Much of Wheeler's reasoning is correct. If you have a v-block channel for high torque mounting, like the Choate stocks, then you don't need to bed at all. With pillars, you use a loose enough hole in the stock to require enough bedding material that the pillar can self-center around the screw while the bedding sets up. Otherwise you can get the pillars slightly too close together or slightly too far apart and introduce flexing stress on the action.
Personally, I fit pillars ahead of bedding by leaving them a little too long, and using high spot blue and a scraper to give them a mating fit to the action. Then I use my lathe to final trim the bottom to correct length. At bedding, I make a small (1/8" or so) dam from clay rolled into a string, and work it in around that mating contact edge at the receiver to keep the bedding out of the contact point.
Keep in mind that the pillar is there to keep the stock screws from applying compression to the stock and bedding, which can otherwise take a set over time in a wood stock. They are not a substitute for the bedding at the sides or back at the tang of the receiver. Those places can develop flexing moments and whipping action. If you are using a conventional flat end pillar, there is nothing to stop that slight whipping, which can make the back of the receiver shift a few thousands on the pillar after each shot, unless you have that bedding at the back of the receiver, too.
As to the recoil lug, I was taught to bed the back face and a little of the back edges and bottom of it, but to leave the front of it clear. That scheme keeps it centered and recoiling back a against a surface broad enough to limit rearward recoil force on the pillars and yet be able to be removed from the stock without stressing the rest of the bedding. It can also expand forward if the gun gets really hot.
Bedding the first portion of the barrel does help some guns center in their bedding a little better and may help damp vibration in some. I would not do it unless you are dissatisfied with the gun's performance and are looking for another way to tweak it. You can always add that portion of the bedding later. In most instances all you will accomplish is adding weight to the gun, though a few will respond positively. When I was younger, I did that with a steel-filled bedding to what had been a nice Mauser B&C Carbelite stock and basically destroyed its weight advantage. I tried to whittle it out, and being less experienced at the time, went on to make the stock cosmetically unacceptable. The gun shot no better with all that bedding than it had with conventional action bedding. Lesson learned.
An alternative bedding approach that Bruce Baer developed is to sleeve the barrel back where you are talking about bedding it. He is doing this to long range magnum target rifles, so he can get a straight cylinder that is rather longer than you have for his sleeves. The sleeve is glued to the barrel and engaged to the stock. The whole action and trigger group float. This seems to work well with a rigid custom action, but I wouldn't be trying it on a sporter action because of whipping.
The term glass bedding is generally a misnomer. Epoxy glass, like Fiberglass, is a glass cloth-based composite that uses epoxy resin instead of the polyester resin in Fiberglass. The epoxy resin is more dimensionally stable and heat tolerant than polyester, so it became popular as a phenolic resin and paper insulating board replacement for printed circuits. I expect that when composite stock layups of epoxy glass became popular for heavy target shooting stocks, the term just carried over to the resin, erroneously, but became part of the vernacular, nonetheless. I suppose you could use epoxy resin impregnated glass mat to fill big gaps in a very loose stock, but it is very hard on cutting tools when you trim it. The conventional filled epoxy bedding materials are better for that, IMHO.
