Rob Skiba

May 26, 1969 – October 13, 2021

ROB SKIBA was murdered.

For now, we’ll just leave it at that. We lost a good man in this War. Remember what I said though. Murdered. The Press can quote me on that.

The last 24 hours have been somewhat sobering, as the Torah community, as well as the flat earth community, and I suppose other segments of the Truther community, have come to learn that Rob Skiba has died. He entered the hospital several weeks ago with symptoms of pneumonia, was put down on a ventilator, and as we have seen time and again throughout this planned-demic, was never fully revived. Much can be said about the circumstances surrounding his death, as his end has become a repeated telling. It is in fact dutiful for seekers of the Truth not to treat truth itself as something fragile or weak and needing nursed at the breast whenever grief makes itself known. Perhaps more will be said. But at present I want to recognize and honor the man, Rob Skiba. For most of my own readers, he needs no introduction.

Before anything gets lost in translation, I want to make sure that Yahuah, the Most-High Elohiym, is given the praise, glory, and honor for Rob Skiba’s life and ministry. Rather than giving empty praise to men, or Yah forbid, worship man, we honor his life, first and foremost, as a servant of the Most-High. If there was a smidgeon of truth to anything that Skiba said, and there most certainly was (I’ll cover some of that), it’s because the self-existent and eternal AHAYAH, the I AM, is personally responsible for dispensing Truth. Again, it is through Rob’s faithfulness to the Elohiym of Yashar’el that each of us were mutually affected by him. As such, I couldn’t even begin to express how meaningful Skiba is to so many of us. Many others will attempt to convey the same sentiments. We probably needn’t even have to, though.

Skiba introduced us, either directly or indirectly, to Biblical Cosmology. The flat motionless plane that we currently find ourselves on. But you knew that already. Even more importantly however, he gave meaning to Truth by connecting that revelation with the narrow path that is Torah. That would be the first five books of the Bible. I call my online magazine The Unexpected Cosmology because, despite digging into my Bible from the very decade that I could first read, nobody saw either of the two coming. The flat earth. But also, Torah. And yet, they were in plain sight all along. What the flat earth ultimately did is, it connected us back to our Creator, Yahuah, and revealed to us that His Testimony regarding His instructions in righteous living is just as trustworthy and true as the heaven and earth which give witness to it. For many of us, Rob Skiba did that. It was he who connected those dots.

Now, I don’t know that I can ever call our relationship a friendship, per se (in the true sense of the word, as we often picture friends in our day-to-day lives). And that’s okay. I think of Rob Skiba as my friend, but it was more of a working relationship. One of mutual respect but which was sometimes frustrated. I say this because I want to focus on the human character of Rob Skiba. He and I had disagreements. We often butted heads. One thing however that is certain, Rob Skiba was generous with his time. If I asked him for an interview, or simply a phone conversation to discuss issues that had arisen, either between us or in the greater community at large, he made certain to give me a ring.

During our interviews, he expounded greatly upon his life. He would talk to me late into the night regarding his days long before the flat earth or even Torah. If you were a regular at his Virtual House Church, he likely engaged the listener with the same stories. On any given chat, he might transport me back to basic training in the Army, laughing hysterically at his antics. Or take me up into a helicopter where he and his military buddies would race alongside a heavily forested hill, gutted out of a row of trees for an electrical line (which hadn’t been constructed yet), and pretend they were making the Death Star Trench run.

How many people here know that Rob Skiba once played Dave in the Alvin and the Chipmunks nationwide tour? He did. Perhaps my fondest memory of Skiba is one in which he and I alone share. During one such interview, I asked him to give his best Dave impersonation over the phone. He then quickly proceeded to yell at Alvin.

Nearly two years ago, I made the decision to promote a very controversial teaching at The Unexpected Cosmology. In case you’re curious what that was, it involved the epistles of the Apostle Paul. And no, I am not attempting to bring up controversy this evening. Because of that decision, many individuals within the greater Torah community immediately severed ties. They were done. I haven’t heard from many of them since, and I guess I can’t blame them. In hindsight, I wish I had paused for better evaluation before holding up a flag and charging the hill. But again, there’s a point to this. Rob Skiba was more than willing to speak with me privately on the phone regarding this controversy and others. Despite seeing me as having fallen off the rails on one particular issue or another, he was supportive of my ministry and mission. More than anything, his concern was always for my soul, and that I never make any decision which might lead to my denying Yahusha Messiah. That is the worst decision that anyone can make. That tells me where his heart was.

