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

All people are ignorant of something. To be ignorant is to be without knowledge and understanding of something. The scientist may have great knowledge in many areas but he may be ignorant as to how his car works or how to fix it. But there is a common and very deadly ignorance that we abide in and bear witness of apart from the grace and power of God upon us. Paul confessed it and attributed his deliverance from it to God’s grace alone. Before Christ coming to him in His saving power, he was an educated, religious and moral man who trusted in his own works of religion, nationality and morality to commend him to God. But when God revealed Christ to and in Paul, he says, “ I was before a blasphemer” and trusted my own works of righteousness “ ignorantly in unbelief” [I TIMOTHY 1:13 ] . The unbelief he spoke of was ignorance of God’s truth. Ignorance of Christ who is the Truth. We are ignorant of the most important things when we are ignorant of who God is, what...

"My people are bent to backsliding from M e." -H OSEA 11:7 [KJV] What an awful error it is to deny backsliding! What ignorance it manifests of a man's own heart! How it stamps a man as a perverter of truth, and one that trifles with sin and the displeasure of the Most High! Who that knows himself and the idolatry of his fallen nature, dares deny that he backslides perpetually in heart, lip, or life? Can any of us deny that we have backslidden from our first love? backslidden from simplicity and godly sincerity, backslidden from reverence and godly fear, backslidden from spirituality and heavenly-mindedness, backslidden from the breathings of affection and pouring forth of the heart into the bosom of the Lord? And if we have not been suffered to backslide into open sin, if the Lord has kept us, and not suffered us to be cast down into the mire, yet have we not committed that twofold evil which the Lord charges upon His people: "They have forsaken M e, the fo...