The Benedict Option, Tim Keller, South Africa and London, and an Important Announcement

And greetings! Welcome to The Dividing Line. Yeah, we're back. I noticed the tribbles have not moved a bit since I left. I forgot to grab the... Someone gave me the little Borg sphere that came out of the Borg cube in First Contact.

I forgot to... Well, I think it might be a med bag. I'm not sure. When you get back from nearly 17 days overseas, everything is just... The first day, by the way, if anyone wonders what it's like to cross all those time zones, the first day, actually, you feel pretty good.

Slept like a rock last night because I had had a 31-hour-long day. And the rough thing is tonight and tomorrow. Now, I don't know if that's just because I'm getting old and everything takes longer to start hurting or go bad or something.

I don't know. But yeah, that's sort of how it works. I'm hearing weird things. What are you doing out there? I don't know. He disappeared. Don't know what's happening. But anyways, Dr. Oakley has no kuji on.

It's 93 degrees in Phoenix. Why in the world would I be wearing a sweater? That would be sort of... That'd be weird. So anyway, back from the trip, but I'd like to hold off on reporting on that until the end of the program, because there's some really important stuff.

And if you're a supporter of the ministry, if you think what we're doing is important, and once again, being overseas, lots of folks talk about the dividing line and what it's meant to them and how it's helped them.

So please listen through to the end. We've got some important stuff to talk about then. But I wanted to catch up on some stuff. We've got the Gorsuch stuff going on. Fascinating show. That's really a modern thing.

In history, there hasn't been this much emphasis upon the Senate hearings for nominees and stuff like that. Now it's become, ever since the Bork nomination, it's turned into a circus. But the left turns everything into a circus because that's what the left's all about.

Got a couple things I want to look at. Just three things, and then we'll talk about the trip a little bit, about what's going on. Where do we go first? Let's talk about an article that I saw today on the Aquila Report.

Is Tim Keller about to have his Rod Dreher moment? And what caught my attention about this was the fact that I got through about, according to my Kindle Voyager, I got 56 of the way through the Benedict Option, which is a book that is getting a lot of press, especially since Albert Moeller interviewed the author.

I listened to that and then started reading the book. Since I'm only 56 of the way through, I don't want to say too much about it. I may just, I'm not sure if I'm going to have time to sit down and just read through the rest of it, or if I'm just going to pick it up at that point, record it to mp3, listen to it on a long ride or something along those lines.

But it's a fascinating book, and this particular issue that's raised in this article is about Tim Keller going to speak. Tim Keller, the PCA pastor of Redeemer Church in New York City, etc., etc., likely needs no introduction, though he has his critics, myself among them.

This is D .G. Hart writing this. He is generally the darling of evangelical gatekeepers, the New Calvinists, and PCA church planners. His reputation is that of an apologist who persuades skeptical New Yorkers to give Christianity another chance.

Add to that his inspirational exhortation to evangelicals to revitalize the city, read New York City. If Keller were talking about reministering from Chicago, I doubt he'd be all that in demand. So impressive has Keller been that even Princeton Theological Seminar has invited him to give the annual Kuiper Lecture and award him its Prize of Reformed Theology and Public Life.

The oldest mainline, for some read liberal, Presbyterian Seminary, is bestowing its blessing on what used to be regarded as a sectarian fundamentalist, that is, someone who left the Protestant mainline for a conservative denomination.

But this is where it gets dicey. Keller's communion with the PCA does not ordain women, nor is it recognized sexual orientation rights. I guess that's the new phrase now is sexual orientation rights. Over these matters, Keller could face the kind of reception that Charles Murray recently did at Middlebury College.

Let's see, what is the... Okay, here's just a comment. It doesn't even say who the commentary is here, but I'll let others argue finer points of Reverend Keller's theology. Hello, this is Princeton Theological Seminary here.

Arguing finer points is what we do. My personal soapbox is much less refined. It boils down to this. An institution designed to train men and women for ministry shouldn't be awarding fancy prizes to someone who believes half the student body, or is it more than half, has no business leading churches.

