Could We Be Gatekeeping the Gospel of the Kingdom?

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

All right, well, let's just jump right into it today. I have, over the last few days, really over the last few months,

I've been talking to my biological brother who's an elder in the PCA. I've been talking to him about, you know, one topic that, you know,

I want to see if I can capture this conversation with you guys, and where I want to begin is with Joe Rogan.

So, a lot of people have asked me what I think about the Joe Rogan situation, and obviously,

I don't want Joe Rogan to be censored. I think that's ridiculous and all of that. But what

I'm more interested in is all of these reactions that I'm getting from people that I respect, where it's like,

Joe Rogan's indispensable, like, we need him in this fight, and stuff like that. And I just, so far, what

I've said about this is, no, we don't. Why do we need Joe Rogan in this fight? Like, what's so great about Joe Rogan?

And, you know, what I've said is that, sure, he interviews people that maybe the mainstream media won't interview because they're totally, you know, ridiculously propagandized at this point.

So, maybe that's a good thing. I'm glad he'll interview, you know, that anti -vax doctor or whoever.

But is that how low our bar is for someone that's indispensable to the movement? Like, the fact that he's willing to interview someone?

I just don't understand how that makes him indispensable. And the reality is that Joe Rogan is a gatekeeper.

And what I mean by that in this context is that Joe Rogan will say some true things, and maybe some true things that are uncomfortable or politically incorrect to a certain degree.

He'll say some true things, and I'm always glad when people say true things. But what's dangerous about Joe Rogan is all of the true things that he'll tell you, it's couched in a story, in a narrative, that's totally upside down.

It's like the narrative that Joe Rogan is pushing is antichrist. It's upside down.

It's not true at all. So it actually makes it even more dangerous that he's saying some true things because it's all couched in a context that's totally false.

And what I said was, you know, it's kind of similar to public school, right? Public school is like institutional gatekeeping.

So when you send your kid to public school, they're going to learn how to read and write. They're going to learn how to do mathematics.

They're going to learn some true facts about geography and some science and stuff like that. But the whole story that they're going to get while they're learning this is anti -God, anti -God's creation, anti -God's plans for his people and all of that kind of stuff.

It's all satanic. It's all upside down. Where do our laws come from? Well, they come from God, but that's not the story that they're going to get from public school.

And it's like—and I'm not talking about prayer in school. That's just a small thing, right? Yes, of course you should pray everywhere, right?

But that's not what the issue is. You see, the enemy has distracted us, and so it's about the story. It's about the narrative that is being taught to our children.

God didn't create the world. The world was a cosmic accident. God didn't—God doesn't give you our laws and rules.

Our overlords do. And they'll learn all this false stuff while they're also learning true stuff about mathematics.

Two plus two does equal four. They're going to learn how to read and all this kind of thing. And so the gatekeeping that goes on in these institutions, in the schools, and in a show like Joe Rogan, and almost every official conservative show that does a lot of this gatekeeping as well, it's very dangerous because it kind of lulls you into a—almost like you're asleep because you're learning some true things and you're like—you're getting scratched kind of where you itch, but all the while you're being presented a false worldview.

And in those two cases, it's an upside -down worldview. I propose—and

I want to be careful here because I don't want to talk badly about the Bride of Christ.

I propose that there is a form of gatekeeping happening in the church in the

United States. And I don't think it's the same kind of gatekeeping. Like, I don't think the church is presenting an upside -down worldview.

That's not what I'm saying. So please don't hear me saying that the church is a force for evil. Not saying that.

That would be wrong to say. But what I am saying, though, is that the way the church presents

Christianity and biblical living and the story of the gospel of Jesus Christ, right, the good news of the kingdom of God, the way the church in the

United States generally presents that story is not quite correct. And it's not quite correct in a way that almost makes us impotent.

It makes us fruitless. It kind of makes us gay in that way. I mean, fruitless, if you want to go with what

Doug Wilson said, that gayness is really just fruitlessness. Yeah. The way we present the story kind of puts us into that road.

