Holy Spirit Given From Heaven — A.W. Tozer

Divine Things Must Be Received From Heaven

John answered and said, A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven. A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven. Now this text states two things. It states that we have not the ability to apprehend divine things.

And it states that the ability is, can be given to us from heaven. I want those two thoughts to lie in your mind while I talk. That we have not by nature the ability to apprehend divine things but that the ability to some is given from heaven.

The Human Intellect Cannot Apprehend Spiritual Things

Now let's begin by saying that the realm of the spirit is closed to the intellect. I wish that I might have an opportunity to talk to all the teachers. I'm going to be able to talk to the teachers of Ontario one of these times forgotten when somewhere here in the city.

As many as will be attending of the public school teachers. But I wish that all of the church people might hear this. That the realm of the spirit is closed to the intellect. And it's not difficult to understand why.

Because you see, the spirit is the organ by which we apprehend divine things and the human spirit has died. It's dead because of sin. You see, when I say that the human intellect is not the organ by which we apprehend divine things, I'm not saying anything very profound.

But I'm saying that which can be understood easily. For instance, if there were a symphony being played just now, you don't hear that symphony or you wouldn't hear that symphony with your eye. Because God didn't give you your eye to hear with.

He gave you your eye to see with. If there were a beautiful sunset in, as there no doubt is, about here, at the time of the going down of the sun, you wouldn't enjoy that with your ear because God didn't give you your ear to hear sunsets with.

He gave you your ear to hear music and the voices of your friends and the laughter of children and birdsong and all things beautiful and good. He gave your ear to hear all things that can be heard and he gave you your eye to see what can be seen.

But he never confuses the two. You do not hear with your eye nor see with your ear. Therefore, if a man stands up and says, the realm of nature, visible nature, cannot be apprehended by the ear, nobody wonders, nobody jumps up and says, that man's a mystic.

That's just common sense. It's ordinary scientific fact. So when I say that God did not give you your intellect to apprehend him with, the divine, divine being with, but that he gave you another organ altogether, then there's certainly nothing profoundly queer about it.

Scripture on the Spirit's Revelation

Let me read to you from the word of God. Sometimes when you've heard a thing explained and you read the scripture, scripture come alive to you. Ever read this passage. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. In 1 Corinthians 2. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Now hear that. The natural man, that is the psychical man, the man of mind, the man of intellect, he cannot understand or receive the things of the Spirit of God, they are foolishness to him, and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

God gave a spirit to apprehend him with, an intellect to apprehend theology with. There's a difference. Then in John 16, Jesus said, I have yet many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth, for he shall not speak from himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come.

He will glorify me, for he shall receive of mine, and shall show it unto you. Now that's perfectly plain, that the Spirit of God is the one who reveals God to us, who reveals Christ to us. In 1 Corinthians 2, we have a passage there also that tells us.

Now I'll read quite a little Scripture tonight, because I don't want you to go away trusting in the words of man's wisdom, but rather in the wisdom of the Scriptures and the power of God. Howbeit, he says, we speak wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world that come to naught, but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world and unto our glory.

But as it is written, eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. Isn't it strange how many times we stop when we should go on, and go on when we should stop?

And here's one of the places where people stop. We memorize that verse and put a full stop after the word to him. God hath prepared for them that love him. And then we stop there. But the Bible doesn't stop there.

It has a little conjunctive but there. It says,. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man understood, but God hath revealed it by the Spirit.

The spiritual things are not apprehended by the eye. They're not apprehended by the ear. And they're not apprehended even by the intellect. But they are revealed by the Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yea, the deep things of God.

And he uses an illustration. And he says, What man knows the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him. Now you see that's what we call intuition. There's a word we oughtn't to be afraid of.

I'm not afraid of words. Stuart Chase wrote a book called The Tyranny of Words. And I read the book. And along with that and the help of God and a few other things, I'm not afraid of words. I don't run from words.

