LA is huge. Way too big.
It just goes on and on. Traffic is terrible. I don’t know how people live there. Unless it’s the great beaches, mountains, weather and all the many activities there are there. And great shopping. I understand that’s really important to some people.
But the smog, crime, traffic, and America-hating socialist government more than cancel all of that out to me. I could only see enjoying LA if I was really rich. They actually have a freeway called the “Santa Ana Freeway”. Is that actually named after the Mexican general who attacked the Alamo? Amazing.
Also they have barbed wire around their freeway signs, to discourage graffiti. That was kind of surreal.
But the MacArthur conference was great. It was really encouraging to be in the presence of three thousand or so Baptist pastors, all committed to the sufficiency and inerrancy of Scripture and the sovereignty of God. Yes, they’re wrong about Baptism (IMHO), but I came to understand their position a good deal better. I also came to understand that the basic issue between Reformed Baptists and Reformed Reformed is the issue of continuity- that is, how much continuity do you see between the Old and New Testaments? We see more continuity, though not absolute continuity. They have a presumption of discontinuity, though not absolute discontinuity. That explains pretty much all of the differences between Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians- Baptism, church government and eschatology.
But like I said, it was great. I got a lot of great counseling resources, they gave away a lot of books and I met a lot of peope. Also, RC Sproul was there, and he’s always a hoot. He’s recently had a sort of stroke, so he wasn’t quite as animated as he used to be. But he was great.
Update:
It’s not named after the Mexican general. The town that the freeway goes through is called Santa Ana, named after Saint Anne, according to Kevin in the comments.