And that's a very dangerous place to be because I think that the church in the United States is pretty good at getting a lot of facts about the

Bible correct, a lot of facts about God correct. Some of the theology that's taught is very, very good in the

United States. You know, I've got my particular form that I think is the most correct. I'm a Reformed Presbyterian.

I think that's the most correct form of Christianity that we have right now. But I'm not taking away anything from certain other traditions that also have some forms and some theology correct as well.

I consider many of them brothers. I'm a pretty ecumenical guy in general and all of that. I know that bothers some of you.

That's okay. That's okay. But so there's a lot of true things taught in church.

But the storyline, I want to be careful. Many times the storyline is one of impotence and is one of escapism.

And that just cripples our effectiveness as a church in the United States.

Let me tell you what I mean. Let me shift gears here for a second. So when I was a kid,

I used to play in a certain way all the time. And me and my brother, when we were growing up, we'd have our nerf gun or our cap gun, whatever it was, and our swords, our shields that we would make.

And we would pretend to be heroes, right? We would pretend that we were in a situation where we were like the last line of defense for the kingdom or for the resistance and the machines were coming.

And our play kind of evolved over time, right? It started off with like swords and shields.

Eventually it came to like automatic weapons. But the story was basically always the same where we were practicing being heroes against all odds, right?

Against a powerful enemy. And we would overcome. We would do heroic things.

We'd flank them. We'd do all kinds of stuff. And it was so fun. Playing like that is so fun. I can even see my kids doing that today where they will.

I can't talk. Well, they'll practice being heroic, right? They'll practice winning the battle.

They'll practice doing something good. And sometimes they'll even fight over who gets to be the hero because they all three of them.

I got three boys. God has blessed me. I've got three boys. And they all want to be the hero, but they need someone to pretend to be the villain.

So they'll often fight about who gets to be the hero and stuff like that. And it's so funny to see them do that.

But they're practicing being heroic. And where did they learn how to be heroes in this context, right?

Where did I learn how to be a hero? Well, I'd tell you where I learned. I learned from G .I. Joe. That's where I learned.

I learned from cartoons that I used to watch about kingdoms and things like that. I learned from stories that I heard as a child that were compelling, that offered a real

American hero, right? A real enemy that really needed to be defeated, and the heroes came in and really defeated them, right?

And I know what a victory looks like. I knew what a hero looked like. I used to watch Star Wars, and I knew that Luke Skywalker was a hero.

And look, I'm not saying that there's no subversive stuff in this. Look, Star Wars, even the originals, had a lot of subversive kind of worldview -bending ideas in it.

But ultimately, they were telling a heroic story where the hero was really a hero. He won a real victory and all of that.

So I learned what a victory was. I learned what heroism was from these shows, right?

And that was compelling to me, so I acted it out. I wonder, though, if children in our churches are getting that same story because here's what

I— I don't know if I fear this, but this is what I want to concern myself with here.

I don't think that many people understand the actual story of the gospel, the way it really is in real life, with a real victory, with real heroes, and with something that can actually affect change for the positive in the here and now, in our world today.

Because what I think people hear when they hear about the story of Christianity—and this is our fault because this is how we've taught it— is basically our victory is sort of like this spiritual victory that is very hard to discern in physical life, in real life, the life that we can see with our eyes.

Very hard to discern. In fact, the evidence of the spiritual victory looks like defeat in real life.

And then we've got an escape pod. And so you join the church, basically you get your ticket into the escape pod that we're going to escape this place that's going to get worse and worse and worse, and things are going to go crazy.

But don't worry, the best part about joining the church is Christ has secured a victory for you, and that victory looks like an escape pod.

That flies in the face of everything we know about what a victory is, and it's not a compelling story.

Think about this too. Let me take another sidetrack here for a second. Think about what potential recruits—I'm going to call them recruits, right?