It's offensive. Man, my thingy here, it just doesn't want to leave the text where it's supposed to be. It's offensive, and as I have taught my four and five-year-olds to express, it hurts my feelings.

This is a giant lecture with a giant whoop-dee-doo factor. There's a place for common ground, but unless the Reverend Tim Keller is prepared to argue for the ordination of all the women students of Princeton Theological Seminary, the Abraham Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life is not that place, in my opinion.

Well, I wonder what Abraham Kuyper would have thought about that. But anyway, here's what the Princeton Seminary president said. Our seminary embraces full inclusion for ordained leadership of the church.

We clearly stand in, get this, prophetic opposition to the PCA and many other Christian dominations that do not extend, ready for this, the full exercise of spirit-filled gifts for women or those of various sexual orientations.

We know that many have been hurt by being excluded from ministry, and we have worked hard to be an affirming place of preparation for service to the church. If you weren't aware of the fact that Princeton has jumped off the cliff, that should pretty much tell you right there.

The seminary has many student organizations and several theological centers that bring speakers to campus. While my office issues the official invitations to campus, I don't practice censorship over the choices of these organizations, even when I or the seminary disagree with some of the convictions of these speakers.

It is also a core conviction of our seminary to be a serious academic institution that will sometimes bring controversial speakers to campus. Can you imagine that Tim Keller is the controversial speaker?

It sounds like someone defending, inviting the KKK, because from their perspective, it pretty much is the same thing. To be a serious academic institution that will sometimes bring controversial speakers to campus because we refuse to exclude voices within the church.

Diversity of theological thought and practice has long been a hallmark of our school, and so we have had a wide variety of featured speakers on campus, including others who come from traditions that do not ordain women or, and this thing keeps getting longer, LGBTQ.

Now they've put a plus afterwards. I guess that's just sort of like, we don't want to put any more, so if you do, we're not discriminating against you. LGBTQ plus. What if they're LGBTQ minus? Is that like A minus?

O positive? Yeah, I don't know. Such as many wings of the Protestant church and bishops of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic communions. And as he points out, note, this is not the president anymore. This is the author.

Note that Princeton Seminary stands in, and it says in opposition to the PCA. It's prophetic opposition. What happened to love? Yes, that is, we clearly stand in prophetic opposition to the PCA and many other Christian denominations that do not extend the full exercise of spirit-filled gifts for women or those of various sexual orientations.

Oh, I don't know. This does bring me to the issue of the Benedict option. I didn't grab my iPad, not iPad, Kindle. What I've read so far, and I blame someone in Channel. He's the guy that's always trying to take over Channel, but has failed so far to do so.

But a fellow by the nick of Book in Channel. I had seen some stuff in Channel, then I started seeing things on Facebook, and then I was linked to the interview between the author and Albert Moeller. And the author is an Eastern Orthodox member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, former Roman Catholic, who became Eastern Orthodox, which is an interesting direction to go, actually.

And fundamentally, what the Benedict option is, is going back to the Benedictine order and the rule of Saint Benedict. And it's monasticism, asceticism. It's an organized life, a disciplined life. And what is fascinating about it, at the beginning, the hook that grabs you is a pretty much full on statement that this culture is done.

Western culture is finished. We've had our Waterloo. It basically was the Casey decision. And then if that wasn't it, then clearly Obergefell, at that point, the process of the individualization, well, the statement.

And that's why I was going to grab my, and I just forgot to bring it with me. I'm sorry. I was gonna grab my Kindles. I had marked these things. But he quotes the Kennedy statement, which I had forgotten about the fact that Kennedy's the guy that got on because Bork didn't.

And man, has that changed everything. That accelerated everything in a major way, major way. The leftists knew they had to stop it and the lengths they went to totally subverted the system, totally subverted the system.

And anyway, Kennedy's statement in the Casey decision that I think was re-quoted in Obergefell, basically identifying human autonomy as the foundational principle of American jurisprudence, which of course, it was not when there was an American jurisprudence, but there isn't really anymore.

