God and His Remnants

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 11, 1913

God and His Remnants

God is not dependent upon multitudes for carrying on his work, nor for its successful completion. Armed with his strength, one can chase a thousand and two put ten thousand to flight. If multitudes were essential to his success, he would take the frightened and fleeing ten thousand and pass by the insignificant two who were the cause of their flight. But no; the loyal and courageous two, fearing nothing but God, and anxious for naught but his approval, are of greater consequence than all the hosts of error and disloyalty.

Isaiah was seeking to impress this fact upon Israel of old when he wrote: “A remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God. For though thy people, Israel, be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them shall return: a destruction is determined, overflowing with righteousness. For a full end, and that determined, will the Lord, Jehovah of hosts, make in the midst of all the earth.” Isa. 10: 21-23. Inspiration interprets this in Rom. 9: 27: “If the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that shall be saved.”

There can be no doubt as to what is meant by the above quotation. The remnant there mentioned is the last company gathered out of the nations of the world. That destruction which is determined is the destruction of the hosts of iniquity when Christ shall come to take his remnant to himself; for that “full end” which is determined “in the midst of all the world,” is the end of the world. That remnant will be, to the Lord, the most precious thing in this world, in fact, the only thing the world contains that God considers worth saving. But that remnant is of so great worth that heaven gave its best to redeem it.

That this remnant is exceeding precious in God’s sight, is shown by the term he uses in speaking of those who make up the company saved out of the doomed world. He says of them:—

“They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.” Mal. 3: 17.

As jewels are considered the most precious things of one’s possession, God uses that term to express to us how he looks upon those who persist in their loyalty to him and their service of him. Another version renders this scripture: “They shall be mine, saith Jehovah of hosts, even mine own possession.” That, too, expresses the tender regard of the Almighty for his faithful people who have remained loyal when the millions of earth have turned their backs upon him, and upon the law on which his government is founded.

God has with deep solicitude sought in every possible way to turn his wayward children back to the paths of loyalty and truth that he might not be compelled to cut them off from the eternal inheritance. He says: “What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it? wherefore, when I looked that it should bring forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes?” Isa. 5: 4. That longing solicitude over his erring children must emphasize the preciousness of the remnant that does prove true to him in spite of the almost universal disloyalty.

In a time of great trouble King Hezekiah sent to the prophet Isaiah, asking that he pray to God for Israel’s deliverance from the hands of Rabshakeh, who had determined their destruction and had blasphemed the God of Israel. “Wherefore,” said Hezekiah, “lift up thy prayer for the remnant that are left.” God, by the mouth of his prophet, spoke words of assurance and comfort to his remnant, and turned Rabshakeh about and sent him back to his own land, where he would pay with his life for his defiance of the Almighty.

More than this, God purposes that his remnant shall be a rallying-center for the honest-hearted that desire to know and walk in his ways. This we may learn from Jer. 40: 11, 12: “When all the Jews that were in Moab, and among the children of Ammon, and in Edom, and that were in all the countries, heard that the king of Babylon had left a remnant of Judah, . . . then all the Jews returned out of all places whither they were driven, and came to the land of Judah.” In the last days of this world the honest-hearted souls in all the nations will join themselves to God’s remnant

vital at this time. Nothing can possibly concern God’s people in such a time as this more than the proper management of their temporal affairs in view of the nearness of the end and the “better and enduring substance.”

Mount Vernon, Ohio.