I am not afraid of the word intuition. And intuit. Because that's how you know you're you and not somebody else. Did you ever think of this? Now this is kind of silly, but I'll put it in here. Did you ever stop to think, did you ever stop to think that you never dream you're somebody else no matter how weird the dream is and how upset everything is and how all mixed up you are?

You never dream you're somebody else. A man said once that he dreamed he was a butterfly. And then he woke up. And now he said he's all mixed up. He doesn't know whether he's a butterfly dreaming he's a man or a man dreaming he's a butterfly.

That all sounds very cute, but the simple fact is no man ever dreamed he was a butterfly. Always you maintain your individuality, your ego, your id, your you. You're always you in your dream. How do you know you're you and not somebody else?

If you were to walk up to 14 other men who looked exactly like you, it wouldn't stun you at all. You'd grin and you'd say, isn't this an amazing coincidence that 14 other men look exactly like me? My wife wouldn't know the difference.

It would be. But you wouldn't wonder which one you were. You wouldn't suddenly begin to drool and your hair go wild and they'd send for the man in the cap. Uh-uh. You'd maintain your individuality because you intuit your individuality.

You don't run to the old family Bible to find out who you are. You know who you are. Now, of course, if you're left an orphan, you might not know who your parents are. But as far as your individual self is concerned, you know who you are by intuition.

Mark Twain said once that he got a young fellow aside and by logic, by making him say yes and no to questions in the Socratic method, he finally succeeded in proving to the young fellow that he was his own grandmother.

But that, of course, was Mark Twain. But the truth is you can do that because, listen to this, what man knoweth the things of the man save the spirit of the man which is in him. You know what you are and who you are and even if you didn't know your name and even if you were visited with, uh, what's the disease that takes away your memory, you would still know you were you.

You intuit it. You know you're alive. You don't reason that you're alive. Well, Rene Descartes said, I think, therefore, I am. But that was silly because he knew he was long before he ever reasoned to it.

He knew he was by an intuition. Now, that's what's the matter with the church in our day. We forget that there's something that you can't get a hold of with your head and we run around with our heads always trying to lay hold of things with our mind.

Now, the mind is good. God put it there. He gave you a head and he didn't give it to you so your glasses could be on it and your hat, he gave it to you. He put brains in your head and the organ we call the intellect has a work to do.

But if that work is not apprehending divine things, that's of the Holy Ghost. That's why you can take a fellow and get him converted, really converted, and after that you can't argue him out of it. Well, the world stands.

He knows he's converted. He intuits it. The Holy Ghost tells him within deep in his heart. He doesn't have to have three or four fellows beat him on the back and stick a marked New Testament under his nose.

He knows he's converted by the inworking of the Holy Ghost that intuits it. He knows it. Now, he said, even so, the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. God knows himself and the Holy Ghost knows God because the Holy Ghost is God and no man can know God except by the Holy Ghost.

Those are the words of the man Paul. I see that I'm a field here and I'll never get through this tonight but I'll do my best. I've got material enough here for a book, a hundred and fifty pages, and I'm trying to pack it into forty minutes.

But we'll do our best. Trust God. Now, to disregard what I'm talking about is to shut out spiritual things entirely from our understanding. Spiritual things are hidden behind a veil, according to this, and the Son of Earth can't get hold of them.

He comes up against a blank wall. He takes doctrine and text and proofs and creeds and theology and he lays them up like a wall but he can't find a gate and he can't find any light. He stands in the darkness and all around about him is the intellectual knowledge of God but not the knowledge of God.

There's a difference now. The intellectual knowledge of God. We wonder why it's possible to grow up in a church and learn the catechism and get all done to you that they do to you. We like churches. They like to serve and to please.

That's our moral hope. And we do everything from sprinkling the baby on down to the last rites. And we'll do anything that's in reason for a fellow. But after you've done all that you may not know God at all.

You may not know him at all because God isn't known by those external things. You're blind. You're blind. You can't see because the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God. Now there's been a great blunder in modern orthodoxy and it is the erroneous assumption that spiritual truths can be intellectually perceived.

