What a sobering word Isaiah gives early in his book: “Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant” (Isa. 1:9). The commencement of the Book of Isaiah refers to the vision of Isaiah which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. What did this prophet see concerning his contemporary, his Judah and Jerusalem? Two entities are presented here: Judah—the people, and Jerusalem—the city of God where the people reside. In our day of the End Time (the consummation of the church ages), the spiritual Judah is the people who are to be the people of praise, and Jerusalem would appropriately be the institutional Church.
After Isaiah gives a list of the sins of the people and the city collectively, there is the acknowledgment, “Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.” Isaiah then cries for the rulers of this Sodom city (Jerusalem) and the people of Gomorrah (the people of Jerusalem). The leaders of this people had set the pace for the falling away of this people.
What is this small remnant “left unto us,” or within Jerusalem? The remnant is that of the few godly men who still inhabit Jerusalem. It is the Lord of Hosts who had preserved this very small remnant. The institutional Church in the End Time of the last days is in deep apostasy; it has become the Sodom and Gomorrah before God. As Judah and Jerusalem went, so go the professing people of God and the Church today. We must candidly acknowledge that Isaiah is not speaking to the world or about the world; he is speaking to God’s people and to His city.
We can see a spiritual parallel between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church. Just as the Northern ten tribes were taken into captivity, the public realm of Christianity called Christendom has been in captivity for some time now. It has basically come down to the Fundamentalist movement within the land of Christendom. This movement has been like the last city left, the last truly identifiable city for Christ’s sake. But now it is becoming part of the decline, the falling away. What has kept it from total captivity? It has been a remnant still within the movement that has honored God. Why has not Fundamentalism, the last of the movements before the secret coming of Christ, sunk fully into Neo-Christianity? Is it not because of the fact that there is the remnant of Christ (though getting smaller and smaller) still within the movement? Otherwise, Fundamentalism would have plunged a long time ago fully into the dregs of the apostasy.
It is clear that the remnant belong to the Lord of Hosts; His hosts are the remnant. The remnant cannot be judged by quantity, only by quality. They are the ones that are arresting the disease that has come into the body of Fundamentalism. While Fundamentalism has gone the way of all flesh, there is still a remnant of believers who are preaching, living, singing, teaching, and keeping the movement from absolute apostasy. The movement may be dying (or even dead), but there is a remnant that has kept it from absolute apostasy up to this hour.
The Present Remnant
What is the remnant for the End Time of these last days? They are initially those who abide in Truth within a decaying Christian identity. They are the puritans who long to get back to what Judah is to be, to what Jerusalem is to be: a true biblical Christian who longs and prays for what should be a true biblical church in a given generation? The remnant are those people left still believing and living the Truth, or what remains for Truth when that, which at its beginning identified with truth, finally leaves truth. The remnant do all they can to stop the disease, the decay; they become the singular hinderer of the city of Christianity from getting further away from the Truth.
However, if the movement, the city, or the church does not change and return to its Lord, then the remnant is forced out of the city—either forced to leave by the city or by their own soul’s conscience. They know they must not succumb to the spiritually decaying city or allow the pervading leaven to leaven them. The remnant then becomes separated from its city identification, from its visible nativity, from its public family, and becomes in the eyes of organized Christianity, nomadic. This nomadic or refugee heart commences with an awakening call from God to “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing” (Gen. 12:1, 2). Once this happens, it is a permanent departure from home, never to return. Like three heavy blows are the phrases about “country,” “kindred,” and “house.” Even more moving is the mysterious uncertainty about the destination. This has been a recurring theme of refugee wanderings through many centuries.
From its inception, the Church has been “called out” to a larger destiny, and the remnant continues to be the “true church,” ever being called out. The departure is not like Cain in his act of leaving God, going eastward, farther and farther away from God, into the land of Nod, wandering with no goal or culmination of life. The honorable departure is that of Abraham moving westward, with direction and exactness of walk, journeying a way divinely appointed by God. The remnant will always be a “sojourner,” a true Hebrew in contrast to the organized, institutional Church. This is his lot in life especially in the days of apostasy. The remnant’s exodus is with purpose, and his quest of journey is Christ in His fullness. He is on a spiritual journey, not a carnal wandering. He has made his exodus from Egypt, from sin, from the world, never to return. He not only has made his exodus from Egypt but also from Babylon, the fallen religious system of this world that controls the institutional Church.