So he starts off by basically saying, it's done. The battle's been lost. And now what are we going to do? Now, the proposed solutions are troubling. They're troubling. First of all, how you read this book, and I've actually bought two copies for other people because I'd like them to read it.

And I'd like to hear what, if they're hearing the same things I'm hearing, if they're identifying the same things I'm identifying. And I may buy a few more copies for a few other friends and say, when you get the time, as long as you've got a Kindle, take a look at this.

And obviously for me, Benedict and that kind of stuff is problematic. Asceticism, monastic rules, that kind of stuff is problematic. But he's basically saying that there is going to need to be a Christian community and Christian communities that are extremely focused upon a disciplined life, a life that is not focused upon individuality, but community.

And see, that echoes with me because those of you who've listened, what have I said for a long, long time? I've said the only power that the world is going to have against Christians when, you know, because it looks like if you follow the trends, there is a withdrawing of the hand of restraint against those who hate the gospel.

And the only power that the world is going to have against us is our own love for the things of the world, because that's the only thing they can touch. They can take away our jobs and our homes and our security.

They can touch the body. They can't touch the soul. That's all they can do. So if the source of our strength, the source of our commitment and not commitment, the source of our contentment, I'm sorry, is focused upon that which they cannot touch, they can't do anything to us.

But obviously, when you look at the church as a whole, that's not where we are. Evangelical churches, nominal, because he uses the term Orthodox Christians, small o, for conservative Roman Catholics, conservative Easter Orthodox, and conservative evangelicals.

He recognizes that the liberals of all three of those branches are pretty much irrelevant. And so there are things that echo with me, because there's no question that those who love the things of the world, they're not going to, they're not going to be able to stand against the onslaught that's coming.

They're not going to be able to make the sacrifices that are going to be necessary to remain faithful in the onslaught that is coming our direction. There's no two ways about that. But what's missing so far, and maybe it comes up, but I can't see how it can come up, primarily because of the Eastern Orthodox aspect.

What I was going to say earlier, the way you're going to read this book is really going to be dependent upon your eschatology. It really is. It didn't shock me that after I started reading it, I saw Michael Brown post a response.

And Michael Brown, whether he wants to admit it or not, thinks like a post-millennialist, really does. If you read his books, it's a very much a positive, you know, the revolution will take place, and so on and so forth idea.

And he criticized the book for basically being too much of a downer, in essence. And I would imagine my post-millennial friends will have an allergic reaction to it. Though, at least in my understanding of post-millennialism, a post-millennialist cannot say that a particular expression of culture will be quote-unquote Christianized.

The West may fall. The city of Rome fell to the barbarians, and it would have been really hard to be a post-millennialist from, say, 430 onwards for quite some time in the West. So isn't it possible that there could be a God-glorifying destruction of the hedonism and the secularism of the West?

Because secular humanism cannot provide a meaningful foundation for culture. And we are seeing the secular humanists are totalitarians. They have to be, they have to control what everybody thinks and what everyone rejoices in and celebrates.

But what's missing so far is the gospel. Oh, it's been used. But there is such a fundamental difference in how orthodoxy understands the gospel and the emphases in it because of a lack of understanding in orthodox theology of the true deadness of man and sin.

That's all there is to it. That's why you don't have the emphasis upon justification and atonement. You have much more emphasis upon theosis and union with Christ and etc., etc. Just not seeing that yet.

And what I also haven't seen is even though there is a recognition of the totalitarian nature of the secular left, a lot of the attempted suggestions that you go back to when the communists were in power and things like that, the one thing that's missing is the technology that will now be available to those oppressing Christians that was never possessed before.

You could turn everything off and go without electricity out in the woods someplace, but now they can watch you there too. And it just makes me wonder some of the things I'm reading, just how practical some of these things are in light of, I've used the illustration a number of times, but when I visited the Stasi prison in former East Germany in Berlin, it was not a technological place.

