The purity of the church which we are instructed to maintain is not an arbitrary purity. These things have their definitive expression in the resurrection assembly of God. The objective standard which eschatology imposes for the church does not allow for arbitrariness in definition or in method employed in our pursuit of these things. Provisional and outward unity bought at the price of doctrinal or practical compromise is selling our heavenly birthright for a bowl of earthly stew. Moreover such spurious unity cannot endure.
Separation is prerequisite to unity.
For the great Division on the Last Day is prerequisite to the unity of heaven. Such an external peace may guard our worldly interests and advance our worldly agendas, but it cannot guard our hearts and minds and cannot advance the kingdom of God. Such peace, in fact, is explicitly excluded by the promised hostility of the world toward the pilgrim household of faith. Jesus knew that animosity during His pilgrimage, and all who are in Him, He has promised must share in that cross. Such fragile peace, which derives its motives and ideals from men rather than God, may appear to have some of the same characteristics of God's peace, but in the end it is a short-lived peace, a peace which pertains to this age, and shall be disturbed in cataclysmic violence.