by Stephen Rodgers

This is long overdue, but James Shin has been cranking out illustrations for several of the series that are available to you in the Hub Post Directory.  This week, we’re highlighting Pastor Patrick’s series (from 2008/2009!) entitled “Getting Back to Basics.”

If you’ve never read it before, now’s a great chance to catch up, and enjoy James’ artwork in the process.

by Stephen Rodgers

And…we’re back!

So the good news is that you’re reading this on the new and improved Beacon!  We’re now simpler and sleeker than ever, and regardless of what the resolution is on your device, you should have a truer reading experience now that the upgrade is complete.  So take a moment to poke around and enjoy the new theme. If you notice anything not working correctly, please drop me a line and we’ll get it fixed.

There’s never quite enough time to finish everything, so we’ll be wrapping up some of the other projects that I mentioned back in December in the weeks to come.  To celebrate the new year and the new theme however, I thought you might enjoy a quick look back on the most popular posts of 2012.  If you missed any the first time around, now’s a great chance to catch up.

The most popular page by far was just people landing on the home page, but once you get past that we quickly get into the top ten posts:

1. LBC Ministry Overview – A list of the various ministries that you can get involved in here at LBC. If you’re new to the church and wondering where you can serve, this list is a great place to start!
2. DTR – Hub Post -The hub post for various articles and sermons on the subject of dating.
3. Mission: LBC Los Angeles – Pastor Patrick’s article announcing the LBC LA church plant.
4. Hub Post Directory – The collection of all the various hub posts available here on the Beacon.
5. Signs of Spiritual Maturity #5: Changes in Friendship – The fifth post in Elder Peter Lim’s ongoing series on spiritual maturity.
6. Recommended Resources – Our collection of external resources that we hope will be edifying, encouraging, and challenging.
7. Gray Issues – Hub Post -The hub post for Elder Peter Lim’s seven-part series on understanding so-called “gray issues” (or “wisdom issues”) in the life of a Christian
8. Caution – Hub Post – The hub post for Elder Mike Chon’s three-part series on humility and pride.
9. Encouragement – Hub Post –  The hub post for Elder Mike Chon’s seven-part series on encouragement.
10. Signs of Spiritual Maturity #6: Conservative Decision Making Motivated By a Hatred of Sin – The sixth post in Elder Peter Lim’s ongoing series on spiritual maturity.

Thanks for reading in 2012, and we look forward to picking up where we left off in 2013!

Pro Rege

by Stephen Rodgers

Just to let you all know, the Beacon will be on its traditional Christmas hiatus for the next couple weeks.  If all goes well, we’ll be back the second week of January.

I say “if” simply because we’re also planning on doing some fairly important upgrades to the blog, so on the off-chance that we encounter some unexpected downtime, don’t panic.  I think you’ll agree that the end result is worth it.  Spoiler alert: our smart phone and tablet users should be much happier with us after the changes.

We’ve also got a small pile of awesomeness planned to go live around the same time we return, including more illustrations for some of the article series, one more pass to make the BOB articles inter-relate to one another to a greater extent, and a secret project that should enable you to conduct theological research much more easily.

Merry Christmas!

Pro Rege

“All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.” (Albert Einstein)

by Stephen Rodgers

Unfortunately, I had to cancel the BOB article today because I’m otherwise occupied with correcting a minor issue with the Beacon that is causing the pages to display…oddly. If the left margin appears non-existant, and there’s a blue box at the top of the banner, do not adjust your set. We control the vertical and the horizontal…we just control them poorly at the moment.

Believe it or not, this is an improvement: on Monday the issue was that the pages weren’t displaying at all. So progress is being made.

That being said, a number of articles in the BOB series have been recently updated, and you might want to revisit them.  They are:

• 1 & 2 Chronicles
• Isaiah
• Ezekiel

A couple people have asked about the resources that are used to write the BOB articles. I wrote a post specifically on that subject, and for some links that will set you on a path to other great resources, you might want to refer to the Recommended Resources page, specifically the sections dealing with “Recommended Commentaries” and “Recommended Systematic Theologies.”

I’ve also recently updated that page with some links pertaining to “Recommended Reading for Seminary.” That should be very useful for anyone starting to do some reading on theological topics.

