THE MAKING OF THE
REMNANT
Lesson 24
Page
1 of 2
Our last study
contains a review and an
invitation. A review of the
gospel is necessary because the
gospel propels us to a decision.
In due time, we either accept or
reject the gospel because of
basic internal needs to resolve
conflicts. Some people try
to avoid difficult decisions by
putting them far into the
background of consciousness.
They say, “I’ll think
about this tomorrow.”
Postponement, though, is really a
decision, too. It is a mild
rejection. Suppose you
asked someone to marry you.
Any answer other than
“yes” is actually
rejection, isn’t it? The
danger of postponement is that it
easily leads to greater rejection
until we are firmly decided. In
the case of the gospel, we must
listen to the Holy Spirit. The
more we reject His promptings,
the more difficult to respond.
This lesson also
contains an invitation to attend
this prophecy seminar again.
If the Holy Spirit has impressed
you that this message is
important, you need to hear it
again for two reasons. First,
your understanding of the gospel
will increase 100% the second
time you hear it. Details
will become much clearer and more
meaningful. Secondly,
knowing what Revelation is about,
you need to find an interested
friend and bring him or her to
hear this message. “The
Spirit and the bride say,
‘Come!’ And let
him who hears say,
‘Come!’ Whoever
is thirsty, let him come; and
whoever wishes, let him take the
free gift of the water of
life.” Revelation
22:17
The proclamation
of the gospel
The full gospel
must reach every person before
Jesus comes. John said,
“Then I saw another angel
flying in midair, and he had the
eternal gospel to proclaim to
those who live on the earth
– to every nation, tribe,
language and people.”
Revelation 14:6 Jesus said,
“And this gospel of the
kingdom will be preached in the
whole world as a testimony to all
nations. And then the end will
come.” Matthew 24:14
The question is, “who will
help spread the gospel?”
We know the 144,000 will lead the
way during the shaking and the
trumpets, but they can’t do
the work alone. They need the
help and support of the remnant!
What is the
gospel?
Would a
counterfeiter print a $9 bill?
No. People would
immediately recognize the folly.
A $9 bill couldn’t be a
counterfeit since $9 bills
don’t exist. Thus, a
counterfeit has to be an
imitation of something that
exists.
The devil has
counterfeited the gospel and his
imitations are in every land.
In America, the devil’s
counterfeit of the gospel is
almost indistinguishable from the
real thing.
Many people
honestly believe Satan’s
counterfeit gospel. Jesus
understands. He looks from
upon the earth with love at those
living up to all they believe to
be true. In His great
mercy, He accepts those who do
not know the truths of the
gospel. Jesus does not
hold a person responsible for
truth they don’t know.
James tells us that sin is held
against us when we know
better and then refuse to
do it! “Anyone, then,
who knows the good he ought to do
and doesn’t do it,
sins.” James 4:17
The Lord loves the
people of earth with a love
beyond human understanding.
Those living up to all they know
to be right glorify God and He is
pleased. Peter says,
“For the eyes of the Lord
are on the righteous and his ears
are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the Lord is
against those who do evil.”
I Peter 3:12 Because truth has
been obscured from most people by
Satan’s devices, Jesus is
going to enlighten the entire
world with the gospel in the near
future. Those who are
sincere in heart will receive the
full gospel and the remnant will
be made up. Those who
recognize the confirmation of the
Holy Spirit will move forward and
receive the gospel truth as it
reaches every nation, kindred,
tongue and people! Thus the
remnant will be gathered together
in one body. Jesus said,
“I have other sheep that are
not of this sheep pen. I
must bring them also. They
too will listen to my voice, and
there shall be one flock and one
shepherd.” John 10:16
The net effect of
the gospel will be to unify those
who hear the voice of Jesus into
one large group called the
remnant. This will finally
be accomplished during the
trumpets. People will
receive the gospel by faith, obey
the commandments of Jesus as the
first angel’s message
commands or they will reject the
gospel or receive the mark of the
beast. There will be no
middle ground. The rapid
sequence of events coupled with
rigorous laws requiring Sunday
observance in America will push
everyone to a rapid decision
What are the
gospel and its counterfeit?
In a sentence, the
gospel is the complete story of
salvation. The gospel
explains the role of our Creator,
the nature of man, the sinless
life of Jesus on behalf of man,
the work of Jesus in the heavenly
sanctuary as our mediator and the
second coming. If you look
closely at the previous sentence,
you will observe God’s great
love expressed through the five
fundamental teachings of the
gospel. They are easy to
remember when you begin them with
the letter, “S.”
