A Pastor's Telling of the Life of a.w. Tozer — A.W. Tozer

God’s Lordship and the Pursuit of God

So let us begin with God, back of all, above all, before all, first in sequential order, above in rank and station, exalted in dignity and honor. As the self-existent one, he gave being to all things, and all things exist out of him and for him.

Every soul belongs to God and exists by his pleasure, God being who and what he is, who and what we are. The only thinkable relation between us is one of full lordship on his part and compassion on ours.

We owe him every honor that is in our power to give him, our everlasting grief, giving him anything less. The pursuit of God will embrace the labor of bringing our total personality, conformity to his, and this not judicially but actually.

I do not here refer to the act of justification by faith, I speak of a voluntary exalting of God to his proper station over us and a wonder of our whole being to the place of worshipful submission, which the creator, creature, circumnavigates, makes proper.

That's tosa. Remembering my own deep imperfection, I can speak with charity of all who take upon them the worthy name by which we Christians are called, but if I see a right, the cross of Poplar is not the cross of the New Testament.

It is rather a new bright ornament upon the bosom of a self-assured and carnal Christianity, indeed the hands of Abel, but whose voice is the voice of Cain. The old cross slew men, the new cross entertains them.

Demned, the new cross amuses. The old cross destroyed confidence in the flesh, the new cross encourages it. The old tears and blood, the new cross brings laughter. The flesh, smiling and confident, preaches about the cross.

Before that cross it bows and towards that cross it points with carefully staged, but upon that cross it will not die and the reproach of that cross it stubbornly refuses to bear. I well know how many smooth arguments can be marshaled in support of the new cross.

Doesn't the new cross win converts and make many followers, play the advantage of numerical success? Should we not adjust ourselves to the changing times? Have we not heard the slogan, new days, new ways?

And who but someone very old and very conservative would insist upon death as the appointed way to life? It's interested in a gloomy mysticism that would sentence its flesh to a cross and recommend self-effacing humility to actually to be practiced by modern Christians.

These are the arguments along with many more flippants which are brought forward to give an appearance of wisdom to the hollow and meaningless cross of popular Christianity. And that is Tozer. We're familiar with those themes and many like them in the publication, Christian publications in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and of course Tozer will live on through those.

Tozer’s Family Background and Early Life

But who was A. W. Tozer? And he was born on a farm in April 1897 in a small community in Pennsylvania. The third of his grandfather Gilbert had emigrated to America from England 40 years before his birth.

He was called Ada, named after the husband of the closest friend of his mother, a shopkeeper. Tozer disliked the name, yet he named one of his sons Aidan. So he always used the initial A. W. I come from a fiery, nervous English strain.

Father had a temper like a trigger on an atom bomb and he could blow up. I've seen him take a shovel and beat a wheelbarrow in anger, just a wheelbarrow. There was something in the line from which I came that was almost anti-religion.

Moral, but not religious. Attitudes were cold, earthy, profane. But this I must say of both my high human standards, morality, but completely without any thought of God. God might have existed. My appearance appeared to be without a spark of desire after God.

They would hear from his father was, why did God create mosquitoes? So he had a tough happy on a farm, certainly the first 10 years of his life, and went to a single class, country school teen, and that was his entire education.

He had little Christian influence, except it appears from his father, who might have been a Christian, but little is said of her. But his mother's mother, she was a powerful, she had a dream book. And all her confidence was in this.

The first thing she did every morning before her cup of coffee was to take up her dream. She would have one or two dreams every night. And the first thing she did in the morning was to check this book.

It was in alphabetical order, so she'd look under A and turn to apples and find out what the dream would say of what was to happen that day. She had a sharp tongue, a lever in dog barks. So if a dog barked outside her window, she'd know someone would surely die that day.

That was the one influence of the supernatural or preternatural world then that he was aware of constantly. When he was 10, his older brother Zene went to Akron, Ohio, to work for the Goodrich Rubber Company.

