The remnant of Israel is a recurring theme in the writings of the prophets. This remnant is sometimes a remnant of righteous covenant-keepers within a society of covenant-breakers. In other cases, it refers to a small number as such, such as Isaiah’s prophecy regarding the return of a relatively small number of Israelites to the land after the Babylonian captivity. “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God. For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness” (Isa. 10:20–22).

At the beginning of his book, Isaiah refers to a saving remnant. It was not large enough to transform Israelite society, but it had a representative judicial function. Because of its presence in the land, God would not destroy the nation in the way that He had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. This remnant had the same judicial function as the hypothetical remnant in Sodom would have had as a result of Abraham’s bargaining with the angelic representatives of God to spare the city for the sake of a remnant as few as 10 people (Gen. 18:23–32).

Elijah had not known of the existence of this remnant when he fled from Ahab and Jezebel. God spoke to him while he was hiding in a cave in the wilderness. God asked him why he was there. Elijah lamented, “I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: because 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” (I Kings 19:14). He saw himself as the last man standing. God informed him that he was incorrect. “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” (I Kings 19:18). On account of them, God did not allow the nation to be carried off in Elijah’s era. But time eventually ran out for the nation.

The scriptural principle of the saving remnant applies to all of history. Covenant-keepers have usually been outnumbered. They may be sufficiently numerous to have influence in a particular society and era, or they may not. God recognizes that His remnant is small and therefore deserves protection. He deals with this remnant in a special way. This applied to Israel among the nations. Moses said:

For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt (Deut. 7:6–8).

This special arrangement also applied to the covenantally faithful remnant within the nation, after the nation had apostatized. 

Because the remnant is small, the members’ individual productivity does not account for very much most of the time. To remain productive, they require an extensive division of labor within the context of a much larger society. The skills and efforts of many people result in high output per capita. The remnant participates in a social order that benefits from voluntary exchange. They are richer as individuals because of the division of labor. This was Lot’s situation until the angels led him out of Sodom just before the destruction of the city (Gen. 19).

And Abimelech, and the company that was with him, rushed forward, and stood in the entering of the gate of the city: and the two other companies ran upon all the people that were in the fields, and slew them. And Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt (Jdgs. 9:44–45).

The remnant possesses both of these attributes of salt. The remnant’s presence brings God’s preserving grace to the general society, yet it also condemns it by comparison. Covenantbreakers perceive this threat. They reject its testimony. “For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?” (II Cor. 2:15–16). 

God administers His transforming grace for the sake of the remnant and also through the remnant. All of history moves toward the final judgment, when the remnant inherits the accumulated capital of human history. Psalm 37 emphasizes this theme.

For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth. For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace (Ps. 37:9–11).

Wait on the LORD, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it. I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found. Mark the perfect man, and  behold the upright: for the end of that man is peace. But the transgressors shall be destroyed together: the end of the wicked shall be cut off (Ps. 37:34–38).

The message of Isaiah is that the remnant will not remain the remnant permanently. There will come a time when it becomes the dominant force in society. He ends his book with a description of this triumph.

The sinner will die young at age one hundred. The covenant-keeper will live far longer. This cannot possibly refer to eternity. It refers to history. This is the long-run vision of Isaiah. It offers hope to the remnant through the ages. The remnant’s work is cumulative. It expands. The result will be comprehensive inheritance in history.

Isaiah sees the remnant as the reason for God’s preservation of Israel in the land. But this preservation is temporary. Captivity is coming.

Isaiah presents the sovereignty of God. This is made clear in Isaiah 44 and 45, where he prophesies regarding the restoration of Israel to the land, specifically naming King Cyrus the Medo-Persian, two centuries in advance. “That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid” (Isa. 44:28). The context of this sovereignty provides the meaning of the remnant. Its work perseveres through history through covenantal succession. “Thy people also shall be all righteous: they shall inherit the land for ever, the branch of my planting, the work of my hands, that I may be glorified. A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the LORD will hasten it in his time” (Isa. 60:21–22).

Faith in linear history, faith in compound growth, and faith in the absolute sovereignty of God over both history and growth: these constitute the confession of the remnant. These three concepts lead to a society that experiences long-term economic growth. Without the first two, people will not save at high rates. They do not trust the future. The third intensifies men’s commitment to the future.

