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

A wealthy and philanthropic individual visits a prison and approaches the dungeon in which a wretched captive lies bound with chains and fetters, and strongly secured within walls, and doors, and bars. He proclaims loud to the captive that he has brought gold sufficient for a ransom on condition that the captive will liberate himself from his chains, burst open his prison doors, and come forth. "Alas," exclaims the wretched man, "your kindness does not reach my case. Unless your gold can effect my deliverance, it can be of no service to me. The offer of it on such terms can do me no good." Now, although there is a great difference between physical and spiritual inability, yet one serves to illustrate the other. Man by nature is as spiritually unable to believe in Christ as the prisoner is physically unable to break his chains and open the prison doors; so that all this boasted sufficiency of the atonement is only an empty offer of salvation on certain terms a...

“ We are saved out and out at once and wholly by what the Lord Jesus Christ has done, without ourselves having a hand in it. Outside of us is the blood that cleanses from all sin. Outside of us is the obedience which fulfills the law, earns our salvation, and cries, "IT IS FINISHED." OUTSIDE! We have only to look on Christ to be saved.” - Gospel report by preacher George Bishop

"And our hope of you is stedfast, knowing, that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation." - II C ORINTHIANS 1:7 [KJV] THE LORD HAS APPOINTED the path of sorrow for the redeemed to walk in. Why? One purpose is to wean them from the world; another purpose is to shew them the weakness of the creature; a third purpose is to make them feel the liberty and vitality of genuine godliness made manifest in their soul's experience. What am I, and what are you when we have no trials? Light, frothy, worldly-minded, carnal, frivolous. We may talk of the things of God, but they are at a distance; there are no solemn feelings, no melting sensations, no real brokenness, no genuine contrition, no weeping at the divine feet, no embracing of Christ in the arms of affection. But when affliction, be it in providence or be it in grace, brings a man down; when it empties him of all his high thoughts, lays him low in his own eyes, brings trouble...

"I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in M e, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without M e ye can do nothing." -J OHN 15:5 [KJV] Without a union with Christ, we have no spiritual existence; and we may boldly say that we no more have a spiritual being in the mind of God independent of Christ, than the branch of a tree has an independent existence out of the stem in which it grows. But you will observe, also, in this figure of the vine and the branches, how all the fruitfulness of the branch depends upon its union with the vine. Whatever life there is in the branch, it flows out of the stem; whatever strength there is in the branch, it comes from its union with the stem; whatever foliage, whatever fruit, all come still out of its union with the stem. And this is the case, whether the branch be great or small. From the stoutest limb of a tree to the smallest twig, all are in union with the stem and all derive life and nourishment from ...

"There is, therefore, now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus" -R OMANS 8:1 [KJV] THE FREEDOM OF THE BELIEVER is just what it is declared to be - ENTIRE EXEMPTION FROM CONDEMNATION. From all which that word of significant and solemn import implies, he is, by his relation to Christ, delivered. Sin does not condemn him, the law does not condemn him, the curse does not condemn him, hell does not condemn him, God does not condemn him. He is under no power from these, beneath whose accumulated and tremendous woe all others wither. A brief and simple argument will, perhaps, be sufficient to establish this fact. The pardon of sin necessarily includes the negation of its condemnatory power. There being no sin legally alleged, there can be no condemnation justly pronounced. Now, by the sacrifice of Christ all the sins of the Church are entirely put away. He, the sinless Lamb of God, took them up and bore them away into a land of oblivion, w...

"...Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that He Himself also is compassed with infirmity" -H EBREWS 5:2 [ KJV]   Thanks be unto God for our compassionate and faithful High Priest, Jesus Christ (H EBREWS 2:17) . Our blessed Saviour knows our frame; He knows that we are but sinful dust (P SALM 103:13-14) . But in spite of all that we are (P SALM 39:5) and all that we have done (R OMANS 3:23) the Lord is longsuffering and compassionate toward His children ( II PETER 3:9) . So much that He loves the unlovely ( ROMANS 5:8) , so much that Christ justifies the ungodly (R OMANS 4:5) , so much that the Redeemer died to save sinners (R OMANS 5:6) . We read that His compassions fail not and are new every morning (L AMENTATIONS 3:22) . We read when He saw a multitude of sinners as sheep that were scattered having no shepherd, He was moved with compassion (M ATTHEW 9:36) . What a blessed Shepherd the Lord has pr...

"The gospel of the grace of God." -ACTS 20:24 [KJV] What does the word "gospel" signify? Gospel is a good old Anglo-Saxon word, sprung from that pure Anglo-Saxon stock which forms the bulk, as well as the most expressive and precious portion of our noble language, of that language of which the daily lengthening line is gone throughout all the earth, and its words to the end of the world, our mother tongue, in which God seems to have set a tabernacle for the Sun of the gospel, whose going forth is from the end of the heaven and its circuit unto the ends of it. Its literal meaning is either "God's word" or message, or rather, "good news," or "good tidings," which is more agreeable to the original. But if it be "good news," it must be good news of something and to somebody. There must be some good tidings brought, and there must be some person by whom, as good tidings, it is received. In order, then, that the go...