As we know, the remnant will return with the Lord at the time of rapture. – Isaiah 10:21. The Lord will receive the fullness of the harvest of souls in the end of the age when He will reach out His hand a second time. – Isaiah 11:11 This is the bountiful harvest spoken about as the ‘many without number’. – Rev 7:9 The remnant is called the ‘remnant of My people’ and the second harvest is referred to as the ‘remainder of My Nation’ according to Zep 2:9. So we need clarity on these terms and to whom they belong. This is the focus of this post.
Why is there only a remnant?
Malachi 3:14-18 explains why. The priests and Judah as a whole break faith with God and dishonor God. God requires of them to guard themselves in their spirit and not break faith. – Mal 2:16c. But they counter Him saying, “It is futile to serve God. We do not gain by carrying out His requirements and going about like mourners before Him because God prospers the arrogant and evildoers and those who challenge God (rebels)”. 3:14-15 (abridged)
God leads them with His ultimate solution: “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty. –Mal 3:1
God knows that the people will not receive His Son as the answer to their broken faith. So then He goes on to state how He will do the needful. He will bring forth the refiner’s fire:
2 But who can endure the day of his coming?
Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, 4 and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years. 5 “So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty. – Mal 3:2-5
God knows that He will have to testify against all their wickedness because they will not be innocent without receiving the justification of His Son and the sanctification of His Holy Spirit. Those who receive God’s Son and follow Him faithfully are the remnant while the remainder of God’s people fail to accept God’s Son. Why then does God refer to them as His Nation?
God has to keep his promise
“So too, at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.” – Rom 11:5
Apostle Paul likens the remnant of the New Testament to the Old Testament ‘saints’ who had not bowed their knee to Baal. – Rom 11:4b. This means that the remnant is those who serve God faithfully, and even in situations where they are tempted to sin or threatened to death, they do not bow their knee to Satan. Amen.
Paul speaks about the remnant being chosen in the dispensation of the church age in Rom 11:5. He speaks this in the context of God rejecting the Israelites to choose His remnant from among the Gentiles in the church age, but adding them in during the age of the tribulation where the end of the age harvest will bring in the full number of Jewish believers who initially refused the truth and were disobedient but later became penitent and received the truth. The Lord God honors them though they dishonored Him because of Rom 11:28 where we read: “Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers.” Other versions read patriarchs instead of fathers. God, being a promise-keeping God, will do whatever it takes to bring the Jews into the inheritance He promised their forefathers. Yet considering their stubborn opposition, God must devise ways and methods to bring them in despite their resistance to His only way to entering into the inheritance—Christ His Son. So He allows the tribulation to bring them to a place of surrender. Amen. All this just means that the Lord God will bring them too along with the Gentiles. So we can be assured that Jew and Gentile will be saved!
When God encounters the chosen and sees they are rebellious, oppressive, defiled, disobedient, distrustful, unfaithful, arrogant, treacherous and so on, His solution is to assemble them and pour out His wrath on them. – Zep 3:1-8
This is then followed by God pouring out His Spirit, thus purifying their lips so they will call on the name of the Lord. (vs 9). They will thus serve Him and not be haughty again. They need not fear any harm. The Lord will take delight in them and quiet them with His love and rejoice over them with singing. (vs 10-17)
He will also remove the sorrows of the appointed feasts because they are a burden and a reproach to them. He will repay those who oppressed them and will gather them to bring them to their new home (New Jerusalem). Thus He will restore their fortunes before their eyes. (vs 18-20)
The survivors of the dreadful judgments will come to them and they will be consoled on seeing their conduct and actions. They will then understand that God has not done anything without cause. – Ezekiel 14:22-23
Ezekiel 14:22-23 NASB
Yet, behold, survivors will be left in it who will be brought out, both sons and daughters. Behold, they are going to come forth to you and you will see their conduct and actions; then you will be comforted for the calamity which I have brought against Jerusalem for everything which I have brought upon it. Then they will comfort you when you see their conduct and actions, for you will know that I have not done in vain whatever I did to it,” declares the Lord God.
The Distinction
The remnant are those who fear God and honor Him with their obedience (being directed by God’s Will) while the remainder are also the chosen of God but are rebellious until God’s Spirit is poured on them and they become subservient to God’s Will.
We read in Malachi 3:16-18 that the remnant are a people who fear God and honor His name:
16 Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name. 17 “On the day when I act,” says the LORD Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. 18 And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.
The Lord will honor the righteous and dishonor the wicked. He makes a clear distinction between the righteous (those who have received Christ as Savior and live according to the Spirit and renewed soul) and the wicked (who do not know God and live according to the flesh and unrenewed soul). The former serve the Lord while the latter do not serve Him. So we must give great emphasis to fearing God and honoring His Name. Amen.
On this account, we can be assured that God will not allow the righteous to suffer along with the wicked. He rescued Lot even when there were no other righteous persons in Sodom. He evacuated Noah and his family (total eight) before bringing about total destruction. It is evident that God will rescue His people from the coming wrath. He will not be unmerciful to the righteous. In fact, we read in Lot’s account that the Lord was merciful. – Gen 19:16b because Lot was righteous according to 2 Peter 2:7 NLT:
God also rescued Lot out of Sodom because he was a righteous man who was sick of the shameful immorality of the wicked people around him. His actions were not righteous but he certainly had a change of heart and was troubled by the sin he saw around him day after day. Lot was righteous. Scripture declares that Noah was a righteous man. At the current time, to be righteous is to belong totally to God initiated by receiving Jesus’ sacrifice and cooperate thereon to be transformed by the inworking of His Spirit unto service in God’s kingdom. Amen.
The Remnant are the Firstfruits
We discussed in the book ‘Raising Samuels’ that the remnant are those who have been faithful and served the Lord in every season of their lives. It is important to be totally consecrated and be made whole until the time Jesus returns to take us. We must be at our righteous best and work out our salvation with dedication and diligence. The Lord will prepare the way for our sanctification. We just need to cooperate with His Spirit.
The remnant are the firstfruits that appear as a result of abiding and seeking the Lord. They are the first harvest of the Lord. He will transform us and we will be ready because He who started a good work will be faithful unto the day of Christ. Amen. “And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.” – Phil 1:6 NLT