October 2022

It is Enough to be an Israelite, But Enough for What?, Part 2

As we had seen in Part 1 of our critique of Bertrand Comparet’s sermon, Is it Enough Merely to be an Israelite?, he had clearly taken Romans 11:26 out of the context of the epistle itself so that he could critique Paul, and he even accused Paul of having misquoted scripture. Then he denied the veracity of Paul’s statement that “All Israel shall be saved” where he compared it to Isaiah 45:17, while he ignored Isaiah 45:25. While for many other reasons we may love Bertrand Comparet, this approach to scripture is what even he himself had professed to have rejected, and he must be corrected. If we truly believe Yahweh our God, and if we love Yahshua Christ, then we shall seek to reconcile and understand all of Scripture, without ever assuming that one verse can cancel out another, or that we can arbitrarily pick a favorite and ignore others.

In Romans chapter 9 Paul began by praying for his kinsmen according to the flesh, those who truly were of Israel, as opposed to the Edomites in Judaea for which he had then contrasted Jacob and Esau. Continuing at the beginning of Romans chapter 10, he continued his prayer where he addressed his Roman readers and said “1 Brethren, truly the preference of my heart, and supplication to Yahweh is for preservation on their behalf. 2 I attest to them that they have zeal for Yahweh, but not in accordance with full knowledge.” So there he was still speaking of his “kinsmen according to the flesh”, of those true Israelites in Judaea for which he had prayed in chapter 9.

Apparently VLC on Windows, which I have used to apply metadata for years, has been ruining podcasts. But only some listeners had problems while others did not. So once again, I have resampled and uploaded a new file, as of 11:30 AM on the 22nd. Thank you for your patience! 

It is Enough to be an Israelite, But Enough for What?, Part 1

The medieval Roman Catholic paradigm relating to salvation and heaven, or judgment and hell, has been ingrained into all modern Christian theology to such a degree, having been imbued into our thought from perhaps as long ago as 1,800 years, that it may be one of the most difficult errors of Roman Catholicism to overcome. But it really cannot be overcome at all, until one learns the proper differences between the wheat and the tares, the sheep and the goats, and can identify the good race of fish in the parable of the net. While Bertrand Comparet did know those differences, in my opinion he nevertheless had not fully thought them out in other areas of Scripture, and especially in this area. But we can forgive him, since the subject of salvation and the common perception concerning salvation is probably the deepest rabbit hole in Scripture. No matter how many times one may read the promises to the fathers and the words of Christ, there is always that one verse by which one may imagine that a child of God may ultimately and eternally be cast into the pits of hell, or the Lake of Fire.