His Infinitude - Part 3 — A.W. Tozer

God’s Joyful Creativity in Light, Color, and Nature

He made the light, and the light gave us the colors. Put the light of the sun through a prism and it will break up into its seven major or seven primary colors, and then out of those primary colors you get all the colors you have.

I don't believe that a Christian woman ought to try to look like a Christmas tree. I don't think that. But I don't think there's any harm in wearing colors. Some of you dear old ladies won't like me for this, and you will want to pat on me good and say, What's happening to the old man, is he breaking up?

No, I'm not breaking up. I always believe this. I always believe in colors. I like to see color. I like to see it everywhere God made it all, and so God is enthusiastic about it. I find enthusiasm in the Godhead.

I see enthusiasm in energy. I used to preach about this, even used it for an illustration. They say if you take a glass of water, there are atoms enough in a glass of water to blow up a whole city. That sounded rather extreme, but one day a little fellow, a little sawed-off fellow with a sharp nose, gave the order, and some men flew over Hiroshima and dropped a bomb about as big as a glass of water and blew the city to bits and killed 120 ,000 people.

Just atoms, just the little atoms, that's all it was. It didn't happen to be H2O or something else, but just atoms. So I tell you, with so much energy in the world and so much ability to come back and make good after you've killed a thing, out in my state of Pennsylvania, the money-greedy dogs have gone out there, and here's what they've done.

They have gone and bought up the coal rights in certain sections of the state. Beautiful hills that I grew up to see and love, beautiful sun-kissed hills, sometimes misty blue in the setting of the sun.

I would see them there, and I, the boy, loved them. And the creeks, or cricks as we called them, that ran below and the little runs that ran out to the rivers and down to the sea, was all very beautiful to me.

But I went back to my old place here a few years ago, and I found that these money-hungry fellows had sold out the coal rights. And do you know what they did? They didn't dig a hole and go back after the coal.

They took bulldozers and dragged the top off of the earth, trees, grass, everything to get down to the coal and lifted the coal out. And the result was thousands and thousands of acres, whole hills that used to grow up with their green to meet heaven's blue, lay dashed like one vast grave that hadn't been filled in.

And the state of Pennsylvania said, You've got to fill it all in, or we'll fine you $300. And they looked at each other and grinned and said, It would cost us several thousand to fill it in, so here's your $300.

And they left it as it was. I went away, grief-stricken, to see my beautiful hills, now great, ugly sand pits. And I went back in a few more years. And do you know what nature had done, dear, old, busy, enthusiastic, fun-loving, joyous Mother Nature?

Do you know what she did? I don't know where she got the seed, and I don't know where she got anything. But I know she began to draw a green veil over that ugly dash. And now if you'd go back this summer, I think by this time, or certainly by next summer, it will have cured itself.

God Almighty put in nature the ability, when an evil man, loving money, would take bulldozers and steam shovels and gouge great, ugly holes in God's lovely creation, God gave Mother Nature the ability to go right back and in a few years, push a curtain of green over it and start the trees again, and now you can see nature.

You see, she's busy, she's enthusiastic, but there's no she, it's God, my brethren, it's God. We ought to stop thinking like a scientist and think like a psalmist. We'll get right with God when we think like a psalmist and an apostle, and stop thinking like a technician or a mechanic, because our trouble is we think like mechanics.

We say, Nature did this, and of course I've used expression, but I'm explaining by nature I mean God, enthusiastic over his work. So there is God working with color and sound and bodies and space out there traveling around.

Man can make them travel 25 ,000 miles an hour, but they are poor little old creeping oxtracts compared to the speed God gets out of them. These are some of those heavenly bodies, the way they go. And why did God go out there and say, Now get going fast?

I don't know, God was just happy in his creation, that's all. He looked and, Lord, it was very good. This infinite God was enjoying himself. Somebody is having a good time in heaven and earth and sea and sky.

Somebody is painting the sky old rose and cerise and blue and pink and white. Somebody is making trees to grow where only gashes grew a year ago. Somebody is causing the ice to melt out of the river and the fish to swim and the birds to sing and lay their blue eggs and build their nests and hatch their young.