The West has been committed to the first belief ever since it became Christian. It has come to accept the second, beginning in the seventeenth century: Puritan and Presbyterian postmillennialism, a view of time that was secularized by the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. The third belief has been limited to Augustinians and Calvinists, which have been minority positions in their respective ecclesiastical traditions.

1. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).

2. Gary North, Hierarchy and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on First Timothy (Harrisonburg, Virginia: Dominion Educational Ministries, Inc., [2001] 2006), ch. 6.

3. Gary North, Priorities and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Matthew, 2nd electronic edition (Harrisonburg, Virginia: Dominion Educational Ministries, Inc., [2000] 2003), ch. 5.

4. Gary North, God’s Success Manual: An Economic Commentary on Proverbs (Horn Lake, Mississippi: GaryNorth.com, Inc., 2007), ch. 40.

5. Chapter 15.

I got the name from Rev. Edmund Opitz, who was a member of the Senior Staff of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), located in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, about 25 miles north of New York City. In his spare time, he had put together a small group of ministers who were interested in attending informal meetings devoted to a discussion of the relationship between religion and the free society. He called his organization “The Remnant.”

Both aspects of the prophet’s job must be acknowledged: confrontation as well as garden-tending. There are times when a prophet must “go public.” There are other times when he stays in the shadows and does his work quietly. The prophet must know the times and seasons.

Every faithful person is to some degree a prophet. He has a particular view of God, man, law, and time which he honors in his life. He has a message for others. But his commitment to this view of life need not be public all of the time. He is supposed to prove to himself and to those under his lawful authority that these principles are not only true; they also work in the real world. He is to work hard to develop these basic principles through his obedience. He is not only a preacher of the word; he must also be a doer.

The righteous person’s accomplishments should be visible. “By their fruits ye shall know them,” Jesus said of all men. A good tree will bear good fruit. So, as time goes by, others will start asking the prophet about himself. He must be ready to give them principled answers.

Isaiah's Job

Albert Jay Nock

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One evening last autumn I sat long hours with a European acquaintance while he expounded a politico-economic doctrine which seemed sound as a nut and in which I could find no defect. At the end, he said with great earnestness: “I have a mission to the masses. I feel that I am called to get the ear of the people. I shall devote the rest of my life to spreading my doctrine far and wide among the populace. What do you think?”

An embarrassing question in any case, and doubly so under the circumstances, because my acquaintance is a very learned man, one of the three or four really first-class minds that Europe produced in his generation; and naturally I, as one of the unlearned, was inclined to regard his lightest word with reverence amounting to awe . . . .

I referred him to the story of the prophet Isaiah . . . . I shall paraphrase the story in our common speech since it has to be pieced out from various sources....

The prophet’s career began at the end of King Uzziah’s reign, say about 740 B.C. This reign was uncommonly long, almost half a century, and apparently prosperous. It was one of those prosperous reigns, however—like the reign of Marcus Aurelius at Rome, or the administration of Eubulus at Athens, or of Mr. Coolidge at Washington—where at the end the prosperity suddenly peters out and things go by the board with a resounding crash.

In the year of Uzziah’s death, the Lord commissioned the prophet to go out and warn the people of the wrath to come. “Tell them what a worthless lot they are,” He said. Tell them what is wrong, and why, and what is going to happen unless they have a change of heart and straighten up. Don’t mince matters. Make it clear that they are positively down to their last chance. Give it to them good and strong and keep on giving it to them. I suppose perhaps I ought to tell you,” He added, “that it won’t do any good. The official class and their intelligentsia will turn up their noses at you, and the masses will not even listen. They will all keep on in their own ways until they carry everything down to destruction, and you will probably be lucky if you get out with your life.”

Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job—in fact, he had asked for it—but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so-If the enterprise were to be a failure from the start —was there any sense in starting it?

“Ah,” the Lord said, “you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile Your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it . . . .”

The picture which Isaiah presents of the Judean masses is most untfavorable. In his view, the mass-man—be he high or be he lowly, rich or poor, prince or pauper—gets off very badly. He appears as not only weak-minded and weak-willed, but as by consequence knavish, arrogant, grasping, dissipated, unprincipled, unscrupulous. . . .

As things now stand, Isaiah’s job seems rather to go begging. Everyone with a message nowadays is, like my venerable European friend, eager to take it to the masses. His first, last, and only thought is of mass-acceptance and mass-approval. His great care is to put his doctrine in such shape as will capture the masses attention and interest . . . .

