Archives for September 18, 2021

We are having a wonderful, beautiful day at a young adults camp in Forest Home, California. I am delivering five messages here on union with Christ, church unity, and holiness, and meeting with many friends, both new and old. We just had a wonderful meal with this couple, Peter and Jennifer, who are fairly new converts but are growing in grace and hungry to learn. Peter was remarkably converted in prison and is now running a successful business and seeking to be a man of God for his wife and family. We also have just received a message that Pastor Joel Weaver is still in the hospital and not doing too well, so we are gathering for a prayer meeting right now for him. Please pray earnestly for his full recovery.

Thursday night we arrived safely in Burbank, California from Nashville to begin the second of our three back-to-back conferences—this one being a Spanish conference for 2,200 pastors and lay people at Grace Community Church pastored by Dr. John MacArthur. After we arrived, three young men Jhonathon, Alex, and Miguel took us out for a late dinner (picture #1). Their conversion stories were fascinating. Jhonathon was converted to Christianity from being a Jehovah’s Witness.

David Woollin joined us very late that evening flying in from Europe. He brought with him the very first copy of “A Puritan Theology: Doctrine for Life” by Mark Jones and me in Spanish, which will be officially released from the publishers (Poiema and RHB) in three or four weeks. Our prayer is that this will open up the teaching of the Puritans for Spanish-speaking Latin America more than anything else has done to date. The next day, the Spanish-speaking attendees at the conference could order it already. In picture #2, I am holding copies of the new book with a Poiema employee at their table in the bookstore. You can order it here:

https://poiema.co/products/una-teologia-puritana?variant=4098202507692

Yesterday afternoon I spoke in English at the Spanish conference on “The Puritans on Christ’s Compassionate Heart and Intercession in Heaven” while being simultaneously translated into Spanish by Jonathan Tucker (picture #3), who did a great job, but it was challenging to speak when the translator was speaking at the same time.

After I spoke, Mary and I had a good but brief visit with Paul Washer who was also speaking at the conference. A young couple, Thaddeus and Rachelle, then graciously drove us three hours to Forest Home, California to a conference camp (for 18-35 year olds) organized by the Vasilia, California United Reformed Church pastored by Joel Weaver, a PRTS alumnus. (Please pray for this dear brother as he is presently in the hospital with COVID and pneumonia.)

When we arrived near the camp, three coyotes ran in front of our car, and we could hear their cries in the darkness when we stepped out of the car in the camp’s parking lot. We arrived five minutes before I had to give my first of five addresses on “Union with Christ and Christian Unity.” After my address we were taken to our beautiful cabin, only to witness that in the next door cabin some camp employees were cleaning up the interior after chasing out of the cabin a mother bear with her cubs! And then, upon settling in, we heard that there had been a 4.3-magnitude earthquake in the Los Angeles area at 8:00 p.m. (about two hours after we drove through that area). Never a dull moment in California!