A Remnant
Prepared
Because the previous reprinted
prophecy mentions God's purpose in the "remnant
prepared," it would be well to take a look at the
principle of the "remnant" in the Bible. The word
"remnant" simply means a part of the whole:
literally the remainder, a few in comparison to the
whole. When God was telling Isaiah of the judgment
coming on Israel
because of their sins, Isaiah asked the Lord "how long?"
The answer came back: "until the cities be wasted
without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the
land be utterly desolate. And the Lord have removed
men far away, and there be a great forsaking in the
midst of the land. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be
eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose
substance is in them, when they cast their leaves;
so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof (Isa.
6:11-13). God assured Isaiah that though most of the
people would forsake Him and be destroyed or led away
captive in judgment, that yet in the land there would be
"a tenth" of the people who would return to the Lord,
and it would be as a "holy seed" or remnant, and God
would consider this remnant as the "substance" of the
whole through which He could continue to work out His
purpose in His chosen people. We read in Isa. 10:20-22,
"And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as
are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again
rely
on him that struck them;
but shall rely on the Lord, the Holy One of
Israel, in truth. The remnant
shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. For though
your people Israel be as
the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return.
"
This principle is repeated again
and again in the scriptures. No matter how far most of
His people strayed from Him, God always had His faithful
remnant. God even told Isaiah to name one of his sons,
"Shearjashub", which means "a remnant shall return"
(Isa. 7:3), and this was to be a SIGN to him and to the
people. During the years that Isaiah prophesied, a
righteous king arose by the name of Hezekiah, and during
his reign, under the tutorship of the great prophet
Isaiah, a remnant of the people did return
wholeheartedly to the Lord, and as a result one of the
greatest spiritual awakenings and revivals recorded in
the scriptures took place. You can read about it in II
Chron. chaps. 29-33. But Isaiah's son's name had even a
more far-reaching significance. For after Hezekiah's
righteous reign, the people of God went into their final
decline and apostasy, leading to their captivity by
the Babylonians. But God gave the sign that eventually
(after 70 years) a remnant of the captive Jews would
return to Jerusalem and rebuild
the temple and city and prepare for the coming
Messiah.
The remnant principle was repeated when the time
approached for the Messiah to arrive. Only a small
spiritual remnant was eagerly anticipating and preparing
their hearts for His corning, such as Anna the
prophetess (Lk. 2:36), and Simeon, a devout man
(Lk. 2:25-35). Others were prepared by the ministry of
John the Baptist, and then responded to Jesus' call to
follow Him. But though multitudes heard Him teach and
crowded Him because of His miracle working power, John
6:66-68 shows that most were willing to follow Him only
so far and then turned away; only a remnant wanted to give
themselves totally to Him,
and become instruments of God's purpose in the nation.
By the time Jesus' ministry had ended, and His death and
resurrection had taken place, a small remnant of 120 had
sufficiently committed themselves to gather in the
upper room in obedience to Jesus' command to wait for
the promise of the Father. Paul refers to such
faithful ones in Rom. 11:5 as "a remnant according to
the election of grace." He then goes on to say that
"Israel has not obtained that which he
seeks for; but the election
obtained it, and the rest were blinded" (Rom. 11:7). But
look what was accomplished after the Holy Spirit was
poured out on that waiting remnant. A great harvest of
souls was brought forth to God, beginning with the Jews
and then reaching to the Gentiles, as is vividly
portrayed in the book of Acts.
Can we not see that the Lord is
again preparing to fully pour out of His Spirit on a
prepared remnant in a second Pentecost, or "latter
rain"? God is moving by His Spirit now, to be sure, but
this is only a foretaste and forerunner of that which is
to come. We are presently seeing the restoration of the
early rain, with a few preliminary drops of the latter
rain, as a means of gathering, teaching, and
disciplining God's worldwide remnant in preparation
for the great harvest time to come. God is raising up
local Churches in these times of refreshing and
restoration which are coming into submission to the
Headship of Christ, and in submission to one another as
members of the Body of Christ, and who are seeking to be
disciplined in the ways of God, to function in His
divine order in unity and love. Many thousands
throughout the world are feeling the effects of this
present move of the Spirit and are responding to the
call of the Master to take up their crosses and follow
Him all the way. But still this is but a "remnant" in
comparison to the vast multitudes of nominal, lukewarm
Christendom. However, the Lord must call and prepare
this totally committed remnant before the great and
mighty outpouring and harvest can come.
It would take a volume to show how
God has worked down through history through chosen
remnants, but this is not the time or place for such a
study. A couple of illustrations will suffice to further
demonstrate this principle in the Old Testament.
