Hitting the Ground Running

by Phil Johnson

es, I'm home from my mini-vacation. Darlene and I went to western North Carolina (Maggie Valley, in the Great Smoky Mountains), where we spent a few days with some friends. I preached on Sunday at Twin City Baptist Church, (they've already got the sermon on line, if you're interested in downloading it) and I was amazed at the number of PyroManiacs readers who showed up. I hadn't posted here the details of where I was going, so I appreciate the effort those readers made to find me. It was good to meet many of you.

We got back home late Tuesday night, but I haven't even had time to catch up on reading the blog, much less posting new stuff. It'll prolly be next Tuesday or later before I get a chance to write a new post—except for the standard weekend Spurgeon excerpt and BlogSpotting posts.

But I'm rested up. My mind is clear. I read a bunch of evangelical magazines while I was away and discovered to my surprise that the burgeoning evangelical fringe is in far worse shape than even I thought. So I'm eager to get back to blogging about it. So many aberrations; so little time.

But before I do that, I have some stuff to catch up on. My massive e-mail backlog, for instance.

Nevertheless, it's Thursday afternoon as I'm writing this, and in the 36 hours since I came back from North Carolina, here are some things I've been doing that will be of immediate interest to PyroManiacs readers:

1. Teleconference with Jeff Williams. I don't know how Jay Flowers and my co-workers at Grace to You negotiated the timing with NASA, but yesterday morning our entire staff was treated to a live half-hour video conference with our friend Jeff Williams in the International Space Station. Of course, if you've been watching the news, you know that Space Shuttle Atlantis is docked at the International Space Station this week, and our teleconference took place a scant hour after the completion of a major spacewalk with the crew of Atlantis. They were installing two amazing solar panels, which were just unfurled today. So it's a busy time up there, and the place is rather crowded, judging from the video. But it was a great conversation with Jeff, whose descriptions of the marvel of God's creation are always enlightening.
        By the way, the crew of Expedition 13 have taken a record number of photographs, and hundreds of them are online and downloadable for free. Enjoy.
        Expedition 13's mission is nearly over. Jeff has been in space 168 days now, and he and Commander Pavel Vinogradov are scheduled to return in a Soyuz capsule on the 29th of this month. Thanks for keeping Jeff and his family in your prayers.
   
2. Interview with John MacArthur. This morning, I taped a one-hour interview with John MacArthur on the Emerging Church Movement. He spoke with his usual candor about various trends in the post-evangelical wasteland. He said one of the worst tendencies of the "emerging" spirit is the way it exaggerates and venerates mystery at the expense of the Bible's clarity. Denying the perspicuity of Scripture has the same practical outcome as denying the truthfulness of Scripture. The essential message of Scripture is not unclear or uncertain, and Jesus Himself bore testimony to that fact repeatedly.
        Grace to You will offer a CD of the interview next month, but only to those on the mailing list. If you're interested in being on our mailing list, send an e-mail message with nothing but your complete name, street address, city, state, and Zip code to Pyromaniac@gty.org. Grace to You offers a major free resource—normally a book, CD, or video—every month. So if you're not on the Grace to You mailing list, you're missing out. And if you're not on the list and would like to receive a free copy of the interview that was recorded with John MacArthur today, that will be next month's offer. So you need to get on the list ASAP.
   
3. Final work on The Truth War. While we're on the subject of John MacArthur and the Emerging Church, I'm in the process of making final editorial revisions on The Truth War. (That will be offered free of charge to people on the Grace to You mailing list sometime in the spring of 2007, so there's more incentive to get on the list.) Sometime after the manuscript is in final form, I plan to start posting snippets of the text at the Pulpit blog, to whet people's appetites. Watch for that.
   
4. Miscellany. While I'm talking about the Emerging Church and doing commercials, here's a draft of the artwork for a two-message album from The GraceLife Pulpit. Will Moneymaker, who manages The GraceLife Pulpit, asked me for suggestions for artwork on that album, so I threw this draft together for him tonight:

Enough details on Where I Am Right Now. I mainly wanted regular readers to know that I haven't been goofing off this past day and a half, and I haven't lost interest in the blog. Now, let me get my suitcases unpacked and the lawn mowed, and I'll have more to write. Special thanks to Frank and Dan for keeping the blog going whilst I was gone. Actually, Dan managed most of it singlehandedly and superbly, but Frank's Wednesday post, "from vacation," was so spectacularly great that it deserves special mention. Thanks.

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