Bible Study Requires Divine Illumination

And of course there has been very far-reaching conditions that has resulted from this very far-reaching. It has shown itself in our preaching and in our praying and in our singing and in our activity and in our thinking.

But it's an error to believe that Bible study can remove the veil. When we go to Bible school we want to learn theology. New Testament introduction, Old Testament introduction, New Testament synthesis, and Old Testament synthesis.

They name them wrong names and I suppose the kids who study it think they've got something. And they could have something provided they had the divine illumination of the Holy Ghost. But until they receive that illumination, that inward enlightenment, they don't have anything because Bible study does not of itself lift the veil and penetrate it.

For it doesn't say that no man knoweth the things of God save the man who studies his Bible. It says no man knows the things of God except the Holy Ghost. So it is the Spirit who wrote the Bible who must inspire the Bible.

Let me give you a little motto. I've been around so long now and written so much that I can't recall sometimes whether I said it or whether I'm quoting. So if I said this, why, it's all right. But if I didn't say it, why, I will give a little wave of recognition to whoever did so not to plagiarize.

But here's the thing. Here's the thing I want you to get. That it takes an act of the Holy Ghost before I can understand a text, it takes an act of the Holy Ghost equal to the act that inspired the text.

Now, I mixed that one up. I'll back out and try again. It's a snowy weather and the wheels don't hold. But here's what I'm trying to say. That to understand a Bible text takes an act of the Holy Spirit equal to the act that inspired the text in the first place.

I don't know where I got that or whether I thought it up myself, but it's true. You will find two texts here. Listen. 2 Timothy 3 .16 which says that all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable.

John 3 .27 which says no man can receive anything from heaven except God. Anything except God revealed to him from heaven. But we're in a state of error. We're in a state where we believe we can talk each other up.

And we put things down on a level with man. And we say that a preacher is a salesman. He's outselling the gospel. And I've even heard people talking about gossiping the gospel. Gossip the gospel. I think that's hideous.

I wouldn't use it in a graveyard for a stray dog. But they do anyhow. They say gossip the gospel. I don't believe them. I don't like that at all. And don't tell me that the method of God in winning men is the same method that a fuller brush salesman uses in selling a back scratcher.

Don't tell me that, brother, because I don't believe it. The Holy Spirit operates on another realm all together. And the method of winning a man to God is a divine method and not a human one. But we can make proselytes and church members and get people over on our side joining our class and going to our summer camp and have done nothing to him but make a proselyte out of him.

But when the Holy Spirit works in a man, then that man, God does the work. And what God does, the scripture says, is forever. But we imagine that we can handle it by the flesh, and so we do handle it by the flesh, and the Lord lets us do it.

We can hold the Christian creed and not know God and know the doctrine of the alliance and not know spiritual things at all. Now, there are fearful consequences, I say. And one of the consequences is that many people know about God but don't know God.

Knowing God Rather Than Knowing About God

There's a difference between knowing about God and knowing God. I remember saying that once before here, so I'll go easy on it, not be too repetitious. But the difference between knowing about and knowing and know, there's a vast difference.

I can know about your relative in Saskatchewan but not know him, not know him, never have met him, never know the touch of his hand or the look of his eyes or the smile of his face or the sound of his voice, only know about him.

You can even show me his picture and tell me, describe the man to me. And still, I don't know the man, I just know about the man. You know, a scientist, say, Faber, for instance, knows bugs. He knew bugs.

He wrote books on bees and worms and other bugs and various kinds of creatures. A bee isn't a bug, is it? But it'll do for tonight. And yet, Faber never knew a bug, never. He never could get through to them, you see.

You can know all about your dog and never know your dog. He'll smile at you, he'll stick your red tongue out and pant, and he seems to be intelligent, but he is a dog. And you have no organs, no technique for getting into his world.

Externally, you can comb him and wash him and feed him and trim his ears and you can know him externally, but you never can know your dog. And your dog can never know you. He can know about you. He can know when you're glad and when you're angry with him.