But potential people that join the church, what they see leaders of evangelicalism presenting

Christianity as. What do they see, right? They see people that are invited to CNN, to write an article for Washington Post, to go on MSNBC, to talk to Morning Joe, whatever his name is.

And what do they see? They see a man who's very effeminate, number one, very mild speaking and very passive.

And they see him doing what? They see him agreeing with basically everything that the host of the show is saying, right, which is basically anything that propaganda is spreading.

They'll agree with it. And they'll also see them disparaging Christians as if they're nervous, as if they're fearful, as if they're petty, and as if they're bigoted and stupid.

That's the word on the street about Christians. They're bigoted, petty, stupid, and all of that.

And what they see about evangelical leaders is essentially no disagreement there, no pushback, and fawning over Morning Joe and Micah, whatever her name is.

And that's not a compelling story. So I get to be a

Christian, and according to you, Christians are these petty, bigoted, stupid idiots. I just don't see the attraction there.

And then on top of that, we get our teeth kicked in for millennia, and then we'll get our escape pod.

That's Christianity. Get your teeth kicked in. In fact, the more that you suffer, the more evidence that you're actually part of the kingdom of God and the more evidence that you're actually going to be let into that escape pod at the end.

That's how you know you're a real Christian. In fact, I knew a guy that said if you had never been persecuted, then you're not a real

Christian. I knew a guy who said that. If you've never been persecuted, you're not a real Christian. And that's the evidence of being a real

Christian. And so I worry about the story that we're telling the world because it's not quite accurate.

That kind of a theology, that kind of a story, even if there's a lot of good theology in that story, because I know where they get some of this stuff.

Some of this stuff is actually there's a true element to it, but it's leaving out things that are crucial to the story that make the story compelling to someone who's listening, someone who's looking for something that can actually help them in the here and now.

The gospel of Jesus Christ can help you in the here and now, not just spiritually, not just someday in the future, but actually right now.

That's a compelling story. And we have a hero. We've got a savior.

We've got a king who is the best hero, the best savior, and the best king you could possibly imagine.

And that means not only later, but also right now. You see, this is interesting about Disney.

Disney knows what a hero is. There's a subversive company, and they do a lot of subversive stuff in their movies, but they still actually have a story that is connected to reality, which is why people like it.

So let me give you an example. The movie Encanto. I just saw the movie Encanto recently, and it's a pretty interesting movie.

There's a lot of subversive stuff in the movie Encanto, in my opinion, but it's interesting. So what happens in the movie is in the very beginning, the father dies, and it leaves the mother with three children.

I think it's three twins, and that's like her lowest moment. And in her lowest moment, she finds like this magical candle that gives them a house.

It creates like a little country for her and her people, and it also gives them magical powers.

And what's interesting about this is the magical powers that this candle gives them is basically kind of many of them replace what the father would have done had he been around.

So one of them makes a girl super strong. That's very subversive. She's like this beastly Amazon, and that's what the father would have been the one providing the strength in that situation.

One of the powers is it's like a healing power. And again, the father is the one to take care of the family and stuff like that.

So magic needs to replace what they lost in their father. And so the father was a very important character.

In fact, the family falls apart because the grandmother who lost the husband overcompensates for losing the husband, and she becomes this real you -know -what and almost destroys the family.

And it's very clear that if the father had been there, none of this would have happened, and you need magical powers to replace the father.

So even though there's subversion in there, they still have to play in reality.

Otherwise, the story is not relatable. And so that story is compelling for that reason because it still plays in a version of reality, and there's still a real hero in it and stuff like that.

And I wonder, guys, does the church's story play in that much reality?

Look, there's a lot of truth in what the church tells you, that you are saved because of your sin debt against the

Lord. Christ saves you from your own sin spiritually. Your spiritual condition is changed because of what

Christ did when he died on the cross. And in fact, this is where a lot of people get this kind of theology of suffering from, because there is a truth there, right?

Because what does Christ say? Pick up your cross and follow me. The cross, that's a way of suffering, right?

