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

" Those He predestined, He also called; and those He called, He also justified; and those He justified, He also glorified." -Romans 8:30 [KJV]   The justified sinner stands the closest to God, of any created being in the universe. Nearer to the throne of the Eternal, he cannot stand. What marvelous love! Who will dare assert that salvation is not, from first to last of free, sovereign grace! Let your eye pierce the veil which falls between earth and heaven. Behold that shining, worshiping being, standing so near to the throne of glory, bathed in the overpowering effulgence of its rays! Who is he? He was once a sinner upon earth, the vilest of his race, the dishonored of his generation, forsaken by man and abhorred of God. But Jesus met him, and divine love drew him, and sovereign grace rescued, pardoned, and saved him! And now washed from all his guilt by the blood, freed from all condemnation by the righteousness of Christ he stands before the throne "blam...

"Faith brings God into the scene. Therefore, it knows absolutely nothing of difficulty; it laughs at impossibilities. In the judgment of faith, God is the answer to every question; He is the salvation to every difficulty. Unbelief says, how can such things be? Unbelief is full of flaws; but faith has one great answer to ten thousand hows‘, and that answer is God Almighty."      -preacher Joe Terrell   http://www.sermonaudio.com/source_detail.asp?sourceid=gccrvia

"He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory." - I Samuel 2:8  [KJV] A man can never reach heaven unless he travel heavenwards, Zion-wards, in the way that God has marked out for His people to walk in. It is a delusion to think that we are going to heaven unless we know something of divine teaching in the soul. But if we know anything of divine teaching, we know what it is to be poor and needy, we know what it is, more or less, to have our mouth in the dust. But many people do so mistake the way to heaven. The ordinary way is to set up a ladder to reach from earth to heaven, and progressively clambering up the different rounds, at last to climb up into the abode of God. But that is not the way of God's people. They have to go down, down, down, that they may be raised up. It is not with them first "up, up, up," to scale the battlements of heaven....

" Although I am a sinner, yet I despair not; for Christ, Who is my Redeemer and my Righteousness, liveth. In Him I have no sin, no fear, no sting of conscience, and no fear of judgment; for in Him there is no condemnation. I am indeed a sinner as touching this present life; but I have a righteousness of God which is above this life, Who is Christ my Lord. In Him I rejoice!”  -copied