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

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge" [PROVERBS 1:7 ] . Happy the soul that has been awed by a view of God's majesty, that has had a vision of God's awful greatness, His ineffable holiness, His perfect righteousness, His irresistible power, His Sovereign grace. Does someone say, "But it is only the unsaved, those outside of Christ, who need to fear God"? Then the sufficient answer is that the saved, those who are in Christ, are admonished to work out their own salvation with "fear and trembling." Time was when it was the general custom to speak of a believer as a "God-fearing man"-that such an appellation has become nearly extinct only serves to show whither we have drifted. Nevertheless, it still stands written "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear Him" [PSALM 103:13] ! -Gospel report by preacher Arthur W. Pink  Excerpt from ‘ The Sovereignty of God,’ c. 1918 A.D

"In Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." - COLOSSIANS 2:3 [KJV] What poor, blind fools are we by nature! How insufficient is all our earthly wisdom and all our natural knowledge, to guide us into the truth! When the soul really is under divine teaching, how ignorant it feels as to every single thing it desires to know! What clouds of darkness perpetually hang over the mind! What a veil of ignorance seems continually spread over the heart! The simplest truths of God's word seem hid in the deepest obscurity, and the soul can neither see the truth, nor see nor feel its personal interest in it. Now, when a man is here, he does not go to the Lord with lying lips and a mocking tongue, and ask Him to give him wisdom, merely because he has heard that other persons have asked it of God, or because he reads in the Bible that Christ is made of God "wisdom" to His people; but he goes as a poor, blind fool, as one completely ignorant, as one to

“ Now faith cometh not of our free-will; but is the gift of God, given us by grace, ere there be any will in our hearts to do the law of God. And why God giveth it not every man, I can give no reckoning of His judgments. But well I know, I never deserved it, nor prepared myself unto it; but ran another way clean contrary in my blindness, and sought not that Way; but He sought me, and found me out, and showed it me, and therewith drew me to Him.” – Gospel report by preacher Wm. Tyndale (1494-1536 A.D.)