Welcome back to the podcast. We have a special episode to close out of the week. It's an update, and we're gonna take a moment to look back and look ahead, and that is because our fiscal year comes to an end in 12 days, at the end of June, and it's a good time to stop and look back at God's providence over the past year, to thank him for his kindness, to see what we can learn from him, and then to ponder our planning for the year to come, and particularly for the summer ahead for you, Pastor John.

So as we start, what would you want people to know? Well, Tony, just right off the bat, my guess is that a lot of people wonder, at least I did, why we have a fiscal, a financial year that is different from our calendar year. That just seems to complicate things.

It does for me when I try to think about this, and one of the answers is this. December is far and away our biggest month of support from our donors, and the scope of that month's giving shapes the planning for the future of what we're able to do, and therefore we can't be doing the serious, detailed planning in the very last month of the year when that's the month that is shaping the planning.

So it makes sense to me now, a little more than it used to, as to why we do it that way, so that we can formulate our goals for the fiscal year starting in July, based on what we saw happen in December and then in the beginning part of the year.

So just, I think it's good to begin with that kind of clarification of, "Why in the world are you doing this in the middle of the summer?" That's good, and it reminds us that so much of what we plan and pursue at Desiring God, it hangs on the amazing generosity of those who love this ministry.

And I know, Pastor John, you and I, we both feel the blessing of that, especially in doing this podcast, right? Week in and a week out. We wouldn't be doing APJ without your support, and so we hope that you rejoice with us as God continues to show his favor on us.

And speaking of his favor, we are nearing a huge benchmark that we've had our eye on for a few years now, huge for us anyways, and that is 200 million all-time episode plays. 200 million episodes played over the course of our nine-year history. It is amazing. I mean, we are on pace to hit that benchmark sometime in late July, maybe early August, but we're just weeks away from that.

So 200 million plays. Thank you to everyone who listens in a podcast app or listens in the APJ app or who listens in YouTube. YouTube represents about 40 million of those plays alone, which is just incredible to me. That is weird, you know, people go to YouTube to watch.

No, they don't. They listen. Well, they're listening right now, so thank you, YouTube audience, for listening through YouTube. And there are no signs of slowing down. We still get dozens of questions every day. We continue to record and try to keep up with at least some of those questions.

It's a wonderful work that we get to do in partnership with our listeners and our donors. It has been a gift to us that APJ is the kind of ministry that is possible to pursue right through all the limitations that come in a pandemic, like the one that we're emerging from.

It has been a year like really no other in our lifetime. Right, especially here in Minneapolis. Yeah. The effects of COVID-19 and the violence that we experienced that was stirred up last summer because of the killing of George Floyd, these two realities have created a kind of wartime mentality here in Minneapolis for the past year or so.

There never has been a time before when I would sit with my wife each evening and she would read to me the casualty statistics of the pandemic in Minnesota. I mean, it's as if we were sitting here in a war and she's reading me the statistics from the front lines of the war.

This many people infected, this many people in intensive care, this many people have died. During the German bombing of London in 1940, I'm reading a book about this right now, there were austerity measures. Black out your windows so no light gets through to show the bombers where to drop the bombs.

Drink your tea sparingly because you only get three ounces of rationing each week. Carry your gas mask to work. And that's the way it's been with the pandemic. Closed restaurants, closed theaters, closed schools, closed churches, and all the while here in Minneapolis boarded up coffee shops two blocks from my house and boarded up restaurants and wondering where the next simmering unrest is gonna break out.

So yeah, it's been an unusual year for everybody. Very unusual, but it sure hasn't seemed to slow you down or even slow the ministry down at all. No, in fact, if anything, I would say the pandemic increased my output. Yeah. I mean, that's just the nature of my job.

If a pandemic says to me, "You have to stay inside, Piper," that's like a fox saying to a rabbit, "I have to throw you into the briar patch." Oh no, no, please don't throw me in the briar patch. That's where I live. Ironically, I say to the pandemic, "What a painful gift you have been to me.

You said to me, 'Stay there at your desk, Piper, and do your 252 look at the book episodes to finish the book of Ephesians.'" I mean, that was a gift to me. I mean, I loved finishing the book of Ephesians, the second greatest letter in the world, and we did 252 look at the book episodes on it.

And then, "Stay there again, Piper, and get going on 1 Thessalonians." And so I've done, goodness, as we're recording this, I've done about 50 more episodes on 1 Thessalonians. And while you're at it, stay there and work with Crossway of Desiring God and Westminster Books to launch this big red book on Providence.

