Tozer Speaks: Volume One: 128 Compelling & Authoritative Teachings of A.W. Tozer

by A.W. Tozer

But this book comes to you with a presentation for the very first time of Dr. Tozer’s creative pulpit material, faithfully giving you his own thoughts and colorful expressions as he spoke them in his Chicago pulpit.

Dr. Tozer was many things to many people—but never neutral!

There isn’t anything quite so chilling, quite so disheartening as a man without the Holy Spirit preaching about the Holy Spirit.

And I revolt from hearing the hyphenated adjective “born-again” tossed around lightly by people with their manufactured smiles, and just heading for the nearest restaurant!

But the new birth is a miracle, a major miracle. It is a vital and unique work of God in human nature. It is the creating of a new man in the heart, where another man has been. It is the putting of a new man in the old man’s place, and we are born anew!

Man was made in the image of God, and while sin has ruined him and condemned him to death forever unless he be redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ, mankind is a being only one degree removed from the angels. But sin, God knows, is like a cancer in the very being of man.

Man, made in the image of God, is now a dying man. He is sick unto death, because of the poison of sin.

Why does God love sinners? He loves them for that which He sees in them of His lost and fallen image, for God can never lose anything but Himself, directly. He loves everything else for His own sake. So, you are loved of God—but you are loved of God for Jesus’ sake!

The Scripture says that God made man in His own image, and when Jesus Christ was incarnated, He was incarnated in the body of a man without embarrassment and without change.

The devil sinned in a way not quite like man’s sin. He sinned in some way that erased forever everything of which God could be proud and in which God could rest, so that God no longer loved the devil. He sent no redeemer for him. There isn’t anything in Satan that could remind God of Himself.

God loves all lost men now—in prisons, in asylums, in saloons, in houses of ill-fame. He loves them now because the last trace has not been erased, and He still remembers that His Son on the tree had a body like theirs.

What the combined forces of hell can’t do, the church can do. Love of money, love of the world, unconfessed iniquity, private sins that no one dreams we have—these are destroying the Church of Christ.

These are the words of the Saviour: “When the light that is in you turns to darkness, how great is that darkness!”

Israel did not reject the Lord because of philosophical reasons. Israel’s rejection was for moral reasons.

The man who continues in his rejection of Christ has a pet sin somewhere—he’s in love with iniquity.

Jesus said: “For everyone that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light lest his deeds should be reproved.”

The Bible links faith to expression and faith that never gets expression is not a Bible faith.

Science and philosophy are more arrogant and bigoted than religion could ever possibly be.

I am in favor of a generation of Christian thinkers—Christian philosophers, if you please—and by that, I mean that the children of God should have hold of the truth of God.

Paul has been reckoned by men who are supposed to know as one of the six great thinkers of all time.

I repeat, that there never has been any woe ever visited any world as bad as this.

I don’t believe that Communism can ever destroy Christianity, if Christians will really live like Christians.

There is no such thing in heaven as Sunday worship—unless it is accompanied by Monday worship and Tuesday worship, and so on all down the line, right through the week.

I grant you, sir, that it can be true worship, provided that on Monday and Tuesday and the other days you also experience the blessings of true worship.

You can worship God at your desk, on an elevated train, or driving in traffic. You can worship God washing dishes or ironing clothes. You can worship God in school, on the basketball court. You can worship God in whatever is legitimate and right and good.

We can go to church and worship. But if we go to church and worship one day, it is not true worship unless it is followed by continuing worship in the days that follow.

We cannot pray in love and live in hate and spite, and still think we are worshipping God—no, sir!

Remember, there is no magic in faith or in names. You can name the name of Jesus a thousand times, but if you will not follow the nature of Jesus, the name of Jesus will not mean anything to you.

It says that God is holy and eternal and omnipotent and omniscient and sovereign, and that He has a thousand sovereign attributes.

Faith and love and obedience and loyalty and high conduct of life—all of these must be taken as burnt offerings and offered to God.

For where there is not worship there is discord from the broken strings.

Reverence is a beautiful thing, and it is so rare in this terrible day in which we live.

Pride and arrogance sometimes get into the church of God, and that’s bad, brother!

First,

second

This is serious. Never say “yes” or “no” to anything while you are discouraged. Don’t resign your job. Don’t sell your property. Get down before God and get straightened out. Ask God to roll the clouds away and take the defeat out of your spirit, and the reverses out of your heart.

third,

fourth

Even religion—yes, fundamental religion—seems to be built around the idea that Jesus Christ did all the dying, God does all the justifying, and you and I can just romp our way to heaven, with nothing expected of us and no questions asked. Don’t believe it! Don’t believe it!

“I want no other argument, I want no other plea; it is enough that Jesus died, and that He died for me!”

Some universalists believe only in the restoration of all human beings to blessedness—not only Christians, but all human beings will be finally saved and blessed.

He does understand, because He became one of us, and walked among us.

I, for my part, can’t afford to face Him as my Judge; I must have His protecting blood, and face Him as my Saviour.

If we could have the Apostle Paul on tape recordings and let him stand here and preach, he could do no more for you than the Holy Ghost can do, with The Book and the human conscience.

The truth is you wouldn’t have been better off if you had been here when Jesus was on earth.

The Crooked Foundations Will Betray Man’s Civilization

In Psalm 82, the Psalmist declares that God is standing among the mighty, that He judgeth among the rulers, and that He is not pleased with what He sees. He sees oppression and injustice and a poverty that’s imposed, and He sees an ignorance that cannot be excused, and a darkness that enshrouds the minds of men. And he sees dying, and dying, and dying.

And any revival that can come to a nation and leave men as worldly as they were before, and as engrossed in human pleasures, is a snare and a delusion.

We are Christians first, and Americans second.

Jesus Christ was here upon the earth, God’s Lamb being tested.