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

"Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you, and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints ." -Jude vs. 3 [KJV] In this day of blasphemy, lukewarmness, and indifference, we are seeing how few want the completed revelation of truth. Nothing is superfluous in the sphere of truth. Jude 3 states three important facts:  (1) This is God’s final gift of objective truth.  (2) It is once-for-all given.  (3) It is given to the saints of God.  Saints are to struggle in behalf of God-given truth. Giving up any part of truth makes a saint guilty of a breach of allegiance to Christ. Giving up any part of Scripture to please oneself, or in order to keep the company of its opposers, results in giving up other parts of truth. The Bible is the one and only standard. It is essential to maturity (see II Timothy 3:16, 17) , and it is not contin...

"And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment" (Philippians 1:9, KJV). Love is especially the effect of knowledge; and love we know is a fruit of the blessed Spirit. As then the Lord the Spirit is pleased to open up the precious truth of God to the soul, love embraces what the Holy Ghost reveals. Thus there is a knowledge of the only true God by the teaching of the Spirit. But our love is to abound not only in knowledge, which is the foundation of it, because if there is no knowledge of the Lord there can be no love to the Lord or His people, but also in all feeling, in all sense (- perception, discernment ) , in all experience. Spiritual knowledge, therefore, and experimental feeling are the two feeders of Christian love; the two streams, as it were, that run side by side out of the very throne of the most High, and meet and melt into that boundless river, love. And it is by this union of knowledge and experience...

"They made me keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept." -Song of Solomon 1:6 [KJV] My soul, now the day is over, sit down, and look back on the employments of it. What a day hath it been? What portion of it hath been engaged in the service of thy Lord, and the improvement of thy soul? How wholly occupied in the busy and imperious demands of the world, the care of the body, and in procuring the bread that perisheth! Surely the complaint of the church is thine also. Keeper of the vineyards of others, thine own goeth to waste! And of what avail, in the path of grace, if though occupied by a thousand things in the aid of others, thou art making no progress in the heavenly road by thine own soul? Are not the peace of thy life, and the glorious expectation of a better, to be advanced in the knowledge and enjoyment of Jesus? If I lose sight of Thee, Thou dear Immanuel; if the lively actings of faith upon Thee be remitted, will the recollection of ...

" Forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord." -I Corinthians 15:58 [KJV] Christian knowledge is the source of comfort, and the spring of obedience. The knowledge of God’s love to us in Christ, received into the heart by faith, animates us to be, and to do, what the Lord calls us to in our lives. St. Paul appeals to Christians, Ye know—what? that you are called, not to loiter, but to labour: not to stand idle, but to work: not merely to talk of the truths of Christianity, but to walk in the ways of the Lord. But what constitutes it the sweetest of all labouring, working, and walking, it is the labour of love, the work of faith, and the walk of hope. And we have Christ’s presence and power in all.  We know, we are fully persuaded, we are divinely assured, our labour is not in vain: for it is in the Lord. It is begun by His grace, tarried on by His power, IN sweet fellowship with Him, IN love to Him, IN dependence on Him, IN assurance that we a...