1.
Salvation by faith
2.
Sanctuary in heaven
3.
State of the dead.
4.
Second coming of Jesus
5.
Sabbath worship
The devil has
distorted and ruined each of
these elements as far as
possible. We will briefly
survey each of the counterfeit
elements of the gospel within the
Christian world:
Counterfeit 1
One of
Satan’s most powerful
counterfeits is that salvation
either comes by obedience to God
or by intellectual assent to what
is true. Satan’s
trickery on this subject is very
subtle. He can actually
deceive an evil person into
thinking he is righteous! For
example, Satan led the Pharisees
to think they were righteous even
though they were far away from
the kingdom. Jesus said,
“on the outside you appear
to people as righteous but on the
inside you are full of hypocrisy
and wickedness.” Matthew
23:28
Asking a person
what he believes is not enough.
The Pharisees thought they were
righteous. So, to see what
a person actually believes, we
have to do some fruit inspection.
Jesus said, “every good tree
bears good fruit, but a bad tree
bears bad fruit, and a bad tree
cannot bear good fruit.”
Matthew 7:17 The problem is that
what people say and what people
do may not be consistent. Notice
the two extremes examples. The
first example describes a
religious type we’ll call,
“workers.”
A worker can say,
“I’m saved by
faith,” while at the same
time, be working his or her way
to heaven. People having
this problem are usually
identified by zealous and/or
rigorous obedience to the
teachings or ideals of their
denomination. Workers tend
to see sin as acts of commission,
sins or wrongful deeds acted out.
Living by the rules is very
important to these people. In
their hearts, they have
confidence that they are saved
because they are obedient to the
rules. They look at
themselves and see very little
wrong. Workers, in a day
to day living, regard obedience
as the primary process through
which salvation occurs even
though they say, “salvation
comes by faith!”
The Jewish
religion at the time of Christ
typifies this great deception.
The sin that blinds these people
is pride. They
can’t see why they
don’t have salvation! After
all, they don’t see anything
wrong with themselves! These
people tend to criticize those
breaking the rules but rarely
speak about the greater sins of
omission. Here is a
paradox. Workers tend to
see the violation of rules as
great sins while disregarding the
spiritual or physical needs of
those around them. Jesus
said to the Pharisees, “Woe
to you Pharisees, because you
give God a tenth of your mint,
rue and all other kinds of garden
herbs, but you neglect justice
and the love of God. You
should practice the latter
without leaving the former
undone. And you experts in
the law, woe to you, because you
load people down with burdens
they can hardly carry, and you
yourselves will not lift one
finger to help them.”
Luke 11:42,46
The coming exam
will overtake these people.
Workers will not be able to obey
God; for civil laws will become
so strict that obedience will be
impossible! (Remember how
Hitler threatened the Germans if
they should help an enemy of the
Reich?) To avoid suffering
and possibly death, the workers
will have no option but to
worship the beast! When the
great religious organizations of
the world merge as a result of
the great destruction of the
trumpets, whose rules will the
workers, follow?
The tragic point
with this deception of
Satan’s is that he makes
obedience of greater importance
than the purpose of obedience!
Jesus said of the Jews,
“They worship me in vain;
their teachings are but rules
taught by men. You have let
go of the commands of God and are
holding on to the traditions of
men.” Mark 7:7,8
On the other hand
of the scale, Satan has another
counterfeit about salvation that
is equally dangerous and perhaps
more widely received in America
than the worker concept. In
brief, this counterfeit holds
that if you believe you’re
saved, - you’re saved!
In general terms, this doctrine
teaches that obedience to the Ten
Commandments is unnecessary, even
more, an insult to God’s
salvation. The Christian is
under grace, not under the law,
and his primary duty is to love
his neighbor as himself. By
simply assenting to the fact that
Jesus died on Calvary, one may
have salvation, full and free!
We call these
people, “Thinkers.”
Thinkers tend to enjoy their
religion more than workers
because their religion is
people-orientated. Whereas,
workers are quite critical in
nature, thinkers are generous and
casual about behavior. The
thinker’s gospel has very
few limitations.
Righteousness that comes with
intellectual assent is simply a
gift from God, so take it, and
join the church. The heart
of the thinker’s gospel is
the golden rule, “Do unto
others as you would have him do
to you.”