And there's a death associated with that, right? And look, we're not above our master, so if he was hated by the world and suffers, we're going to be too and all that.

So there's some truth there. But the story that we tell, it emphasizes the death of Christ so much, almost to the neglect of the resurrection of Christ.

Because, yes, pick up your cross, follow God, but there's a death associated with that.

But then there's also a resurrection because we're also raised with Christ. And so there's a newness of life.

There's a recreation going on. There's a renewal. And that should have an impact not only on your future self when you're raised in the imperishable body and all that, but right now.

Right now, that should have an impact on you. You're a new creation right now. You died with Christ.

You're raised with Christ right now. And there is a job to do right now, guys. There's a job to do.

Jesus Christ is a real hero. He's a real king, and he's not like a king where you can't even decipher what his kingship is.

No, no. He's got decrees. He's got battle plans. He's got ambassadors. He's got heralds that are unheralding his victory.

It's a real victory. It's not a victory that everything we see about it looks like a loss.

See, that's the thing. So people have Disney that presents a subversion of reality, but it's actually a real hero with a real victory, whether it's in Star Wars or Encanto or whatever it is.

We recognize the victory as subversive as these movies are. They have a real hero with a real victory, and we recognize it as a victory.

And then we have the church, which is presenting this thing where it's like all of our visible leaders are disparaging

Christians and praising pagans. That's another thing. The church leaders that we see in the media have this, like, pathological need to praise the wisdom and the leadership and the example of pagans all while they're disparaging

Christians. And so we've got that. That doesn't look like a good thing, right? That doesn't comport with our reality of what brotherhood looks like, of what unity looks like.

That doesn't comport with reality. And then we've got a victory that we talk about, the victory of Jesus Christ on the cross, but it doesn't look like a victory in any way and not even afterwards.

Because basically, look, I understand, like, the cross was a victory, but it was a victory because three days later he rose from the dead.

But so much of what the story that we tell, and I'm not saying that we don't have the theology of this right. Our churches all, for the most part, have the theology of him rising from the dead.

We have that right, but the story we tell discounts it. The story we tell is not a story of victory in any discernible way.

Because our story is basically, look, we're going to get our teeth kicked in, but we've got the escape pod.

That's the victory. The escape pod. Look, that's not a victory. Even in Star Wars, where there actually is a literal escape pod, they use the escape pod as a means to get to the eventual victory.

Like, there's a real victory there. But with Jesus Christ on the cross and his resurrection, where he's raised to the right hand of the father, where he sits, where all his enemies would put under his feet.

Look, guys, that's where we're at right now. He's at the right hand of the father. He's got a real body.

He's a real man, just like he was when he was on earth after the resurrection.

He's just like that. And he's there until all his enemies are put under his feet.

And God is using his people, his church, to accomplish that mission. We've got the ultimate mission here, guys.

The ultimate mission. The gates of hell can't stand against the church.

The gates of hell are there ready to be kicked down. Ready to be kicked down. And the gates of hell right now are everywhere.

They're at the White House. They're at Congress. They're probably at your local city hall and stuff like that.

They're in schools. They're in movies. And they're ready to be kicked down.

We don't get our teeth kicked in. We kick their teeth in. And that's the ultimate victory.

The ultimate victory that Christ is accomplishing. Day by day. Every enemy will be made a footstool for his feet.

Until the end, when the righteous shine like the sun. Here, this is our home. This earth is our home.

We're not waiting for an escape pod. We're waiting for our king to come back. And he's going to remain at the right hand of the father until all his enemies are made a footstool for his feet.

That's what it says in the scripture, guys. We have a role to play in this. This is not our victory.

We have a role to play. God has saw fit to let us play a role in this. Some of us are going to be playing a role in raising a family and leaving them with an inheritance of land and resources and things like that.

Some of us are going to be teachers in schools. Some of us are pastors. Some of us are preachers, straight preachers.

Some of us are making movies. Some of us have entire plans for a movie platform where they're going to start telling true stories with real heroes, with real victories that are not subversive.