He left the senior boy on the farm working, plowing. There was a great tragedy when the farmhouse burned through the pine chips on the fire, and the sparks set the shingle ablaze, and he led his younger brothers and sister to safety.

He lived there five more years, and then in 1912, all the family followed Zene to Akron, and totally went to work at 15 years of age in the Goodrich Rubber Company with his father and his sister. There was a streak of cynicism in him in those days.

It was completely eroded from him. He took it into the kingdom of God with him. He got it from the agnostics in his school and in his place of employment. He always approached people with a question mark.

Tozer’s Conversion and Early Christian Service

He went on to attend church in Akron with his younger brother and sister. He went to the Sunday school, and then in 1915, just before he was converted, the human instrument was an old man standing on the pavement, preaching to people as they passed him, and urging people, what he could remember of it, urging people to cry, merciful to me, a sinner, and God used those words.

He went home when he tells it himself, speaking of the mystery of God's dealings in bringing us all to a knowledge of himself. Can you tell me why then, at the age of 70, always surrounded by unbelief 100 percent, I could find my way to my mother's attic, kneel on my knees, and give my heart and life in Christ?

Can you tell me how I could be thoroughly and completely converted without help from anyone on the outside? I came to faith in Jesus Christ. There wasn't a single human being to help. There was nobody with a marked New Testament showing me how easy it is.

No friend placing an arm over my shoulder to pray beside me. I can't answer the question why. I can only testify that Jesus Christ was as real as any man's conversion has ever been. You tell me why. I don't know why.

I can only say there's such a thing as the secret working of God in a human being. And then he applies it then. He's preaching this. Oh, you feel the tug of God in your breast. What a happy man you should be.

What a marvelous and mysterious privilege if you feel the inner tug of God in your bosom. Whisper. There are not many men here to be on God's prospect list, to be on God's active list for inner working and do something about it.

Remember, a thousand men work where you work. Perhaps you're the only one who feels that tug. God yearns over. Listen, they won't hear. They kill it within them. If it's still alive and tugging at your heart, thank God.

Follow the light from every soul by sin oppressed. There's mercy with the Lord. Well, then he joined Grace and Akron. And then he was baptized in the Church of the Brethren. And he began to witness street preaching groups, prayer meetings.

And then a period of coldness then came into his life. He decided he'd run away with a friend. They went on a little boat on the down river. They weren't sure where they were going till the boat capsized and he lost all his possessions.

He came back a humbler boy. His sister Effie was also converted at that time and said about him, he lived the most consistent Christian life I've seen. The Methodists frowned upon his and there was tension.

And so he transferred his membership to the congregation of the Christian and Missionary Alliance. And the pastor of Gatien, Gero, had a considerable influence over him. And Tosa was very typical of the best of the CNMA.

The Christian and Missionary Alliance and Tozer’s Ministry

It was the only board he ever served on, the board of management of the CMA. He was the vice-president from 1946. And he resigned in 1950 when there was talk of making him president. From 1950 he was editor of the national paper, the Alliance Witness.

Now the Christian Missionary Alliance, it really comes out of the 1850s and what followed in those next 40 years in America. It was founded by A .B. Simpson. A .B. Simpson, who was a Canadian and ministry at Knox Seminary in Toronto, graduated in 1866 at 23 years of age and went then to Knox in Hamilton.

And he was one of the Victoria phenomena. In three years, the growth of that church, he brought in 750 new members in three years. When he was 30, he went then to Louisville, Kentucky. He was involved there in evangelism, healing after the Civil War.

36 he went to the 13th Presbyterian Church in New York. And there was tension in the first year in that congregation as Catholics working class were converted and came into the church. And within two years, he resigned and started a new work in the Caledonian group.

So eight years later, the great gospel tabernacle was built for him as an independent evangelical work. And around that time, two societies were formed that he was connected with, the Christian Alliance and the Evangelical Missionary Alliance.

After 10 years of independence, they merged in 1897. And so they went, which they did not want to be known as a denomination. They were not a denomination, they always said, but of course they were. And the gospel tabernacle, and there the fourfold gospel of the Christian and Missionary Alliance was preached, Christ the Savior, first sanctifier, and coming King.

