Gospel Coalition "Secretly" Spreads Lies About Ole' AD - Responding to Rumors
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#NoDespair2020
- 00:00
- Hello there, this is A .D. Robles, and you're listening to A .D. on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network.
- 00:11
- All right, well, let's jump right into it today. Today's episode is going to be interesting. I'm going to address some of the
- 00:18
- Twitter drama that I got involved in this week. I think it's actually very interesting just with the narrative that we talk a lot about on this show, the
- 00:27
- Big Eva narrative, the evangelical machine narrative, what they're pushing, why they're pushing it, and how they push it.
- 00:34
- Some things happened this week that have revealed so much extra stuff to me that I knew about, but I know a little more detail about now.
- 00:42
- So we're going to talk about that because I think it's worth it. And just to be completely transparent, this is going to be a pitch about the
- 00:50
- Fight, Laugh, Feast Network as well. I wasn't asked to do this, but the contrast between the two organizations really could not be sharper.
- 00:57
- And so I think that by the time you get to the end of this video, you're going to potentially want to support this stuff.
- 01:03
- And so I'm going to ask you to listen, if you can, and consider supporting the
- 01:10
- Fight, Laugh, Feast Network as a club member. Use the show code ROBLES, R -O -B -L -E -S.
- 01:15
- Now, this week I got into two Twitter beefs. Now, I'm not going to become the Christian version of Keemstar, so don't worry about that.
- 01:22
- This is not what my channel is going to be turning into from going forward. But I got into two conversations in which my opponent in the conversation deleted all of their tweets in the conversation.
- 01:34
- So you can guess how they felt those conversations went. All of my tweets are still up because I wasn't ashamed of anything
- 01:40
- I said. Everything I said was truthful. But almost all of their tweets they decided to delete from the internet.
- 01:50
- But because your boy A .D. Robles is used to this kind of thing and it's not his first rodeo, he actually screenshotted all of those tweets.
- 01:57
- And so this week I posted two videos, one about Joe Carter. He's an editor of Gospel Coalition.
- 02:03
- And one about a guy named Griffin Goolidge who is another writer for the Gospel Coalition. I have all the screenshots of the tweets so you can see exactly how those conversations went and the slimeball tactics that they used against me.
- 02:16
- Now, in the Joe Carter video, I said that he libeled me, committed libel against me.
- 02:21
- And in my opinion, he did. But a lawyer informed me. I didn't go to the lawyer. He came to me.
- 02:26
- A lawyer informed me that I probably couldn't prove libel. The court would probably see it as his opinion.
- 02:33
- Maybe it was right, maybe it was wrong, but that was his opinion. And I couldn't prove damages, which
- 02:39
- I think in the video I said I wouldn't even attempt to sue him, of course. But even if I did, I probably couldn't prove damages, which is the big thing about libel.
- 02:47
- Anyway, so technically, Joe Carter probably didn't commit libel against me, although he did lie about me.
- 02:55
- So that's still something that we need to pursue with each other as professing
- 03:00
- Christians in Christ. I do have something against him, and we're going to take that through the steps of church discipline. But anyway, that's not what this is about.
- 03:08
- So I wanted to start here with a tweet from Michael Foster. Michael Foster is a – he writes –
- 03:18
- I think he co -writes or co -owns the ministry It's Good to Be a Man. And his stuff is fantastic.
- 03:25
- If you don't follow him on Twitter, his Twitter handle is ThisIsFoster. I've mentioned him before. Or you can go to his website,
- 03:31
- It'sGoodToBeAMan .com. Just the content here is content you will not find anywhere else, literally nowhere else.
- 03:39
- Him and his co -partner, non -tenant, B -N -O -N -N tenant, they write some really helpful stuff.
- 03:49
- Even if you don't agree with it, it will absolutely challenge you and bless you. I highly recommend it. But a few days ago, two days ago, he tweeted out this.
- 03:57
- He said, Big Eva is really going to trip out when they see that we've realized we don't need them.