That can compete with Disney because right now, Disney's the only game in town. Right now, Disney's the only game in town.

They're the only ones with a story that has any semblance of reality. And what they're doing with it, because they're satanic, is they're trying to subvert that reality at the same time.

No more gatekeepers, guys. No more gatekeepers. The pagans don't fear the church right now.

They don't. They're not writing hit pieces about the PCA. They're not writing hit pieces about just the general church in America.

No, they're writing hit pieces about a church here and there and stuff like that. Doug Wilson's church up in Moscow, Idaho.

They're obviously the worst, most evil people because they put out Hello Ninja. And they're spiraling.

They're scared. They're obviously terrified. They're seeing ghosts where there are no ghosts. It's like maybe they have a secret message in Hello Ninja that they're going to try to Christianize their kids.

And they're worried about that, right? The church should strike fear in the pagans all over the place.

But right now, guys, we had a golden opportunity to do exactly what needed to be done to strike fear in the pagans.

We had an opportunity. Christ gave us an opportunity, and we just missed it. So God gave us this virus, right?

This virus came out, and it's a mild virus. But what God did was in his mercy, he struck panic in the minds of the world.

He said, I'm going to give you this mild virus, and then I'm going to panic you. You're going to be in a complete panic over this.

And you're going to be shutting down your bars. You're going to be shutting down hooters. You're going to be shutting down your strip clubs, everything.

You're going to shut it because you're going to be in panic over this flu, right? And then they're going to tell you, because they're so panicking, they're going to say, you can't meet for worship because of this mild virus.

And this was the opportunity, guys, to strike fear in the pagans because what should have happened was that the church as a whole should have said, absolutely not.

Because we answer to a greater king than you. We answer to a better master than you.

We answer to a more powerful king than you. And so we would have stayed open, right?

We're going to worship our Lord. And by the way, if you are sick, we will lay hands on the sick. By the way, if you're lonely, we'll come.

We'll bring you to this fellowship because we don't want you to be in fear alone. We worship a good king.

We worship a mighty God. He's a healer. He's powerful. He's everything that we could ever want in a

God. And here he is. We don't answer to Cuomo, right? And it would have been a contrast, right?

Because some people would have been really mad about that because we weren't listening to their god, Cuomo. But there would have been a contrast.

Cuomo is forcing you to be alone as an elderly person, to die alone in your residence home, in your nursing home.

And then the church would have been open, compassionate, healing, helping you out where you need to be, making sure you're not alone.

And if you do get sick, making sure you don't die alone and all of that. The church would have been open because we answered to a different king.

We had a great opportunity to strike fear in the power structures, in the institutions.

And all we had to do was obey God. It wasn't like this wild kind of dramatic sort of thing like when

I was a kid thinking that we were the resistance. All you had to do was honor God and say, you know what,

Cuomo? You do what you have to do. We're going to do what we have to do because we answer to a greater king than you.

And he would have probably overreacted. I mean, that's what they did in Canada. Two pastors that I know of in Canada were like, no,

I'm staying open. We're staying open and we're going to do this and all that. And they got arrested. They got harassed. They got abused for what they did.

And Cuomo probably would have done the same thing. But the thing is like if every church just took that opportunity from God to show the world that, no, you don't kick our teeth in.

We kick your teeth in. I think God would have used that, man. But look, I can't lament because it didn't happen.

God's still using it for his purposes. And that's okay. I'm not going to question

God's plan. We had that opportunity and we squandered it. And so we're presenting to the world this impotent story of here's our great victory.

Hide out here. Obey the zeitgeist, whatever the world says. Affirm it and also loud and praise their wisdom.

Oh, the scientists, they know what to do to get rid of this curse. The scientists know.

Oh, the vaccine is like the Holy Spirit. And it's like that's what they see. So they see us doing that.

But at the same time, we're calling it a great victory that Christ won for us. The great victory is that we're now slaves to Pfizer and Fauci.

