't have to guess here.

Jesus Himself told us how to abide in His love. If you obey my commandments, that's how you abide in the love of Christ.

You obey His commandments. The love of Christ doesn't have to be the way

John Piper presents it, where you're just kind of walking around, just always, oh Lord, I love you, writing three -hour poems to Christ.

If you want to do that stuff, I'm not saying that's bad, but that's actually not how Jesus Himself said it.

The way you do it is you obey Him. So if you're walking around, maybe you're not writing a three -hour poem to Christ, maybe you're swinging a hammer to the glory of God, and then all of a sudden you're presented with a situation where maybe you could cheat your time sheet a little bit, or maybe, you know, you could not tell someone about something you broke at their house while you're working on it.

Here's how you abide in the love of Christ. You recognize that God has said, you shall not bear false witness.

You can't lie. So you have to, maybe, even if you have to eat the cost, you have to obey

Christ in those moments. You have to. And so that's how you abide in the love of Jesus Christ. So the reality is that this is the reason.

Joe Ash Thomas is of the world, and quite frankly, Jonathan Lehman is part of this problem as well. Like, this is a good article, but he's also made too much room for people that deny

Christ inside the body of Christ. You have to come hard against this. It's those people that have the mind of Christ, that understand what

Christ desires, what he wants, that don't do what must be done. Those are the people that are responsible for what's happening in the

Church, right? Because there would be no huge division right now in the body of Christ if we were already doing

Church discipline the way we ought to do. Anyone who says that they don't believe the words of God, or they have another word, or they want to import critical theory as an ideology to interpret the

Bible, and whatever, like, if anyone who does that would have been confronted, told to stop. If they didn't stop, it would go to the next step.

If they didn't stop, it goes to the next step. Eventually, they'd get excommunicated. They'd have to have their own pagan church and not poison the body of Christ.

So it's those people's problem. Now, my brother had an insight because here's the situation that we find ourselves in.

There's a lot of people waking up to the threats that are within the Church. In fact, that movie, Enemies Within the

Church, I feel like is going to wake up a lot of people. I'm actually going to be talking to Judd in just a little bit about that movie.

But here's the thing, though. How did we get to this point, and how do we fix it, right? Because the people that I have in mind have good theology in general.

I think in general, Jonathan Lehman has good theology. I would disagree with him on many things, but in general, he has good theology.

We all know pastors who have really good theology. They understand what the Scriptures say.

They understand what the Scriptures mean, and they have good application, but there's a catch.

A lot of men understand the Bible very well, and they can apply the

Bible very well to two circumstances, but they're missing a critical one. They can apply the

Scripture and the moral commands of God very well to the past. They can look backwards and see things that happened in the past and say, well, here's what the situation was, here's what they should have done, here's what the impact was when they didn't do it, and they're very good at applying the

Word of God to the past. They're also likewise very good at applying the

Word of God to the future, right? You know, we do these things, we've got this future, and this is what the

Scripture says is going to happen, and things like that, and they're very good at that. So they can apply the

Word of God to the past very well. They can apply the Word of God to the future very well.

There's a lot of guys like that, but there's very few guys that can apply the

Word of God to the present, to the situation that we currently find ourselves in today.

Lots of people are walking around out there, and they're Christians, and honestly they struggle with figuring, okay, so what do

I do now? How should I then live in this time, in this situation, where we're at as a country in the

United States in 2021? What are my duties? What is my goal? What should I be up to right now?

That's where people have a hard time applying the Word of God, and I think I know why.

Because it's risky, right? Because there's no risk in saying that George Whitefield should have denied slavery back then, because George Whitefield's not alive to defend himself.

There's no pressure saying that George Whitefield shouldn't do that, right? There's no active debate.

There's no risk there. Same with the future. There's no risk there, because whether you believe in post -millennialism, or amillennialism, or whatever it is, like whatever's going on, there's no risk there, because you're not there yet.

You could say whatever you want, and you could be right or wrong, and there would be no risk there. But you see, there's tons of risk in saying how we should act, how we should live, what our laws should be like today.

That's where all the risk is, because if you're wrong, the results of your wrongness, they may come back to haunt you.

They may come back to haunt you. But here's the thing, brothers. I think we need to rediscover our courage, guys, because Jesus Christ is so good, right?

His sacrifice on the cross for the people that He died for, for the people that He died for, was complete.

He knew about all the sins you used to do, He knew about the sins you were currently doing, and He knew when

He died on the cross about the sins that you would eventually do. He knew about all of it, and He covered all of it.

And so what I'm saying is not that you should just be sinning, you know, willy -nilly. Try not to sin, but if you make a mistake about how you apply something today, if you make a mistake and you don't quite get it right, blameworthy.

I'm not saying that's okay, but Christ has covered you. We need courage today, man.

People need to understand how to live and what to do today. This is the problem, and I think a lot of pastors are out there, they're very hesitant to apply the

Bible to specific situations today. Here's something else I'll say. People like to apply the

Bible in generalities today. They like to apply the Bible in generalities today, but they're very hesitant to apply it into specific situations and to go out on a limb and say it in specific situations.

And I think there's this tendency of people to think, I don't want to sound too legalistic.

It's like, what? Brothers, in what planet, in what universe is the thing that Jesus Christ says, will you abide in his love if you obey him?

What is legalistic about that? There's nothing legalistic about that. That's how you abide in the love of Christ.

You obey Christ yourself and train your flocks to obey Christ in every area of their life.

By the way, this is why the pagans are eating our lunch right now, because they have a prescription for right now.

They're not afraid to go after how we should then live right now, according to their doctrines of demons.

They're focused. They're laser focused on right now. Yeah, sure, they exegete the past too. And yeah, sure, they exegete the future as well, but it's all in service of right now.

They're using the history to focus on how we should live right now. They're tearing down monuments right now, because that's how they say we should be a moral people today.

That's how they say we should live right now. That's how they think we should do things right now. If the pagans are after right now, they're in the present.

They're living in the moment, man. How much more should Christians? Because Jesus Christ is saving his people.

Jesus Christ is recreating everything. He's making all things new, and he's doing that right now.

And we ought to be part of that. We need to be part of that. In fact, we are part of that, either for good or for bad. And so, brothers,

I think that we need to find our courage, man. Yes, it's more risky to apply the

Word of God right now to specific situations. It's very risky, but it's necessary.

Brothers, your people need it. I need it. I need my pastor to be applying the words of God, the commands of God to everyday situations right now.

It's not enough to be great at applying it to the future. It's not enough to be talking about the future, the past, or whatever.

It's just not enough. We need a Word of God that is useful and powerful for today.

It's not just that God saves you for the future sometime. He saves you for the future sometime, but also he saves you for today.

And that's what we desperately need right now. If you want to see who's at fault for the divisions that are in the church right now, the only thing you need to do is look in the mirror.

Anyway, I hope you found that helpful. I hope it was not scattered.

It kind of felt a little scattered, but maybe I'll talk a little bit more about this kind of thing in the future.

I think it's a tremendous insight. I hope you found this podcast helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the