Elijah prophesied during a time of great wickedness
and apostasy when the weak king Ahab was on the throne
and his foreign wife Jezebel was destroying all the true
prophets and demanding the worship of Baal. Elijah felt
he alone was being true to God when God spoke to him and
said, "I have left me seven thousand in
Israel, all
the knees which have not bowed to Baal" (1 Kings 19:18). Yes,
God had His faithful remnant in the midst of all that
wickedness. We could show in much detail the time of
crises in the days of Gideon, when judgment was coming
on God's people from the
Midianites and Amalekites (see Judges chaps. 6-7). When
the people cried to Him, God wrought a great
deliverance through Gideon and his 300 men. This small
company was the "remnant"— that which remained devoted
and faithful—willing to be prepared, after almost 32,000
had turned back from the battle. As a final
illustration, take the example of Joseph, the
"remnant" of the sons of Jacob; he who ended up in
Egypt because
of the betrayal of his brothers. Yet he was willing to
trust God, and through great testings and
disciplines, he was prepared to be used to be the
instrument which saved the lives of his brethren and
brought forth a great deliverance (Gen. 45:5-7).
Surely, Joseph is a type of that remnant
that God is preparing in this day.
What portion of His people in terms
of numbers God considers as sufficient as His
"remnant" and which He sees as the "substance" of
the whole through which He can work, we cannot say for
sure. This would vary in any given situation, as we have
seen in the examples given: 7,000 were mentioned in
Elijah's day, Gideon's 300 were sufficient in his day,
and one man—Joseph—became the means of God's deliverance
for the house of Israel in his day; but of course, he
was a type of a remnant
company or group which God is preparing so his life is
symbolic. But all through the scriptures, the one
portion which God declares is always HIS in a special way is the holy TENTH.
We cannot limit God, and we have noted how his remnant
is often less than a tenth. But looking again at the
scripture with which we began, we note these words: "and
there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land. But
yet in it shall be a tenth,
and it shall RETURN (Isa. 6:12-13). One wonders if in
the day in which we live, as God is preparing for a
great outpouring of His Spirit and a great harvest, that
He is waiting for ONE-TENTH of those who call themselves
Christians, to FULLY RETURN their whole lives over to
Him in complete dedication and without reservation,
making Him Lord of ALL.
To illustrate the principle of the
holy tenth in relation to the remnant principle, let's
take a look at a significant incident that took
place in Jesus' ministry as recorded in Luke 17:
11-19. The cleansing of the
ten lepers in this narrative took place while Jesus was
on His last journey to
Jerusalem. In 17:11 we
read, "and it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem,
that he passed through the midst of Samaria and
Galilee." His going to
Jerusalem for the LAST time, the city of the great King,
the center of Israel's government, where the multitudes
hailed him and shouted his kingship, is a TYPE of His
return to this earth when He shall take up His power to
reign. On His way to Jerusalem, it says He passed
through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.
"Samaria" comes from a
Hebrew word which means a "watchtower." Without taking
time to demonstrate this truth from other scriptures,
"Samaria" thus becomes a
type of the Heaven-world, which is the "high watchtower"
over the earth. "Galilee" is derived from the
fairly circular or heart-shaped sea by that name; thus
its meaning is that of a circle or ring, and is a type
of the "circle" or circuitous area of the whole earth.
The statement that Jesus passed through the midst of
Samaria and Galilee, together with the fact that it was
his LAST journey sets the stage for a prophetic picture
of the LAST days of our age, We shall see more clearly
the significance of this shortly,
While passing along the border of
Samaria & Galilee, Jesus meets ten lepers. All were
cleansed by Him, Ten is the number of the Gentiles,
and leprosy is a type of sin. Thus we see the symbolic picture of the vast
numbers of the Gentiles who have and are being cleansed
by the provision made by Jesus through His sacrifice for
our sins. The fact that they were all cleansed, shows by type
that they all represent saved people, made clean through
the blood of Christ. But Luke 17:15 says,
"And ONE of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on
his face at his feet, giving him thanks; and he was a
Samaritan. And Jesus said, Were there not ten cleansed?
But where are the nine? There are not found that
returned to give glory to God, save this stranger. "We
need to see that there is a difference between
being cleansed of our leprosy of sin through the blood
of Christ, and letting our lives RETURN FULLY to Him to
GLORIFY Him in everything, "falling down" at His feet to
worship Him with our whole being. Only one out of ten
was willing to do this. The rest of the
"cleansed" went their own way without letting their
lives fully glorify Him.
We notice in Lk. 17:11 that this
miracle-drama took place as Jesus was "passing along
between (or along the borders of) Samaria and
Galilee." (NAS version). We saw
that Samaria represents the heaven-world
and Galilee the whole earth to which
Jesus shall return. So the fulfillment of this prophetic
miracle-drama was to take place in the end-time when the
church would be on the BORDER between the end of this
age and the coming of Christ—the over-lapping of
dispensations, We might say that the prophetic picture
shows that when Jesus passes through the heaven-world
(Samaria) taking care of the final details of
preparation for His return to this earth, giving
instructions to the angelic hosts, etc., and His work is
almost completed throughout the whole earth (Galilee),
THEN it is time for the final fulfillment of this
prophetic type of the leper's return to glorify
Jesus; just before the Lord's return to this earth,
Thus, before Christ returns to this earth, a chosen
remnant must RETURN with their whole heart to Him to GLORIFY Him in an
end-time ministry of love and devotion. Whether this
final remnant will be a literal ten percent of all
Christians I do not know, but the principle of the "holy tenth"
is there, and God is determined in His purpose that what
truly belongs to Him in a special way, will become an
instrument in His hand.
