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

"And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom." - I CORINTHIANS 2:4 [KJV]   It is not the work of the Spirit to produce doubts and fears, but to overcome them. And yet we are continually subject to them. Infidel thoughts fly across the mind; doubts and questionings suggest themselves Satan is busy in plying his arguments; a guilty conscience falls too readily under his accusations; painful recollections of past slips, falls, and backslidings strengthen the power of unbelief, so that to come to a spot wherein there is not the least shadow of a doubt of divine realities, and, what is far more, of our own interest in them, is a rare circumstance, and only attainable at those favoured moments when the Lord is pleased to shine into the soul and settle the matter between H imself and our conscience . But these very doubts, these very questionings, these cutting, killing fears, these anxious surmisings work together for good, and ar...

When Adam sinned, the Lord provided a sacrifice to die in the stead of the fallen man and his wife. "Unto Adam also and to his wife did the L ORD God make coats of skins, and clothed them" [GENESIS 3:21 ] . The Lord killed and skinned animals in order to cloth our guilty, naked parents. The animals were innocent of any rebellion against God and thus was implemented a vital truth seen throughout the Bible: if the guilty are to be delivered from judgment, an innocent victim must die in their place . In chapter four of Genesis, we find Abel offering to God "of his flock" [vs. 4 ] to die in his stead. While Abel was a guilty sinner, the animal was not and it was sacrificed to God as his substitute. Hundreds of years later, when the Passover lambs were slain, God commanded that they be "without blemish" and to make certain there was no imperfection, the lambs were to be kept up four days for inspection [EXODUS 12:5-6 ] . Of course none...