Tobias Riemenschneider Rages At Joel Webbon Over Recorded Zoom Call, Demands Church Court

Earlier this week, the Reformed Evangelical world was shocked when Tobias Riemenschneider debuted his podcast rebutting Joel Webbon’s response to accusations that the former made public against Joel Webbon and his church. Eschatology Matters is a YouTube channel with 9.19k subscribers. They reached out to Tobias Reimenschneider to host a podcast on their platform, which was a part of the Fight Laugh Feast Network, a Doug Wilson adjacent podcast ministry. Tobias Reimenschneider launched his podcast making slanderous accusations against Joel Webbon which were egregious enough for Escatology Matters to remove the podcast and issue an apology.

Evidently, Riemenshneider has not had enough and has made a follow-up statement in an attempt to escalate the matter even further. James White relayed the statement on social media:

In recent weeks, Joel Webbon made public allegations against me on his podcast.  The situation concerned one of my former church members, and a Zoom call of August 7, 2024 which was the culmination of an extended process.  I decided to use a new platform opportunity with Eschatology Matters to respond, which has since been removed.

Whatever the errors, failures of memory, misrepresentations, or sins committed in my video response may be, they are mine and mine alone.  Eschatology Matters and the friends I asked to repost my response so that it might be seen, all acted in good faith and on the biblical basis that every man has the right to respond to his accuser and be heard, having been given every reason to believe my testimony and that of my fellow elder to be faithful.

In the fallout of this public controversy, various claims, accusations and counter claims have now been made online which, in order to honour God, and give due weight and process to both parties, need to be addressed formally.

One emerging matter requires comment.  It is now evident that this private conversation was secretly recorded without our consent or knowledge and has since been distributed, in part or whole, to various parties, while at the same time Joel Webbon and his team refuse to make the recording available to me thereby holding me hostage.  I am ready to respond to any accusations and do what is right before God and man in terms of the requirements of scripture where I have either misspoken or sinned.

I want to address one of the accusations that were made against me online right away.  It is said I had claimed that the brother from Joel‘s church agreed with Corey Mahler‘s claim that children of mixed ethnicities are like feces.  I know with full confidence I did not intend to imply that because it is definitely not true.  But I have taken that accusation seriously because I genuinely do not want to misrepresent anyone.  So, I went back and listened to that portion of my podcast again.  I was discussing that the revisionism of WWII history was strongly influenced by Corey Mahler‘s Stone Choir Podcast.  To illustrate how evil Corey Mahler is, I wanted mentioned that the brother from Joel‘s church was aware of this outrageous Mahler quote and yet endorsed other ideas and historical interpretations from this same man.  However, I do recognise that the way I phrased my remarks could easily be understood as implying that this brother agreed with Mahler on this specific point.  My English construction is not perfect, but working in a foreign language is no excuse for saying something misleading and I genuinely and sincerely apologize for having given this false impression and ask this brothers‘ forgiveness for misrepresenting him.

I believe that the biblical course now, required by God’s law, is the formation of a church court for the purpose of an independent third-party Christian arbitration so that all the issues and evidence can be brought fully into the light (Deut. 19:15f; 1 Cor. 6; 2 Cor. 13:1; 1 Tim 5: 19f).  As Baptists, neither Joel nor I are part of a consistory, presbytery or episcopate, but this situation now clearly requires third party adjudication to bring complete clarity and get to all of the truth.  This alone will allow for meaningful apologies for errors, mutual repentance where required for actual sin and the possibility of reconciliation.

I am ready to submit myself to the findings and outcome of such a Christian court.  And since the statements on both sides have been public, I would agree to a summary statement of the committees findings being released publicly so that Christ may be honoured and glorified in everything.  I appeal to Joel Webbon and his team to agree to this scriptural request and process.

In many words, Tobias Riemenschneider does not offer a meaningful apology chalking up gross misrepresentations to language barriers and fleeting memory, despite supposedly having receipts. He then asserts a moral high ground for being secretly recorded, which isn’t actually a sin in and of itself. It is worth mentioning that James White who broadcasted the statement is an elder of Apologia Church whose pastor, Jeff Durbin used secret recordings to lambast the criticism of Tim Hurd, years ago. This irony is not lost on people. Moreover, it was the accused church member who recorded the Zoom meeting, not Joel Webbon. Whereas the church member was willing to use the recording to exonerate his pastor, Joel Webbon, in the eyes of Eschato0logy Matters, who after seeing the recording deleted the podcast, this church member is not interested in giving his accusers ammunition against him.

Riemenschneider further escalates the situation calling for an international ecclesiastical arbitration of the event, acknowledging the irony of them being Baptists. Joel Webbon has refused this offer, citing the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith which his church adheres to.

This is a developing story.