Somebody is running the universe, and I believe I know who it is. I believe it's the Eternal Father, strong to save, whose power rules the restless wave. I believe that it's the Trinity, that it is our Father who art in heaven, Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

Creation, Incarnation, and Resurrection as Songs of Joy

God is having a good time in his world. And so let us not think any more of God as being heavy-browed and gloomy. I repeat that when God made the heaven and earth, they sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.

There wasn't a funeral at the creation of the world, there was an anthem, and all the creature creations sang. And at the incarnation they sang. I know some of these textualists, they shut you right up, they put a clammy, pasty paw over your happy mouth and say, psh, psh, psh.

Now, the angels didn't sing, Peace on earth, good will to men. According to the Greek, it says they said, Peace on earth, good will to men. But all you have to do is read that, brother. You can't read that without getting a little something that gets to move in you, and you get a rhythm, you get music in your heart.

Peace on earth, good will toward men, they said. That was singing, there was singing at the incarnation. And then at the resurrection there was singing. I will sing among my brethren, said Jesus in the psalm.

And when he rose from the dead, he doesn't tell us in the New, but it foretells it in the Old that one of the first things Jesus did was to sing. And one of the last things he did before he went out to die was to sing a hymn along with his brethren.

I'd love to have heard that hymn. You'll identify it, it's found in the Psalms, I don't know which one. Think about the rapture. You ever stop to think about the rapture? Some of you have got so far from prophecy, you've been scared out and intimidated and chased down the alley until you don't believe in the coming of the Lord anymore.

The pre-tribulationists and the post-tribulationists and the amillennialists and what have you have all scared a lot of you people, and scared me. I still believe Jesus Christ is coming back to the world he made and died for, still believe he's coming back and his feet will stand on that day where they stood once on the Mount of Olives.

You believe that? I believe he's coming back. Now, I'll admit that I don't go with everything I see in the Schofield Notes, and I'll admit that I don't go along with everything that everybody puts on the chart and stands up with a long stick and says, Now, this is this, and that's that, and the other thing is the other thing.

That's carrying it too far, brother. I don't want to know more than Isaiah. I'll be satisfied if I'm just a shade under Isaiah, but not more than Isaiah. So I'm not trying to know more than Daniel and Isaiah and John on the Mount of Olives.

I knew John was somewhere, but I'm getting tired and forgot where he was. Well, brethren, I believe he's coming back again. Everybody knows how to die, but never stop to think you'll be all mixed up when he comes to rapture.

It's going to be something that's never happened before. Lots of people have died. Old Jacob pulled his feet into bed with him and leaned on his staff and gave up the ghost and slept with his father. That was a dear, quaint, old way they had it in doing those days.

They slept with their fathers. Everybody slept with grandpa. And there they are, row on row, sleeping together. And that's the way they died. They knew how to die. You know how to die. You just lie down, and when it gets so that you can't live, you die.

So we're not too much worried about dying, but the rapture, I'll tell you, that's a hard one. What's going to happen? Here you are, sleeping out here, dear Mrs. Deet, sleeping over here, Brother Wood and Brother Moore, and all out here, Brother Gately, and all of these that we've known during the years.

They lie sleeping all around. And it's the Lord telling you, while you now join them, we'll go. We can't live forever, down here, I mean. And you'll die, but then coming up out of there, getting up out of there.

And if you're walking around on the street, and you hear the sound of the trumpet that's louder than the horn of a diesel engine, and you recognize that timber isn't earthly at all, it's heavenly, and it isn't even the music of the Spirit, it's the music of the voice of Jesus, the Son of God, and suddenly you're transformed.

Glorification and the Believer’s Response in the Presence of Christ

You don't know what to do. You don't know how to act, you can't find out anywhere. When they are going to be presented before the Queen, they know how to curtsy. You know, I couldn't do it, I'd fall apart.