If they had had the kind of technology that we have today, it would have been a much more hellish place than it was. Well, now we've got it. And so I'll be interested to see in the rest of what's there, if any of those things are addressed.

But one of the key issues for me is the interface I'm seeing in regards to the gospel secondary here instead of being primary. And that for me is very problematic. Though I would highly recommend reading the book to people.

Some people get confused by that. You recommended that book. That doesn't mean I agree with everything in it. If you only read books you agree with, well, then again, given the average person, they doesn't read books anymore.

But you need to read books you don't agree with, so you can figure out why you don't. It clarifies your own thought. It's really good for you. So I would highly recommend reading it. And if you don't read it, at least listen to the interview that Al Mohler did in Thinking in Public on the subject, and it will help you to think some of those things through.

But that's what this article was saying. The Rod Dreher moment is this idea that, you know, what if Keller shows up at Princeton and they won't even let him speak, like what happened with, what's his face?

What was that guy's name? I thought it was right there. Oh yeah, Charles Murray. In many of these places that the left just does not care anymore about being straight open in saying we will not allow freedom of speech.

Since we identify you as a bigot and your perspectives are evil from our perspective, then we will silence you. And we are totalitarians and we admit it. We're open about it. So it'll be interesting to see what happens.

I think you'll get to speak personally, but you never know. You never know in time. All right. You know what? I had a video here that I was going to take a look at, and I just don't know that I have time because it's just the first day back after 16 and a half days away.

You've got a lot of stuff to catch up with, got a lot of stuff to catch up with. So I'm going to hold that off for, we've got other dividing lines to do, and we'll just use that for one of those issues then, because I need to give you a quick report on what has been going on and sort of bring you up to speed on some things.

40 hours in a plane, not including all the hours in the airports. I know terminals three and five at Heathrow really well now. Really, really well. Starting to recognize a few people. But it is nice to know where you're going and things like that.

Love British Airways, but those guys, they know what they're doing. I got a little luggage thing. You know that luggage thing? Man, that thing works. When I landed, I'm taxiing in Johannesburg. No, first taxiing in Heathrow because I went through Heathrow to Johannesburg.

Taxiing in Heathrow and my phone goes off and here's a little text message that says, your luggage is in such and such London. It's like, yeah, better than being in Madrid, Spain. That's happened. Land in Johannesburg, same thing happens.

Land back in Heathrow. There it is again. Land in Phoenix. It's in Phoenix, Arizona. It's like, cool. And then when you go down to get it, if you turn on the Bluetooth thing, your luggage is 50 feet from you.

Your luggage is 40 feet from you. Then it comes around the corner and there's my luggage. That's nice. If you've ever lost your luggage, it's pretty nice. I got to admit that. Yeah. Well, I don't care if the NSA knows where my luggage is.

His dirty clothes is in Washington. I don't care. I don't care if the NSA knows. It's irrelevant. Anyway, so that was pretty cool. A lot of people say, why South Africa? Oh, I see. I see someone in channel asking about the thing I mentioned to you.

Yeah, I am going to, to Logos and channel, I am going to address the Maranov situation. Just not today. Too quick after I got back. And besides, we haven't installed the asbestos filters on the lines yet.

You say anything about Bozhidar Maranov and just be prepared for acid in your face because the man just doesn't even know how to be nice to somebody. It's just unbelievable. But anyway, there you go. We'll get to that later on.

And that was not the video that I was going to be talking about. That's that's that's another issue, but we'll get to it later on. People ask why, why South Africa? And, you know, it is still amazing that, you know, I'd had the exchange with Simon Brace, who is now in Potsdam at Northwest University, doing Ratio Christie work down there.

But he's South African. And we had met when I went to SES for the debate with Michael Brown and then the debate that didn't happen because we got snowed out. And the the debate, which wasn't planned on apologetic methodology, that that context there.

I thought when Rudolf Bossoff contacted me that he was doing so because Simon Brace asked him to. It was just out of the blue. He just contacted out of the blue. And I would not be doing what I'm doing in South Africa without Rudolf.