The thinker’s
gospel sounds good. This is
why it is so popular in America.
The thinker’s gospel has
transcended mainline
denominations and has become the
dominant theme of 20th
century Protestantism. This
point is proven by asking,
“What theological
differences exist in day to day
living between Methodists,
Lutherans, Baptists,
Presbyterians and all others in
America?”
Certain
characteristics of thinkers and
workers have been presented in
the extreme to demonstrate the
kind of people such theological
processes produce. What we
do reflects what we believe!
Old Testament history clearly
tells us that Israel vacillated
between these two poles. The
reason Israel was so unsteady is
that they forgot that salvation
comes through a love – faith
relationship with God. Loving
Jesus for all that He has done
comes first. Having faith
in Jesus means doing, going and
being as He directs. The
faith relationship requires
prayer and study each day to know
His will and Satan offers a
million diversions to prevent us
from spending time in either.
Satan has cleverly
counterfeited the gospel of the
workers and thinkers by using
partial truth in each case!
Don’t be fooled. Either
doctrine is deadly. The
simple truth about salvation is
this: salvation by faith
means a complete surrender of the
will to Jesus. It means to
be, to do, and to go as Jesus
directs the life. True
salvation produces a life of
action. Obedience comes as
a result of salvation – not
salvation as a result of
obedience! Look closely at
Hebrews 11 and you will observe
that each of the great men and
women in this Hall of Faith was
obedient to God’s commands!
Paul says of Abraham, “By
faith Abraham, when God tested
him, offered Isaac as a
sacrifice. He who had
received the promises was about
to sacrifice his one and only
son, even though God had said to
him, ‘It is through Isaac
that your offspring will be
reckoned.’ Abraham
reasoned that God could raise the
dead, and figuratively speaking,
he did receive Isaac back from
death.” Hebrews
11:17-19
The old gospel
favorite by James Sammis and
Daniel Tower, “Trust
and Obey”, sums up the
gospel very well:
“When we walk
with the Lord
In the light of
His Word,
What a glory He
sheds on our way!
While we do His
good will,
He abides with us
still,
And when all who
will trust and obey.
Trust and obey,
For there’s
no other way
To be happy in
Jesus,
But to trust and
obey.”
Counterfeit 2
Knowing that
Jesus, our High Priest, is
conducting a very special service
in heaven is crucial to
understanding what is going on in
heaven at this time. This
wonderful truth has almost been
totally obscured by Satan. He
has led most Christians to ignore
the Old Testament sanctuary
services by causing them to
believe the ceremonies were only
for the Jews. For this
reason, most Christians never
investigate this subject. Since
the rituals and ceremonies
attached to the earthly sanctuary
is not part of
Catholic/Protestant heritage,
most Christians are unsure why
Paul directs us to the heavenly
sanctuary in the book of Hebrews.
Paul clearly says, “The
point of what we are saying is
this: We do have such a
high priest, who sat down at
right hand of the throne of the
Majesty in heaven, and who serves
in the sanctuary, the true
tabernacle set up by the Lord,
not by man.” Hebrews
8:1,2 Since the sanctuary in the
wilderness was a model of the
real one in heaven,
shouldn’t we understand what
the services meant? Since
Jesus is our High Priest,
shouldn’t we understand why
we need one in the heavenly
sanctuary?
Satan doesn’t
want us to know about the
sanctuary in heaven, for if we
don’t know about the true
tabernacle in heaven, we
don’t need to understand the
importance of 1844. If we
don’t know about 1844, we
don’t know when the
“appointed time of the
end” began. If we
don’t know when the
appointed time of the end began,
we won’t suspect the coming
wrath that occurs when Jesus
opens the fourth seal. Neither
will we suspect the rapid and
climactic culmination of
earth’s events that occurs
during the trumpets. If we
don’t understand the Old
Testament trumpets that warned of
the approaching Day of Atonement,
we can’t understand the
purpose of Revelation’s
trumpets. Even worse,
Revelation’s story makes no
sense apart from the work of
Jesus in the heavenly sanctuary!
Satan had led Protestantism to
believe that the Law of God and
the Law of Moses were nailed to
the cross. By doing away
with both, the purpose of both
has been forgotten.
Counterfeit 3
The third truth
that Satan has counterfeited is
the truth about death.
