[Cal]

Gubei,

If you don't see recognizing the local ground as mandatory, then why are you arguing with me about it? And if you do see it as mandatory, then your statement that you are not insisting on it is by definition false.

I see head covering as commanded, but I don't know whether hair is good enough or whether something more is needed. Jesus himself said that if you marry a divorced person you commit adultery. Yet I know of such marriages that seem to be blessed. Who am I to judge?

The point is I can know for my own life what God's commandments mean. But I can't know what they mean in all cases for others. I do not have complete wisdom. You act as if you have complete wisdom about practical oneness. The problem with your interpretation of local ground is that you seem to think your interpretation is precisely the right one. Yet I see reason to think, or at the very least to understand why someone else would think, you very well could be mistaken. When uncertainty is present liberality is required. For my trouble you announce that I oppose the truth.

I must allow free movement because I don't think the Bible gives me enough information to restrict it. That's the difference between what I believe and what you believe--mine is more general and liberal, not because I'm for generality and liberality, but because more specificity or restriction is not within my allotment of wisdom to insist upon. Your model restricts people more. Mine says, go to the Lord and let him tell you what oneness is. You say, I know what oneness is and everyone who doesn't agree with me is working against oneness.


Also, let me say that I don't appreciate your saying, in typically boorish LC fashion, that I am opposing the truth. Get off it. You don't have some monopoly on the truth, and you clearly don't have enough of a gift of discernment to be putting me in my place, as evidenced by your repeated in inability to properly interpret what I've written.

You said I didn't quote WN or WL because I was opposing "the truth." This statement is completely uncalled for. In the first place you can't possible know that, in the second I could provide plenty of quotes by WL which practically make the local ground as an article of faith. I've done my homework.


If you want to believe that the Lord's goal is to one day bring every city in the world under one eldership then you are certainly free to believe it. I for one would like more information before I commit to such a vision. For example, as I've asked ad nauseum, I would like to know what options the Christians who eventually come under such eldership have when they become convinced by the Lord that they should no longer follow that eldership if it becomes corrupt.