The remnant will be slandered by the organized city. The institutional Church will try to hunt down the remnant, blackballing its voice from pulpits, churches, and conferences. Every day it becomes more obvious that the remnant is truly becoming a fugitive in the earth. The institutional Church of the End Time will also try to defame God’s remnant in private conversations, defaming and maligning its reputation. They will try to suppress the influence of the remnant’s preaching and living before others. Yes, God’s remnant will be a fugitive all its days. Demeaning titles and labels will be aggressively branded upon it: legalist, fanatical religionist, close-minded person, misguided soul, cultist, fool, man-follower, etc. The names will even rise to mark it as a disorderly brother, a troublemaker, an enemy of God’s people, and even an apostate. Yet in the sight of God individuals of the remnant are true children of God, the apple of His eye, found in His beloved Son; they are marked as part of the Lord of Hosts’ remnant.
An individual of God’s remnant becomes in the eyes of the world a refugee. Therefore he must be wise in his flights, always looking for refuge, for sanctuary, a place of rest. Where does he find this refuge, sanctuary, and place of rest? He finds it in his Lord and in the moments of fellowship with other spiritual refugees. Sometimes his refuge is his home, a church in the home; sometimes it is a storefront church; and sometimes it is through a spiritual spring “streaming” from an Internet connection. The refugee is not looking for a kingdom or a temple here. Remnant ministries are not building their kingdoms here; they are tent dwellers with an altar. They are militant against the apostasy, yet they want to fight the fight of faith with a golden spirit. Their very lives within adorn their Lord; they are seeking and dwelling in His life as a land of blessing and fruitfulness.
Triumphantly, God gives them power over this world and the powers of sin. They live in this world, but it is for another world that they are longing. They are awake when others are asleep; they are hungry for God when others don’t care; they are pursuing holiness of heart and life while others commend carnality and worldliness; and, they discern others who are of that remnant.
The Contexts of the Remnant
It is important to note three major contexts in which the remnant will be found in God’s providence at the End Time of the Church ages. (1) Revelation 12 presents the remnant as the man child; (2) 2 Thessalonians 2 presents it as the hinderer and restrainer; and (3) Matthew 25 presents the remnant as the wise ones in their watching and waiting.
The first context of Revelation 12 consists of several personalities. Here we see the remnant’s relationship to the Church. In more recent decades this chapter in Revelation has been enigmatically interpreted. At the outset of the chapter we are introduced to a woman. It is interesting to note that throughout church history this woman has been viewed by the remnant as the visible Church. It was only when Dispensationalism came in the mid-1800s that the woman was viewed as Israel and the man child as Jesus Christ. But through church history the woman was viewed as the Visible Church, or Christianization and later Christendom (the outward kingdom of Christ). Israel certainly is viewed as a woman in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament the Church is viewed as a woman. There is no hint in Revelation 12 that the woman is Israel; Israel is not even mentioned in the chapter.
There is also the man child; again in recent decades the man child has been dispensationally viewed as Jesus Christ. But there is no implication of such a connection. Throughout church history the man child has been viewed as the manly, vigorous, fresh growth of the people of God. Within the body of this mystic woman the Church, concealed from human view but consciously to herself, there is a mystic seed maturing for manifestation. The child is not birthed until the end of its term. This child is within the visible Church; the Church has nourished this child. It is designated a male child, a son; however, it is the representative of the corporate true ones within the visible Church.
One may point dispensationally to Revelation 19:15 as Christ will “rule them with a rod of iron” and thus the man child is Jesus Christ coming forth from Israel. Yet, we dare not overlook the earlier hermeneutic statement in 2:27 that the overcomer (the remnant) “shall rule them with a rod of iron.” This description of the remnant is a preface hermeneutic statement before Revelation 12.
Satan the dragon is poised over the woman, more so to lay hold of the child, not so much the woman. It is when this man child is brought to light, to his fullness of term, that the child is raptured or caught away to God and to His Throne. We read in Revelation 3:21, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.” This will take place at the most intense point of Satan’s attacks on earth against the saints. The rapture will come in a most crucial hour when the woman will be crying, “travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered” (12:2), and at a time when the institutional Church will hate the saints and long to be delivered from them and their presence.