Satan has led most of Christendom
to believe that when a person
dies, he really doesn’t die!
On the surface, this counterfeit
may not seem too bad. If
you have ever lost a loved one or
close friend, there may be some
consolation in the idea that they
may better off in heaven.
On the other hand, if you lost an
enemy, there also may be some
consolation in the idea that he
is worse off than before!
But the issue of
consolation is not the essence of
the matter. Two elements
stand at the heart of this
matter. First, Satan has
caused many people to distrust
God, even to the point of hatred,
by leading them to believe in the
doctrine of eternal torment.
By misrepresenting the character
of God before the human race,
Satan has blinded many to the
loving character of God. (Remember,
he deceived one third of the
angels too!) Secondly, the
idea that people go to heaven
after death gives credence to
spiritualism, psychic powers and
so-called
“metaphysics.” Through
mysterious supernatural
manifestations, Satan is already
deceiving a large number of
people. But his best
demonstrations are yet to come!
He will cause apparitions of
deceased people to appear on
earth! These apparitions
will be nothing less than demons
in the form of human beings sent
throughout the earth to deceive
people into believing that Satan
is God. John saw these
apparitions and said, “They
are spirits of demons performing
miraculous signs, and they go out
to the kings of the whole world,
to gather them for the battle on
the great day of God
Almighty.” Revelation
16:14
Again the point
must be made. Satan has
strategically set the stage for
his final deceptions. Since
most people would rather depend
upon their senses than trust
their knowledge of the Word of
God, they will be easy prey.
When these demons appear, they
will be an overpowering
deception. If possible, the
remnant could be deceived, too!
When they come, these
counterfeiters will appear to be
just as real as your Mom or Dad.
How can you argue that the dead
know nothing when the form of a
dead person stand “in the
flesh” before you? The
Bible is clear that the dead are
dead. “For the living
know that they will die, but the
dead know knowing.”
Ecclesiastes 9:5 Jesus said that
when He comes, “those in the
graves will hear his voice.”
(See John 5:28 and I
Thessalonians 4:15-17.) You
can anticipate that the devil
will use the lying testimony of
many apparitions to disprove the
Word of God.
Counterfeit 4
The fourth
deception of the gospel that
Satan has given the Christian
world is the truth about the
second coming of Jesus. He
has many Christians either
believing that there is a
“secret rapture” or
that the second coming is in the
distant future. Both of
this counter-
feit doctrines
have the same effect. Most
Christians are either unaware of
the coming tribulation or they
believe they will be spared the
awful agony of the testing time
that is coming upon the whole
world.
The secret rapture
counterfeit hold two fatal flaws.
First, this doctrine eliminates
the urgent need to understand
Revelation and the timely
preparation for the things coming
upon the earth. Since many
Christians believe the rapture
occurs before the second coming,
they are lulled into false
security by thinking they have
nothing to prepare for. Secondly,
and even worse, is that when
Satan comes, this group will
likely receive him as “the
Christ” because the second
coming hasn’t taken place!
The net effect of this deception
is that when the trumpets begin,
these people will be immediately
be overwhelmed, and in great
panic they will go along with the
idea of appeasing God through
legislative action.
In the other camp,
many Christians scoff at the
suggestion that the Lord is about
to return. They see no
reason for all the excitement.
They say, “all things
continue as usual – why all
the fuss?’ These
people are content in their
spiritual poverty. They
have no idea of the things coming
upon the earth, and even worse,
they don’t want to hear
about it! They like
spiritual programs that feature
talented singers and gifted
speakers with clever ideas.
They don’t want to hear
about the coming wrath of Jesus.
So, Satan has the
Christian world convinced that
they are either safe from the
tribulation, due to the rapture,
or that life continues as usual
– no worry.
Unfortunately, his deceptions are
widely accepted.
Those receiving
the everlasting gospel are not
focused on gloom or doom. These
people are focused on the
greatest and most awesome event
in earth’s history: the
revelation of Jesus at the second
coming. These know that the
testing time precedes the second
coming, they know about the
future rise of Babylon and the
appearing of Satan claiming to be
God. They know that their
faith will be fully tested –
yet they are positive about their
relationship with Jesus and they
have peace in their hearts, for
they claim the promises of God.
They are committed to being
“over comers” because
they “have ears to hear what
the Spirit is saying to
them.” They walk by
faith and they will be prepared
for a mighty work when the
trumpets sound.
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