He can know when he's done the right thing and done the wrong thing. And sometimes, I think, dogs have a conscience almost as good as people. But still, the dog dies and never knows the man. They say the great English Sir Isaac Newton, who wrote his great works, you know, on mathematics and astronomy and all the rest, that he had a little dog that was with him everywhere all the time.

His little dog was always with him. And he had a very great manuscript that he had spent labored years on, this Isaac Newton. He had it there and, of course, he had a can, not a candle, with oil in it for the days of electric light.

And the little dog got to bouncing around on the table when he was out for a moment, spilled the oil, and his manuscript burned up. Now, Newton came over, they said, patted the dog on the head, I think I had to chase him up an alley, but he patted the dog on the head, and he said, Little dost thou know the damage thou hast done.

Let the little fellow off. Little dost thou know the damage thou hast done. Then he wrote the book over again. Why, the little dog couldn't know that manuscript. He didn't know anything human. He only knew things canine.

So you can know about God and you can know about Christ dying for you. You can even write songs and sell them to Rodeheaver Company. All about, By his grace I'll see his face upon the tree he died for me.

You know. Anybody can write them. I could write a yard of hymns between now and midnight after church service and sell them. But I wouldn't do it or I'd be caught dead doing it. Too many people are doing it now.

But you can write hymns, you can write books, you can head this and be the president of that and found this religious thing and still never know God at all because only by the Holy Ghost can we know God.

It's possible, I say, to know about him and not know him. And then a second consequence of this error of which I spoke is that we have two Christs. The Christ of history and of creed and story and song.

Christ Revealed by the Holy Spirit

The Christ we sing about, the man upstairs or the baby Jesus or what have you. And then there is the Christ which the Spirit reveals. You see, you never can piece Jesus together out of historic knowledge.

You never can do it. You can read your New Testament and still never find Christ in it. You can be convinced that he's the Son of God and still never find Christ. Christ is revealed by the Holy Ghost.

No man knows the things of God but by the Holy Ghost. Jesus said, I have lots of things to say but I can't say them now. But when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will take the things of mine and reveal them unto you.

And I'd like to say this to you, brethren and sisters in Christ, that a revelation of the Holy Spirit in one glorious flash of inward illumination will teach you more of Jesus than five years in a theological seminary.

Though I believe in the seminary, you know. You say, seminary? Keep it right and don't misunderstand and think it's a cemetery. Keep it right and it'll be all right. But you can learn about Jesus in the seminary and you can learn lots about him.

And we ought to learn lots about him. We ought to read everything we can read about him. For reading about him is legitimate and good and a part of Christianity. But the final flash that introduces your heart to Jesus must be done by the Holy Spirit or it isn't done at all.

Remember this, you only know Jesus as well as the Holy Spirit is pleased to reveal him to you. For he cannot be revealed any other way. Even Paul said, Now know we Christ no longer after the flesh. The Church cannot know Christ except as the Spirit reveals him.

The Christian Life Is a Supernatural Life

Now a third thing is that the Christian life, a third consequence, evil consequence of the blunder that modern orthodoxy, modern fundamentalism, that we know God with our minds, the Christian life is conceived to be much like the natural life only, you know, jollier and cleaner and more fun.

So the faith of our fathers has been identified with a number of questionable things. One is philosophy, the modern evangelical church. Oh, I speak for them. I was up at Minneapolis, as you know, and talked for them up there.

And I say the same things to them that I say about them, so I think that's fair and Christian. But I think that this modern neo-intellectual movement that is trying to resurrect the church by means of learning is about as far off the track as it's possible to be because you don't go to philosophy to find out about the Lord Jesus.

Now Paul happens to be, happened to be, one of the most intellectual men that ever lived. I read once a book somewhere or a chapter in a book or something where it was said that a consensus among a great many learned scholars was that St. Paul was one of the six greatest intellects that ever lived.

He was one of six. I personally think maybe he was the wisest and the greatest intellect that ever lived, barring, of course, our Savior whom we never classify with other men. But even the man Paul said, when I came to you, I came not with wise words of men's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and the power.