- 04:05
- People are waking to the fact that we don't need their credentials, we don't need their
- 04:10
- PR machine, we don't need their platforms, and we don't need their approval. More importantly, people are realizing that they don't even want those things.
- 04:23
- For my week, this was prophetic because in the Twitter drama that I got involved in, there were some things revealed about conversations that are happening in the shadows about your boy
- 04:34
- AD that are hilariously misinformed and I think shows a lot of weakness when it comes to Big Eva, a lot of anxiety, a lot of self -consciousness about the fact that, frankly, people don't want to be a part of their organizations anymore.
- 04:54
- Of course, you'll always find lackeys that'll write your articles for you and intern for you, work for free for you, but the reality is that the way that the internet works these days, the way that we can do video production, the way that we can do audio production and stuff like that, the cost of entry, the barrier of entry is very low, and people, frankly, aren't necessarily going to look for the most highest quality produced stuff.
- 05:17
- They like high quality produced stuff, but we can eventually get there, of course, and we are planning on doing that.
- 05:24
- But really, at this point, there's so many lies out there and there's so many milquetoast effeminate types out there that really people are just looking for someone to just not be that and have a camera and a microphone, and even if they have to suffer through a little bit of low audio quality, which, guys, it's coming, they'll do it.
- 05:42
- They'll do it because they'd rather see somebody on the video screen telling them the truth than someone telling them smooth -sounding lies like Big Eva does all the time.
- 05:53
- The time of the Tim Keller, you know, fortune cookie show that everyone just fawns over everything he says, that time is setting, and it's not just because Tim Keller is getting old.
- 06:03
- It's just that style is no longer attractive to people. Nobody likes to be caressed and soothed in lies.
- 06:11
- People like people that are going to tell them what's what and tell them what's true from the scripture. They don't want people weaseling out of the scriptures like so often
- 06:19
- Big Eva tries to do. Like that Jonathan Lehman cross -politic interview was just so remarkable how he just tried to weasel out of clear scriptures, and it was so obvious to everybody, even people who agreed with him were wondering, why doesn't he just answer?
- 06:33
- Well, I've got my opinions on why he won't answer, but this is how the Big Eva machine works, and people, you know, are waking up every single day that they're not interested in it.
- 06:44
- If you look at Gospel Coalition's Twitter engagement, they get ratioed almost every single tweet, and they definitely get ratioed every single tweet that people that aren't in Big Eva mention.
- 06:55
- So if I mention a tweet or Marcus mentions a tweet or someone else from one of these other independent platforms mentions a tweet, it'll get ratioed every time.
- 07:04
- That's the only engagement that they have. It's a wasteland out there, and they don't know how to fix that, and frankly, they don't have the will to fix it because their style is just unattractive in almost every way.
- 07:15
- And so what you'll get is articles that will denounce the platform itself. So you lose on Twitter.
- 07:21
- You can't figure out how to win. You get ratioed every tweet, and so what you do is you call your buddy, hey,
- 07:26
- Carl Truman, can you write an article about why Twitter stinks? And Carl Truman, because he's a dutiful little soldier, will write you a theologically worded article about why
- 07:36
- Twitter thinks. Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he outsources it to one of those other companies that does research for Big Eva and writes their articles for them because we revealed that last week as well.
- 07:47
- And so that's kind of how this game has been played, but let me just get to the point here. So this is a thread
- 07:53
- I just tweeted out. This is like 4 in the morning because I'm up early today. But anyway, here's what
- 08:00
- I said, and I will explain a little bit more. It says this. It says, It's come to my attention that there are a handful of rumors that have spread through certain sections of Big Eva about your boy,
- 08:10
- AD. Like the high school Mean Girls lunch table, these folks love gossiping behind the scenes.
- 08:17
- The first is a flat -out lie that I described in my video yesterday. I was never confronted by my church for my content or tone.
- 08:25
- So yesterday the Gospel Coalition writer said that my church confronted me about my tone and even rebuked me for it, and I didn't listen to them.
- 08:35
- And the reality is that I've never told that story. And so where did he get that story?
