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

  “ A debtor to mercy alone, Of covenant mercy I sing; Nor fear with Thy righteousness on, My person and offering to bring; The terrors of law and of God, With me can have nothing to do; My Savior’s obedience and blood, Hide all my transgressions from view. The work which His goodness began, The arm of His strength will complete; His promise is Y ea and A men, And never was forfeited yet; Things future nor things that are now, Not all things below nor above, Can make Him His purpose forego, Or sever my soul from His love. My name from the palms of His hands, Eternity will not erase; Impressed on His heart it remains, In marks of indelible grace. Yes, I to the end shall endure, As sure as the Earnest is given; More happy, but not more secure, The glorified spirits in heaven.” -preacher Augustus Toplady, 1771 A.D.

"The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations." - II Peter 2:9 [KJV] Few will sincerely and spiritually go to the Lord, and cry from their hearts to be delivered from the power of a temptation, until it presses so weightily upon their conscience, and lies so heavy a burden upon their soul, that none but God can remove it. But when we really feel the burden of a temptation; when, though our flesh may love it, our spirit hates it; when, though there may be in our carnal mind a cleaving to it, our conscience bleeds under it, and we are brought spiritually to loathe it and to loathe ourselves for it; when we are enabled to go to the Lord in real sincerity of soul and honesty of heart, beseeching H im to deliver us from it, I believe, that the Lord will, sooner or later, either remove that temptation entirely in H is providence or by H is grace, or so weaken its power that it shall cease to be what it was before, drawing our feet into paths of darkness and evil....

"By H is knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew." -Proverbs 3:20  [KJV] When the Lord said, "Let there be light," instantly there was light. So when the Lord says, "Let the earth open," the heart immediately opens, the conscience is made tender, and the soul hears and receives what God speaks. And what follows this opening? The heart receives the dews and showers of God's grace that fall into it; and these dews and showers of God's grace communicate to it softness, fertility, and productiveness. O how we have to learn this by painful experience! Is not our heart as hard sometimes as the nether millstone; and to our feelings, utterly destitute of light, life and power, without one grain of brokenness, contrition, godly sorrow, spiritual desire, or fervent breathing after the Lord? This painful experience the Lord's people have to pass through perpetually, that they may know that "in them, that is, in their f...

"If we this day be examined of the good deed done to the impotent man, by what means he is made whole; Be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth , whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even by Him doth this man stand here before you whole." -Acts 4:9-10 [KJV] Peter and John were faithful preachers of the gospel. They were not afraid to meet men at their point of rebellion; they were preachers, not politicians. Peter could have said to the Sanhedrin court, "The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers hath made this man whole." He would have been right, everyone there would have agreed, and all would have been well. However, Peter and John would have been wrong, because they knew their point of rebellion.  They knew that those men refused to recognize Jesus Christ as God incarnate, as Messiah, and as Lord, and refused to admit their own guilt. Thank God for men like Peter an...

"And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace." -Acts 20:32 [KJV] Not only did Paul "commend" the church at Ephesus "to God," but he commended them also in an especial manner "to the word of His grace." There is a difference between "grace" and "the word of His grace." Nothing but grace can save the soul; nothing but superabounding grace can blot out and hide from the view of justice our aggravated iniquities. But "the word of His grace" is that word which brings this grace into the heart, which communicates life and power to the soul, which the Spirit by His inward teaching and testimony seals on the conscience, and by which He reveals and sheds abroad that favour of which He testifies. This is what the Lord's people  want. It is "the word of grace" that reaches their soul. It is not reading of grace in God's word that brings peace into their hearts; it is "th...

"That H e would grant unto us, that we being delivered out of the hand of our enemies might serve H im without fear, in holiness and righteousness before H im, all the days of our life." -Luke 1:74,75 [KJV] Holiness consists mainly of two points:   1. Being made a partaker of the spirit of holiness whereby, as born of God, we are made meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; set our affections on things above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God; have our conversation in heaven; put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him which created him; live a life of faith in the Son of God, and beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.   To be thus spiritually-minded, to be thus brought near unto God through His dear Son, to walk before Him in the light of His countenance, and to know something of spiritual communion with the ...

"THE WORLD BY WISDOM KNEW NOT GOD" -I Corinthians 1:21 [KJV] What did the philosophy of Greece do for its disciples? It made them ignorant worshipers of an "unknown God" (Acts 17:23) . The inscription on their altar published to the universe their ignorance and shame. How can I know God? Where can I find Him? Can science and philosophy tell me? Have they ever told anyone? No, never. "The world by wisdom knew not God." The schools of ancient philosophy could only plunge the human mind into darkness and hopeless bewilderment, and the schools of modern philosophy are not one bit better. They give no certainty, no safe anchorage, no solid ground of confidence, only hopeless speculation, torturing doubt, wild and baseless theory. That's all human philosophy in any age or any nation has to offer an earnest seeker of truth. How then are we to know God? If such a stupendous result hangs on this knowledge; if to know God is life eternal, and Jesus says it i...