Witnessing — A.W. Tozer

The Holy Spirit and the Christian Witness

Tonight I want to talk about the Holy Spirit and the Christian witness, and I'm very conscious as I begin my talk that a certain false cult has risen in the latter days that have taken this word witness and put a copyright on it before the Christian public and before the world, but I refuse to admit the validity of their claim or the rightness of their use of the term witness or witnesses.

Jesus’ Promise of Witness in an Unpopular Age

I want to use it in its biblical sense and in the sense that it is used here. Now our Lord said, Ye shall be witnesses unto me. And it is a touching and solemn thing that in the time of the exile of our Lord Jesus and the extreme unpopularity of God, for don't you fool yourself for a minute, everybody is talking about God, but God is extremely unpopular.

As long as God is around to help us when we need him, we'll talk about him and even pray to him in the world and in the popular church. As long as he keeps his place and doesn't intrude upon our plans, we're very God-conscious these days.

Radio, television, newspapers, magazines, politicians, everywhere, God's in this and God's in that, everywhere from being a co-pilot, which means second from the top, the pilot is first, co-pilot second.

On the up-and-down-the-scale, God is talked about, but that's the God who minds his own business except when you're in trouble. God is like the doctor that lives across the street. As long as he lets you along, he's all right except when you get sick and then you sin for him.

That's the God that men talk about today. And his son Jesus Christ in exile, he said that when he sent the Holy Spirit, the Spirit would witness to righteousness because he went unto the Father. It is such an insolent thing that in an hour like this, it is yet possible for some people to have the high honor of speaking for him among his enemies.

What It Means to Be a Witness

He says he shall be witnesses, and I want to talk a little about what it means, this witness. A witness is one who tells. He's not repeating stories, he's not presenting philosophical concepts. He is witnessing, he is telling something that he has seen or heard or experienced in some way.

Biblical Witnesses Describe Their Encounters with God

Isaiah witnessed by saying, I saw the Lord high and lifted up. Ezekiel witnessed by saying that he saw one sitting on a throne, and Peter witnessed by saying in the Tenth of Acts that the Lord had come back from the dead and that God had anointed him with the Holy Ghost and power before his crucifixion.

Then he had come back from the dead, and now he forgave whoever believed on him. John witnessed, and there were about 500 brethren at once, Paul said, who saw Jesus after his resurrection, and they witnessed.

All of them told what they had seen and heard. Now, he didn't tell what they had seen and heard or what they had experienced, and sometimes these are the same. You'll notice Paul's testimony had to do with what he had experienced.

Witness and Martyrdom

And the historic testimony given by the word witness is that the witnesses so often died for their witness that they were called martyrs, because the Greek word witness is the word martyr before we get our word witnesses.

So that because they witnessed and were killed for their witness so often, they said their witness was a martyr, and a martyr was a witness. It was the same thing. However, not all witnesses have died for their faith, but because so many did, the word witness and the word martyr has come to be very much the same.

And as Brother Newell knows, it's very much the same, is the same thing in the Greek language.