- 08:40
- Well, he got that story from a particular person who has a personal vendetta against me, and he spun that story in a completely lying fashion.
- 08:49
- That's not how it went down. I actually have talked about this in my content. My co -elder in the faith one day came to me very concerned about my content and tone.
- 09:01
- We couldn't agree, and we talked about it like two brothers. At the time, I didn't know he had talked to this Big Eva person, but he had.
- 09:08
- Anyway, so we had talked about it like two brothers. We couldn't agree on it. My point was that sometimes harsh language is required towards Christians.
- 09:17
- His point was that harsh language is never acceptable towards Christians. I know that sounds crazy, but that literally was his point.
- 09:24
- He said if I was talking about a brother in Christ, harsh language is never allowable. Anyway, so we couldn't agree, and so I insisted that we bring the rest of the men of the church into the conversation so that we could kind of talk it through all together and that kind of thing.
- 09:42
- And so we did that. I think it was three other men, maybe. Oh, it was four other men, actually.
- 09:48
- We brought three other men from the church and then a pastor that we both trusted from external, someone else that we both knew who knew us both and all that kind of thing.
- 09:56
- That was my idea as well because I figured we should probably get a mediator in the conversation. Anyway, that was a long conversation, a very difficult conversation.
- 10:04
- At one point, I was close to tears because the details don't matter.
- 10:10
- Anyway, because this stuff is important to me. I don't relish in criticizing
- 10:18
- Big Eva members. Some of these people have written books that have impacted my life so much, and it's not easy.
- 10:26
- You know what I mean? It's not an easy thing to do. Anyway, the result of that conversation was that every single person said, you know, even if I don't—
- 10:34
- Well, some people just agreed with my content completely. They were just like, it's totally fine, including the mediator, actually, eventually came out on my side.
- 10:45
- But then the others that didn't agree with the tone necessarily were saying, well, there's definitely room for this tone, and I might not agree with every time you've ever employed it, but that's a matter of opinion.
- 10:55
- And so the facts are that my church did not confront me about this. In fact, the church talked to me and the other elder at the request of the other elder and agreed with me.
- 11:06
- That's how it went down. But you see, Big Eva spun it to make it seem like I was kicked out of the church, and I think that partly this is my fault because what had happened was the church was small, and I personally and the other elder didn't want to work with me anymore.
- 11:22
- He couldn't abide working with someone who was making the kind of content that I was making, and I was at the time unwilling to pastor the church alone.
- 11:31
- And so I offered because I wanted the church to continue. I didn't want it to blow up for that. I offered to leave myself.
- 11:38
- I offered to leave the church myself, and so that's what I did. I left the church myself willingly.
- 11:44
- I wasn't kicked out. I wasn't pushed out or anything, but I left in order to preserve the unity of the church. A few weeks later, the church closed down anyway, so that was ineffective as a strategy on my part.
- 11:56
- But you see, Big Eva took that opportunity to spin that, that I was kicked out of the church, which is not what happened.
- 12:03
- So that's a pretty slimy thing for someone to bring up in a conversation later who really has no business talking about something of which he was not a part of, and so it tells me that Big Eva has had these conversations in a gossip session one day and a lot of people spread it or a lot of people heard it at the time.
- 12:22
- Really slimy, but overall, that one doesn't really bother me too much because I've got all the receipts on that.
- 12:28
- There's just no question about it. But this is the one that I found especially interesting as well.
- 12:35
- Another person from Big Eva was the other day spreading this rumor about me.
- 12:42
- The rumor is that I'm just mad at Big Eva and I do content against Big Eva because I never got to be a part of Big Eva.
- 12:52
- I couldn't hack it. And so I am now jealous because they wouldn't let me write for their blogs.
- 12:58
- They wouldn't support me. They wouldn't platform me. I'm mad, so now I want to burn down the system essentially is what this guy said.
- 13:07
- And I have the receipts on this one. I've got screenshots on this one. I'm not going to reveal them because that's not really the point of this.