Rudolf must have driven, I don't know, six, 700 kilometers this trip, put six, 700 kilometers on his car, driving me back and forth and stayed with me. They put us up at the it's called the Sports Village at North.

It's now called Northwest University. It's the old historic Christian university called Potsdam University. But then after the after apartheid, the ANC came in and said, you can't have a Christian university anymore.

We're going to put you together with these other these other schools and change the name Northwest University. Thankfully, the School of Theology is still there and great people teaching there and a great bunch of students.

And yeah, I have fallen in love with the place and I fall in love with the professors. Prof. Hank Stoker there is trying his level best to help train ministers in South Africa. There is a tremendous need for the gospel.

There's a tremendous amount of false gospel teaching. It's a huge missions field and there are good churches there. Antioch Bible Church, Tim Cantrell. I've been there pretty much every single time I've gone to South Africa.

They just make room for me. They want to have me speak. They want to have me preach. I preached a week ago Sunday night on Titus 2, 11 through 15. And Tim was late getting there. He had been at Shepherd's Conference and had bad jet lag and fell asleep that afternoon, slept for three hours.

And at 10 minutes, it's a service starts at 6, 10 minutes after his phone goes off. Where are you? Where am I supposed to be? Church, maybe? And so he shows up late. And so I made, Tim, I'm sorry, I had to mention it.

But fully understandable, even though I flew to South Africa on a Sunday and the guys at POTCH had me lecturing six hours a day, Monday and Tuesday. I didn't fall asleep. So anyway, so, but Tim and I love each other.

He'll find something to get back at me later on. Anyway, I preached in Titus 2, 11 through 15, found out later on that that was the text that was assigned to Tim for his ordination sermon in front of John MacArthur.

But I felt tremendous freedom that evening. And I'm not sure if it was Tim or somebody else that said, you know, we're used to you teaching. That was preaching. And I was like, yeah, yeah, it was. That was great.

So I've gotten to meet individuals down there. We want to get to Durban next time I go down. I haven't seen Adrian and his family down there in Durban in a couple of trips. And they're just wonderful Christian people.

And I've told this story before, a couple of trips back, I was in a small church in Johannesburg and had these three university students come up to me. And, you know, they said, the only reason we made it through university was because of the dividing line.

That's the only reason we kept our faith, because everything we were being told was against what you were saying. But you would respond to those things and you just don't know how much that means. And so it's not like this is the only place that's the case.

But because Rudolph is there and because I've gotten plugged in at POTCH, and because they're willing to have me teach, you know, the Lord's just really bound my heart there. So I spent the first few days there.

Yes, I did tweet out about this and it managed to get through the shadow ban, to some people anyways. But you can't go there. I mean, even in the rooms, in the rooms, the sports complex, are these big mural pictures of a cricket batter.

And people in the United States do not understand cricket and rugby. You spend time in Australia, New Zealand, England, and South Africa, all the places I'm going fairly regularly. Wow. And what's really neat is I've now figured out cricket.

It took a while. It took a while, but I figured out cricket. And Australia was playing India in a full test match. And I kept turning it on on BBC because I wanted to see what was happening. And it's seven days long, you know, and they take their time out for lunch and tea.

And it's just so, so completely different. But it's a lot of fun to watch. So anyway, I spent the first two days lecturing on every subject under the sun for hours, hours at a time. And it was exhausting.

But such a blessing to be able to do so. Wednesday, I sort of had off, but not really. And I'll tell you why in a second. And then we did more lecturing on Thursday, Friday night. Was it Thursday night?

Starting to lose track of which day it was. But I went over to Simon Brace's house, the Ratio Christi guys. And for some reason, they wanted me to speak on Mormonism. And so earlier in the week, what I did is I said, well, guys, what you want to do is you want to contact the local missions and tell them you're going to have a talk on Mormonism.

They will send missionaries. And they're like, really? I'm like, yeah, I bet you anything, do it. We had four of them, four missionaries show up for that talk. And it was great because, you know, I set up my computer.