But they do it, they curtsy, and they know how to approach Kings and Queens and Presidents and all other VIPs. But nobody's told us what to do when we get over yonder. And suddenly you're walking down the street and you're somebody else, and you look at yourself, no more warts, no more wrinkles, no more hollow holes, and you feel your head and hair that didn't used to be, and you're glorified, and you look away and see the Son of God, and you're like him!

And you don't know what to do. The people lying in their graves, what will they do? Do you know I know what they'll do? I mentioned this one time, where did I mention this? Trouble with getting around so much, you forget where you've been.

I mentioned it somewhere, and a man came up afterward, and I said, we were going to sing, sing, arise and sing ye that dwell in dust. That's what it said, arise and sing ye that dwell in dust, for the earth shall cast forth her dead.

And a man came to me and said, I heard a sermon, a great sermon preached one time called, Sing in dust, singing dust, that the dead who sleep in the dust of the earth shall rise and they'll sing, and it'll be singing dust that's going to be singing at the rapture, and there's going to be singing at the consummation, and that great day.

The New Song Centers on the Worthiness of the Lamb

Thou art worthy to take the book and to open the seals thereof, for thou wast slain and thou hast redeemed us. That's the theme of the new song. The theme of the new song isn't, I am, the theme of the new song is, Thou art.

You notice the difference? When you read the old hymnody of Wesley and Montgomery and Watts and the rest of them, it was, Thou art, Thou art, Thou art, O God, Thou art. Then when you get down to the modern hymns of the modern fundamentalists, it's, I am, I am, I am, I am.

It makes me sick to the stomach, all this I am-ing. I know we can testify, and we have a right to, and occasionally a good hymn of testimony is all right, too. But we've overdone it, because we've overdone almost everything else we've ever done anything about.

We've overdone it. So we've overdone this I am, I am stuff. My brethren, let me say to you that the joy of the Lord, the song of the ransomed is going to be, Thou art, Thou art worthy, O God, they said, to take the boat.

Thou hast redeemed us to God and has made us kings and priests, and we shall reign on the earth. And I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beasts and the elders and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, and you put on the blackboard how many that is, and I'll buy you a dinner.

I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders and the number of them was ten thousand. Well, isn't it strange that men are made, actually made? They've got such timber, and when I say timber, I mean timber here, they've got such timber in their head that instead of getting happy over this, they solemnly try to figure out who these deacons were, and these elders and beasts and these creatures.

And they write books on who they were and what they looked like. Isn't that strange? How dumb can a scholar get? I don't know about these creatures here. See me five minutes after the rapture and I'll tell you about it.

But now I just have to take it by faith. Thou hast made us kings and priests, and ye said, all these creatures, saying, worthy is the Lamb. Now, look at me, I'm wonderful, I'm happy, happy, happy, happy.

Christ as the Manward Face of the Infinite God

No. The Lamb, the Lamb is worthy. So that's the consummation. Well, my brethren, the infinite Godhead invites us into himself to share in all the intimacies of the Trinity. And Christ is the way in. The moon is geared this way toward the earth, relative to the earth, it's geared this way.

It turns, and the earth turns. But they turn in such a way that we only see one side of the moon, we never see the other. They're hoping to go around and see the other side, I'm not interested. It's the dark side.

But we see only one side of the moon. And I thought the eternal God is so vast, so infinite, extended out so far into infinitude, that I can't hope to know all about God and all there is about God. But God has a manward side, just as the moon has an earthward side and always keeps that smiling, yellow face turned earthward, so God has a manward side and always keeps that turned manward, and that side is Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is God's manward face, God's manward side. Jesus is the way God sees us. He always looks down and sees us in Jesus Christ. Then we go back to my quotation, Where Jesus appears, the blessed Trinity is understood.

Pressing Beyond Nominal Christianity Toward Perfection

Now I close, and I want to ask some questions. Are you contented with nominal Christianity? If you are, I have nothing for you. Are you contented with popular Christianity that runs on the authority and popularity of big shots?

If you have, if you are, I have nothing for you. Are you content with elementary Christianity, the beginnings, the elementary beginnings of things? If you are, all I've got for you is to exhort you earnestly to press on toward perfection.