| A. W. Tozer |
| "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." 1 Timothy 2:5 |
"To understand a Bible text it takes an act of the Holy
Spirit equal to the act that inspired the text in the first place. A revelation
of the Holy Spirit in one glorious flash of inward illumination would teach you
more of Jesus than five years in a theological seminary." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol
II
"If you have to be reasoned into Christianity, some wise
fellow can reason you out of it. If you come to Christ by a flash of the Holy
Ghost so that by intuition you know that you are God's child, you know it by the
text but you also know it by the inner light, the inner illumination of the
Spirit, and no one can ever reason you out of it." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Indeed I wonder whether there is anything taught in any
seminary on earth that could not be learned by a brigand or a swindler as well
as by a consecrated Christian... It does not strain my imagination to think of
Judas Iscariot as coming out of school with a Th.B., if such a thing had been
offered in his day." The Need For Divine Illumination
"When the Spirit illuminates the heart, then a part of the
man sees which never saw before; a part of him knows which never knew before,
and that with a kind of knowing which the most acute thinker cannot imitate."
The Divine Conquest
"There is a difference between the intellectual knowledge
of God and the Spirit-revealed knowledge... modern orthodoxy has made a great
blunder in the erroneous assumption that spiritual truths can be intellectually
perceived... until a man receives that illumination -- that inward enlightenment
-- he will not have anything because Bible study does not, of itself, lift the
veil or penetrate it... there is the Christ whom only the Spirit can reveal...
you may be convinced that He is the Son of God and still never find Him as the
living Person He is. Jesus Christ must be revealed by the Holy Ghost -- no man
knows the things of God but by the Holy Ghost... the final flash that introduces
your heart to Jesus must be by that illumination of the Holy Spirit Himself, or
it isn't done at all." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"You cannot read the Scriptures with a spirit of Adam, for
the Scriptures were inspired by the Spirit of God. One little flash of the Holy
Ghost will give you more inward, divine illumination on the meaning of the text
than all the commentators that ever commented." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"In the Scriptures and in church history, persons filled
with the Spirit always knew they were filled, and it was an instantaneous act,
not a gradual filling... God does not come rushing into a human heart unless He
knows that He is the answer and fulfillment to the greatest, most overpowering
desire of that life." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I wouldn't believe an archangel if he came to me with a
wingspread of twelve feet, shining like an atomic bomb just at the moment of its
explosion, if he couldn't give me chapter and verse... The Holy Spirit who
inspired the Scriptures will expect obedience to the Scriptures... The Holy
Spirit will expect obedience to the Word of God." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Let me solemnly tell you that the Holy Ghost never works
with mere talent... much that passes for the gospel in our day is very little
more than a mild case of orthodox religion grafted onto a heart that is sold out
to the world in its pleasures and tastes and ambitions." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol
II
"The Holy Ghost wrote the Word, and if you make much of the
Word, He will make much of you." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The world knows nothing about the Holy Ghost... The best
that we have in the world, our universities, our humanitarian societies, the
best we have apart from the new birth, apart from the presence of God in the
life of a man, is only corruption, and the wrath of God is upon it. The world
cannot receive the Spirit of God." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I think the difference is in the emphasis of the major
miracle which we ought to expect in genuine Christian conversion. Those
old-timers would not have believed if a major miracle had not taken place. They
would never have been willing to accept a pale and apologetic kind of believing
on the Son of God. They insisted on a miracle taking place within the human
breast. They knew what Peter meant when he said that the Lord God has begotten
us unto a living hope." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Brethren, Let's not forget that the new birth is a miracle
-- a major miracle! Peter in describing it relates it to the miracle of Jesus
Christ rising from the dead. So there is a divine principle here -- the fact
that a man truly born again is a man who has experienced regenesis, supernatural
regenesis. Just as God generated the heavens and the earth in the beginning. He
regenerates again in the breast of the believing man!" The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Brethren, creation is the setting forth of Jesus Christ as
Lord and Sovereign, for Jesus Christ is the purpose of God in creation!" The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Let me tell you straight out that Jesus Christ will never
stand at the right side of a plus sign. If you will insist upon adding some plus
to your faith in Jesus Christ, He will walk away in His holy dignity. He will
ever refuse to be considered the other part of a plus sign. If your trust is in
the plus -- something added -- then you do not possess Jesus Christ." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol II
"The purpose and work of redemption in Christ Jesus is to
raise man as much above the level of Adam as Christ Himself is above the level
of Adam." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"It is an amazing thing that Jesus Christ claimed that He
never left the bosom of the Father. He said the Son of Man, who is in the bosom
of the Father, hath declared it. While Jesus was upon earth, walking as a man
among men, by the mystery of the ever-present God and the indivisible substance
of Deity, He could remain in the bosom of the Father, and He did." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol II
"Man's hopeless condition cannot be perfected by some
process of social regeneration -- it must be brought about through the
miraculous process of individual regeneration." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Contrary to the opinion held by many would-be religious
leaders in the world, Christianity was never intended to be an ethical system
with Jesus Christ at the head... it is Jesus Christ Himself that Christianity
offers you... all Christianity offers is Jesus Christ the Lord, and Him alone --
for He is enough!" The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Jesus Christ is no longer on trial before men - men are
now on trial before Him!" The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The believer's faith in the deity and person of Jesus does
not rest upon his ability to comb through history and arrive at logical
conclusions concerning historical facts. The Holy Ghost will blaze in on him
like a lightning flash, blinding him with the wonder of it!" The Tozer Pulpit,
Vol II
"Saving faith is not a conclusion drawn from facts
presented; saving faith is a gift of God to a penitent man or woman." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol II
"There isn't anything quite so chilling, quite so
disheartening as a man without the Holy Spirit preaching about the Holy Spirit."