The main trouble with this [mass-main approach] is its reaction upon the mission itself. It necessitates an opportunist sophistication of one’s doctrine which profoundly alters its character and reduces it to a mere placebo. If, say, you are a preacher, you wish to attract as large a congregation as you can, which means an appeal to the masses; and this, in turn, means adapting the terms of your message to the order of intellect and character that the masses exhibit.  If you are an educator, say with a college on your hands, you wish to get as many students as possible and you whittle down your requirements accordingly. If a writer, you aim at getting many readers; if a publisher, many purchasers; if a philosopher, many disciples; if a reforner, many converts; if a musician, many auditors; and so on. But as we see on all sides, in the realization of these several desires the prophetic message is so heavily adulterated with trivialities, in every instance, that its effect on the masses is merely to harden them in their sins. Meanwhile, the Remnant, aware of this adulteration and of the desires that prompt it, turn their backs on the prophet and will have nothing to do with him or his message.

Isaiah, on the other hand, worked under no such disabilities. He preached to the masses only in the sense that he preached publicly. Anyone who liked might listen; anyone who liked might pass by. He knew that the Remnant would listen . . . .

The Remnant want only the best you have, whatever that may be. Give them that, and they are satisfied; you have nothing more to worry about . . . .

In a sense, nevertheless, as I have said, it is not a rewarding job . . . . A prophet of the Remnant will not grow purse-proud on the financial returns from his work, nor is it likely that he will get any great renown out of it. Isaiah’s case was exceptional to this second rule, and there are others—but not many.

It may be thought, then, that while taking care of the Remnant is no doubt a good job, it is not an especially interesting job because, it is as a rule so poorly paid. I have my doubts about this. There are other compensations to be got out of a job besides money and notoriety and some of them seem substantial enough to be attractive. Many jobs which do not pay well are yet profoundly interesting, as, for instance, the job of the research student in the sciences is said to be; and the job of looking after the Remnant seems to me, as I have surveyed it for many years from my seat in the grandstand, to be as interesting as any that can be found in the world.

What chiefly makes it so, I think, is that in any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those—dead sure, as our phrase is—but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor where they are, nor how many of them there are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you know, and no more: first, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness; and this, I should say, is just the condition calculated most effectively to pique the interest of any prophet who is properly gifted with the imagination, insight, and intellectual curiosity necessary to a successful pursuit of his trade.

He said that he was running away, not because he was a coward, but because all the Remnant had been killed off except himself. He had got away only by the skin of his teeth, and, he being now all the Remnant there was, if he were killed the True Faith would go flat. The Lord replied that he need not worry about that, for even without him the True Faith could probably manage to squeeze along somehow if it had to; “and as for your figures on the Remnant,”  He said, “I don’t mind telling you that there are seven thousand of them back there in Israel whom it seems you have not heard of, but you may take My word for it that there they are. ”

At that time, probably the population of Israel could not have been too much more than a million or so; and a Remnant of seven thousand out of a million is a highly encouraging percentage for any prophet. With seven thousand of the boys on his side, there was no great reason for Elijah to feel lonesome; and incidentally, that would be something for the modem prophet of the Remnant to think of when he has a touch of the blues. But the main point is that if Elijah the Prophet could not make a closer guess on the number of the Remnant than he made when he missed it by seven thousand, anyone else who tackled the problem would only waste his time.

The other certainty which the prophet of the Remnant may always have is that the Remnant will find him. He may rely on that with absolute assurance. They will find him without his doing anything about it; in fact, if he tries to do anything about it, he is pretty sure to put them off. He does not need to advertise for them nor resort to any schemes of publicity to get their attention. If he is a preacher or a public speaker, for example, he may be quite indifferent to going on show at receptions, getting his picture printed in the newspapers, or furnishing autobiographical material for publication on the side of “human interest. ” If a writer, he need not make a point of attending any pink teas, autographing books at wholesale, or entering into any specious freemasonry with reviewers.

All this and much more of the same order lies in the regular and necessary routine laid down fir the prophet of the masses. It is, and it must be, part of the great general technique of getting the mass-man’s ear—or as our vigorous and excellent publicist, Mr. H. L. Mencken, puts it, the technique of boob-bumping. The prophet of the Remnant is not bound to this technique. He may be quite sure that the Remnant will make their own way to him without any adventitious aids; and not only so, but if they find him employing such aids, as I said, it is ten to one that they will smell a rat in them and will sheer off.