- 13:15
- But this is a rumor that's been confirmed by other people as well, so this is definitely true. Anyway, but here's the thing, guys.
- 13:24
- Here's the thing. So I do want to burn the system down.
- 13:30
- I don't want Big Eva to have any more influence. In fact, that's one of my goals. I want people to think when they hear the term
- 13:37
- Gospel Coalition, I want them to think of, I don't know, the New York Post or something like that or the
- 13:43
- Washington Post or something like that where it's just like obviously fake news. You know what I mean? Something like that.
- 13:50
- But here's the reality. Here's what really happened here. So that carrot about joining
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- Big Eva, that's been dangled before me at least three separate times. I've had the conversation at least three separate times how talented
- 14:05
- I was, but the kind of content that I was making, that's not the way to climb the
- 14:10
- Big Eva ladder. That is not the way to make moves in their circles. And that conversation has happened at least three times where they said, you know, you could be essentially in our club.
- 14:22
- You have the talent. You have the background. You have this stuff, but this is not the way.
- 14:29
- And what they were meaning by that was criticizing the words of other brothers. That's not the way. Every time
- 14:36
- I was dangled that carrot, I rejected it because I was not interested in being platformed if I couldn't say certain things, like if I couldn't say, hey,
- 14:45
- Matt Chandler, you were wrong about this. Because at the time, I was super tame. I was not ripping people.
- 14:51
- I was just saying, you know, Matt Chandler, I love you, but you're wrong about this. Like that's what they were saying I couldn't do. So I rejected that.
- 14:58
- That wasn't going to happen. You know what I mean? I'm not interested in being somebody's lackey. I'm interested in what's true, right?
- 15:05
- So three times I was dangled that carrot to be a part of Big Eva, and three times I rejected it.
- 15:11
- But even more hilarious than that is that I actually used to write for a Big Eva blog.
- 15:16
- I was invited to write for the For the Church blog when it first started. That's the blog that is produced out of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
- 15:27
- I was asked to write blogs for there. I wrote maybe four blogs, and I just found no joy in it.
- 15:32
- I found no joy in it. And so I stopped writing them. I wrote a blog about atheists.
- 15:39
- I wrote a blog about Mormonism. I wrote a blog about the law of God one time. But I think even back then, early on,
- 15:48
- I could sense that there were certain things I could not write. And so I was writing these kind of like puff piece, typical
- 15:54
- Gospel Coalition type articles. And I just didn't find it very fun.
- 15:59
- And so I just stopped writing for it. I mean, I just submitted maybe four articles. I didn't have like a –
- 16:05
- I wasn't like required to send a certain amount of articles, but I was told I could send whatever I wanted.
- 16:11
- I wrote like four articles, and then I just stopped. I just didn't like it. I had no joy in it, and I just – it just wasn't for me.
- 16:18
- And then a couple years later, I started my YouTube channel. And that was a lot of fun because I could actually talk about things that were important, that were maybe a little bit controversial, you know, that could have a little bit of an edge to them.
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- And I didn't have an editor. I didn't feel like I was – the only thing that was stopping me was what the
- 16:36
- Gospel said, what the Bible said I should do or could do or things like that. And that was a lot more fun.
- 16:43
- And what's interesting is that those videos led to the deletion of my old articles on that website without any warning, without any explanation at the time.
- 16:54
- Those articles were just thrown down the memory hole. And I've shared those articles before. People can see they're just pretty milquetoast type stuff, you know.
- 17:02
- Anyway, so I did one on immigration too, but it was like the official immigration line at the time.
- 17:09
- And I've since changed my opinion on immigration. Anyway, so it's like – so that's just a lie too.
- 17:17
- It's like, well, you're just mad because you couldn't be a part of Big Eva when in actuality
- 17:22
- I was already on the track of Big Eva. And I found no joy in it. I quit almost immediately.
- 17:27
- And people have dangled that carrot. They've told me that they would help me and support me and things like that at least three times.
