“O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.” (William Shakespeare)

“Does anyone else think that Phil ought to be forced at gunpoint to enter the blogosphere?” (Scott McClare at the Fighting Fundamentalist Forums)

by Stephen Rodgers

I know what you’re thinking: “We’re never going to finish the prophetic books are we?”

We will. But every so often there’s an event in the Christian blogosphere that requires us to stop, take stock, and reflect. And contrary to what many of the hysteria-prone residents of the internet would have you believe, they don’t come around very often. However, yesterday was one of those events.

Yesterday, Phil Johnson basically announced that he’s retiring from the internet.

Now I’ll admit, that’s a slightly sensationalist way of putting it, but you’re welcome to read the post for yourself and get the details. Suffice to say, the original Pyromaniac is hanging up his hat to focus on other things. I wish him all the best, but I wanted to briefly take a moment to share with you what this man has meant to me.

• I actually started attending Grace Community Church a year or so before Phil arrived. The difference was that he had been recruited by John MacArthur himself as a result of his work at Moody, and I was occupying a crib in the nursery. Notwithstanding that little difference, Phil has been something of a fixture at GCC for as long as I can remember. Other pastors, elders, and luminaries have come and gone, but he’s been faithfully serving at the same church for more than 30 years now.
• Growing up at GCC I would occasionally cross paths with him, mostly because one of his sons was close to my age and we progressed through the various child and youth-oriented programs together. Given my anti-social tendencies that normally wouldn’t have registered, but the progeny in question had a name that was fraught with Star Wars terminology, so it stuck.
• Fast-forward a couple of decades, and through a series of providential maneuvers that had to be lived to be believed, I wind up on the doorstep of LBC. It wasn’t the best of times: I had just returned to the United States from overseas, I was still in the final stages of a rather protracted illness, and I was grappling with quite a few of my core theological assumptions. For the first time in nearly a quarter-century I was starting to take my faith really seriously, and recognizing that, my father offhandedly mentioned that Phil Johnson had a blog.
• (No, that’s not the famous Pyromaniacs blog, that’s the original Pyromaniac (singular) blog. Yes, that’s “OG” as the kids say.)
• Over the next several years I devoured just about everything that Phil wrote, blogged, preached, or commented on. That wasn’t to say that I agreed with all the theological positions he espoused (at least at first), or saw much value in all the subjects he taught on (at least at first), but I kept reading. My mother was highly amused by all this and even accused my goatee of being an homage to Phil, which I distinctly remember being enraged by since I was busy vehemently disagreeing with him at the time.
• I really should have paid more attention to one of the earliest post titles on his blog: Iuventus stultorum magister. Because the next few years were a rather constant exercise in head-banging…and not of the throw-the-horns-and-rock-out variety. No, this was more of the against-the-wall variety. Phil would post something, I’d get huffy and storm off to grab a Bible in order to correct him, only to discover again and again that it was my theology that was getting corrected. And to the amusement of my mother, I actually came full circle on a number of issues and positions that I’d been so sure were shining examples of my brilliance and his…well… obsolescence.
• I guess the fact that two significant themes in Scripture are the value of old faith and the stupidity of young men should have been a clue right?
• Fast forward a couple of years…I’m sporting a truly impressive goatee, buying Spurgeon biographies, harassing poor Phil for recommendations on church history books at Shepherds’ Conferences, and forcing everyone I came in contact with to familiarize themselves with early church heresies (still the finest introduction to that topic that I’ve ever heard). And let’s be clear: none of his kindness rose to the level of guidance and assistance that my actual pastors and elders poured into my life, which is as it should be. But except for a couple of really rough times that Pastor John doesn’t want to talk about, I try not to bother those real people at two or three in the morning…but Pyro was always there, as were his sermons, articles, and the entire Spurgeon archive. And on top of that, he’s the one who originally pointed me to Triablogue. And on top of that, he’s the reason that I got exposed to Frank and Dan as well.
• One last thing before I push the publish button and this gets real…there’s something else I always admired about Phil, something that was always a profound encouragement to me: he’s a layman. He’s got no M.Div. on his wall, no Th.M. in his back pocket. As near as I can tell, he started with little more than a love for God and a bookshelf full of Spurgeon and went from there. On top of that, he’s insanely productive and still makes time to educate himself in order to serve at his church. I’ve commented before that in my opinion John Frame might just be the most dangerous man (theologically speaking, in a good way) with a master’s degree. I really think that Phil might be the most dangerous man without one.
• So, for all that (and more)...thank you Phil. Thank you for your service to both the church writ large and the church writ small. Thank you for your example of faithfulness. And thank you for your willingness to partner with other godly men to proclaim the full counsel of God at a time when so few are willing to say what needs to be said. And most of all, thank you for blasting that truth out onto the internet where confused guys like me could benefit from it. Frank’s right: those posts aren’t going to just write themselves.

For those of you still trying to figure out that Latin phrase, it translates to “youth is the teacher of fools.” Hopefully you learn that earlier than I did. But if you don’t, I’ve got some old Pyro articles for you to read.

That’ll straighten you out.