Tozer and the Knowledge of God

The late great A. W. Tozer on knowing God:

There are certain topics that we can never have enough of. And there are certain authors that we can never have enough of as well. In this piece I will run with both. My topic is the knowledge of God, and my author is A. W. Tozer. Let me begin by discussing the author.

The great American pastor, writer and speaker lived from 1897 to 1963. He has influenced millions of Christians with his emphasis on holiness, the devout life, and the need for nearness to God. You can read more about him here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2009/10/02/notable-christians-a-w-tozer/

Early on in my Christian life I kept reading references to, or quotes from, Tozer. So I bought a bunch of his books which I avidly consumed. Let me mention one personal episode concerning them. When I was still in Wisconsin, a church friend was in hospital for a while. He was known as one of the church’s intellectuals (he may have been a school teacher). I went to visit him, and I took my Tozer books with me to let him read while recovering.

I think the titles I loaned him were The Pursuit of God (1948), The Root of the Righteous (1955), Born After Midnight (1959), and The Knowledge of the Holy (1961). When I handed them over, he said that he was not really a fan of devotional works.

I replied by saying that I was not either, but that these books were different. So I left them with him. Whether he ever read them or not I am not certain. And worse yet, I think I never did get them back! Oh dear. But of course I have since then bought them again, plus everything else he wrote.

Earlier today I quoted from one of his books in an article, and I decided that this is such an important book that it deserves to be quoted from a whole lot more. So that is what I will do here. My quotes will come from his classic work, The Knowledge of the Holy.

The first chapter alone is worth the price of the book. Entitled “Why We Must Think Rightly About God” it is loaded with spiritual gems. My copy of the book has most of it covered in yellow highlighter. At first I was just going to feature a whole bunch of powerful quotes from the chapter, but then I realised that just running with the whole thing would be the best way to proceed.

But let me first offer just one quote from his introduction which sets the stage for Chapter 1:

The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshiping men. This she has not done deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic. The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us.

So here then is the first chapter. All that follows is from the great A. W. Tozer:

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

The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God. Worship is pure or base as the worshiper entertains high or low thoughts of God.

For this reason the gravest question before the Church is always God Himself, and 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. We tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God. This is true not only of the individual Christian, but of the company of Christians that composes the Church. Always the most revealing thing about the Church is her idea of God, just as her most significant message is what she says about Him or leaves unsaid, for her silence is often more eloquent than her speech. She can never escape the self-disclosure of her witness concerning God.

Were we able to extract from any man a complete answer to the question, “What comes into your mind when you think about God?” we might predict with certainty the spiritual future of that man. Were we able to know exactly what our most influential religious leaders think of God today, we might be able with some precision to foretell where the Church will stand tomorrow.

Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightiest word in any language is its word for God. Thought and speech are God’s gifts to creatures made in His image; these are intimately associated with Him and impossible apart from him. It is highly significant that the first word was the Word: “And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” We may speak because God spoke. 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. Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.

Image of The Attributes of God: Knowledge of the HOLY
The Attributes of God: Knowledge of the HOLY by Tozer, A. W. (Author), Tozer, Aiden Wilson (Author) Amazon logo

A right conception of God is basic not only to systematic theology but to practical Christian living as well. It is to worship what the foundation is to the temple; where it is inadequate or out of plumb the whole structure must sooner or later collapse. I believe there is scarcely an error in doctrine or a failure in applying Christian ethics that cannot be traced finally to imperfect and ignoble thoughts about God.

It is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the twentieth century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the Most High God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.

All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him.

The man who comes to a right belief about God is relieved of ten thousand temporal problems, for he sees at once that these have to do with matters which at the most cannot concern him for very long; but even if the multiple burdens of time may be lifted from him, the one mighty single burden of eternity begins to press down upon him with a weight more crushing than all the woes of the world piled one upon another. That mighty burden is his obligation to God. It includes an instant and lifelong duty to love God with every power of mind and soul, to obey Him perfectly, and to worship Him acceptably. And when the man’s laboring conscience tells him that he has done none of these things, but has from childhood been guilty of foul revolt against the Majesty in the heavens, the inner pressure of self accusation may become too heavy to bear.

The gospel can lift this destroying burden from the mind; give beauty for ashes, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. But unless the weight of the burden is felt the gospel can mean nothing to the man; and until he sees a vision of God high and lifted up, there will be no woe and no burden. Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.

Among the sins to which the human heart is prone, hardly any other is more hateful to God than idolatry, for idolatry is at bottom a libel on His character. The idolatrous heart assumes that God is other than He is – in itself a monstrous sin – and substitutes for the true God one made after its own likeness. Always this God will conform to the image of the one who created it and will be base or pure, cruel or kind, according to the moral state of the mind from which it emerges.

A god begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will naturally be no true likeness of the true God. “You thought,” said the Lord to the wicked man in the psalm, “that I was altogether such an one as yourself.” Surely this must be a serious affront to the Most High God before whom cherubim and seraphim continually do cry, “Holy, holy, holy, lord God of Hosts.”

Let us beware lest we in our pride accept the erroneous notion that idolatry consists only in kneeling before visible objects of adoration, and that civilized peoples are therefore free from it. The essence of idolatry is the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him. It begins in the mind and may be present where no overt act of worship has taken place. “When they knew God,” wrote Paul, “they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.”

Then followed the worship of idols fashioned after the likeness of men and birds and beasts and creeping things. But this series of degrading acts began in the mind. Wrong ideas about God are not only the fountain from which the polluted waters of idolatry flow; they are themselves idolatrous. 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 long career of Israel demonstrates this clearly enough, and the history of the Church confirms it. So necessary to the Church is a lofty concept of God that when that concept in any measure declines, the Church with her worship and her moral standards declines along with it. The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God.

Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere there must first be a corrupting of her simple basic theology. She simply gets a wrong answer to the question, “What is God like?” and goes on from there. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, her practical working creed has become false. The masses of 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. We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God which we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past. This will prove of greater value to them than anything that art or science can devise.

[1930 words]

5 Replies to “Tozer and the Knowledge of God”

  1. A wonderful article Bill. Thank you.
    We were just talking about this very thing at Church this past Sunday, in fact Rob (our Pastor) mentioned the importance of how we view God, from the pulpit.
    We MUST view God through the right lenses; it affects, directs and challenges our perspectives on everything.

  2. Thanks Bill, for highlighting this wonderful servant of God. Tozers audio sermons were and are a great influence on me and my wife.

  3. Another cracker Bill. The very first Christian book I read was Towzer. I purchased the Extracts from the Writings of A.W.Towzer from the M.S. Doulos in 1975 just 6 months after my conversion. The Doulos was in Durban at the time. May God raise up Towzer’s in this generation to deliver us from the soft ecclesiastical putty that abounds. The best thing that my new mother-in-law did for me was to insist that I visited the Doulos. She even paid the conference fee! Thank God for faithful mothers-in-law!

  4. I was just encouraging my class at Alphacrucis college to read Tozer especially that book The Knowledge of the Holy. You can download it free of charge by the way

  5. Great article Bill and so true. Our pastor is currently preaching through Revelation where we realise how far we have fallen from a true concept of Who God is in all His majesty.

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