CHAPTER 23 REVIVAL IS FOR THE REMNANT The story of David continues in I Samuel 22:1-2, "So David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam; and when his brothers and all his father's household heard of it, they went down there too.  And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was discontented gathered to him; and he became captain over them.  Now there were about 400 men with them." After the Spirit of God left Saul and the Lord sent him an evil spirit, the king grew increasingly unsure of his power base and increasingly paranoid.  On two separate occasions he tried to kill David with a spear.  Finally he devised a plot to have David murdered in his sleep but this plot was foiled by the Lord and David fled.  David moved from place to place and for a time was living in the Cave of Adullam.  While there, four hundred distressed, debt ridden, dissatisfied men, along with his brothers and his father's household met with him and he became their leader.  In these Scriptures we see God causing a division in His people as He separates the dis-anointed Saul and his supporters, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, from the anointed but as yet uncrowned king David with his band of four hundred men. The band of four hundred was a small portion of the nation of Israel, but it was the beginning of a kingdom that would spread to the whole tribe of Judah and eventually the entire nation of Israel.  This kingdom would have the most authority, respect and power that the Jews would ever have.  This Remnant would lay the foundation for the most prestigious kingdom that ever existed: the kingdom ruled by the son of David.  This government in exile was really the seed that would blossom and bring forth much fruit decades and millennia later.  This group, which did grow somewhat, but still remained extremely small,  remained powerless for a time while waiting for the Lord Himself to set up the circumstances that would allow their leader David to assume his rightful place as the appointed and anointed ruler of God's people.  To the vast majority of Israelites, however, this group was merely an annoyance, if it was even that.  The dis-anointed and paranoid Saul was their leader, the people were satisfied, and there was no move to make David king.  That would come later, after God had finished making his anointed ready to assume rulership and after He had allowed the cup of Saul's iniquity to become full so that Saul would be fully judged. Today, we see a very small group of men and women, who in the Spirit are brothers and sisters with David.  They are men and women who love God and desire Him for Himself alone.  We see men and women who are members of David's Father's household.  These people hunger and thirst for a return to the type of Christianity they see documented in the Book of Acts.  Some have seen glimpses from the pages of Church history of mighty moves of God, that have brought forth leaders who have manifested an anointing of God and have spoken a word from heaven.  This word and this anointing caused men and women to serve Him in the war against Satan and his formidable army.  They desire to move only in the simple spiritual armor and the same trust that enabled David to glorify God when he defeated Goliath.  They have an honest concern for God’s honor and God’s people.  They are like those who left Saul.  They are distressed, in debt and discontented.  They are distressed by what they continue to see happening in the Saul Church.  They are distressed with the bait approach to ministry.  They are distressed with the rationalizations they have seen others make concerning everything from raising money to justifying sin and selfishness to even the alteration of the Word of God to accommodate flesh.  Worst of all they are distressed with what they have seen happen in their own lives.  They are distressed with the fact that they have become double-minded.  They are even ashamed of the fact that they love God so slightly and walk in such shallowness, disobedience, and compromise.  They realize that they have half-swallowed the Laodicean lie and are afraid for their souls.  They see others, by the score, lose the precious anointing of God, and they are even now abandoning all that they have invested in the Saul Church to retain or reflame His Holy Spirit in their lives.   They are distressed with the ever-increasing blindness of the Saul brothers who defend the dis-anointed and call sin another name and side openly with the unrepentant who are now moving in realms of evil never before thought possible.  They are no longer content to let Saul clothe them luxuriously in purple and gold.  They have discovered that they have given far too much of their heart in exchange for accumulating toys and pursuing materialistic diversions.  They are in great debt to the Lord for their folly and are coming together with others who share their heart's desire.  There is an emptiness in their hearts that entertainment, greed, and shallow ministry can no longer fill.  And they are no longer concerned about what the vast majority does or think.  They are no longer even concerned about one of the greatest and last idols of all to go: the idol of church growth.  They want to move in true love and absolute truth, regardless of whether there are 400 or 4,000,000 who are with them.   They are definitely a Remnant when compared to the rest of the various Movements that exist in the Evangelical and Charismatic churches.   In the 1980’s when several churches in southern California were seeking the Lord at a Friday night prayer meeting, the Lord showed me how He was going to build His Church.  He showed me a huge, hard rock made of marble or a granite-like substance.  I saw lightening bolts thrust by Him that struck the rock.  There was a flurry of these lightening bolts and chips flew in every direction.  After this, I commented to the Lord that I could see that He was shaping His Church like a sculptor would shape a huge block of marble by chipping off the excess pieces with his chisel.    He replied to me that I was missing the point.  He said that He was making His Church from the original piece of marble,   but His program was to use only THE CHIPS.  He was not shaping the large piece of rock to become His Church, He was gathering the chips, the smaller pieces of stone, and He was going to make His dwelling place out of those chips.  He was going to throw away the main part and save the small pieces for Himself to be His Church.  He said these small pieces would be the Living Stones that would be the Remnant Church that He was building.  This division of the Remnant from the main body (the chips from the marble rock) would be a sovereign work of God.   Scripture deals with the concept of God's ultimate people, His bond-servants, His bride, His Revival Church coming forth as a Remnant from the larger number of people who are seemingly Christian.  Micah 4:1, 6-7 says, ""And it will come about in the last days that the mountain of the house of the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains.  It will be raised above the hills, and the people will stream to it.  "In that day," declares the Lord, "I will assemble the lame, and gather the outcasts, even those whom I have afflicted.  I will make the lame a Remnant and the outcasts a strong nation.  And the Lord will reign over them in Mt. Zion from now on and forever."" In our day the Remnant consists of the lame, the outcasts, and the afflicted of the Lord.  They are the distressed, the indebted and the discontented of our time.  They have been brought to the point where they have no strength of their own and some have no standing in the Saul Church or the world.  They have been dealt with severely by the Lord.  David's Remnant also had no strength, little standing with Saul’s people and were also being dealt with severely by the Lord.  In our day, even now, God is chiseling the chips off of the rock and gathering together these chips to form His David Church.  It is a very painful process to be separated from the rock from which they have been chipped.  Many now have been chipped off the main rock but are lying alone and have not yet been united with the other chips.  This is a major part of the dealings of God with the David Church.  Before many of these people will be united with the other chips, they must develop an intimate love and an absolute dependence on the Lord Himself.  In this way they are starting to pay the debt of love and intimacy with God that is their reasonable response to such a magnificent Savior.  These people must trust that God has not left them, but in fact, is drawing them closer to Him.  Still, many of these people will wonder if they are out of God’s will because they have been separated from the Saul Church.  They must understand that this is part of the process.  These chips may lie alone for some time.  In God’s time He will either bring them home to Himself and the Heavenly Church or He will bring them together with other brothers and sisters.   This Remnant will be the men and women, who like Jacob, have been dealt with by God and had their natural strength crippled.  This Remnant, like David's Remnant, is even now in the process of being overwhelmed and cast aside by the Saul Church.  Even as we saw the Methodist Remnant of the eighteenth century and the Pentecostal Remnant of the earlier twentieth century, so we will see the distressed, debt ridden, discontented, and disillusioned David Remnant of the 21st century routed by Saul from the mainline Evangelical and Charismatic churches.  For now we must wait for God to put these living stones together again and build a Church that is strong enough to withstand everything that enemy throws against it.

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