That's the great victory. And by the way, as we get our teeth kicked in and kicked in and kicked in and kicked in and pretend like there's nothing happening.

No, there's no persecution in Canada. All while we're doing this great victory, this victory of impotence.

At the end, we got our escape pod and that's our victory. It's no wonder nobody wants to be a

Christian because it's not a compelling story and it's not true. And I think that I think that people love their sin.

Don't get me wrong. People aren't Christian because they love their sin. Right. But when they hear the story of the great victory, they also don't even understand how it could be a victory if it doesn't have any impact on reality today.

Of course, we know that the spiritual impact. Of course, it has an impact on reality today, but it's not an impact to hide out more effectively.

It's not an impact to wait, wait out the the suffering more effectively until you get your escape pod at the end.

No, guys, it's a story with a real mission with a compelling victory. We're going to we're going to destroy every stronghold of the enemy and win it for Christ.

And it's going to be his glorious victory where he gets the honor all day long. Anyway, I hope you found this podcast helpful.

God bless. OK, one more thought, too, because I don't want to be misunderstood here.

And again, I want to be careful because I'm talking about the bride of Jesus Christ here. What I'm not saying is that the world or the natural man gets to define what a victory is.

That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is that God has written into reality what a victory looks like, what it is, what heroes look like, what kings look like and all of that.

And in fact, the Bible itself determines these things, the Old Testament. And honestly,

I think part of the reason why we've got our story so weakened is because there has been a rejection of a lot of the

Old Testament stories. Sometimes they outright reject them and sometimes they want to downplay them as this is a big thing with like the you're not

David thing. Like I heard Matt Chandler apologize for that. But a lot of people still believe you're not

David. They want to take away the stories that God himself taught us about victories and villains and heroes and and and a man that's that's that's that's that's that's that's on the

Lord's side. And the Lord wins a great victory through these guys. And it's like like all and they're and they're and they're pretty violent stories.

Some of them are our children need to see that because reality that God created reality obviously tells us what a victory is, what what heroism is, what a

Lord is, what a king is, what a good king is, what a bad king is. All of this stuff is written into reality.

And Disney borrows it from the from from reality, from God's reality. But you see, the scripture itself defines these things.

Right. And so, yes, we do have a spiritual victory over Satan. Christ died for our sins so that we don't have to die for our sins.

But we cannot downplay the resurrection, the victory. And I don't mean just the the victory at the end of time with the escape pod.

No, the victory that God wins using his people as as as soldiers, as ambassadors, as heralds, as everybody has a role in this.

Our children need to understand they have a role in this glorious victory that Christ, our

Lord, is going to win. And we know what victory is. We know what heroism is. We know the story and the story is an epic story.

It's way better than anything we could have ever seen on Star Wars or on any

Disney show or things like that. They borrow that stuff from us and they're trying to subvert it. No, we've got a true story that resonates with reality as God created it.

And it is powerful. The church is not impotent. It is a church that is emboldened by the

Holy Spirit of God himself and dwelt by the Holy Spirit of God himself.

And we can do powerful things and great things through him who strengthens us.

Does it mean we won't suffer? Does it mean that there won't be losses or or or or situations where we've got issues or challenges or problems?

That's all part of the heroic story. I mean, David had problems. You know, all the heroes of the

Old Testament had issues that they had to overcome. And it wasn't all peaches and peachy keen all the time.

But at the end of the day, there's a real victory and there's a real mission for the church.

That's not some kind of invisible mission that when we're losing, we're actually winning. We're actually always winning.

So there's a true element of truth there again. We're always winning because Christ has secured the victory for us.

Now we get to participate in how that works itself out in our time. And so we need to have a long view of this, a view that tells the right story, a story that is more compelling than any story that the pagans could dream up.

This whole idea of disparaging the church of God as as a bunch of barbarians, a bunch of idiots, cowards, trembling in fear, petty.

All of this that our leaders tend to do when they get on their little soapboxes.

It undermines the story, the great story that God gives us. I hope you found this video helpful.