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Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dear brother in Christ!

But, sister, we also lose unity of effort and purpose. So, the issue is not arriving at a bland agreement on doctrine, but is rather producing a salty coalition that is willing to attack.

Well and truly said. Even within confessions boasting a common creed, there is not equity in effort or purpose. Some will lead, some will follow, some will wander and some will take a nap.

I assert the mission and calling must be of God, not man, to be empowered whether as evangelist, preacher, pastor, teacher, helper - or whether to simply stand as a bulwark against anti-Christianity.

Pastors make poor evangelists. Evangelists make poor pastors. But when God is in control, there is no lack of unity, effort or purpose. Indeed, when God is in control, there is no lack of resource or power (Hebrews 11.)

And so I aver that if we want to do things our own way, He will let us and we will fail.

As evidence I point to the Hebrews whining for flesh until God was angry with them and gave them flesh until they choked on it (Numbers 11:18-20). And they whined for earthly kings/judges until God was angry with them and gave them a lineage of notoriously fallible men (I Sam 8:6-9)

And I see the same thing in Moses' whining for God to appoint someone else to speak for Him. He made God angry and Moses and all the people ended up with an ecclesiastical body, a system of religious authorities and intermediaries (Exodus 4:10-17).

Each time they whined they were insulting God, they were saying they didn't believe Him or they didn't trust Him. Each time God was angry. And in each case He gave them what they were whining for so much so they choked on it.

But if we love God, if we believe Him, if we trust Him, we will follow the Good Shepherd and we cannot fail.

[There is] therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded [is] death; but to be spiritually minded [is] life and peace. Because the carnal mind [is] enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. - Romans 8:1-9

He might be a young boy with just a rock and slingshot standing against a giant, but if God is in control, that is enough.

And Saul said to David, Thou art not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him: for thou [art but] a youth, and he a man of war from his youth. - I Sam 17:33

And that is what I perceive in the unreasonable success we have had in standing against the spirit of anti-Christ on the myriad agnostic/atheist threads on Free Republic - whether the issue at hand was politics, philosophy, science, etc. I perceive that the success is God's doing, not ours.

God's Name is I AM.

INDEED.

I have believed for decades that . . .

probably much as on some mission fields,

GOD WILL ENGINEER

BLOOD BROTHERS IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS AMONGST CHRISTIANS IN A LOCALE FOR HIS PURPOSES—AND

ALL WHO LOVE GOD FOREMOST, FIRST, ABOVE ALL

WILL BE GLAD YOKEFELLOWS TOGETHER REGARDLESS OF ALL ELSE.

Distinctives have their place. When DADDY SAYS

YOU 3, THERE—DO THIS, NOW!

distinctives fall by the wayside unless HE is using them in the task.