The entire sanctification of believer, body, soul, and spirit, the crisis of the deeper light, no eradication of the sinful nature, that was the strand then of second blessing teaching. For the sick with anointing of oil, the premillennial return of Christ, and it's Bible colleges there, and the NIAC, and then St. Paul's Minnesota.

It has about 1500 churches now, 100 ,000 members. That's the Christian and Missionary Alliance then, of which Tozer was such a representative personality. So, with the thought life of that group, but he was far broader than the theology of that group, and it was to the church fathers, and to the evil writers, that of course he found the experiential Christianity that his heart yearned for, and of course some seriousness with which he always viewed Christian things.

When he was 21, he married his wife Ador, sons, and finally a daughter came along when he was 41 years of age, and his mother-in-law was a very godly woman who had influence over him. He saw in the next couple of years both his father and mother, and two of his sisters, and shortly after he was married, he was called up and served then in the American, a year at the end of the First World War.

When he returned home, his gifts were recognized in the denomination, and in February he was appointed as a pastor in the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in West Virginia. He'd been converted four years, and he had nothing whatsoever.

He was 22 years of age, and he was pastor of a church in West Virginia, and you find in his all these warnings, giving young, professing Christians tasks and duties and responsibilities straight away.

Anyway, that's what happened to him, and it happened to many people in the New Testament too. So his first pastorate, three years. Second year, third pastorate, five years. Then in 1928, he came and began his great long ministry of 31 years, outside Christian and Missionary Alliance Church in Chicago.

It was a very blessed ministry, the capital of the North of America, north of the USA, a city where Moody College is, and Wheaton is, Fort Wayne College is, and later the Evangelical Divinity School, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.

Naturally there, Wheaton gave him a doctorate in 1950. It's a very educated, cultural city of second-hand bookshops. It's a city with a marvelous symphony orchestra and universities, and he, in fact, read so widely, compensated for the lack of education that he had had, leaving school at 14.

He gave himself to preaching. He rarely visited. He rarely called. Once when he called, an elder who was shot up in bed and said, I'm not that sick, am I? Never took a vacation. In 1941, they built a new auditorium there, and then when Wilbur Smith went off to Fuller, I faced him on the Moody Bible Radio program each week, a very popular program, talks from a pastor's study, and he would always stand in the study in the church to give those talks week by week.

A bit of a loner as a personality, he would often withdraw. Old family. A married monk he was described as. Didn't have a car, never bought a car. His, really, his chauffeur would drive him around. He'd go with his books, and he would read to the assistant from the books, and they would discuss Shakespeare, and as they drove.

Never owned property, never involved in business, and sometimes would refuse in salary, and, of course, he had strong opinions about absolutely everything. In 1959, his own ministry had come to an end in Chicago.

There was a new building program. It was the South Side there, and racial change going on in that area, and they were talking about a new site and moving out, and he felt they needed a younger man, 62, and he accepted a call to Toronto, to Avonlea Road Christian and Missionary Alliance.

I saw the building in April, and out to me it's now the Hare Krishna building for Toronto. They moved out to the Christian Missionary Alliance to a suburb, and there it was. Then after a three-year ministry there, he died on May the 12th in 1963, thrombosis, as in the morning, was taken to hospital, and he died that night.

Tozer’s Preaching, Pastoral Character, and Church Life

Let me say something to you now about his ministry. Chicago church was in a downtown area. It was a blue-collar area, white-collar area, people of stances around that church. The church building which was erected during the years that he was there was very plain, not quite stark, completely functional.

The essential simplicity of the building emphasized the seriousness of mass in that church, and the serious intent of the man who was there bringing that message. Tosa was slight, not striking at all in his appearance, always wore very plain clothes, browns, greys.

