[Cal]

Drake,

I am so grateful to the Lord and you for your careful and thorough response. Thanks for taking the time to write with such care.

I think one of the things that separates us is that I speak of an LCM of about 30 years ago. You speak of the one of today. They are no doubt different. LCMers of my day would have never joined Facebook, had it existed. Now such a thing is pretty much accepted. Things have softened, and that's good.

Davy Crockett, a Texas hero, famously said, "Be sure you are right, then go ahead." Feeling assured makes us feel good. But regardless of your feelings of assuredness about your vision, in the final analysis you must admit that you cannot be 100% certain of its complete accuracy. That being the case, and in keeping with the humility the Lord commands us to embrace, you must defer to at least the possibility that you may be wrong about some things. And that being so, you should be more tolerant of those who disagree with you on those points that reflection says you may be overly confident in.

Take the local ground for example. The fact that the Bible does not command it is incongruous with your insistence on it. However much you think your vision of it is clear, you have to ask yourself, Why didn't the Lord specify it more clearly? I believe this: if you really pray and think about it, the only conclusion you can come to is that he wanted us to be less contentious about it.

The fact is that in his Word God is vague about some things. Why is that? I can think of two possible reasons. One is so that an anointed few can know they are right about things that others miss. Another possibility, which I favor, is that God wishes to convey deeper points about which more specificity would lead to superficial misapplications.

Take, for example, Babylon the Great. We all want to know--What is Babylon? So why didn't God just tell us? I think it is because the important point about Babylon is not what it is, but what it represents.

Babylon is about people organized in rebellion against God. In the LCM we were taught that Babylon is the Roman Catholic Church. Cut and dried. Plain and simple. And that may be true. But for some reason God didn't make that so clear. Why?--so that those of us who "know" can know we have special insight? Or was it because the important point is not the superficial specifics, but rather the deeper principles? I believe the latter. I believe this is always the reason God sometimes speaks in vague parables, figures and analogies--not to present a puzzle, but to lead us to deeper realizations.

So when you look at the local ground, what does it represent? That we all need to meet as the church in the city? Or does it represent a deeper principle about oneness? And does being contentious for the local ground represent a desire for that deeper principle of oneness? Or something else?

It's an interesting dilemma, and one which I hope is not lost on a guy as smart as you.

I hope this makes some sense.