"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

"O L ORD , be gracious unto us; we have waited for T hee: be T hou their arm every morning, our salvation also in the time of trouble." -Isaiah 33:2 [KJV] Israel has often to pass through times of sorrow and trouble. Deep temporal and deep spiritual trouble is the allotted portion of many, if not of most of the people of God. But having found that the Lord is a Saviour, and the only Saviour who can support in trouble and deliver out of trouble, there is this conviction deeply implanted and firmly written upon their heart, that H e is a Saviour in the time of trouble. It is the purpose of God to hunt us out of all lying refuges, that we may believe in Jesus to the saving of our soul; that we may prove that H e is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by H im; that we may learn what salvation is, and that we may know it for ourselves as a divine and blessed reality. Thus though H e is always a Saviour, yet H e is not experimentally a Saviour in times

My friends, do you love to hear Christ lifted up and exalted as your all and in all? If you do you are willing to be made less than nothing and vanity in yourselves. Professors of religion, generally, do not like to be thus humbled. They love to have something to do, in whole or in part, to recommend themselves to God. But the Lord’s salvation is not a mixture of grace and works. It is of free and sovereign grace, and received by faith alone, which is the gift of God. It is “ not of works, lest any man should boast” ( Ephesians 2:8-9 ). The Lord alone be exalted as the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, the first and the last in the salvation of His people. - Gospel report by preacher John Kershaw, 1848 A.D.

There is no doubt that the blood of Jesus was real blood. It was the actual blood of a real man. Yet it was more than just the blood of a man... it was the blood of God. It was the blood of God because He is the God-Man. Thus, when it says in scripture that "the blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanses us from all sin," it is not speaking of His literal blood being applied to us. If the blood of Christ spattered on the soldier that nailed Him to the cross it did not cleanse him from his sins. Likewise if His blood dripped from His pierced side it did not cleanse any it might have fallen upon. No, this term, "the blood of Jesus," refers to the life He laid down and the death that He died. "The life is in the blood , " God said. His death was not simply the death of a man but rather the death of THE Man! It was the death of a Representative Man and "the death of the cross." God looked to Christ alone for all that was neces