Hopefully we’ll have all the technicalia resolved by next week, and be back to our regularly-scheduled BOB.

Thank you for your patience.

Pro Rege

by Stephen Rodgers

In my previous post, I cheerfully declared that we would be on hiatus for the month of July. It turns out I spoke too soon.

As opportunity allows, Eugene will be sending updates regarding the Argentina missions trip, the first of which will follow hot on the heels of this post. I hope these will not only give you insight into the trip, but also will remind you to keep the team in prayer.

So to clarify: we won’t be on hiatus after all, but we won’t be sticking to our regularly-scheduled updates either.

That’s my (new) story, and I’m sticking to it (for now).

Pro Rege

by Stephen Rodgers

As we’ve done in years past, we’ll be taking a brief hiatus for the month of July. In case anyone is curious as to the reasons behind that, in no particular order they are:

• This is a time where a number of our members who support the Beacon directly and indirectly are unavailable: many collegians are out of town, summer mission team members are out of the country, etc.
• This is a time where we like to give our pastors, elders, and ministry coordinators a little bit of a break from writing articles. Some use it to catch up, others to get ahead, but they really do appreciate a few weeks off.
• Last but not least, this gives us on the Beacon staff an opportunity to update, upgrade, and generally tweak some of the code under the hood, without the fear that we’ll inadvertently bring the site down and prevent you from receiving fresh content. (We just inadvertently bring down the site and prevent you from receiving any content whatsoever).

In the meantime, I’d encourage you to take the opportunity to explore and catch up on some past articles you may have missed.  Here’s a few of my favorites:

• Since summer missions are happening now, you might want to review either the entire missions category, or the Argentina missions or Czech missions sub-categories.
• Hopefully you’re coming out for Wednesday-night Bible study if you’re able…for a sneak peak, you can take a look at Pastor Patrick’s Israel Jounal series.
• The Books of the Bible (BOB) series continues its inexorable march through Scripture. Currently it just wrapped up the Major Prophets, so now’s a good time to catch up if you need to do so.
• An oldie-but-a-goodie is the Peacemaker series. If you haven’t read that book or listened to that Sunday School series, I’d strongly recommend you do so.
• And if that’s still not enough for you, then you’re welcome to browse all our various series, check out recommended resources, find a ministry to join, or contact us and let us know any suggestions you might have.

That’s it for now. See you in August!

Pro Rege

“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.

by Stephen Rodgers

I wanted to announce this last time, but it wasn’t quite ready yet.  Now that we’re really caught up, here it is.

• Illustrations – James Shin recently joined the staff here at the Beacon, and he’s been doing some great work in illustrating the Caution series, the Gray Issues series, and the Encouragement Series (he’s still working on that one). Click through to check that out!

Also, if you haven’t read those series yet, this would be a great time to catch up.  It won’t take long, and you’ll benefit greatly.

by Stephen Rodgers

I know you were probably expecting a BOB article today, and I’d liked to have delivered one. The problem is that the guy who writes the BOB series is the same guy who needed to make you aware of a number of housekeeping issues around the Beacon. After all, it does no good for us to fix and update things behind the scenes if you don’t know that they’ve been fixed and updated.

Anyways:

• SC 2012 Audio – Just to let you know, the Shepherds’ Conference resources that I referenced in this article are now available online (previously the folks at GCC had not uploaded General Session III; that has been corrected)
• Baptism Hub – For some reason, I’ve been fielding a lot of questions about baptism lately.  I don’t know why…it must be something in the water. (Get it? In the water?  Heh…I’m hilarious…anyhow). I’ve updated the Baptism Hub to include a number of resources in addition to Richard’s series.
• DTR Hub – The DTR Hub has been updated with Austin Duncan’s excellent seminar from the 2012 Shepherds’ Conference
• Recommended Resources – I’ve updated the Recommended Resources page to include Kategoria, Creation Magazine, and The Journal of Creation
• Chronological Index of Tabletalk – The Tabletalk index has been updated to include the most recent issue
• Topical Index of 9Marks eJournal – The eJournal index has been updated to include the most recent issue
• Canon Fodder – Since this is taking the place of BOB, I wanted to pass along a recent addition to the Christian blogosphere: Michael J. Kruger’s blog Canon Fodder (in particular, his recently-begun series on Misconceptions about the NT Canon)