His close friend, once you've got the expression of a hound dog and you walk like Mickey Mouse. I once asked Dr. Lloyd-Jones if he'd heard him, and he said to me, no, I never heard him, but friends of mine from the chapel, they heard him, and they were a bit disappointed because of the grammar that he used.

After the articles that they'd read, they expected it to be very, very serious, his preaching. Well, my friend who was a member there for three years, Joe, told me that he had a terrific sense, not really on himself, most of all.

He spoke, for example, of a woman who wrote to him when he was editing the Alliance, and she looked forward to the paper every week because his page is exactly covered the floor of her Paris page. The worship services were devout and dignified, but that feeling that the Lord was present in the midst.

My friend can remember one morning service when he finished priesthood, not with a prayer even, and not with a closing hymn, but wanted the impact of what he'd said to them, with them. He loved, of course, the great hymns, and those were always his choice, and would listen in Tent Sunday, and kept a vial of oil at the front of the church for anointing in their understanding of James chapter 5.

But there was no evidence that he ever asked for anointing himself when he had his heart condition. He was a respected heart specialist in Chicago. His daughter Becky was the apple of his eye. He wasn't pleased when she began to wear lipstick, and one day he went into a room, and he put himself, and came down, and smiled across at her.

She was furious, but she continued to her, I think. And the effect of his ministry then was very varied. Some did that, didn't understand what he was saying year after year, but many were affected. My friend was one such, and he tells me, it was in that church that I met laymen who I could feel instinctively had an intimate working relationship with three persons of the Godhead.

One man was a foreman in a large machinery factory. The workers were organized by the most aggressive military in the USA, and yet Neil managed these men. He kept his shop on schedule without a cross or loud word.

He was respected by his men. His calm holy aura was with him at home, at work, all due to a close walk with God. Joseph would say that he was a preacher. You often hear that. You often hear ministers saying they don't feel themselves at ease with people.

They're not a people person. With their books. I doubt them. Once they say that, they know what is to be expected of them. And I think that Tozer was wonderful with people. He was very acceptable to young people.

There was a young people's convention in Chicago with 1 ,000 people attending it, 1 ,000 teenagers, 1962, half past, they met. And one who attended it wrote him a letter. And you know, you later, this young teenager who's heard this man speak and writes to him, I wish I could have gone with you and your dad hunting deer, many deer down in Pennsylvania.

I wish I could visit you in California and see your new rifle and bike. That 4-H is a fine organization. Each year, some of those boys and girls exhibit their steers. Two years in a row, the same girl won the blue ribbon for the best steer.

She received a lot of money for it, about $14 ,000. Said she was going to lay it aside for a college education. Never worry about losing a basketball game. The best teams lose at times. But in the long run, the best ones win most frequently, and the worst ones lose the most games.

I really enjoyed and hope to hear good things about you as the years go on. Learn to discipline yourself like a prize fighter or a big league ball boys are too soft, don't like to do anything they don't enjoy doing.

Sometimes we have to do what we don't like, and that's good for us. Lincoln was a good started young to learn everything he could. He read and thought and got ready. If he'd wasted his time loafing, he wouldn't have become what he was.

Christian Discipline, Conscience, and Obedience

Another letter comes in then, and he replies again, I was converted at 17 and served the Lord. In addition, there are seven children in our family, all of whom have passed through the teenage period. So you see, I should know quite a lot about the problems of young people.

Your ideas of right and wrong will develop as you go on with God. And some things you will undoubtedly drop. Some things about which you now have a conscience, you may later see as being completely harmless.

To obey the scriptures where they're plain, and obey your conscience where the scriptures are not plain. Further light may come and change your attitude towards such things. But no amount of light can change the plain instruction of scripture, for they are themselves light.

When you say the Christian life is hard, you're merely repeating what the saints of the ages have found. To follow Christ is to carry a cross, and the cross is never easy. Read these two following passages prayerfully.

Exodus 23, 20 to 33, and Isaiah 54. I shall pray that God may give you a heart and make you an outstanding Christian, and a light to your generation. Well now, that was a wonderful letter. Of a man with a pastor's heart, who can find time to write like that, to a teenager who's heard him speak, and when he says he was a preacher at home in the pulpit.