The certainty that the Remnant will find him, however, leaves the prophet as much in the dark as ever, as helpless as ever in the matter of putting any estimate of any kind upon the Remnant; for, as appears in the case of Elijah, he remains ignorant of who they are that have found him or where they are or how many. They do not write in and tell him about it, after the manner of those who admire the vedettes of Hollywood, nor yet do they seek him out and attach themselves to his person. They are not that kind. They take his message much as drivers take the directions on a roadside signboard—that is, with very little thought about the sign-board, beyond being gratefully glad that it happened to be there, but with very serious thought about the directions.

This impersonal attitude of the Remnant wonderfully enhances the interest of the imaginative prophet’s job. Once in a while, just about often enough to keep his intellectual curiosity in good working order, he will quite accidentally come upon some distinct reflection of his own message in an unsuspected quarter.  This enables him to entertain himself in his leisure moments with agreeable speculations about the course his message may have taken in reaching that particular quarter, and about what came of it after it got there. Most interesting of all are those instances, if one could only run them down (but one may always speculate about them), where, the recipient himself no longer knows where nor when nor from whom he got the message—or even where, as sometimes happens, he has forgotten that he got it anywhere and imagines that it is all a self-sprung idea of his own.

Such instances as these are probably not infrequent, for, without presuming to enroll ourselves among the Remnant, we can all no doubt remember having found ourselves suddenly under the influence of an idea, the source of which we cannot possibly identify. “It came to us afterward,” as we say; that is, we are aware of it only after it has shot up full-grown in our minds, leaving us quite ignorant of how and when and by what agency it was planted there and left to germinate. It seems highly probable that the prophet’s message often takes some such course with the Remnant.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Sooner or later, those who are interested in the philosophy of liberty run across Albert J. Neck’s essay, “Isaiah’s Job.” Taking as an example two Old Testament prophets, Isaiah and Elijah, Nock makes at least two important points. First, until society seems to be disintegrating around our ears, not many people are going to listen to a critic who comes in the name of principled action. The masses want to get all the benefits of principled action, but they also want to continue to follow their unprincipled ways. They want the fruits but not the roots of morality. Therefore they refuse to listen to prophets. Second, Nock pointed out, the prophet Elijah was convinced that he was the last of the faithful, or what Nock calls the Remnant. Not so, God told the prophet; He had kept seven thousand others from the rot of the day.

Elijah had no idea that there were this many failful people left. He had not seen any of them. He had heard no reports of them. Yet here was God, telling him that they were out there. Thus, Nock concludes, it does no good to count heads. The people whose heads are available for counting are not the ones you ought to be interested in. Whether or not people listen is irrelevant; the important thing is that the prophet makes the message clear and consistent. He is not to water down the truth for the sake of mass appeal.

Nock’s essay helps those of us who are used to the idea that we should measure our success by the number of people we convince. We are “scalp-hunters,” when we ought to be prophets. The prophets were not supposed to give the message out in order to win lots of public support. On the contrary, they were supposed to give the message for the sake of truth. They were asked to witness to a generation which would not respond to the message. The truth is therefore its own justification. Those who were supposed to hear, namely, the Remnant, would get the message, one way or the other. They were the people who counted. Lesson: the people who count can’t be counted. Not by prophets, anyway.

A Sad Message

The main problem I have with Nock’s essay is that he excluded another very important prophet. That prophet was Jeremiah. He lived about 125 years after Isaiah, and God gave him virtually the same message. He was told to go to the highest leaders in the land, to the average man in the street, and to everyone in between, and proclaim the message. He was to tell them that they were in violation of basic moral law in everything they did, and that if they did not turn away from their false beliefs and wicked practices, they would see their society totally devastated. In this respect, Jeremiah’s task was not fundamentally different from Isaiah's.

Nevertheless, there were some differences. Jeremiah also wrote (or dictated) a book. He was not content to preach an unpleasant message to skeptical and hostile people. He wanted to record the results of their unwillingness to listen. His thoughts are preserved in the saddest book in the Bible: the Book of Lamentations. Though he knew in advance that the masses would reject his message, he also knew that there would be great suffering in Judah because of their stiffnecked response. Furthermore, the Remnant would pay the same price in the short run. They, too, would be carried off into captivity. They, too, would lose their possessions and die in a foreign land. They would not be protected from disaster just because they happened to be decent people who were not immersed in the practices of their day. He wrote these words in response to the coming of the predicted judgment: “Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people” (Lam. 3:48). He knew that their punishment was well deserved, yet he was also a part of them. The destruction was so great that not a glimmer of hope appears in the whole book.