Let’s take this back a little bit further though. In the opening few weeks of 2019, I joyfully surrendered to the Truth of Torah as something applicable to my spiritual walk. After all, heaven and earth attest to that fact. I’ve talked about this often, that it was Rob Skiba who took the phone call. He knew that I was investigating Torah. That I only did so, initially, because I was asked to write a hit piece against it. To show that Yahuah’s instructions in righteousness was yet another of Satan’s end-times deceptions. Yes, the indoctrination still ran deep. I shudder now even thinking about what might have been, had I remained obstinate to Yah’s ways. Skiba knew very well that I might in turn include him in that hit piece. I certainly wouldn’t be the only one to do so, as he was being attacked by many non-Torah observant individuals within the flat earth Movement. But he risked that phone call. He did it merely to invest in me. I threw any number of silly questions his way, intending to show that the Law had been done away with, and he repelled, or rather answered every question—to adequately show my error.

Here’s one objection you’ve all heard before. “But Peter’s vision of the animals!” I tried that one on Skiba, and as anyone who knew him can easily imagine, I was quickly shot down. The vision was in fact not about eating unclean animals, but about associating with people, in case you didn’t know.

It was that same phone call however in which I was shown that sin can only be defined as a transgression of the law. That’s what it says in 1 John 3:4. Sin is a transgression of the Law. It was Skiba who pointed out my oversight. I had been told my entire life that being obedient to our heavenly Father’s Torah was fleshly and sinful—a curse nailed to the cross—and that it’s what Satan wanted. As if sinful fleshly people just can’t get enough of Yahuah’s ways, but whatever. Ridiculous.

By the end of our conversation, I not only admitted with gladness that I was wrong, but that Yahuah’s Law is what my heart had desired to embrace for as long as I could recall. But before I could even get there, Rob Skiba was also responsible for removing the first obstacle. He was the one to adequately show me, to my uttermost amazement, that salvation comes to the house of Yashar’el alone, and that we are grafted in through Ephraim. He even calls it The Ephraim Awakening. What that means is, crossing over and becoming a Hebrew is an adoption into Abraham’s family. The narrative of the Patriarchs and the children of the Most-High, as seen throughout Scripture, is also our story. The Bible is far more literal of a living document than I could have ever possibly imagined. That is why the unexpected cosmology is also the joyous cosmology.

That’s what Rob Skiba means to me. He was the only person in the Torah community, aside from Adam Fink at Parable of the Vineyard, who thought the health of my soul, via my understanding of the Most-High and response to His set-apart ways, was worth their time. Who else invested in me? I am eternally grateful to Rob. If I make it into one of New Jerusalem’s gates, it can probably be said that Skiba was the loyal evangelists who pointed the Way.

The theme verse of my ministry is a reminder for everyone of who is written in the Book of Life.

Revelation 14:12 says:

Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that guard the commandments of Elohiym, and the faith of Yahusha.

We can rest assured, knowing his testimony, that Rob Skiba has advocated those two requirements, and that he is at rest now with Messiah. Perhaps, while in that rest, he has even already been given the answers to the very questions which so many of us seek. In life, I believe that he was an example for all of us in that, though he died far too young, his labors will far outlive him.

There’s some irony that probably needs pointed out. Skiba died on the very day that 90-year-old William Shatner, aka Captain Kirk, supposedly went into earth’s orbit. That was a simple parlor trick, but also a discussion for another time. Skiba used to be quite the Trekkie. Though it was Zen Garcia who offered me my first radio interview, it was Skiba who granted my second. And on that show, I deliberated for two hours regarding how the spirit of the dead soul is put night-night and must await the sound of the trumpet blast before waking again. I am still an avid soul sleeper, but only as a past event. Since that time, I have come back around to the position that our Savior historically entered Sheol in order that the sheep Yashar’el might be rescued; that death might be conquered once and for all. Sheol has been emptied. Seeing as how Paradise is in the third heaven, we can only imagine Rob watching the horizon of the Earth pressed upon his line of sight, like one of his weather balloon experiments, as he’s taken up to the very firmament which he taught so many of us about, and then beyond—through the waters above, pulsating with the luminaries—to the final frontier.

Yah used Rob Skiba mightily.

Thank you and shalom.

Noel

EDIT: Who knew Rob Skiba called the Mark of the Beast back in 2013?