June – Aiden Wilson Tozer

Born April 21, 1897, in the mountainous region of western Pennsylvania, Aiden Wilson Tozer influenced his generation like no other individual.

During his lifetime, Tozer, as he preferred, earned the reputation of a twentieth-century prophet. His spiritual gifts afforded him a degree of insight regarding biblical truth and the nature and state of the evangelical church in his day. Able to express his perceptions in a beautiful, simple, forceful manner, Tozer was often the voice of God when the words of others were but echoes. He saw through the fog of modern Christianity, pointing out the rocks on which it might flounder if it continued its course.
Just before his 17th birthday, Tozer heard a street preacher on a corner in Akron, Ohio, as he walked home from his job at a rubber factory. He could not shake off the simple message. “If you don’t know how to be saved,” the preacher said, “just call on God, saying, ‘Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.'” Wrestling with God for some time at home, Tozer emerged from his attic sanctuary a new creature in Christ.
Under the tutelage of his future mother-in-law, Tozer progressed rapidly in the things of God. She encouraged him to read good books, study the Bible, and pray. She also urged him to preach, often gathering people in her home to hear him.
In 1919, without formal education, they called Tozer to pastor a small storefront church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia. In these humble beginnings Tozer and his new bride, Ada Cecilia Pfaust, launched a ministry that was to span some forty-four years in The Christian and Missionary Alliance. Other churches in Indiana and Ohio would follow.
In 1928 Tozer received a call from The Southside Alliance Church in Chicago. That first Sunday in Chicago was notable. Francis Chase, a commercial illustrator, and close friend of Tozer’s, remembered that first service. “He said very little and I didn’t expect much. He was slight with plenty of black hair, and certainly not a fashion plate as we say. He wore a black tie about 1 1/4 inches in width. His shoes were even then outmoded; high tops with hooks part way up. I introduced him and left the platform. He said nothing about being pleased to be there or any other pat phrases usually given on such occasions, but simply introduced his sermon topic, which was, “God’s Westminster Abbey,” based on the eleventh chapter of Hebrews.”
Writing to a friend after accepting the call to Chicago, Tozer confided, “As soon as I passed the city limits of Indianapolis I had a favorable earnest of my decision. There swept over my soul a sweet peace and I knew that I was in the will of God.”
From the first, his approach to preaching captivated the congregation – with superior language and phrases – and his splendid voice and diction. Numbering around eighty people when Tozer began, the congregation had to build larger facilities in 1941 to accommodate about 800. Many felt there were only two great churches in Chicago: Moody Memorial Church with Harry Ironside and Southside Alliance Church where Tozer pastored. Hundreds of people, especially nearby college students, flocked to his services.
From 1951 to 1959 Tozer’s ministry enlarged when WMBI, the Moody radio station, broadcast a weekly program originating from his church study. His ministry to the nearby Bible colleges was his special delight. Tozer pastored the Southside Alliance Church from 1928 until 1959, when he accepted the call from the Avenue Road Alliance Church in Toronto, Canada.
Tozer was fond of saying, “I refuse to allow any man to put his glasses on me and force me to see everything in his light.” He literally burned the midnight oil in his quest for truth. Giving himself to the study of the great classics in religion, philosophy, literature, poetry, the church fathers and Christian mystics. His special love for poetry and the hymns of the church gave wings to his preaching and writing. A voracious reader, he would read a bit, then think and meditated on what he had read. He often said, “You should think ten times more than you read.” He never read a book merely to say he had read it. Always a book was to lead him on in his quest for God. In an editorial on the subject Tozer said that the best book was the one that starts the reader on a train of thought and then bows out, its work finished.
In 1950 Tozer was elected editor of the Alliance Weekly, now the Alliance Life, official magazine of The Christian and Missionary Alliance. The committee that presented Tozer’s name said of him, “His clear and forceful style and Bible-loving Christians will approve his unique presentation of a Christ-centered gospel . . . everywhere.” That proved prophetic, as under Tozer’s leadership the magazine doubled in circulation. The Alliance Weekly, more than anything else, helped establish Tozer as a spokesman to the evangelical church at large. Someone observed that the Alliance Weekly was the only magazine subscribed to solely for its editorials. Many subscribed to the Alliance Weekly simply for Tozer’s pungent editorials and insightful articles.