The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"In that great and terrible day, there will be those white
with shock when they find that they have depended upon a mental assent to
Christianity instead of upon the miracle of the new birth." The Tozer Pulpit,
Vol I
"Whenever I find men running to science to find support for
the Bible, I know they are rationalists and not true believers!" The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"The scientist has nothing he can tell me about Jesus
Christ, our Lord. There is nothing he can add, and I do not need to appeal to
him." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Jesus will never qualify or compromise anything he has
said." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"A Christian is one who dedicates himself to God to inhabit
another world, and that's why we get called many of the names that we do!" The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The tree that is blown down in the storm is rotten in its
heart or it wouldn't be blown down. And the church that falls because of
persecution is a church that was dead before it fell." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Worship seeks union with its beloved, and an active effort
to close the gap between the heart and the God it adores is worship at its
best." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Contrary to the opinion held by many would-be religious
leaders in the world, Christianity was never intended to be an ethical system
with Jesus Christ at the head... all Christianity offers is Jesus Christ the
Lord, and Him alone - for He is enough." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Paul said if any man thinketh that he amounts to anything,
let him know that he won't amount to anything until he gets over it! That's
paraphrased, but that is approximately what Paul said." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"I am of the firm opinion that no church should be occupied
with politics, literature, philosophy, art. It is our belief that the church -
and that must also mean any local church - should be devoted exclusively to God
and things eternal." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"When a man of God speaks as a prophet, his message is
freighted with wisdom and power. When he speaks for a party, God withdraws His
power and lets His servant speak without wisdom... Let him
seek to identify his prophetic office with politics, or place his power
at the disposal of a party, and he violates his office and confuses his own
face. Then he speaks as a discredited prophet, and not all his pretensions to
omniscience can disguise the Babel in his voice." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"We need to remember that it is possible to have some kind
of external religious experience that immunizes you to the new birth, and puts
you where you will never be born again, because you think you are already born
again." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The spiritual faculties of the unregenerate man lie asleep
in his nature, unused and for every purpose dead; that is the stroke which has
fallen upon us by sin. They may be quickened to active life again by the
operation of the Holy Spirit in regeneration; that is one of the immeasurable
benefits which come to us through Christ's atoning work on the cross." The
Pursuit Of God
"I hear people testify that they give their tithe because
God makes their nine-tenths go farther than the ten-tenths. That is not
spirituality; that is just plain business. I insist that it is a dangerous thing
to associate the working of God with our prosperity and success down here." I
Talk Back To The Devil
"I hear people testify about their search for the deeper
Christian life... But there isn't any such thing. There is a cross." I Talk Back
To The Devil
"Supernatural grace has been the teaching of the Church
from Pentecost to the present hour." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Just the moment that a man's experience in Christ can be
broken down and explained by the psychologists, we have a church member on our
hands - and not a Christian." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"You can find more carnal, unregenerate, self-centered
characters who have religion and are sensitive toward it than you can bury in
the Grand Canyon." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"All of the Christians I meet who are amounting to anything
for God are Christians who are very much out of key with their age - very, very
much out of tune with their generation... If you can fit into it too
comfortably, I am forced to wonder whether the miracle has ever been wrought in
your life." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"If you are going to heaven, you had better begin to live
like it now, and if you are going to die like a Christian, you had better live
like a Christian now." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The difference between faith as it is found in the New
Testament and faith as it is found now is that faith in the New Testament
actually produced something - there was a confirmation of it." The Tozer Pulpit,
Vol I
"We have religion without guilt, and religion without guilt just tries to make God a big pal of man. But religion without guilt is a religion that cannot escape hell for it deceives and finally destroys all who are a part of it." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"God, being who He is, must always be sought for Himself,
never as a means toward something else... Whoever seeks God as a means toward
desired ends will not find God... The mighty God, the maker of heaven and
earth... will not aid men in their selfish striving after personal gain... Yet
popular Christianity has as one of its most effective talking points the idea
that God exists to help people get ahead in this world." The Dwelling Place of
God
"Do you realize that your faith is a gift from God? You
should look upon your faith as a miracle. It is the ability God gives lost men
and women to trust and obey our Saviour and Lord... And Jesus is the author of
our faith." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"It is quite possible to lead people into the mistake of
placing their faith in faith itself... It is not proper to magnify faith if in
doing so we forget that our confidence as believers is not in the power of faith
but in the person and work of our Saviour, Jesus Christ." Jesus, Author Of Our
Faith
"Faith does not rest upon promises. Faith rests upon
character. Faith must rest in confidence upon the One who makes the promises...
we must be concerned with the person and character of God and not just with His
promises. Through promises we learn what God has willed to us, we learn what we
may claim as our heritage, we learn how we should pray. But faith itself must
rest upon the character of our God." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"Faith in God is to be demonstrated, not defined." Jesus,
Author Of Our Faith
"Christian believers have an answer born from their
scriptural perspective. They are not afraid to declare that at the door of the
kingdom of God man's reason is dethroned. For those who are living a life of
faith and have found fellowship with God, human reason is no longer king.
Instead, reason becomes a servant... Once those persons enter the kingdom of God
by faith, reason becomes a useful servant -- no longer ruling them as a false
god." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"God Himself, through the Holy Spirit, points out a
universal human problem: the natural brotherhood of human beings is a sinful
brotherhood. It is a brotherhood of all who are spiritually lost." Jesus, Author
Of Our Faith
"Enoch could have written a book on human loneliness...
