The Daily Word of Righteousness

Spiritual Forces of the Last Days, #9

These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will. (Revelation 11:6)

The awesome disasters wrought by the hands of the end-time witnesses will sweep away the chaff of Christian teaching and cause the people to bow their hearts in repentance before the God of the whole earth.

The former-rain outpouring of the Holy Spirit portrayed in the Book of Acts gave birth to the Christian Church. The outpouring of the latter rain, the harvest downpour, will bring the Church to maturity. It is our point of view that during the latter-rain dispensation of grace and glory, the majority of the inhabitants of the earth will make at least a nominal profession of Christ.

The perfecting of the godly remnant. A third force that will operate in the last days is the perfecting of the remnant of the Church. The Scriptures speak several times of a remnant of Israel who will play an important role in the establishing of the Kingdom of God on the earth. The story of Gideon's triumph, which may be the strongest of the Old Testament types of the Day of the Lord, portrays a remnant gaining victory over the enemy.

A remnant shall be saved.

Esaias also crieth concerning Israel, Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved: (Romans 9:27)

Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace. (Romans 11:5)

The Scripture teaches that the remnant (which may be portraying the firstfruits of the Bride of the Lamb, consisting of both Jews and Gentiles) will be purified by suffering before the Lord returns.

And it shall come to pass, that he that is left in Zion, and he that remaineth in Jerusalem, shall be called holy, even every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem: When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning. (Isaiah 4:3,4)

And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God. (Zechariah 13:9)

The doctrine of the remnant is important. There is an abundance of emphasis in both the Old Testament and the New Testament to support the view that only a remnant of the Church will be resurrected when the Lord appears the next time. It is the holy remnant who, as a fulfillment of the type of David's mighty men, will return with the Lord in order to establish His Kingdom on the earth.

And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the Gentiles in the midst of many people as a lion among the beasts of the forest, as a young lion among the flocks of sheep: who, if he go through, both treadeth down, and teareth in pieces, and none can deliver. (Micah 5:8)

And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, (Jude 1:14)

To be continued.