The Remnant—Israel's Apostasy Not Complete.

The second answer to the important question and argument that God has not cast away His people Israel is continued in verses 2-6. "God hath not cast away His people whom He foreknew. Know ye not what the Scripture says in the history of Elias, how he pleads with God against Israel? Lord, they have killed Thy prophets, they have dug down Thine altars; and I have been left alone and they seek my life." But what says the divine answer to him? "I have left to Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Thus, then, in the present time also there has been a remnant according to election of grace. But if by grace, it is no more of works; since otherwise grace is no more grace."

It is historical evidence which is placed in these words before us. The Holy Spirit reaches back into the history of the nation and calls our attention to an important episode. The prophet Elijah lived in a time when almost everything among the professing people of God was being swept away into the apostasy. A great reformation took place; God had answered the call of Elijah on Mount Carmel by fire, and when the fire of the Lord consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench, and when all the people saw, they cried out: "Jehovah is God! Jehovah is God!" The prophets of Baal were slain there and then. The Lord also graciously opened the heavens and there was an abundance of rain. All this has a typical and dispensational meaning, which we cannot follow in detail at this time. The wonderful manifestation of the Lord out of the opened heavens, however, did not turn the people from the path of apostasy. A little while later Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, "So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time" (1 Kings xix:2). Elijah, in the weakness of the flesh, fails and flees. We find him a day's journey in the wilderness. There we see him under a juniper tree, and he requested for himself that he might die, and said: It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my Fathers. But the Lord meets His servant. "What doest thou here, Elijah?" "And he said, I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life to take it away." Twice he repeats this wonderful tale, born of a discouraged and unbelieving heart. But now comes the answer of the Lord to him. He tells him how mistaken he is about being left alone, the only Israelite who has not fallen away. "Yet I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed unto Baal and every mouth which hath not kissed him." The Lord had a remnant, a faithful remnant, among His people even at the time of their great apostasy. This is the thought and argument here. The apostasy of Israel is never a complete apostasy. The Lord has always a remnant faithful to Him and the covenants among them. In this respect the difference of the apostasy of Israel and the predicted apostasy of Gentile Christendom is very marked. One of Israel's race has expressed it very pointedly in the following words:¹

"The apostasy of Israel is not as the apostasy of Christendom. The apostasy of Christendom is incurable, but the apostasy of Israel is curable. Although Israel have rejected Jesus, they do not wish to reject God; they still believe in His Word; they still invoke His holy name. They still remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. They still, as the Apostle Paul says, have a zeal for God, although it is not according to knowledge. The children of Israel are like the brethren of Joseph. After they had sold Joseph into Egypt, they returned to their father Jacob, and then for a number of years their conduct was less blamable than it had been before. They seemed to have been anxious to please their father Jacob, and to walk before him in the right path. Still, there was upon their hearts the blood-guiltiness, in that they had delivered their brother Joseph into the hands of their enemies. And so it is with Israel now. There is still a godly remnant among them. There is still the fear of God and the acknowledgment of God before their eyes. Whereas, what is the history of apostate Christendom, as it is presented to us in the Scriptures, and the beginnings of which we can see already? First, people do not believe in Jesus as an atonement. They begin with that. They do not like the blood of Jesus. They like the character of Jesus very well. Then they give up Jesus too. Then they give up the Father too, and do not believe in creation. And then they become agnostics, and say they know nothing about it—whether there is a God or not—the worst thing that this world has ever seen, and the most insulting to God. And then they give up morality, as necessarily they must give it up; and then they fall into the most abject pessimism, and look upon man as a flower of the field, which is to-day and to-morrow is cast into the oven. This is the downward career of the Gentile apostasy. But in the Jewish apostasy there is still kept the connecting link, the golden thread—a spark dying, yet not dead, of a belief in God, however unenlightened, and in a future."

The Lord always has a remnant among His people and that remnant is the sign and evidence that He hath not cast away His people.

We shall, however, show what we have to understand by "remnant;" and the remnant that has been, and will yet be called, we hope to investigate more fully.

The question concerning the remnant is a most interesting one. That the Lord has such a remnant according to the election of grace among His people, is, as we have stated before, an evidence that He hath not cast them away. There is a double remnant which is to be considered. The remnant which has been in the beginning of this dispensation and the remnant which will yet be called for a definite work and testimony at the time when Israel's Hope will appear and the glorious promises made to the nation find their fulfillment. Between these two remnants, a remnant at the beginning of the present age and a remnant at the end, stands another fact—the fact that the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ is composed of believing Jews and Gentiles and that through the preaching of the Gospel of Grace, not alone sinners of the Gentiles are added to that body, but also Jews who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. As soon, then, as a Jew believes he ceases to be a Jew. His Hope is no longer national and earthly, but heavenly; he belongs no longer to the earthly Jerusalem, but to the heavenly; he has, like the believing Gentile, nothing to do with the law, its ordinances and ceremonies. It is impossible to speak of a remnant of Israel at this time, which is saved by Grace and which holds a specific national Jewish position in the earth. When the Holy Spirit gave the full revelation concerning the church, the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, we do not read anything whatever about the believing Jew, who, as it is being claimed, "should not sever his connection with the nation," and who should still continue in keeping Jewish laws and feast days. All national distinctions cease in that body, and to preach that the believing Jew should continue to keep the seventh day, practice circumcision, keep the Passover and other feast days, is not alone nowhere taught in the Epistles, but such teaching is unscriptural and brings in a sad and confusing mixture which destroys the simplicity of the Gospel.