Believing Christians with true faith in God know very well the meaning of
loneliness." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"If we are satisfied to settle down and become weak victims
amid the sins of our generation, we will die with our generation." Jesus, Author
Of Our Faith
"The Christian gospel always has been and must continue to
be a gospel of alarm. The Christian gospel cannot always be a gospel of honey
and sweetness!... The gospel message is a gospel of hope and good news to those
who respond and believe. But the gospel message is starkly plain to those who do
not believe." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"Holy fear is a kind of faith closely associated with high
moral wisdom. It can only be the part of wisdom for a human being to fear
irrecoverable spiritual loss. It is a wise kind of fear that is willing to
consider the meaning of permanent and eternal separation from God, the source of
all good." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"In my own contemplations, though, I have found great
comfort in the doctrine of prevenient grace. Prevenient grace, simply stated, is
the belief that before a sinful man or woman can seek God, God must first have
sought the man or woman... If God had not in His own way first moved toward
Abraham, Abraham would never have moved toward God." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"Most people seem to have come to terms with an acceptance
of religion if it does not have the cross of Christ within it... But when God
calls out men and women, their faith will be an offense to the world." Jesus,
Author Of Our Faith
"The greater your contentment with your daily circumstances
in this world, the greater your defection from the ranks of God's pilgrims en
route to a city whose architect and builder is God Himself!" Jesus, Author Of
Our Faith
"God has never in the past done anything good in response
to faith that He is unwilling to do again. Let me turn that around and say it
this way: Everything good that God has done in the past in response to faith, He
is willing to do again. We need only believe and obey." Jesus, Author Of Our
Faith
"The only person who is incurably sick is the one who
thinks he or she is well." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"It is hard for a rich church to understand that her Lord
was a poor man. Were He to appear today on our city streets as He appeared in
Jerusalem, He would in all probability be picked up for vagrancy. Were He to
teach here what He taught the multitudes about money, he would be blacklisted by
churches, Bible conferences and missionary societies everywhere as unrealistic,
fanatical and dangerous to organized religion." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"To court a Christian for his financial contributions is as
evil a thing as to marry a man for his money." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"Anyone can do the possible; add a bit of courage and zeal
and some may do the phenomenal; only Christians are obliged to do the
impossible." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"Today we evangelicals are showing signs that we are
becoming too rich and too prominent for our own good. With a curious disregard
for the lessons of history we are busy fighting for recognition by the world and
acceptance by society... Evangelical Christianity is fast becoming the religion
of the bourgeoisie. The well-to-do, the upper middle classes, the politically
prominent, the celebrities are accepting our religion by the thousands and
parking their expensive cars outside our church doors, to the uncontrollable
glee of our religious leaders who seem completely blind to the fact that the
vast majority of these new patrons of the Lord of glory have not altered their
moral habits in the slightest nor given any evidence of true conversion that
would have been accepted by the saintly fathers who built the churches." The
Warfare Of The Spirit
"I would rather be a serous-minded dolt concerned about
eternal life than to be an overpaid jester with nothing better to do than to
make men laugh and forget that they must die and come to judgment." The Warfare
Of The Spirit
"To the one who is advanced enough to hear it I would say,
never let anyone become necessary to you... never attach yourself to any man as
a parasite. Adopt no man as a guru... I repeat, never let any man become
necessary to you. Christ alone is necessary. Apart from Him we are completely
wretched; without Him we cannot live and dare not die." The Warfare Of The
Spirit
"Instead of putting the cross on that hill outside
Jerusalem, Jesus puts the cross in our lives, where it belongs... When He arose
from the dead and ascended to the right hand of God the Father, that wooden
cross had no further meaning in the mind of God. None at all!... But there
remains a very real cross. It is the cross you take and the cross I take as we
follow our Lord Jesus who willingly took His cross... When that cross on the
hill has been transformed by the miraculous grace of the Holy Spirit into the
cross in the heart, then we begin to know something of its true meaning and it
will become to us the cross of power." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"Only God is holy absolutely; all other beings can be holy
only in relative degrees. The angels in heaven do not possess God's holiness.
They are created beings and they are contented to reflect the glory of God. That
is their holiness." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"God's holy nature is unique. He is of a substance not
shared by any other being. Hence, God can be known only as He reveals Himself.
There is absolutely no other way for us to know Him." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"The differences between the churchly world and the
followers of the Lamb are so basic that they can never be reconciled and they
can never be negotiated. God never promised His believing people that they would
become a majority in this earthly scene." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"When we stand up for Jesus, it means that there are some
things that we will be against. This is the way it is in this world. We do not
deny it, and we do not apologize for it." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"It can be fairly said that the institutional church is
largely known in the world as an organization and not as a living organism. The
institutional church offers many good things to its members, but it does not
necessarily recognize the true glory of Christ's life within. It lives and
thrives on sociability, amusements, group activities -- things that may be
innocent and pleasant and nice but which lack the glories of the church of the
living God." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"If those who call themselves the people of God would give
up their carnality and worldly-mindedness, if they would live with the reality
that Jesus is victor at the heavenly controls, they could be the kind of New
Testament church that makes glad the heart of God. There would be such an
overflow of the Holy Spirit's gifts and graces that their spirituality would be
effective in every contact and activity, just as it was in New Testament times."
Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"Everything that is morally commanded in the Ten
Commandments still comprises the moral principles that are the will of God for
His people. As believing, regenerated Christians, we must acknowledge that God's
moral will for His people -- then and now -- has not changed." Jesus, Author Of
Our Faith
"Frankly, in my judgment there are too many "inspirational"
preachers in our day who are trying to cheer up their listeners without using
sound, biblical methods." Jesus, Author Of Our Faith
"Probably you have had some contact with the appeals of
ministers who have espoused the cause of liberal Christian theology... They want
the spiritual virtues without dealing with the root hindrances to such virtues.