Tozer’s forte was his prayer life. He often said, “As a man prayed so is he.” To him the worship of God was paramount in his life and ministry. He believed that true service would flow out of pure worship. His preaching and his writings were but extensions of his prayer life. What he discovered in prayer soon found its way into his sermons, then articles and editorials and finally into his many books.
Tozer greatly appreciated craftsmanship and excellence. His writings reveal that he demanded the utmost from himself. Wide reading and a disciplined mind provided him tremendous resources for the apt expressions that flowed from his tongue and pen. Often he would say, “There’s a right word; use it.” Invariably he had the right word at his fingertips.
The great care with which he produced his books established him as a devotional writer of a classic nature who will long be read when we forget his spoken ministry. He labored diligently to develop a style and strength of expression that continually attracted attentions.
Tozer’s lively imagination and descriptive powers gave force and vividness to his presentations. He spent hours meticulously producing sermons that we could describe as majestic and profound. Instead of shouting, he used crisp, precise, climatic sentences. His voice and delivery were rather quiet, but the sermon penetrated the soul.
Through his preaching and writing Tozer issued a clarion call for evangelicals to return to authentic, biblical, personal and inward positions that characterized the Christian church when she was most faithful to Christ and His Word. As he expounded the Scriptures, analyzing, or explaining a biblical truth, listeners were brought face to face with decisions they would never forget or regret.
As an intellectual beast of prey, Tozer could tear the faulty arguments of an author to pieces. He seemed to have a spiritual intuition enabling him to scent error, name it for what it was and reject it in one decisive act.
Tozer’s method of preaching was the strong declaration of biblical principles, never merely an involvement in word studies, clever outlines or statistics. Listening to his recorded sermons or reading any of his books, the observer will notice the absence of alliteration. He thought alliteration was artificial. His style was the simple unfolding of truth as naturally as a flower unfolding in the sunlight.
Much like that of Will Rogers, we can describe Tozer’s humor as good, honest, homespun wit. He was not a storyteller or joke-teller, but in the turn of a phrase, a sharp observation through satire or a homely illustration, he got his point across.
In the true and best sense of the word, Tozer was a mystic. He placed great emphasis on the contemplation of divine things resulting in the God conscious life.
The last literary project of Tozer’s, completed just before his death and published several months after, was THE CHRISTIAN BOOK OF MYSTICAL VERSE. This was a compilation of a wealth of mystic poetry that had warmed and blessed Tozer’s heart throughout the years.
In his daily walk and ministry Tozer had a sense of God that enveloped him in reverence and adoration. His one daily exercise was the practice of the presence of God, pursuing Him with all his strength and energy. To him, Jesus Christ was a daily wonder, a recurring astonishment, a continual amazement of love and grace.
Toward the end of his life Tozer remarked, “I have found God to be cordial and generous and in every way easy to live with.” For almost fifty years Tozer lived in God. He was not a perfect man; He had his faults and “warts,” possessed a disposition that caused him grief and heartache. Although never nasty or venomous, at times he had to apologize to those he inadvertently hurt when he spontaneously popped their balloons of pretense, pomposity and posturing.
Toward the end of his ministry he requested of his congregation: “Pray for me in the light of the pressures of our times. Pray that I will not just come to a wearied end ?- an exhausted, tired old preacher, interested only in hunting a place to roost. Pray that I will be willing to let my Christian experience and Christian standards cost me something right down to the last gasp!”
On May 12, 1963, A.W. Tozer’s earthly labors ended. His faith in God’s majesty became sight as he entered His presence. At the funeral his daughter Becky said something typical of what Tozer himself would have said. “I can’t feel sad; I know Dad’s happy; he’s lived for this all his life.” And so he had. Although his physical presence is far removed from us, Tozer will continue to minister to those thirsty for the things of God.

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