The Devil knows he has the institutional Church; he is not poised for her, but for the man child within her. The bloody red dragon, the murderer of God’s saints, will be poised in the End Time waiting for the moment of the birth, the rapture, to take place to destroy it. Nevertheless, we read that the man child at the moment of its birth (its final separation from the woman) is caught up to the heavens and to the throne of God. The remnant within the Church has always been attacked and maligned. He has always given the woman pain and travail; and the Devil has always been poised over the woman to destroy that which was within her. But there will come an hour when both the woman and the dragon will equally set their hatred against the remnant—in the End Time. Only the rapture will save the remnant, the Elect, from absolute destruction when the full term of the child comes.
A second context of the remnant is found in 2 Thessalonians 2. Here the remnant is presented as a hinderer to the world. We must carefully note the words of 2:3–7:
Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth [that which restrains] that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth [hindereth] will let [or hinder], until he be taken out of the way.
We read here of a force that will be withholding, or hindering, or restraining.
It is evident that the Antichrist would come prematurely if it were not for the remnant, or the Holy Spirit, the Word of God within God’s true saints. In every generation it has been the remnant’s prayers, preaching, standing for Truth, that have been the hindering forces on the planet. The delays of the iniquity are due to the light, the salt, in the form of living, preaching, and praying. It is clear that the mystery of iniquity doth already work, but what keeps the fullness of the Antichrist back? It is that remnant, that Elect of God empowered by God Himself to restrain.
The mystery of lawlessness is already working, only until he who restraineth is removed. When that takes place, when the restraining influence is removed, the mystery of lawlessness will no longer work secretly; it will be openly manifested in a man that will rule the world through the power of the Devil. Only the remnant within the providence of God is keeping the nation of America from absolute collapse. I am to be a restrainer in the sphere in which God has placed me until God takes me out of the way. While so many professing Christians are compromising and giving in to the powers that be, God’s remnant is the true restraining force. This is why the Tribulation Period will come in its fury; it will be right after the rapture, or after the hinderers are taken out of the way.
One final context in which the remnant finds itself today is presented in Matthew 25. This context addresses the personal responsibility of each individual of God’s remnant. This chapter, part of the Olivet Discourse of our beloved Lord on Tuesday of Passion Week, certainly gives the history of the remnant. The parable opens at the moment when the virgins “took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.” It is most evident in the New Testament that God’s remnant were anticipating the imminent second coming of Christ during their lifetime. But, of course, He did not come. Then the years of delay came upon the world: “While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept” (25:5). We have seen this for nearly two thousand years. “And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him” (25:6).
In the 1840s and 1850s the Second Coming became a prominent cry to the evangelical world. Even the first Congress of Fundamentalists in the 1850s presented the preaching primarily on this theme. The Greek rendering here for “cry” is a “loud, strong cry.” This cry continues to this hour. This cry produced a response in these virgins: “Then all those virgins arose, and trimmed their lamps” (25:7). We have been in this season of response for over one hundred years now. These virgins became aware of the nearness of His coming. What the remnant knows today is the nearness of Christ’s secret coming to the clouds, and thus it has produced an awakening for the life; meanwhile, the church continues to slumber and sleep. The remnant is fully conscious of the need of the vessel, the oil, and the life to be in a state of readiness. A greater consciousness has come to the beloved of God in the trimming of the lamps; they ask themselves, “What will make my light shine the brightest and the most balanced in this midnight hour?” There is also the great importance of the supply of the oil of communion with the Holy Spirit for the life to be in readiness.
Conclusion
Dear reader, are you numbered among the remnant around the world? The number itself is getting smaller and smaller as we view more and more professing Christians falling prey to the powers of compromise, lukewarmness, and debilitating apathy. I must be aware of my relationship before the institutional Church and before the world, as well as my responsibility to myself. As long as I am here, I am to influence all that I can until I am taken out of the way. Have we come to an hour in church history where the puritan ethic “within” no longer is working, and we find ourselves being forced outside the camp of God and going unto Christ bearing His reproach? Will the true child of God finally end up as a pilgrim, a refugee, a biblical Hebrew?
While the institutional Church is ready to flee into a wilderness, ultimately to be assimilated into the rest of the world’s religions, and finally to rise in the earth during the Antichrist’s reign as a harlot riding on the back of the beast (Rev. 17), may the Lord make us ready for His Son’s soon return!