by Stephen Rodgers

Welcome to the first installment of Weekly Links on our brand new, shiny Beacon 3.0 blog! (Can you tell I’m still excited that it has both launched and not yet crashed?) I apologize that this one is a tad late, but it was one of those weeks where I went to bed early this morning lamenting that there were only 3 articles to share, and rose up in the morning lamenting the fact that I had to narrow it down from about 30. God provides in His time…

On to the articles!

• First up, as you might know by know, I will be teaching an Introduction to Apologetics class at LBC, beginning next week (shameless plug). To that end, let’s kick start this off on the topic of apologetics. First off, I was a bit surprised to discover that renowned atheist Christopher Hitchens actually had a shockingly good grasp on what it means to be a Christian. Compared to so much of what passes today for post-modern evangelicalism, this was a breath of fresh air. And speaking of post-modernism, I found this to be rather amusing and acute.
• So if you were at Pastor Reverend Pastor Patrick’s ordination service, you heard him quote spontaneously from a number of the Psalms. Not to diminish Pastor Patrick, but in a recent sermon, John Piper quoted Philippians from memory. “Stephen,” you tsk, “you forgot to tell us what chapter and verse!” No I didn’t. He quoted Philippians from memory!
• In case you missed it the first time, read Teddy Yu’s Convalescent Home Ministry article. Then read Kevin DeYoung’s article on visiting the sick (adapted from Brian Croft’s book).
• Fascinating visual representation of the way the Bible references itself. Try to wrap your head around that one for a while.
• This one goes out especially to Pastor John’s lovely wife and my amazing mother, who have probably (in the case of Mrs. Kim), and definitely (in the case of my mother), commented that we seem to have too many books. Oh yeah? It could be so much worse. You should be grateful we only have xx,xxx books. At least we’re not as bad as Al Mohler.
• There are apparently some new Spurgeon sermons. Really; I’m not joking. If you’ve never read Spurgeon, well…uh…sorry. I’m struggling with the idea of someone who’s never read Spurgeon. You should.
• In what has to be my favorite rant of the week, Kevin DeYoung takes umbrage with self-proclaimed Christians who don’t want to be called “Christians.”
• If you recall, I while back we highlighted an article dealing with Trusting God Through Unemployment, Part 1. Well, part two is now available.
• Speaking of “if you recalls,” I’m sure you remember when Richard Shin did his book review on Stuart Scott’s From Pride to Humility. Over at the 9Marks blog, they have a good two-part outline, which can be found here and here.
• And to wrap up the series, a number of you have commented that you enjoyed Mark Driscoll’s video interview of RC Sproul. You would probably also enjoy his video interviews of John Piper and Matt Chandler.

That’s all for this week folks. See you on Sunday!

Pro Rege