- 17:34
- And every time I've just rejected it. And so jealousy about being part of Big Eva has absolutely nothing to do with it.
- 17:42
- Michael Foster in this tweet here, this was a prophetic tweet because this was two days before I found out all this stuff that he said this.
- 17:51
- And it's like, yeah, like that's exactly me. Like not only do I not need Big Eva to build a platform, but I actually want nothing to do with it.
- 17:59
- I saw what it was like behind the scenes, and I'm not interested. I could never take a job like that.
- 18:06
- It's like if my brother was telling me if he ever found out that he was hired for a job because he was
- 18:11
- Puerto Rican that he would quit that job right away. Because that's just such a ridiculous – it's just so ridiculous.
- 18:18
- So anyway, so all this to say – I told you this is going to be a pitch for Fight, Laugh, Feast. Like here's the reality.
- 18:25
- I do want the systems of Big Eva replaced because they're soy -laden.
- 18:31
- Like you read Gospel Coalition, you look at – I mean, look, looks can't tell you everything. But if you look at the aesthetics of Gospel Coalition, it's just soy -filled to the nth degree.
- 18:43
- If you look at a picture of an author at Gospel Coalition, it is soy -laden.
- 18:49
- I mean Gospel Coalition is the soy coalition. That was a great video by Paul Maxwell.
- 18:56
- If you remember that old video on self -wire that said that evangelical culture is beta culture. There's nowhere that that's more true than Gospel Coalition.
- 19:05
- It is beta. It is effeminate. It's probably fine for women, but it's not fine for most men.
- 19:11
- Let's just be honest about that. And so yeah, I don't want Gospel Coalition to have a good reputation anymore.
- 19:17
- If they change their ways and they change the way they do things, okay, fine. But short of a complete 180,
- 19:23
- I just want it to be completely gone. That's what it is. That's what it is. And so it's not jealousy.
- 19:29
- I do want to burn the metaphorical systems down, you know what I mean, that kind of thing. And they will, and of course that they will.
- 19:35
- I mean they're going to collapse on their own soy -laden, Soros -funded weight eventually.
- 19:40
- That's going to happen. But the thing is like I'm not interested in those platforms. What I want is
- 19:46
- I want to build new platforms. And I think that the people in Moscow, Idaho are working on that.
- 19:52
- They've got a publishing branch. They've got media. They've got businesses in the town and all that kind of stuff.
- 19:58
- There's some great stuff going on up there, and there's some new stuff coming up there as well that nobody really knows about that I know about that is exciting.
- 20:06
- And it's not just exciting for Christian circles. It's exciting just for the country, the kinds of things that are going on right now because we don't need your money.
- 20:15
- We don't need your support. We don't need your PR. We can do our own thing, and we're doing it right now.
- 20:21
- And so I think that the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network, when they called me up to do a podcast here, I said yes basically immediately without even knowing any of the details because if I was going to handpick an organization to podcast with, it would have been the
- 20:33
- Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. So that was probably a dumb idea on my side just to say yes no matter what, but that's what
- 20:39
- I wanted to do because I think that the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network is well -positioned to be a replacement for Big Eva because they actually don't really want to replace
- 20:48
- Big Eva. They want to actually produce content that is valuable outside of the
- 20:53
- Christian church for the Christian church. They want to provide content, for -profit content. This is not a charity.
- 21:02
- This is not like just a ministry kind of thing where we're going to be looking for George Soros -funded money when we can't make our bills and stuff like that.
- 21:09
- But we're not like if you look at the people that are on the Fight, Laugh, Feast Network, we're not insisting on everyone marching to the same drum.
- 21:19
- We don't have a rule where we can't criticize each other if we see fit. I mean that's just not something that was ever discussed.
- 21:27
- People have criticized each other on abortion policy. People have criticized each other on some of this shutdown stuff, and there's never been one passive -aggressive effeminate email sent as far as I'm concerned where it's like,
- 21:41
- A .D., you shouldn't have said that about Doug Wilson. Never. Never. People think like Doug Wilson is like this cult leader and you can't take criticism.