I know all of us can say that. But when you read his writings, he's writing with a great sense of pastoral responsibility and care for the church of Jesus Christ. About his preaching, he never shouted.

He had this clear voice, and it carried its message to a building, so that no one present could miss it. There are cassettes available now. I've got a cassette here. Let me just give you a sample of him.

Tozer’s Preaching and the Power of Spoken Words

We get cassettes, sermons, de-unctionized, don't they, the preaching. There's something missing when a man gets to speak, and you only hear his voice. Well, let me just put on 20 seconds or so of of Tozer preaching here.

These cliches that we have, these cliches, just repeating the same old cliches again. Well, one of the things I do is not do that, and some people are startled and run and never come back, but others come to see this great sight, and wonder how it is.

You can say something and not sound like a preacher in saying it. Well, I've worked on that all my life, until I was 18, but I sure tried hard not to sound like one.

I like the voice of his preaching. Leisurely and easy to hear, not constantly looking down to a manuscript. A leader has to speak out of himself, doesn't he? Not out of a script, or of his audience. And pause, be kind, and be still.

Carry on with the flow. And I like that about Tozer's preaching. And you can only do that sort of thing if it's absolutely natural, if the concepts are your own. The power of a spoken word, how immense it is, in Goebbels' diaries, even in the days of the bunker, Goebbels is writing in his diary, and he's saying, to make a speech, has the Fuhrer decided to speak?

It was like a call to battle. Germany, the Third Reich, was collapsing all around, the only hope that the Fuhrer would speak. Words of Churchill that could save Britain, words that destroyed Germany. No words of Ceaușescu at the end could save himself in Romania.

Church Discipline and Tozer’s Emphasis on Holiness

Once that's fied and hooted out, he was a dead man, the massive revulsion against him and his word. Let me say something about his attitude and church discipline. If there was a weakness with him, it was his love of peace, his hatred of controversy and division, and he'd seen enough in fundamentalism.

My friend told me that there was, in 1954, a young married woman in the church who left, who was also in the church, and went off with another man who was in the congregation. There was a relationship then with him.

He was her boss. It was a very serious situation, and he went and talked to my friend and even used the word pig to describe the woman and her behavior. And he was asked about church discipline, but he said that if the church was at a proper spiritual level, then those sinners left out, or they would leave the church to follow their sinful ways.

They did disappear. They'd been under that ministry, and he reckoned they were responsible for their behavior, and theirs, and theirs alone. And that's how my friend recounts that, and well, I'd like to ask a lot more questions about that.

What went on behind the scenes, and what visits were made, and how were the broken partners in those marriages pastored during that time? Certainly today, church discipline seems so ineffective, even in as blatantly sinful as those that were described.

Let me say something about his emphasis on holiness. All his writings, his complaints about the 20th century, that Christianity was carnal and worldly. And one of his reasons was that the Scofield Bible had Christians into two groups, carnal Christians, over whom Christ was not Lord, sinning Christians, and then sinners, who knew the Lordship of Christ.

He was bitterly scathing of Christianism, not because of its eschatology, but because he was convinced its morality was defective, and made men come with their sins, gave them a theological reason for their sinfulness.

You know, one of his sermons, 1 Peter, a book of sermons on that is called, I Call It Heresy, and he has a sermon on, as obedient children, not fashioning according to your former lusts in your ignorance.

And he's very scathing in that sermon, was that, say they have taken Christ as Savior, and then later on in a separate act of will, take him as Lord. And he says, how can we insist and teach that our Lord Jesus Christ can be our Savior without being our Lord?

How can we teach that we can be saved without any thought of obedience to our Sovereign Lord? I'm satisfied that when a man believes on Jesus Christ, the whole Lord Jesus Christ, not making any reservations, I'm satisfied that it is wrong to look upon Jesus as a kind of sinner, to whom we can go when sin has made us sick, and after he's helped us to say goodbye, and go on our own.

