The Higher Calling, a review of a Sermon by Bertrand Comparet
Perhaps it is fitting that each time I begin a review of a sermon by Comparet or Swift, or an essay by Emahiser, that I do so with reflections on my own early Christian Identity studies. However I had originally embarked on my studies because I was compelled by sermons such as these from Comparet or Swift, and I was helped along the way by Emahiser.
This sermon, however, is important to me because it shows that regarding one critical issue, I have always generally agreed with Comparet, while many other Christian Identity pastors or teachers and their followers have different opinions which are not so well-grounded in Scripture. Often, those who have disagreed with me on this issue have even attributed to Comparet a position which he did not hold. That critical issue is the fact that all Israel shall be saved.
That “all Israel shall be saved”, the Bible states rather plainly, as it is found in both the letters of Paul in Romans chapter 11 and in the prophecy of Isaiah in chapter 45. The Scriptures also lead us to make the same implication in many other places. But in spite of that, many Identity Christians argue against it, and even despise us for holding to the assertion. However we would assert that their doctrines are remnants of their denominational baggage, and they are not founded in Scripture.
There is one popular belief that is probably found in every Christian denomination, which is that people who are generally “good” in their patterns of behavior go to heaven, and people who are “bad” in their patterns of behavior, or who have been especially “bad” at one time or another, are in danger of going to hell forever. To that, the Roman Catholic Church added the concept of purgatory, as priests needed an angle by which to extort men out of their money, convincing them that their loved ones were stuck and couldn’t quite make it to heaven without the intervention of the priests.
Being raised Catholic to some degree, as a young man I had the same general understanding regarding these teachings on salvation, except that I don’t think I ever really believed, or perhaps only never cared about, the claims concerning purgatory. So when I found Christian Identity, sermons such as this made an impression which led me to inquire into these things more carefully, and when I began to actually study the Scriptures, especially in their original languages, the conclusions which I reached remained in general agreement with Comparet’s position on this issue, and perhaps the differences we may have are due only to semantic differences.