They want men and women to be more like Jesus, but they want nothing to do with
the new birth from above that imprints Jesus' image on people's lives. They want
humankind to be forgiving and forgiven, but they do not recognize the biblical
necessity for atonement, regeneration and justification. They want the blessing
and the display of the fruits of the Spirit, but they reject the Bible's
declaration that fruits are related to the fullness of the Spirit. Actually,
they seem to expect fruit and harvest without any tree at all!" Jesus, Author Of
Our Faith
"God sees in Jesus Christ what you would have been! He sees
that in His perfect humanity, not His deity, for you and I could never be divine
in that sense." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"God no longer loves the devil... the time will come when
God will no longer love lost men... The day will come when he that is filthy
will be getting filthier still, and therefore, the day will come when lost man
will no longer be loved by God Almighty... What a warning to a man selling out
to sin and to the transfiguring power of evil and iniquity, which in the end
makes him a devil and not a man, and thus beyond the love of God." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"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." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"The Bible links faith to expression and faith that never
gets expression is not a Bible faith... You say, 'Well, I worship God in my
heart.' I wonder if you do. I wonder if you are simply just excusing the fact
that you haven't generated enough spiritual heat to get your mouth open." The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"It is not whether we can understand it or not; it is
whether God said it nor not." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"No oriental monarch ever ruled his cowering subjects with
any more cruel tyranny than things, visible things, audible things, tangible
things, rule mankind... It seems incredible that we who were made for many
worlds should accept this one world as our ultimate home." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol
I
"Christ is not a member of any political party. He stands
outside of and above every party. His kingdom was not of this world." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"If the blood of Jesus Christ cannot cure a man of
dishonesty, it cannot guarantee his entrance into the kingdom of heaven." The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Whenever any humor takes holy things for its object, that
humor is devilish at once... The eternal, universal Presence of the luminous
Christ is not a joking matter" The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"If we could have the Apostle Paul on tape recordings and
let him stand here and preach, he could no more for you than the Holy Ghost can
do, with The Book and the human conscience." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Peace of heart does not come from denying that there is
trouble, but comes from rolling your trouble on God." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"When God works a miracle within the human breast, heaven
becomes the Christian's home immediately, and he is drawn to it as the bird is
drawn in the springtime to fly north." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"It is sad to us that some people have never heard the
voice of the Shepherd. His voice is as tender as a lullaby and as strong as the
wind and as mighty as the sound of many waters... Thank God for those in the
churches who would rather hear the voice of Jesus than to hear the voice of the
greatest preacher or the best singer in the world. Thank God for those who would
rather be conscious of the Divine Presence than to be in the presence of the
greatest man in the world." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"I think that this modern neo-intellectual movement that is
trying to resurrect the church by means of learning is about as far off the
track as it is possible to be." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"If you have learned to worship the Son of Man, you won't
worship other men... We have to push in past the veil until the illumination of
the Holy Spirit fills our heart and we are learning at the feet of Jesus, not at
the feet of men." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The Holy Spirit rules out and excludes all Adam's flesh,
all human brightness, all that scintillating human personality, human ability
and human efficiency. It makes Christianity depend upon a perpetual miracle. The
man of God, the true Spirit-filled man of God, is a perpetual miracle." The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"I want God Himself or else I will go out and be something
other than a Christian." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"I believe that Pentecost did not come and go, but that
Pentecost came and stayed." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"If we continue to go the way we have been going in
fundamentalist and evangelical circles, the fundamentalists will all be liberals
and most of the liberals will all be unitarian." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"We will never know more about God than the Spirit teaches
us. We will never know any more about Jesus than the Spirit teaches us, because
there is only the Spirit to do the teaching." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"There are many people in our churches who would like to
think that they are filled with the Holy Ghost, even though they don't know it.
This is a most shocking thing, and I am sure that this is one of the attitudes
through which Satan opposes the doctrine of the genuine Spirit-filled life...
Let me say that I do not find in the Old Testament or in the New Testament,
neither in Christian biography, in church history or in personal Christian
testimonies, the experience of any person who was ever filled with the Holy
Ghost and who didn't know it! I can be dogmatic about this on the basis of deep
study. No one was ever filled with the Holy Ghost who didn't know that he had
been so filled!... In the Scriptures and in church history, persons filled with
the Spirit always knew they were filled, and it was an instantaneous act, not a
gradual filling... God does not come rushing into a human heart unless He knows
that He is the answer and fulfillment to the greatest, most overpowering desire
of that life." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"I find in the New Testament that the believers had God,
and they usually didn't have very much else." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"If the Lord's people were only half as eager to be filled
with the Spirit as they are to prove that you can't be filled with the Spirit,
the church would be crowded out." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"There is no use talking about being filled with the Spirit
and waling in the Spirit unless we are willing to give up all to obtain all."
The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"To glorify Jesus is the business of the church, and to
glorify Jesus is the work of the Holy Ghost." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"I really have no place in my sympathies for those
Christians who neglect the Word or ignore the Word or get revelations apart from
the Word." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Some teach that if you are filled with the Spirit, you
will have miracles, forgetting that the disciples had the power of miracles
before they were filled with the Spirit. The power of the Holy Spirit is not
necessary to make miracle workers. The power of the Holy Spirit is something
infinitely higher, grander and more wonderful than that." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol
I
"You will notice that throughout the four Gospels the
disciples were asking questions, while in the book of Acts and after Pentecost
they were answering questions. That is the difference between the man who is
Spirit-filled and the man who is not." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"When a man of God stands to speak, he ought to have the
authority of God on him so that he makes the people responsible to listen to
him. When they will not listen to him, they are accountable to God for turning
away from the divine Word. In place of that needed authority, we have tabby cats
with their claws carefully trimmed in the seminary, so they can paw over the
congregations and never scratch them at all. They have had their claws trimmed
and are just as soft and sweet as can be." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"I believe in the authority of God, and I believe if a man
doesn't have it, he should go away and pray and wait until he gets the authority
and then stand up and speak even if he has to begin by preaching on a soap box
on a street corner." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Some of the churches now advertise courses on how to pray.