Obviously, I did more Bible than I normally do in it, then obviously, we know this can't be true because the scriptures say, and here's where the scriptures are in contradiction to what Joseph Smith said and so on and so forth.

So it was much more of a witnessing situation than normal, but got through the whole thing. And the people were very, very thankful. And I didn't go over and mess with the missionaries because they're surrounded by students.

They want to have conversations. I'm the big baddie. I stay out of the way and let the students do the witnessing. So that was great. But again, just had a great time at POTCH. And then over the weekend, had the World View Conference with Andy McIntosh, who's the other speaker at the World View Conference.

It was great. It was really funny. I did a thing on science and the Bible with John Bile at POTCH. Then I did Andy McIntosh over the weekend. And here's these two guys that are astronomers. And Jason Lyle, when we previewed the unpopular movie, I'm just finding myself running into these brilliant astro-science guys that just have these awesome presentations.

And they're all presuppositionalists, and they're all really solid guys. Just really great to see them out there. And it was really, really interesting listening to Andy McIntosh. And he did his thing on hearing again.

And then he also did something on math, the beauty of God's creation in math. And he had a picture of a Mandelbrot fractal up. And I was, oh, good. He could talk about fractals. He never did. And so afterwards, I said, I'm really disappointed.

When I spoke next, I said, I'm really disappointed because he didn't get into fractals. So I showed off some of my fractals on the screen, and he was like, that's pretty good. So anyway, we had a great conference.

And then I spoke at a Baptist church that's part of the Baptist Union on Sunday morning. And they were pretty packed out. And folks there just are so appreciative of the ministry of the word. They gave me a specific text in John 14 to preach from and had a great time there with the pastor and his family.

When I got in, when I got to his house for lunch after the service, there was a chess board sitting on the table. And so I put the pieces back where they're supposed to be. And he says, so do you play chess?

I said, this is what I said. I know how the pieces move. So I said, well, we got to play then. So he sits down. Rich is laughing because he knows where this is going to go. And it turns out he's an avid chess player.

Until about six months earlier, I had been doing a lot of playing online and stuff like that. I haven't played probably in two years. But those who know me know that when I was a teenager, well, the guys who went up to Salt Lake will remember the time when we were playing chess over the CB while I was driving and I didn't have a set.

The set was in the car behind. And the only reason I lost the position was because we had a real close pass on the two lane. It was that going on the page. We had a real close pass and it sort of it was a little hectic.

And hectic, by the way, in South Africa means something completely different than it does here. Hectic means dangerous. It's really weird. This is a hectic area of the road. OK, whatever. Anyhow, so we we played and.

Yeah, buy a donkey, buy a donkey. That's how you say thank you. Anyways, so we played chess and yeah, I won anyway. So so I felt good about that because if you don't get a chance to play for two years, you don't get a chance to study openings, stuff like that.

You can really get in trouble. But we had we had we had a fun time together. And so that'll probably be the only time I get to play chess for another two years. But it was it was enjoyable. Had a great time out.

There was a really good spirit at that church. And such a all of these churches, folks are just massively mixed, mixed churches. I mean, you've got you've got Indians and blacks and whites. And it's you know, it's really neat to see the body functioning in that in that way.

And so then that evening was when I preached at at Antioch and I. Honestly, I'm starting to lose track of which day was which, but had a great time in Pach very quickly. I just want to mention this because I want to get to the important part here after I left South Africa.

And I think that was on was it was it Wednesday I flew? It was Wednesday I flew to. Yeah, Wednesday was my travel day up to up to Heathrow. What did I do on Monday? I did something on Monday. Oh, well, Dar, Tuesday night was the debate at the mosque in Lanasia, Dar, with Bashir Vania on the crucifixion.

And on Monday, that's right. I spoke at the Baptist Union thing. We were really confused as what was supposed to be. We thought it was going to be sort of a little sit down thing with a few people end up being a big presentation.