You see, if you have to be reasoned into Christianity, some wise fellow can reason you out of it. But if you come to Christ by a flash of the Holy Ghost so that you intuit that you're God's child, you'll know it by the text, but you'll know it also by the inner life, the inner illumination of the spirit.

Nobody can ever reason you out of it again. Up until I was maybe 33 or 34 years old, I read more books on atheism than I did on Christianity. I had my Schofield Bible and a hymn book and a few other books, Andrew Murray and Thomas A. Kempis and a few others.

But I got myself educated, you know, as well as I could, by reading books. And I read the philosophy of all the great minds, the great men, all those fellows, many of them didn't believe in God, you know, didn't believe in Christ, certainly.

And I used to read books. I read White's Warfare of Science with Christianity, or Christianity with Science. And if a man can read that and still say he's saved, he isn't saved by his reason, he's saved by the Holy Ghost in him telling him he's saved.

Well, I used to read those books when I was a young fellow and didn't know much and don't yet. But they take away all my reasons, you know, and reduce me to palpitating ignorance. And I've, any other way, you know, a man would just get down and he'd walk out and close his Bible, toss it on the shelf and say, now there goes another one of that, goes along with Santa Claus and Jack Frost and a few other things he used to believe in.

But you know what I used to do after reading up on, reading a chapter or two that I couldn't answer and have him argument that I couldn't possibly defeat? I'd get down on my knees and with tears I'd thank God with joy that no matter what they say, Lord, I know Thee my Savior and my Lord.

I didn't have it in my head, I had it in my heart and there's a difference there, you see. If we have it in our head, well, then, of course, philosophy will help us. But if we have it in our heart, there isn't much philosophy can do except stand reverently, hat in hand, and say, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.

Well, then there's science. Science is called upon to prove Christianity. We just came through one of those long tunnels when the evangelical church was running to science to get some sort of help, not knowing that everything that's divine in Christianity is exactly what science has, no technique for investigating.

The thing that the science can investigate isn't divine and the thing that's divine science can't investigate. Oh, science can make sputniks and science can make tape recorders. There's one running through.

I'm running backstage here now taking this wandering sermon down. Hope they'll anchor it and get it on tape. Science can do those things, but all of that's nothing. Christianity is a miracle, a wonder, something out of heaven, something let down like Peter's sheep, not depending upon the world nor being a part of the world.

It's something from the throne of God like the waters of Ezekiel's vision. And science knows nothing about that. Science stands back and looks it over and doesn't know what to say. If we don't have this inner intuition, if we don't have this miraculous thing, then we run to science.

And the poor preachers, God help them, they have tried to prove over the last years the miracles you know. They want to believe the miracles. I believe them all, but I don't believe them because science permits me.

I believe them because God wrote them in the Bible. And if they're there, I believe them. But, you know, some fellow finds a fish washed up on the shore and he measures its gullet, gets himself a tape measure and crawls inside the bony skeleton and measures its gullet.

And he finds out that it's as broad as the shoulders of a man. And he goes out and says, See, Jonah could be swallowed by a great fish. See? The unbelievers are wrong. God did make a fish. Fish are big enough to swallow Jonah.

Well, listen, brother, why go to tape measures and fish to find out whether what God says is true or not? If God did the thing, I could believe that Jonah swallowed the whale. It wouldn't make a bit of difference to me, not a bit of difference.

Some fellow, a Scotsman I heard about. Now, I won't do a Scots dialect because some of you have Scottish backgrounds and you'd laugh in my face if I tried any Braid Scots. I do it down home where Braid Scots is not so well known.

But they say there were two scientists talking walking down the street. One of them said, You know, that we have investigated, we have searched into, and we weighed and measured and so on. We have found that the story of Jonah, of Balaam, I speaking, is all false.

The larynx of a donkey could not possibly articulate human speech. And this Scotsman had all he could take. So he went up and he said, Mom, you make a donkey and I'll make him talk. There you have it, brother.

If God can make a donkey, God can make him talk. Well, I don't know. He's science films and all that stuff. You know, it's cute, all right, and it's nice for a high school kid, but it doesn't prove Christianity.