How ridiculous! That is like giving a course on how to fall in love." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"Evangelical rationalism will kill the truth just as
quickly as liberalism will... This evangelical rationalism will kill the truth
just as quickly as liberalism will, though in a more subtle way... The
evangelical rationalist today is still wearing our uniform. He comes right in
wearing our uniform and says what the Pharisees said while Jesus was on earth,
and they were His worst enemies... They have the text and the code and the
creed, and to them that is the truth. So they pass it on to others. The result
is we are dying spiritually." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Is revelation enough or must there be illumination? Is
this Bible an inspired book? Is it a revealed book? Of course you and I believe
that it is a revelation, that God spoke all these words and holy men spoke as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost... But revelation is not enough! There must be
illumination before revelation can get to your soul. It is not enough that I
hold an inspired book in my hands. I must have an inspired heart. There is the
difference, in spite of the evangelical rationalist who insists that revelation
is enough." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"There is a divine inward illumination the Holy Ghost must
give us or we don't know what the truth means... The body of truth, the inspired
text, is not enough -- there must be an inward illumination." The Tozer Pulpit,
Vol I
"I have no doubt that we try to ease many people into the
kingdom, so called, who never get into the kingdom at all. They are jockeyed
into believing in the text, and they do, but they have never been illuminated by
the Holy Ghost. They have never been renewed within their being. They never get
into the kingdom at all." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Christianity is not something you just reach up and grab,
as some have taught." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Paul says (1 Cor. 2:4-5) 'My speech and my preaching was
not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and
of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the
power of God.' Now the theological rationalist understands that in this way: he
says that your faith should stand not in the wisdom of man but in the Word of
God: But that is not what Paul said. He said that your faith should stand in the
POWER of God. That is quite a different thing." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Your faith can stand in the text and you can be as dead as
the proverbial doornail, but when the power of God moves in on the text and sets
the sacrifice on fire, then you have Christianity. We try to call that revival,
but it snot revival at all. It is simply New Testament Christianity." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"If a sinner goes in to the altar and a worker with a
marked New Testament argues him into the kingdom, the devil will meet him two
blocks down the street and argue him out of it again. But if he has an inward
illumination and he has that witness within because the Spirit answers to the
blood, you can't argue with that man." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The man of faith can go into the wilderness and get on his
knees and command heaven -- God is in
that. The man who dare to stand and let his preaching cost him something
-- God is in that. The Christian who is willing to put himself in a place where
he must get the answer from God and God alone -- the Lord is in that!" The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"We do have evangelical rationalists now who insist upon
trying to reduce everything down to where it can be explained and proved -- with
the result that we are rationalizing faith. This is the manner in which we seek
to pull Almighty God down to the low level of the human reason." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"Faith never goes contrary to reason -- faith simply
ignores reason and rises above it." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The human heart by nature is filled with unbelief. It was
belief and not disobedience which was the first sin. While disobedience was the
first recorded sin, back of the act of disobedience there was the sin of
unbelief, or the act of disobedience would not have taken place." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"Faith does not rest upon promises. Faith rests upon
character. Faith must rest in confidence upon the One who made the promise. It
was written of Abraham that he staggered not at the promises of God through
unbelief, but waxed strong in faith giving glory to God. The glory went to God,
not to the promise." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"I believe in Christian charity, but I don't believe in
Christian tolerance... When we become so tolerate that we lead people into
mental fog and spiritual darkness, we are not acting like Christians; we are
acting like cowards!" The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"A Christian is no Christian until he is all Christian,
until he has reached the point of no return." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"No one can know truth except those who obey truth." The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Truth is not a text. Truth in in the text, but it takes
the text plus the Holy Ghost to bring truth to a human soul. You can memorize a
text, my brother, but the truth must come from the Holy Ghost through the text.
Faith cometh by hearing the Word, but faith is also the gift of God the Holy
Ghost." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Conscience never deals with theories. Conscience always
deals with right and wrong, and the relation of the individual to that which is
right or wrong... Christ is in the world, and His secret presence is the ground
of human conscience. It is a moral awareness." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Some people are still wishing that they could have lived
in Jesus' day, so they could have heard His voice and His teaching. They forget
that there were thousands who heard Jesus and yet they had no idea what He was
talking about. They forget that some of His own disciples had to wait for the
Holy Ghost at Pentecost to know what Jesus had been talking about." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"False doctrine can have no power upon a good conscience."
The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"You can go to a priest and he can give you absolution, but
he has only buried your conscience under a little religious rag!" The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"In the kingdom of God there will be no darkness, and in
hell there will be no light." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The truth is just the truth -- it never has to worry about
its image." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Many a husband has learned to say, 'Yes, dear, yes dear',
but when the wife is not there, you should hear what he says to the goldfish."
The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The woman of Samaria met our Lord at the well, and the
Gospel account of that which took place within her soul, and the spontaneous,
contagious witness that followed, is rich with spiritual lessons for every one
of us... Why was He willing to reveal so much more about Himself in this setting
than He did in other encounters during His earthly ministry?... I don't know all
the of the Saviour's reasons that day at the well. I only know that His
revelation of Himself to the Samaritan woman constituted an everlasting rebuke
to human self-righteousness." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Every person that ever receive anything from God must have
a conscious need, a conscious and vital sense of lack." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"You might just as well try to get fat on what someone else
eats as to try to get to heaven on some else's testimony." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol
I
"Jacob was a crooked fellow... In every way, Esau was the
finer man by nature. But in Esau, there was no approach through the top side of
his soul, no open window there. It was Jacob, the crooked one, who met God and
became Israel, because the top side of his soul was open to God." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"A person that has to be picked out of the shell, that has
to be guided by red lines and blue lines under the Bible verses, urged and
pushed and psychologized into the kingdom of God never really gets in. There
must be a revelation to the heart. There must be an encounter with Christ. There
must be that sudden engaging of the soul with Jesus Christ, the Lord." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"There has never really been a time in history when people
were good, but there was a time when the masses of mankind were ashamed of being
evil." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The church and the world have become so mixed up that it
is hard to tell one from the other." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"There is so little filling of our vessels these days
because there is so very little of emptying." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"If we would only stop trying to make the Holy Spirit our
servant and begin to live in His life as the fish lives in the sea, we would
enter into the riches of glory about which we know nothing." The Tozer Pulpit,
Vol I
"The world is making a lot of offers to the church, but we
don't need the world! Even some of my friends lead me to believe that I stand
pretty much alone in all this. But I also know that I am telling a truth which
will stand when the world is on fire: that the world has nothing that the
Christian church needs." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"In many churches Christianity has been watered down until
the solution is so weak that if it were poison it would not hurt anyone, and if
it were medicine it would not cure anyone." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The Spirit cannot fill whom He cannot separate, and whom
He cannot fill, He cannot make holy." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"It is a solemn and frightening thing in this world of sin
and flesh and devils, to realize that about eighty or ninety percent of the
people whom God is testing will flunk this test! The Lord will do His own
sorting out, and all of us should be aware that we are in a time when every day
is a day of testing." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The devoted and committed person who takes the cross and
follows the Lord does not ask what the consequences will be, neither does he
argue about God's plan and God's wisdom." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Every advance that we make for God and for His cause must
be made at our inconvenience. If it does not inconvenience us at all, there is
no cross in it." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Our Lord is more than able to take care of our past. He
pardons instantly and forgives completely." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"We are getting so well-rounded and so broadly symmetrical
that we forget that every superior soul that has done exploits for God was
considered extreme in many cases and even deranged." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"I believe in prevenient grace, and I don't believe that
any person can ever be nudged or pushed or jostled into the kingdom of God or
into the deeper life except the Holy Ghost does it." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"We could never have created ourselves and we could never
have redeemed ourselves. We cannot talk our selves into getting a longing for
God. It has to come from God." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Paul knew something that many Christians still have not
learned -- that the human heart is idolatrous and will worship anything it can
possess. Therein lies the danger of the "good" things... It may be something
good, but it gets between you and God -- whether it be property or family or
reputation or security or your life itself... He also warned us about trusting
earthly security rather than putting our complete confidence in God." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"How can God do His work in people who seem to think that
Christianity is just another way of getting things from God? I hear people
testify that they give their tithe because God makes their nine tenths go
farther than the ten tenths. That is not spirituality; that is just plain
business. I insist that it is a dangerous thing to associate the working of God
with our prosperity and success down here. I cannot promise that if you will
follow the Lord you will soon experience financial prosperity, because that is
not what He promised His disciples." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Yes, there is a dark night of the soul. There are few
Christians willing to go into this dark night and that is why there are so few
who enter into the light. It is impossible for them ever to know the morning
because they will not endure the night." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Some people in reading the Bible say they cannot
understand why Elijah and other men had such active power with the living God.