Brethren, I believe in a deeper Christian life and experience, oh yes, but I believe we are mistaken when we try to add the deeper life, imperfect salvation, obtained imperfectly, by an imperfect concept of the whole thing.

I'm afraid of God through such men as Wesley. No one ever dared to rise in a meeting and say, I'm a Christian, if he hadn't surrendered his whole being, and had taken Jesus Christ as his Lord, as well as his Savior, and had brought himself under obedience to the will of the Lord, it was only then I'm saved.

Today we let them say they're saved, no matter how imperfect and incomplete the transaction, with a proviso that they're tacked on at some time in the future. Can it be that we really think that we do not owe Jesus Christ our obedience?

We have owed him our obedience ever since the second we cried out to him for salvation, and if we did not give him that obedience, to wonder if we were really converted. This is bad teaching, brethren.

It's deception. Let us look unto Jesus our Lord, high, holy, wearing the crown, Lord of Lords, King of Kings, having command, full obedience of his saved people. And then he says the same thing about the phrase, accepting Christ.

So concerned about that then, how you don't find that phrase in Scripture. Spiritual life has been in a low state, and in many cases people are passing along the word about prayer for revival. But here's an odd thing.

No one raised the question such as, perhaps the reason we need revival so badly is the fact that we didn't get started right in the first place. Question the wide use of this soul-winning catchword. Will you accept Christ?

Just bow your head and accept Christ. I actually was told of a group of preachers in a hotel dining room. When the issue of soul winning came up, one of the preachers said, it's the easiest thing in the world.

I'll give you a demonstration. Went to the table. This brother said, can I have a minute of your time? Waiter said, yes sir. Are you a Christian? The preacher asked. No sir, I'm not a Christian. Wouldn't you like to be a Christian?

I haven't thought too much about it. You know, all you have to do is to accept Christ into your heart. Will you accept him? Well, I guess so. All right, then bow your head for a moment. So while the man who had been placed in a corner and is thinking most about his tip in a prayer is, now Lord, here's a man who wants to accept you, and he's taking you now as a savior.

Bless him real good. Amen. So the waiter gets an enthusiastic handshake. His job, and he's just the same as when he came into the room. But the demonstrating preacher turns to the group and says, it's a simple matter.

See how easy it is to lead someone to Christ. I think there are matters about which we must be legitimately honest, and in which we must seek the discernment of the Holy Spirit. I hope that that waiter had better sense than the reverend, because if he did not, he is dead.

There are things about which we cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to still be lost, and far from God. This is death and eternity. When we are considering the importance to any human being of a right and saving relationship to Jesus Christ, we can't afford it.

I think there's much abuse, and that it's a great misconception to try to deal with men and women in this shallow manner. We know the great importance of conviction, and concern, and repentance when it comes to conversion, regeneration, being born from above by the Spirit of God.

Evangelical Worldliness, Graham, and the Call to Obedience

So that then is sight, and insistence that he has. The theme of godly living. The failure of Americanism. His final message on the last Sunday of 1956, which my friend heard. He said there that evangelical Christianity is, and the man who would be God's man must stand up, be counted, and get out of it.

He lacked the gift to be really effective. There was more humility in the pub, he said, than in evangelicals. He said it seemed to him that seminaries were teaching students courses in how to overcome humility.

Evangelicals had been so suspicious of good works and righteousness. Who is then from the pulpit? Self-righteousness. And puppets were saying, good people go to hell. Heaven. And that's a great distortion of scripture.

It's those who admit their sin, and confess their sin, and sin, who are saved. Those who refuse, and claim to be good in themselves, can't be. So sin in these ways was being made acceptable. There was biblical risk being given for sin.

Protos are always speaking out against carnality and worldliness amongst evangelical fundamentalists. The obligation of the church, he said, was not first to speak the gospel. That wasn't the first obligation of it, but it was to be spiritually worthy to spread the gospel.