What are we to conclude? That everything is hopeless? That no one will listen, ever, to the truth? That every society will eventually be ripe for judgment, and that this collapse will allow no one to escape? Is it useless, historically speaking, to serve in the Remnant? Are we forever to  be ground down in the millstones of history?

What were God’s instructions to Jeremiah? Buy the field. So Jeremiah took his silver, and witnesses, and balances (honest money) and they made the transaction. Then Jeremiah instructed Baruch, a scribe, to record the evidence. (It may be that Jeremiah was illiterate, as were most men of his day.) Baruch was told by Jeremiah to put the evidences of the sale into an earthen vessel for long-term storage. “For thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land” (Jer. 32:15).God explained His purposes at the end of the chapter. Yes, the city would fall. Yes, the people would go into captivity. Yes, their sins had brought this upon them. But this is not the end of the story. “Behold I will gather them out of all countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: And they will be my people, and I will be their God” (Jer. 32:37-38).  It doesn’t stop there, either: “Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them. And fields shall be bought in the land, whereof ye say, It is desolate. without man or beast; it is given into the hand of the Chaldeans” (Jer. 32:42-43).

What was God’s message to Jeremiah? There is hope for the long run for those who are faithful to His message. There will eventually come a day when truth will out, when law will reign supreme, when men will buy and sell, when contracts will be honored. “Men shall buy fields for money, and subscribe evidences, and seal them, and take witnesses in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, and in the cities of the mountains, and in the cities of the valleys and in the cities of the south: For I will cause their captivity to return, saith the Lord” (Jer. 32:44).  In other words, business will return because the law of God will be understood and honored.

God had told them that they would be in captivity for seventy years. It would be long enough to make certain that Jeremiah would not be coming back to claim his field. Yet there was hope nonetheless. The prophet is not to imagine that all good things will come in his own day. He is not to be a short-term optimist. He is not to conclude that his words will turn everything around, making him the hero of the hour. He is told to look at the long run, to preach in the short run, and to go about his normal business. Plan for the future. Buy and sell. Continue to speak out when times are opportune. Tell anyone who will listen of the coming judgment, but remind them also that all is not lost forever just because everything seems to be lost today.

The Job Is to Be Honest

The prophet’s job is to be honest. He must face the laws of reality. If bad principles lead to bad actions, then bad consequences will surely follow. These laws of reality cannot be underestimated. In fact, it is the prophet’s task to reaffirm their validity by his message. He pulls no punches. Things are not "fairly bad” if morality is ignored or laughed at. Things are terrible, and people should understand this. Still, there is hope. Men can change their minds. The prophet knows that in "good" times, rebellious people usually don’t change their minds. In fact, that most reluctant of prophets, Jonah, was so startled when the city of Nineveh repented that he pouted that the promised judgment never came, making him look like an idiot—an attitude which God reproached. But in the days of Elijah, Isaiah, and Jeremiah, the pragmatists of Israel were not about to turn back to the moral laws which had provided their prosperity. It would take seven decades of captivity to bring them, or rather their children and grandchildren, back to the truth.

Invest long-term, God told Jeremiah. Invest as if all were not lost. Invest as if your message, eventually, will bear fruit. Invest in the face of despair, when everyone is running scared. Invest for the benefit of your children and grandchildren. Invest as if everything doesn’t depend on the prophet, since prophets, being men, are not omniscient or omnipotent. Invest as if moral law will one day be respected. Keep plugging away, even if you yourself will never live to see the people return to their senses and return to their land. Don’t minimize the extent of the destruction. Don’t rejoice at the plight of your enemies. Don’t despair at the fact that the Remnant is caught in the whirlpool of destruction. Shed tears if you must, but most important, keep records. Plan for the future. Never give an inch.

A prophet is no Pollyanna, no Dr. Pangloss. He faces reality. Reality is his calling in life. To tell people things are terrible when they think everything is fine, and to offer hope when they think everything is lost.

To tell the truth, whatever the cost, and not to let short-term considerations blur one’s vision. The Remnant is there. The Remnant will survive. Eventually, the Remnant will become the masses, since truth will out. But until that day, for which all prophets should rejoice, despite the fact that few will see its dawning, the prophet must do his best to understand reality and present it in the most effective way he knows how. That is Jeremiah’s job.