It is quite simple. God heard Elijah because Elijah had heard God. God did
according the word of Elijah because Elijah had done according to the word of
God. You cannot separate the two." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"All Christians living in full obedience will experience
the cross and find themselves exercised in spirit very frequently. If they know
their own hearts, they will be prepared to wrestle with the cross when it
comes." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"The children of God must be ready for everything the cross
brings or we will surely fail the test! It is God's desire to so deal with us
about all of the things that the world admire and praises that we will see them
in their true light. He will treat us without pity because He desires to raise
us without measure, just as He did with His own Son on the cross!" The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"Willingness to suffer for Jesus' sake -- this is what we
have lost from the Christian church. We want our Easter to come without the
necessity of a Good Friday. We forget that before the Redeemer could rise and
sing among His brethren He must first bow His head and suffer among His
brethren." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"To become effective men of God, then, we must know and
acknowledge that every grace and every virtue proceeds from God alone, and that
not even a good thought can come from us except it be of Him." The Tozer Pulpit,
Vol I
"Jesus Christ HIMSELF is the deeper life, and as I plunge
on into the knowledge of the triune God, my heart moves on into the blessedness
of His fellowship. This means that there is less of me and more of God, thus my
spiritual life deepens, and I am strengthened in the knowledge of His will." The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"Jesus Christ is everything that the Godhead is." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol I
"If God gives you a garden without giving Himself, He is
giving you a garden with a serpent." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"I feel that we must repudiate this great, modern wave of
seeking God for His benefits... It seems that Christian believers have been
going through a process of indoctrination and brainwashing, so it has become
easy for us to adopt a kind of creed that makes God to be our servant instead of
our being God's servant... So many are busy using God. Use God to get a job. Use
God to give us safety. Use God to give us peace of mind. Use God to obtain
success in business. Use God to provide heaven at last. Brethren, we ought to
learn -- and learn it very soon -- that it is much better to have God first and
have God Himself, even if we have only a thin dime, than to have all the riches
and all the influence in the world and not have God... Have you had any part in
this cheapening of the Gospel by making God your servant?" The Tozer Pulpit, Vol
I
"God does have a stake in each of us, and it is for His own
sake that He will lift us up. He is not going to bless us for our own sake -- He
is going to bless us for Jesus' sake and for the sake of His own name. If you
think that there is anyone in the world so good that God could do something for
that person's sake, you don't know sin; and if you think there is anything that
God will not do for you for His sake and for His name, you don't know God!" The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"There is nothing that Jesus has ever done for any of His
disciples that He will not do for any other of His disciples! Where did the
dividers-of-the-Word-of-Truth get their teaching that all the gifts of the
Spirit ended when the last apostle died? They have never furnished chapter and
verse for that." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol I
"I mention a few other contradictions about the man, Peter.
He is said by a portion the Christian church to be the vicar of Christ on earth,
and yet Peter himself never seemed to have found out about it." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol II
"The Christian, the genuine Christian, realizes that he is
indeed a lonely soul in the middle of a world which affords him no fellowship...
This sense of not belonging is a part of our Christian heritage. That sense of
belonging in another world and not belonging to this one steals into the
Christian bosom and marks him off as being different from the people around
him." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I must be frank in my feeling that a notable heresy has
come into being throughout our evangelical Christian circles -- the widely
accepted concept that we humans can choose to accept Christ only because we need
Him as Saviour and that we have the right to postpone our obedience to Him as
Lord as long as we want to... The truth is that salvation apart from obedience
is unknown in the sacred scripture... Apart from obedience, there can be no
salvation, for salvation without obedience is a self-contradictory
impossibility." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The Bible does not tells us to believe in an office or a
work, but to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Person who has done
that work and holds those offices." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I would insist that we do not have the right of
self-determination because God has given us only the power to choose evil.
Seeing that God is a holy God and we are moral creatures having the power but
not the right to choose evil, no man has any right to lie. We have the power to
lie but no man has the right to lie." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Nowhere are we ever led to believe that we can use Jesus
as a Saviour and not own Him as our Lord. He is the Lord and as the Lord He
saves us, because He has all of the offices of Saviour and Christ and High
Priest and Wisdom and Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption... I
believe we need to preach again a whole Christ to the world, a Christ who does
not need our apologies, a Christ who will not be divided, a Christ who will
either be Lord of all or who will not be Lord at all!" The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The Lord will not save those whom he cannot command!" The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"If we believe the New Testament we must surely believe
that the new birth is a major miracle, as truly a miracle of God as was the
first creation, for the new birth is actually the creating of another man in the
heart where another man had been." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"We are still living in a wicked and adulterous generation
and I must confess that the Christians I meet who really amount to anything for
the Saviour are very much out of key and out of tune with their generation." The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"When God sent Judas Iscariot to hell He did not violate
mercy and when God forgave Peter it was not in violation of justice. Everything
that God does is with the full protection of all of His infinite attributes."