I remember Carl Henry wrote the book, American Fundamentalism, and 40 years ago, what was that crisis? Well, that crisis, there was no social conscience, social action. That was the crisis of American fundamentalism.

And talked about that with Dr. Lloyd-Jones once, and he said to me, he thought that fundamentalism was worldliness. Well, that is exactly Tozer's emphasis. Now, his split with Billy Graham was on a different, his split was in 1954 over Graham's insistence that he had to work with all kinds of theological and beliefs when he came into a town to take an evangelistic crusade.

And Tozer, and he was repeatedly phoning him, and seeking to get his backing, asking him, is this the will of God? And when Tozer told people that he had his discernment, and Tozer then finally told Billy Graham not to phone him again, it appeared that Billy Graham was going to come and take a crusade in Chicago.

He joined a group of ministers that signed expressing their opposition to the merits of Billy Graham's crusades. In fact, Billy Graham didn't lead the crusade in Chicago until 1962, when Tozer had left and was then in Toronto.

He had the same opposition then to the Christian and Missionary Alliance entering the Association of Evangelicals, the sort of Evangelical Alliance of America. And he opposed very strongly the CNMA because it consisted of many men who were in in denominations that were modernism and didn't seem to be doing anything to combat the dominance of modernism in those denominations.

So there were these great themes, ministry, holy living, obedience to Christ. And he preached through the books of the Bible, the attributes of God for 30 years, but always centered on the Bible. He told a graduate of a theological college who came to him for advice about preaching about an oath to preach the Word only.

This young man, he said, was in a church and the crowds were average and he was preaching much growth. Then one day a cyclone hit the little town. So he yielded to the temptation. He put a big notice outside the church, why God owns the center bill.

And the church was passed that Sunday. They took the young preacher then and he went back to see his professor for further advice. Told him, should he continue then to preach the Word of God to smaller crowds or should he try to fill the church by preaching sermons that were more sensational?

And the old man looked at him and shook his head and said, if you preach the Word, you'll always have a text. Cyclone, you won't have enough to go around, he said to him. All right, then. His first book in 1942, when he was 45, was called Windspread and it was the popular biography of A. B. Simpson in the Christian Missionary Alliance.

That was his first biography. A few years later then, one of the missionaries that had gone out from them, Robert Jaffray, missionary to the Pope, his biography. And then there were really the three books then that you will all have, I'm sure, that were written as books.

The Pursuit of God, The Divine Conquest, 1950, and then finally Knowledge of the Holy in 1961. He died. There were two chapters written of a book called The Chief End of Man about God creating man as a worshiper.

That important theme. Well, let's just look briefly at those three books, my thoughts about them. Pursuit of God. The center of that book, it seems to me, is the question, why do some persons find Christians don't?

Why does God manifest his presence to some and let multitudes of others struggle along half-lifes of imperfect Christian experiences? He's asking that. Of course, there's an element of divine sovereignty in it.

But this is what he says, I venture to suggest that the one vital quality which they had in common was spiritual captivity. Something in them was open to heaven. Something which urged them Godward. Without a profound analysis, I shall say simply that they had a spiritual awareness and that they went on to cultivate it until it became the biggest in their lives.

They differed from the average person that when they fell to the inward longing, they did something. They acquired the lifelong habit of spiritual response. They weren't disobedient to the heavenly vision.

As David put it, God said, seek ye my faith. My heart said unto thee, thy faith, Lord, will I seek. I think that's, again, a very helpful insight that behind all our goings on, there is God coming to us.

When we find ourselves dry, when we find ourselves restless, when we find ourselves at the Lord's house and longing to hear his word, a longing to meet with his people, that eagerness for God's blessing again to be renewed, behind that, there's a God.

There's a God who's created those things in us that he is to meet in our lives. We are simply to the initiative of grace. And then in the book, The Divine Conquest, the first on the weakness and the sinfulness of the church.

Those chapters are very fine. And the first part I found on being filled with the Spirit. I didn't find those so helpful. I'll come back to that in a moment. And then the third book on the knowledge, it's a book on the divine attributes.