Then we had to rush out of it real quick because we we had scheduled a radio interview. And we ended up doing that and it ended up being a pretty pretty hectic day. When I'm when I'm in Joburg, when I'm not at Pachestrom, I stay with Damon and Linda at the same place.

I've now stayed there. I think this is at least my fourth time. I know every footpath around their neighborhood. They're in it. They're in a development that's all fenced off. It's got security. I would never go running.

And sadly, you just don't go running in South Africa unless you're in a situation like that. So I know I know everything, every path and every road in that development. And so I got some running done there.

And it's real. I generally stay in hotels. It's easier for me to rest. But once you get to know a family and you get to know where everything is, they have the perfect room. It has its own bathroom. I just it's like I'm at home.

And so I can can handle that just great. And it's wonderful. I stayed there and they have a chiropractor in their congregation now. He brought his table over, gave me an adjustment. It was great. It helped me to stay strong.

I got one hundred thousand meters of rowing on this trip. I've never come close to that. Between Pachestrom, Randberg, and then they had a single concept to rower at the hotel I stayed at. A hundred thousand.

That means I'm going to have a million meters this this this season. So I was really happy about that. Keeping the body going, the workouts really help with the stress of travel and sleep and all the rest, that kind of stuff makes a big difference.

So I was very, very excited about that. So we had a great time there and then went to London. And let me just mention real quickly, I realize that my Reformed Baptist friends in London don't understand this, but I am so thankful for KT, for Kensington Temple.

Yep, they're charismatics and they know I'm Reformed Baptist. They love me anyways and I love them too. They step up, they make things work, their volunteers go out of their way. And they made the dialogue with Abdullah Al-Andalusi work on short notice.

I had lunch with Abdullah. It was a very interesting conversation, very useful. Then I spoke Sunday night and even though my MacBook Pro died on me, it's now being repaired for the next five days. Three to five days, we'll see.

My iPad happened to work and we did probably the most energy-filled presentation on New Testament Reliability ever done. It really was. I mean, it was great. Got folks excited about manuscripts and stuff like that.

It was fun. And so Sunday morning, I didn't have anything going on. So I walked. I don't know if because I was right downtown. I had a great location. I ran around the Eye and Big Ben and stuff like that again and had lunch in my favorite little Mexican place called Tortilla in Trafalgar Square.

And I did a bunch of stuff around London and sort of starting to feel like I know what I'm doing around that place. In fact, I was in the Apple Store today and they had this drone thing in London. And I'm pointing things out to people around me and going, hey, see that thing there?

Well, over there, that building there, that's the Royal Horse Guards. And my hotel was right over there. And see up there? There's where Trafalgar Square is. And they're all just going, who is this guy?

So it was sort of fun. Did get back to the hotel and they had a fire alarm. And so I spent an hour waiting to get back to my room after the fire alarm at the hotel, but that does happen when you travel every once in a while.

And then an uneventful trip back yesterday. Thanks again to British Airways, which does such a wonderful job. So that was my time in London. So with all that said, back to something really important. And this is what I want to talk about with our supporters, for those who support this work and support the ministry.

I mentioned that I did something on Wednesday when I was at POTSCH. And what that was, was I met with Dr. Yuri Yordan. Dr. Yordan teaches New Testament. Actually, he's retired now, actually, but he's still deeply involved in translation work and Bible translation work there in South Africa.

There's a lot of Bible translation work needs to be done. The number of languages there is astronomical. It's amazing. All the dialects and things like that. And I had met with Dr. Yordan each time that I had gone the past two times out to POTSCH's room.

And last year, when I came back in May, I made mention of a project. And a number of you helped to, I would put things on the ministry resource list and a number of you helped us to obtain a number of those resources.

This was all in preparation for what I've been talking with Dr. Yordan about now for a little while. And as of last week, I didn't bring it in with me. I was actually going to hold it up. But as of last week, I am now fully registered in the PhD program at POTSCH's room, working with Dr. Yordan as my doctoral advisor, doing a PhD in New Testament, specifically in New Testament textual criticism.