Christianity stands or falls on Jesus Christ. It stands or falls on the illumination of the Holy Ghost. Peter could have reasoned until the cows came home and not known anything, but immediately the Holy Ghost came on him.

He jumped up and said, God has made this man Jesus whom he crucified, Lord and Christ, and knew by the Spirit of God. Well, we've passed that over because I can get awful sarcastic about that because I don't like the way they're doing it.

And then we, because we haven't inward illumination, we have not the Holy Spirit, we patronize human greatness, you know. The whole literature has grown up around the notion that Christianity may be proved by the fact that great men believe in Christ.

If we can get a hold of a politician who believes in Christ, why, we get him all over our fundamentalist magazines and say Senator so-and-so believes in Christ, the implication is that if he believes in Christ, then Christ must be all right.

When did Jesus Christ have to ride in on the coattail of a senator? You ask me that. To find some half-converted cowboy out from that Sodom and Gomorrah called Hollywood, California, get him to say a nice thing about Jesus and go to the microphone and say everybody ought to go to Sunday school, immediately break into print and all the poor dumb fundamentalist print his testimony.

When did Jesus Christ have to come in on the testimony of a half-converted actor? No, no, my brother, Jesus stands alone, unique and supreme, self-validating, and the Holy Ghost declares him to be God's eternal Son.

And let all the senators and all the presidents and all the kings and queens and lords and ladies of the world, along with all the great athletes and great actors, let them kneel at his feet and cry, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.

Only the Holy Ghost can do this, my brethren. For that reason, I don't bow down to great men. I bow down to the great man. And if you've learned to worship one man, you won't worship other men. Well, then, human propaganda method, but I think I've said enough about that.

Entering Past the Veil Through the Holy Spirit

So you see, it's either the Holy Spirit or darkness. The Holy Spirit is God's imperative of life. And if our faith is to be a New Testament faith, if Christ is to be the Christ of God rather than the Christ of history, or to be both, then we have to enter in past the veil.

We have to push in past the veil until the illumination of the Spirit tells our hearts, and we are learning at the feet of Jesus, not at the feet of men. Now, this passage over here, I'd like to read.

But the anointing which ye have received of him abided in you. And ye need not that any man teach you, but as the same anointing teaches you all things, and is truth and is no lie. What does that mean?

Ye need not that any man teach you, for that same anointing teaches you. Now, the man who wrote that was a teacher. That didn't mean that God ruled out all teachers, for, as I shall show some to your two away, the gifts of the Spirit, one of them is a teacher.

So, the Bible makes provision for a teacher. And I'm a teacher. I wouldn't be standing here by the rules as a teacher, where many of you are teachers. So this doesn't rule out teachers. What it says is that your knowledge of God is not taught to you from without.

It is received by an inner anointing. And you don't get your witness from a man, you get your witness from an inner anointing. He said, The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto you that are saved, it's the power of God.

For it's written, I will destroy the wise and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. After that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty. And the base things of the world he has chosen, and the things that are not to bring to naught the things that are of that no flesh or glory in his presence.

So you see, the Holy Spirit rules out and excludes all Adam's flesh, all human brightness, all human personality, all that scintillating personality, and human abilities, and human sufficiency. And it makes Christianity depend upon a perpetual miracle.

The man of God, the true spirit-filled man of God is a perpetual miracle. He's a man from Mars. He's somebody that isn't understood by the people of the world at all. He's a stranger. He's a Hebrew from beyond the flood.

He has come into the world by the wonder of the new birth and the illumination of the Spirit. And his life is completely different from the world. And he lives now, and you know, if you want text for that, I've gone a long way around to say what Paul said.

What did he say here in 1 Corinthians? I want to quote it correctly if I can. He says, He that is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. The spiritual man has a penetration that judges everything, but he himself can't be judged by anybody.

For who hath known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. That's simple. What are we going to do now? Are we going to go home and argue about this or talk it over, say it was good, say it wasn't good, say it was too long or too short or whatever?