Now in the beginning of this present age there certainly was such a Jewish-Christian remnant in existence. To this the words of the apostle refer us. "Thus, then, in the present time there has been a remnant according to the election of Grace." That remnant of Jewish believers is seen in the opening chapters of the Book of Acts. The three thousand saved on the day of Pentecost were all Jews. Soon there was a very strong assembly composed of Jewish believers in Jerusalem, who were faithful witnesses for the Lord Jesus Christ and who bore a faithful testimony in Jerusalem, which was fast ripening for the great judgment. Not alone in Jerusalem, but also in other parts of the land, Jews became believers and formed Jewish-Christian synagogues. When Paul went to Jerusalem the elders of the Jewish-Christian assembly said to him: "Thou seest, brother, how many myriads there are of the Jews who have believed, and are all zealous for the law. And they have been informed concerning thee that thou teachest all the Jews among the nations apostasy from Moses, saying that they should not circumcise their children, nor walk in the customs" (Acts xxi:21). Paul's Gospel certainly teaches this, and it was the hour of his failure when he went back to the ceremonial law. But the passage tells us that there were myriads of believers, all Jews who continued in the observance of the law. They went to the temple to pray, kept the different feasts— in one word, they continued in all the Jewish customs. God's mercy was still lingering over Jerusalem. These Hebrew-Christian believers had hopes that the nation would yet receive their testimony and accept Him whom they had rejected. They were persecuted, beaten, some killed, their goods spoiled, cast out of the synagogue and the temple, and still they continued in their faithful testimony. It was a transition period, passing out of the old into the new. For a time such an attitude of Jewish believers was undoubtedly justified. But then the Holy Spirit addressed an Epistle to these Hebrews, and that Epistle gives us not only a true insight into their condition and danger, their steadfastness and faithfulness, but it also reveals how the Holy Spirit shows them the better things of the new covenant. No one can read the Epistle to the Hebrews without being convinced that in this wonderful commentary to the levitical institutions, showing the fulfillment in Him who is a better priest, a priest after the order of Melchizedek, the Spirit of God aims at this very fact, that all ceremonies, all levitical observances, are to be discontinued. They were all the shadows of better things. In the end of the Epistle He speaks that Word which showed these Hebrew believers their true position, "Let us go forth to Him without the camp, bearing His reproach" (Hebr. xiii:13). At last Jerusalem fell. The temple was destroyed. The people were scattered. It was therefore made impossible for Jewish believers to continue in the position which they held for years. Jewish-Christian assemblies in their peculiar national character ceased in their existence. While in the beginning of this dispensation it was "to the Jew first," that order was stopped with the full rejection of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews.

However, the existence of a remnant of believers among the nation, the myriads who had accepted the Lord as their Saviour and the Hope of Israel, was a definite proof that God had not completely cast away His people. It was proof that He was ready to deal with them according to His infinite mercy.

A Jewish remnant in the sense of the apostolic days is no longer possible. To teach that such a remnant is to be gathered now and to attempt the formation of Jewish national assemblies of believing Hebrews, who continue as Jews though trusting in Christ, practicing circumcision, fasts and other Jewish customs, is confusing and mars completely the doctrines of Grace and that revelation of all revelations, the church, which is His Body. We repeat it once more, the believing Jew at this time is not "gentilized," as has been pressed so much from certain sides, but he becomes a member of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, and has with every other believer a heavenly hope, a heavenly destiny. When the Lord Jesus Christ comes to take His own unto Himself, every believing Jew, saved by Grace, will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.

A fact in this connection must not be overlooked. The Lord has put His hand throughout this Christian dispensation, in every century, upon hundreds and thousands of Jews, and through His Grace they have been saved, not a few of them in a most remarkable way. The past century, the nineteenth, has had more witnesses in this respect than any other. Some of the best teachers, expositors of the Scriptures, were converted Hebrews. We mention Adolf Saphir, Dr. Edersheim, Neander, Cassel, Gottheil and Rabinowitz. Some of them were led out of the deepest darkness with thousands of others whose names are not so universally known. This, too, is an evidence that blindness has happened only in part to Israel.

But there is yet to be a Jewish remnant, a strong and mighty witness that God hath not cast away His people. This future remnant of believing Hebrews will be called as soon as the church is complete and removed from the earth.² This remnant to be called through Grace corresponds to the remnant of the beginning of this age.

Their Gospel will be the Gospel of the Kingdom, "the Kingdom of the Heavens is at hand." It will emanate from Jerusalem and will be declared among all nations (Matt. xxiv:14). Of this remnant, suffering and persecuted, we read in the Olivet discourse of our Lord. The Old Testament Scriptures are full with prophecies concerning the faithful remnant of the endtime. The Book of Psalms can be best understood in the light of a believing remnant of Jews, suffering in the midst of the ungodly nation and delivered by the coming of the King out of the opened heavens. The 144,000 sealed in Revelation vii are all Israelites and the company out of all nations and tongues, who come out of the great tribulation, and are seen as overcomers in the second half of this chapter, are the fruits of the witness and labors of this Jewish remnant. That they do not belong to the church is evident from the scope of the Book of Revelation. The church is seen in glory in the crowned twenty-four elders in chapters iv and v. Only after the church is in the presence of the Lord can the remnant be called and sealed and begin its peculiar testimony. Now this fact that God has had a Remnant and will yet call such a remnant proves that He hath not cast away His people.

1) Adolph Saphir.

2) If it were true and scriptural that the Church is to pass through the great tribulation, it would also be perfectly in order to have a Jewish national assembly of Hebrew believers now. Indeed the establishment of such would then be very desirable and would be a most definite mark of the endtime. On the other hand, it would produce two testimonies, a fact that cannot be harmonized with any of God's dispensational teachings.