- 21:50
- I criticized his position on the shutdown immediately, and I didn't get any—no one threw shade my way.
- 21:58
- No one threw shade my way. But I did that about Chandler early on in my YouTube career and instantly was like how could you touch the
- 22:06
- Lord's anointed? How evil could you be? You know what I mean? That's how girls figure things out, and not just girls.
- 22:13
- Mean girls at the lunch table. You remember the clique. You remember the kind of girls I'm talking about. That's how they do things, passive -aggressive, passing notes, secret meetings, stuff like that.
- 22:24
- Look, I'm sure that there are meetings that happen at Fight, Laugh, Feast that I know nothing about, but I'll tell you what, the results of those meetings don't say, well, you know,
- 22:31
- A .D.'s got to do this, A .D.'s got to do that, that kind of thing. Look, I would take correction. If I've said something across the line,
- 22:37
- I always tell people to tell me that I've taken something across the line. That's not what I'm talking about.
- 22:43
- You know the kind of thing I'm talking about, the passive -aggressive nonsense. That's what I'm talking about. And so, yeah, man,
- 22:49
- I'm working to—I'm not working to get into Big Eva. I'm working to replace it completely with completely new systems, new platforms, and things like that.
- 22:58
- And if I can help with the Fight, Laugh, Feast network to do that in any small way, I definitely will.
- 23:05
- And if you think it's valuable for this as well, please consider becoming a Fight, Laugh, Feast network club member.
- 23:11
- Use the show code ROBLES, R -O -B -L -E -S. Let them know you like this content. And here's the promise, guys, and this is the thing.
- 23:19
- If Fight, Laugh, Feast—God willing this never happens—if Fight, Laugh, Feast network ever became like the old system, like the
- 23:26
- Big Eva machine where you can't talk about Matt Chandler a certain way and things like that, and it's not a biblical rule—because, again, there's biblical rules
- 23:34
- I need to follow, of course, right? But if I can't criticize Matt Chandler's words as a part of the Fight, Laugh, Feast network, then
- 23:41
- I'm quitting. You know what I mean? I'll abandon them completely because this is the thing.
- 23:47
- It's not worth it to me to do it that way. The truth is too important. So, yeah, so these rumors—you may have heard these rumors because if these two random people have been spreading these rumors that had nothing to do with the situation, who
- 24:01
- I've never spoken to prior to this situation, had heard and were willing to spread these rumors publicly, then probably a lot more people have heard them, and they're just not correct at all.
- 24:13
- And so that's really what's gone on. I know that Big Eva likes to work gay ops all the time.
- 24:21
- If you don't know what gay ops are, look it up on Urban Dictionary. These are the secret meetings where you try to ruin people's reputation and platform in secret, never directly because, you know, you're too much of a stately evangelical leader for that kind of thing.
- 24:34
- But you do it in secret, and you stop inviting them to certain things, and you start telling certain lies about them and stuff like that.
- 24:40
- That's what a gay op is. Big Eva is full of gay ops. So if you've heard one of these gay ops, then, you know, understand what it is.
- 24:50
- It's an attempt to stop the sting of rejection because their normal stuff, it just didn't work with me.
- 24:57
- They offered me to kiss the ring, and I will be their perfect protection one day.
- 25:06
- And I just told them no, and I don't think they're used to being told no. I told them no three times.
- 25:11
- I don't think they're used to that, and so that probably hurt their pride a little bit. It's like the hot girl getting rejected on a date.
- 25:17
- Like, that hurts her pride a little bit. So what does she do? She passes a stupid note to her friend, and the gay ops begin.
- 25:24
- Anyway, I hope you found this podcast helpful. If you want to become and support this
- 25:32
- Fight, Laugh, Feast Network as a club member, please consider doing so. Use the show code ROBLES, R -O -B -L -E -S.
- 25:39
- I hope you found this podcast helpful. God bless. Don't forget to tune in next week on Thursday for AD on the
- 25:48
- Fight, Laugh, Feast Network. I'll see you then.