Let's look at this principle from a
different perspective from a passage in Mal. 3:8-11. The
prophet rebukes the people because they have robbed
God of His holy tenth; they had not given their tithes
and offerings. In its primary application we can rightly
apply this to their failure to give of their material
substance to the Lord. But let's look at it a different
way, in light of that which I have been presenting—a people as a holy tenth.
In Mal. 3:10 the prophet states God's promise
that if He receives the tithes (tenth) that belongs to
Him, He will surely "open the windows of heaven,
and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be
room enough to receive it." Has not God promised to pour
out of His Spirit (and a great blessing) on His church
in these last days? Are we not waiting for the "latter
rain" when God shall open the "windows" of heaven and
send refreshing to His people as never before? Looking
at scripture in Malachi from this perspective, we can
see how the promised outpouring is WAITING on the TENTH
to return to God: a tenth of His people
to fully give themselves to Him as His own "special
portion" in this end time. THEN He will open the windows
of heaven and pour out the "latter rain" on us,
There's a passage in Ezekiel that
illustrates this same principle. God spoke through
Ezekiel to the people of Israel
concerning His purpose to bring them out of their
scattered condition and back to the Promised Land.
But He would deal with them until a "remnant" would be
willing to respond; the rest being left in their
rebellious condition. We read in Ezek. 20:33-38: "As I
live, says the Lord God, surely with
a mighty hand, and with a stretched out arm, will I rule
over you. And I will bring you out from the people and
will gather you out of the countries wherein you are scattered.
And I will bring you into the wilderness of the
people, and there will I plead with you face to
face. Like as I
pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the
land of
Egypt, so will I
plead with you, says the Lord God. And I will
cause you to pass under the
rod, and will bring you Into the bond of the
covenant: and I will purge out from among you the
rebels: I will bring them forth out of the country where
they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the land of
Israel: and you shall know that I am the
Lord."
Notice the expression in the above
passage, "I will cause you to pass under the rod." This
is an allusion to the practice of numbering the animals
as they passed under the shepherd's rod or staff so that
every TENTH one could be separated for the Lord, for His
portion (the tithe). God's instructions concerning this
are given in Lev. 27:32-33: "And concerning the tithe of
the herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passes under the rod, the tenth
shall be holy to the Lord. He shall not
search whether it be good or bad, neither shall he
change it: and if he change it at all, then both it and
the change thereof shall be holy; it shall not be
redeemed." Thus we can see that this pattern was
used by Ezekiel to indicate God's dealing with His
people to bring a willing remnant back INTO the Promised
Land (the fulness of their inheritance), and the same
pattern applies in God's dealings with his people TODAY,
that a prepared remnant might be brought into the
fulness of their SPIRITUAL INHERITANCE, and as His
special portion (the holy tenth). To "pass under the
rod" means that God is marking or selecting out those
who are willing to fully give themselves to Him in this
day.
But we need to see further just
what the ROD symbolizes. Without taking time to fully
develop this thought, let me just simply state that I
believe the "rod" represents God's WORD. We can see this
in Isa. 11:4 where the Messiah is pictured as smiting
the earth (the carnal nature) with the rod of His MOUTH.
Moses did mighty signs with the rod or shepherd's staff
(see Ex. 4:1-5, 7:17-20, etc.). This speaks to us of
God's Word, which is the authority for performing His
works. To "pass under the
rod" means that God purposes to bring us under the RULE
and AUTHORITY of His Word. The "remnant" that God is
going to anoint with power must increasingly hear the
admonition: "let the WORD of Christ dwell (tabernacle)
in you richly in all wisdom" (Col. 3:16). We must
be willing to hear and declare "all the counsel of God"
(Acts 20:27). "Passing
under the rod" also speaks of God's disciplines
and corrections (even chastisements if
necessary), that He might truly
"rule over us" as the KING who not only
holds the royal scepter (rod) of rulership over the
earth, but is also preparing a people to share that
ruling scepter with Him (Rev. 1:5, 5:10). Finally,
"passing under the rod" speaks of His providential care
and protection for those who are fully trusting Him, for
we know that the promised experience of the
Psalmist is also ours: "yes, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for
you are with me; your ROD and your STAFF they comfort
me" (Ps. 23:4). This is the "heritage" of the
Lord's
chosen.
[Next: WARNING PROPHECY
]
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