And oh, while you're at it in quarantine, take a couple of weeks and write a book on coronavirus in Christ and apply the doctrine of Providence to that particular trouble. And then, from another angle of my life, it was a tremendous privilege and pleasure to teach preaching in the fall and the spring at Bethlehem College and Seminary.

I think we only missed one class in person because of COVID. I love, Tony, I love being in class with these future preachers. It is such a delight. So, no, the COVID-19 has not slowed me down or slowed down Desiring God. The teaching team with David Mathis and John Blum and Marshall Siegel and Greg Morris and Scott Hubbard and Joe Rigney, they didn't miss a beat in the steady stream of articles that they produced.

And David finished his book called "Humbled," which is supposed to be, I believe, out this fall. And as far as I can tell, COVID didn't slow you down. I believe you finished your book, "God, Technology, and the Christian Life." And I think our listeners would love to hear about that.

What are you trying to do in that major book, and when can they look for it? Yeah, January is when it launches from our friends at Crossway Books. I've always wanted to write a big book on technology and really get into the weeds of things like genetic engineering and nuclear power and space travel and robotics and self-driving cars and artificial intelligence and medical advances and anti-aging innovations, which are really taking off now.

And to look at all of that and really ask, "Where did all that come from?" And does it all violate what God intended for his creation, or does it fulfill it? Have we discovered new powers that God never intended for us to ever find? Are these new technologies a sort of forbidden fruit we were not supposed to find or touch?

And so, you know, back in my book on smartphones published in 2017, I wrote a little 12-page introduction as to how I think of tech broadly, knowing that that little introduction would eventually need to become a big book one day on technology. But the large book idea was really only a distant dream of mine for many, many years.

And so I started to write out some messages and pick away at it. I delivered a few messages on tech to friends of ours at DG, at donor gatherings, to many of our friends who live and work inside the tech industry. And I delivered those messages to those small gatherings.

One was in Phoenix, a few were in Seattle, and then the virus just closed everything down, all of our travel. And it was like, "Well, I guess fiscal year 2021 is gonna be the year that I have the time now to read and to research and to finally write this big book on technology." So I did it, it's done, it's ready for a January release, and you've written the book on Providence.

And this is basically my little attempt to help Christians appreciate God's providence over big tech, over Elon Musk, and over Silicon Valley, and to really show how God, through his Word, leads us to embrace a God-centered worldview over all of it, so we're not left with a godless worldview where he doesn't factor in at all to big tech.

And I fear that that's really where many Christians live, with a view of technology that's pessimistic and dystopian, because at root it's simply a godless view of it all. God is nowhere to be factored into the equation, for whatever reasons. And I think that's problematic for a lot of reasons.

And so I'm thrilled with this book, and I hope it's as enjoyable to read as it was to write. But as we look ahead for the summer, we will continue to press on with APJ episodes here, and you continue to plan to press on with Look at the Book episodes.

Anything else we should have on our radar? Well, Desiring God in the new year is gonna—new fiscal year—is gonna pour a lot of energy, a lot of resources into the global dimension of our ministry, the global reach of our resources. Indeed, as we did last year, coronavirus and Christ set the bar so high—I don't know if we'll ever reach it again—with 31 languages.

Almost overnight we translated that little book into those languages, working with translators in those various cultures. An even more coordinated effort is underway with the Providence book for translation into, I think, nine major languages right now, simultaneously, and Desiring God getting behind those in a big way. But on my front burner is a writing leave in July and August to work on a book on the Second Coming.

I've wanted to do this for a long time. I think I would say that my goal for the book is that more people would come to love—love—the Second Coming of Christ, because Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:8, "There is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have loved his appearing." What an amazing privilege to have time and resources to work on a book like this.

So, Tony, we can't say it too often to our friends on this podcast that you're working on APJ and God Technology and the Christian Life, and my working on a book like the Second Coming of Christ is happening because people have come to love what we live for at Desiring God.

The glorifying of God through being more satisfied in God than anything else, even in our suffering, through the teaching of the truth and beauty of all that God is for us in Christ, with everything rooted in God's infallible scriptures, the Bible. That's what we're about, and we are thankful to those of you who share these convictions with us.

Amen. So very thankful. It really is an amazing privilege. Thank you all for listening and for watching and reading DG Resources. Thank you to everyone who prays for the ministry, and thank you to all our ministry partners who financially support us so that we can make all of our resources and translate them into many languages and spread them all over the world free of charge.

It's an incredible work, and if you want to join us in the labors, you can today at DesiringGod.org/donate. That's DesiringGod.org/donate. Thank you so much for listening, and we will see you back here on Monday. Bye-bye.