The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God (AW Tozer Series Book 2)

by A.W. Tozer

With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence.

The words, “Be still, and know that I am God,” mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshiper in this middle period of the twentieth century.

It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate. If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as He is.

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

the most portentous fact about any man is not what he at a given time may say or do, but what he in his deep heart conceives God to be like.

Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God,

In Him word and idea are indivisible.

That our idea of God corresponds as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us.

Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.

the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him.

Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.

The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him.

The idolater simply imagines things about God and acts as if they were true.

Perverted notions about God soon rot the religion in which they appear.

The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God.

her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind.

The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him – and of her. In all her prayers and labors this should have first place.

Left to ourselves we tend immediately to reduce God to manageable terms. We want to get Him where we can use Him, or at least know where He is when we need Him.

Faith is an organ of knowledge, and love an organ of experience.

“What is God like?” If by that question we mean “What is God like in Himself?” there is no answer. If we mean “What has God disclosed about Himself that the reverent reason can comprehend?” there is, I believe, an answer both full and satisfying.

For while the name of God is secret and His essential nature incomprehensible, He in condescending love has by revelation declared certain things to be true of Himself. These we call His attributes.

By it is meant simply whatever may be correctly ascribed to God. For the purpose of this book an attribute of God is whatever God has in any way revealed as being true of Himself.

It is an answer to a question, the reply God makes to our interrogation concerning himself.

When asked in reverence and their answers sought in humility, these are questions that cannot but be pleasing to our Father which art in heaven.

the answers by no means lie on the surface. They must be sought by prayer, by long meditation on the written Word, and by earnest and well-disciplined labor.

We must break ourselves of the habit of thinking of the Creator as we think of His creatures.

if we permit ourselves to think with the wrong words, we shall soon be entertaining erroneous thoughts; for words, which are given us for the expression of thought, have a habit of going beyond their proper bounds and determining the content of thought.

“As nothing is more easy than to think,” says Thomas Traherne, “so nothing is more difficult than to think well.” If we ever think we...

The harmony of His being is the result not of a perfect balance of parts but of the absence of parts.

All of God does all that God does; He does not divide himself to perform a work, but works in the total unity of His being.

Before that burning bush we ask not to understand, but only that we may fitly adore Thee, One God in Persons Three. Amen.

as the presence of God in the fiery pillar glowed above the camp of Israel throughout the wilderness journey, saying to all the world, “These are My people,” so belief in the Trinity has since the days of the apostles shone above the Church of the Firstborn as she journeyed down the years.

“I believe that Christ died for me because it is incredible; I believe that he rose from the dead because it is impossible.”

He may compare Scripture with Scripture until he has discovered the true meaning of the text. But right there his authority ends. He must never sit in judgment upon what is written.

After the meaning is discovered, that meaning judges him; never does he judge it.

God can never become less than Himself. For God to become anything that He has not been is unthinkable.

To admit that there is One who lies beyond us, who exists outside of all our categories, who will not be dismissed with a name, who will not appear before the bar of our reason, nor submit to our curious inquiries: this requires a great deal of humility, more than most of us possess,

The fact of God is necessary to the fact of man.

Sin has many manifestations but its essence is one. A moral being, created to worship before the throne of God, sits on the throne of his own selfhood and from that elevated position declares, “I AM.” That is sin in its concentrated essence; yet because it is natural it appears to be good.

This “What shall we do?” is the deep heart cry of every man who suddenly realizes that he is a usurper and sits on a stolen throne.

“Purity of heart is to will one thing,” said Kierkegaard,

But the truth is that God is not greater for our being, nor would He be less if we did not exist. That we do exist is altogether of God’s free determination,

God needs no defenders.

To be right we must think worthily of God.

It is morally imperative that we purge from our minds all ignoble concepts of the Deity and let Him be the God in our minds that He is in His universe.

Then truth which now appears to be in conflict with itself will arise in shining unity and it will be seen that the conflict has not been in the truth but in our sin-damaged minds.

He needs no one, but when faith is present He works through anyone.

Enlarge and purify the mansions of our souls that they may be fit habitations for Thy Spirit, who dost prefer before all temples the upright heart and pure. Amen.

to think again the thoughts of prophets and apostles, so full were they of the long dreams of eternity.

an attempt was made to slay a truth to keep it quiet lest it appear as a material witness against an error.