The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Whenever Satan has reason to fear a truth very gravely, he
produces a counterfeit." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"In the context of the Christian church, we are now told to
gossip the gospel and sell Jesus to people." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I do not dismiss the matter of feeling and you can quote
me on that if it is worth it." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The Bible has very few kind things to say about money and
earthly possessions and it is most frank in its expressions against the heaping
up of treasures." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"God has said He will exalt you in due time, but remember,
He is referring to His time and not yours." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The Christian woman should remember that she cannot buy
true attractiveness; that radiance which really shines forth in beauty is of the
heart and spirit and not of the body." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The life in the Spirit is such a different life that some
of your former associates will probably discuss the question of whether or not
you are mentally disturbed." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"It is an interesting thing that when he wants to get up,
the Christian always starts down, for God's way up is always down, even though
that is contrary to common sense. It is also contrary to the finest wisdom on
the earth, because the foolish things of God are wiser than anything on this
earth." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"He may be poor -- and if he is a real Christian he usually
is -- and yet he will always make others rich." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The true Christian fears God with a trembling reverence
and yet he is not afraid of God at all." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Let me warn you that many preachers and Bible teachers
will answer to God some day for encouraging curious speculations about the
return of Christ and failing to stress the necessity for loving His appearing...
The prophetic teacher who engages in speculation to excite the curiosity of his
hearers without providing them with a moral application is sinning even as he
preaches." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Preachers and evangelists have been known to have
exaggerated the numbers and the results of their Christian assemblies... But on
behalf of God honoring honesty in our daily lives, it needs to be said that any
lie is of its father, the devil, whether it is told in a church service or
anywhere else." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Knowing the power of this gospel, I am willing to put
myself on record that I would rather be preached to by a converted car thief
than be lulled to death by the educated gentleman who have reduced Christianity
to nothing more than a psychology of comfort." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"We cannot afford to let down our Christian standards just
to hold the interest of people who want to go to hell and still belong to a
church." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"A truly penitent man who has realized the enormity of his
sin and rebellion against God senses a violent revulsion against himself; he
does not feel that he can actually dare to ask God to let him off." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol II
"Let me tell you what a moral man really is: he is good
enough to deceive himself and bad enough to damn himself." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol
II
"A man who truly comes to God in repentance and contrition
of heart does not work up a defense on the basis that he has not broken every
law and every commandment. If he is truly penitent in seeking pardon and
forgiveness, he will be so overcome with the guilt of the commands that he has
broken and the sins he is confessing that he will lie down before the great God
Almighty, trembling and crying out, 'Oh, God, I am an unclean man and I have
sinned against Thee!'" The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The rich young ruler was a seeker. The church today would
have put his name down on a card and would have counted him among the
statistics. But he walked away and turned his back on the offer and the appeal
of Jesus Christ... The very fact that he could remember that he had kept any of
God's laws disqualified him instantly for eternal life. He trusted in his own
moral defense rather than acknowledge his sin and his need." The Tozer Pulpit,
Vol II
"We are telling people that the easiest thing in the world
is to accept Jesus Christ, and I wonder what has happened to our Christian
theology which no longer contains any hint of what it should mean to be
completely and utterly abandoned to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour." The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"It is not only the careless who perish. Those who are
careful and busy about many good things will perish as well." The Tozer Pulpit,
Vol II
"It is actually true that many people engage in earnest
prayers on their road to perdition. In a way they want God, but they don't want
him enough. They are interested in eternal life, but they are also interested in
other things." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I admit that there are parents who counsel me about the
danger of losing the young people from our church life because I am faithful in
preaching against this present world and the worldly system in which we live. I
can only say that I am concerned and I will stand and cry at the door when they
decide to go, but I will not be guilty of deceiving them. I refuse to deceive
and damn them by teaching that you can be a Christian and love this present
world, for you cannot." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"We have many like the rich young ruler among us still. It
is not enough to inquire about the power of the crucified life and the
Spirit-filled life. It is not enough to want it -- it must be desired and
claimed above everything else. There must be an abandonment to Jesus Christ to
realize it. The individual must want the fullness of Christ with such desire
that he will turn his back on whatever else matters in his life and walk
straight to the arms of Jesus." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"It is very easy in our day to discern a glaring
inconsistency among many well-groomed and overfed evangelical Christians, who
profess that they are looking for Christ's second coming and yet vigorously
reject any suggestion that Christian faith and witness should be costing them
something." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Let me say that it is very difficult to have any brains in
this day in which we live and not get blamed for it. It is hard to have any
insight and not be considered a cynic. It is hard to be realistic and not be
classed with the pessimists." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The leaders who call for peace and tranquility have not
done their homework in the study of the Bible and what it has to say about the
future." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I have only heard one prediction made by a world statesman
in recent years that was absolutely fool-proof, and that was a remark that the
next war will be fought in the future." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"There will be multitudes in panic and distress because of
world conditions before Christ returns as Kind of kings and Lord of lords. But
there is a special provision for the believing Body of Christ, those who make up
His church, for the angels of the Lord encamp around those who fear Him, and
delivereth them. We do not yet have the heavenly understanding of all of God's
promises, but there have been so many instances where true children of God in
danger have been surrounded as by a wall of invisible fire that we dare to rest
back on His deliverance." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Men do not have the luxury of taking their chances --
either they are saved or they are not." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Let me remind you that Jesus Christ did infinitely more in
His death and resurrection than just undoing the damage of the fall. He came to
raise us into the image of Jesus Christ, not merely to the image of the first
Adam. The first man Adam was a living soul, the second man Adam was a
life-giving Spirit. The first man Adam was made of the earth, earthy, but the
second man is the Lord from heaven. Redemption in Christ, then, is not to pay
back dollar-for-dollar or to straighten man out and restore him into Adamic
grace. The purpose and work of redemption in Christ Jesus is to raise man as
much above the level of Adam as Christ Himself is above the level of Adam. We
are to gaze upon Christ, not Adam, and in so doing are being transformed by the
Spirit of God into Christ's image." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"There is a great hue and cry throughout the world today on
behalf of tolerance and much of it comes from a rising spirit of godlessness in
