{"id":11625,"date":"2024-09-12T08:51:02","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T12:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/?p=11625"},"modified":"2024-09-12T09:05:31","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T13:05:31","slug":"popular-christian-youtuber-shares-how-god-brought-him-out-of-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/09\/popular-christian-youtuber-shares-how-god-brought-him-out-of-atheism.html","title":{"rendered":"Popular Christian YouTuber Shares How God Brought Him Out of Atheism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Adobe Stock | Inset: CBN News \/ YouTube<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ruslan KD has become a familiar face in the culture war of Christians pushing back against an increasingly godless culture. His YouTube channel has 625,000 subscribers. His videos range from all sorts of topics, from facing demonic influences, to interviews with former homosexuals, and discussions on the Shroud of Turin. Apart from his podcast, Ruslan is also an entertainer and influencer. But some of his fans may be surprised to find out that Ruslan\u2019s early life was far from idyllic, and that he spent his formative years as an atheist.<\/p>\n

As a young boy, Ruslan found himself and his family as homeless refugees. \u201cI\u2019m \u2026 ethnically Armenian. My father is full Armenian. My mother is adopted by an Armenian family in Azerbaijan \u2014 Baku. So, that\u2019s the city we come from is Baku, right in the Middle East, off the Caspian Sea,\u201d he told CBN News<\/a>. After the Armenian genocide during World War I, life continued to be difficult for Armenians, with the rise of the Soviet Union putting Ruslan\u2019s family at risk while in Russia. \u201cAnd that is where we kind of saw some pretty gnarly \u2026 stuff of \u2026 soldiers coming to our house, people coming to our house, getting reports that we were Armenian. And my mom saying, \u2018Hey, no, no, we\u2019re not Armenian. We\u2019re Russian.\u2019 And to the point where our physical health was in danger.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ruslan came to the United States in 1991 when he was just six years old. His family, which had never been religious, joined the Armenian Orthodox Church, where Ruslan was baptized. But he had no faith of his own, especially after he was abused around the age of 7 or 8 by a group of teenage boys. \u201c[They] ended up showing me same-sex porn and then re-enacting the things that they saw in the videos on me when I was a child,\u201d said Ruslan of the abuse. The church\u2019s lack of response to the allegations hardened Ruslan\u2019s heart to the church. As his family life deteriorated (his mother fell into alcoholism and affairs with other men), so did Ruslan\u2019s opinion of God and his own life. \u201c[I felt] there is no God. And if there is a God, he does not love me. That led me down a spiral of getting arrested at the age of 11 for breaking into homes, attempting to be in a gang \u2026 I was really a troubled preteen at that point, smoking weed, selling weed, breaking into homes, just a complete derelict of a kid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, a mother of one of his friends, Sheree, saw her life radically changed by Christ after doing community service for legal troubles. Soon, Sheree had led most of the apartment complex where she and Ruslan lived to Christ. While spending time doing community service with Sheree and others, Ruslan heard the Gospel. \u201cThey started sharing the Gospel with me, and they would tell me things like, \u2018You\u2019re going to do great things for God someday.\u2019 And I was like, \u2018There\u2019s no way.\u2019 Long story short, I finished the community service hours, we moved \u2026 and the seeds just keep being planted.\u201d In high school, he pursued a Christian girl, which meant going to church to see her. After a couple of years of hearing Christian messages and receiving Josh McDowell\u2019s book \u201cThe New Evidence That Demands A Verdict\u201d from his manager at Pizza Hut, Ruslan finally gave his life to Christ.<\/p>\n

After seeing success as an independent musician and dabbling with YouTube, Ruslan began to be approached by his fans on his opinions of culture. It would eventually lead to his successful YouTube channel. Addressing the decline of Christianity in America, Ruslan stated it may be more of a revealing of the heart of America than an actual decline. \u201cPerhaps the culture devolved because the faith that we had as Americans wasn\u2019t really a faith anchored in Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ruslan KD has become a familiar face in the culture war of Christians pushing back against an increasingly godless culture. His YouTube channel has 625,000 subscribers. His videos range from all sorts of topics, from facing demonic influences, to interviews with former homosexuals, and discussions on the Shroud of Turin. Apart from his podcast, Ruslan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":11628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america"],"yoast_head":"\nPopular Christian YouTuber Shares How God Brought Him Out of Atheism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/christnewstoday\/2024\/09\/popular-christian-youtuber-shares-how-god-brought-him-out-of-atheism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Popular Christian YouTuber Shares How God Brought Him Out of Atheism\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ruslan KD has become a familiar face in the culture war of Christians pushing back against an increasingly godless culture. 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