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

"But now we see not yet all things put under H im." -H EBREWS 2:8 [KJV] It is God's special prerogative to bring good out of evil, and order out of confusion. If you were to watch carefully from an astronomical observatory the movements of the planets, you would see them all in the greatest apparent disorder. Sometimes they would seem to move forward, sometimes backward, and sometimes not to move at all. These confused and contradictory movements sadly puzzled astronomers, till Sir Isaac Newton rose and explained the whole; then all was seen to be the most beautiful harmony and order, where before there was the most puzzling confusion. But take a scriptural instance, the highest and greatest that we can give, to shew that where, to outward appearance, all is disorder, there the greatest wisdom and most determinate will reign. Look at the crucifixion of our blessed Lord. Can you not almost see the scene as painted in the word of truth? See those schemi

If all of God’s elect were “sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” [ H EBREWS 10:10 ] , could we do anything to make ourselves more sanctified? If our Lord Jesus by His one offering “perfected forever them that are sanctified” [HEBREWS 10:14 ] , could we do anything to make ourselves more perfect? If Jesus Christ “by H imself purged our sins” [HEBREWS 1:3 ] , could we possibly do anything to purge that which has already been removed? If the blood of Jesus Christ “cleanseth us from all sin” [I JOHN 1:7 ] , can we who are washed in His precious blood get ourselves any cleaner in God’s sight by our doings? These are questions the works-religionists cannot give a Biblical answer to. They have no love for the truth that they might be saved. “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness” [II THESSALONI

"He giveth power to the faint." - ISAIAH 40:29 [KJV]   The Lord often gives His people power to take a longing, languishing look at the blood and righteousness of Jesus; to come to the Lord, as "mighty to save," with the same feelings with which Esther went into the presence of the king Ahasuerus: "I will go in, and if I perish, I perish." It is with them sometimes as with the four lepers who sat at the entering in of the gate of Samaria: "And they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die? If we say, We will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die" [II KINGS 7:3, 4 ] . And so the Lord's people are sometimes brought to this state—"If I perish, I will perish at His footstool." If He give no