the nations... the most intolerant book in all the wide world is the Bible, the
inspired Word of God, and the most intolerant teacher that ever addressed
himself to an audience was the Lord Jesus Christ Himself." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol
II
"Tolerance easily becomes a matter of cowardice if
spiritual principles are involved, if the teachings of God's Word are ignored
and forgotten." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"This is the kind of age and hour where the Lord's people
should be so alert to the hope and promise of His coming that they should get up
every morning just like a child on Christmas morning, eager and believing that
it should be today!" The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Let us read the Bible as the Word of God and never
apologize for finding Jesus Christ throughout its pages, for Jesus Christ is
what the Bible is all about." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Speaking as a minister it is my strong feeling that no man
has a right to preach to a crowd that he has not prayed for." The Tozer Pulpit,
Vol II
"Led by the Spirit of God, the members of the Body of
Christ will always be right in their spirit, right in their wisdom, and right in
their judgment. They will not be judged nor will they allow themselves to be
judged on the basis of what is currently taking place all around them." The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Nowhere in the Word of God is there any text or passage or
line that can be twisted or tortured into teaching that the organic living
church of Jesus Christ just prior to His return will not have every right and
every power and every obligation that she knew in that early part of the book of
Acts." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"There is no religious group or church organization or
denominational communion in the world that God will not desert and abandon in
the very hour it ceases to fulfill and carry out His divine will." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol II
"Any kind of teaching or exposition, so called, that shuts
us out from the privileges and promises of the New Testament is wrong, and the
man who tries to shut me out is a false teacher!" The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Did you know that the people who were with Jesus at the
time when He walked among men were not as well off as they were ten days after
He left them? Ten days after He departed, He sent the Holy Spirit, and the
disciples who understood only in part suddenly knew the plan of God as in a
blaze of light." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The scriptural teaching that the work of God through the
church can be accomplished only by the energizing of the Holy Spirit is very
hard for humans to accept, for it is a concept that frustrates our own carnal
desire for honor and praise, for glory and recognition." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol
II
"Even those with natural capabilities must have a special
anointing from the Spirit of God to impart truth. This is undoubtedly true also
of the special gifts of wisdom and knowledge." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I do not believe it is proper to magnify one gift above
all others, particularly when that gift is one that Paul described as of least
value." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Where the wise and gentle of Spirit of God is in control,
believers ought to exhibit genuine discernment... Before I join a movement, a
school of thought, a theological persuasion, or a church group or denomination,
I must make the proper tests... Is there an exercise of sharp spiritual
discernment that knows the flesh from the Spirit?... For our fundamentalist
Christian circles in general, I fear that there is an alarming lack of spiritual
discernment. Because we have shut out the Holy Spirit in so many ways, we are
stumbling along as though we are spiritually blindfolded... There is no other
explanation for the wave of rationalism that now marks the life of many
congregations. And what about the increasing compromise with all of the
deadening forces of worldliness? The true, humble and uncompromising church of
Christ is harder and harder to find." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"If any man is determined to preach so that his work and
ministry will abide in the day of the judgment fire, then he must preach, teach
and exhort with the kind of love and concern that comes only through a true and
genuine gift of the Holy Spirit, something beyond his own capabilities!" The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"When leaders and members of a church do not have the
genuine gifts of the Spirit, the true anointing of the Spirit, they are thrown
back to depend upon human and natural capabilities. In that case, natural
talents must come to the fore... in this realm of religious activity, talent
runs the church. The gifts of the Spirit are not recognized and used as God
intended... Part of the successful operation of that church depends upon men
with business talents and part of it depends upon men with natural gifts as
salesmen and politicians... Much of the religious activity we see in the
churches is not the eternal working of the Eternal Spirit, but the mortal
working of man's mortal mind, and that is raw tragedy." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Mortality and temporality are written all across the
church of Christ in the world today because so many persons are trying to do
with human genius and power of the flesh what only God can do through the Holy
Spirit." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I was nineteen years old, earnestly in prayer, kneeling in
the front room of my mother-in-law's home, when I was baptized with a might
effusion of the Holy Ghost. I had been eager for God's will and I had been up
against almost all of the groups and "isms" with their formulas and theories and
teachings... Any tiny work that God has ever done through me and through my
ministry for Him dates back to that hour when I was filled with the Spirit. That
is why I plead for the spiritual life of the Body of Christ and the eternal
ministries of the Eternal Spirit through God's children, His instruments." The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"What else should we do with the Word of God but obey?" The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Better to have no friends and be an Elijah, alone, than to
be like Lot in Sodom, surrounded by friends who all but damned him." The Tozer
Pulpit, Vol II
"The same blight that rests upon sinful, fallen man,
namely, temporality and mortality, rests upon every work that man does." The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Ours is the age in which Christ has been explained,
humanized, demoted. Many professing Christians no longer expect Him to usher in
a new order. They are not at all sure He is able to do so; or if He does, it
will be with the help of art, education, science and technology, that is, with
the help of man." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Men are lost but not abandoned. That is what the Holy
Scriptures teach and that is what the Christian church is commissioned to
declare." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"God loves you for His own sake and not for your sake." The
Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"With all my heart I believe in the historicity of the
Christian gospel, but that does not mean that the eternal fate of the individual
man depends upon historic evidence. The Holy Spirit is here now to convince the
world, and however we treat the warnings of the Holy Spirit is exactly how we
treat Jesus Christ Himself." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I do not have to be a scholar, a logician, and a lawyer to
arrive at belief in the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, for the Holy Spirit has
taken the deity of Christ out of the hands of the scholars and put it in the
consciences of men. The Spirit of God came to lift it out of the history books
and write it on the fleshy tablets of the heart." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"It is a simple matter to get people to come forward when
the invitation is given. It is a simple matter to get them on their knees... I
continue to oppose that kind of instruction and teaching, the kind that would
pick little chickens out of their shells and let them die. I continue to oppose
that kind of practice that would take over the work of the Holy Ghost and crowd
Him out and retire Him." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The Word of the Lord is not easy but it is safe; humble
yourself and the Lord will draw near to you." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The Old Testament picture is that of the blood of murdered
Abel crying out for justice; the New Testament picture is that of the blood of
Jesus Christ the Savior and mediator crying from the throne of God for mercy!"
The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I believe that the ground of human conscience is the
secret presence of Christ in the world." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"We do a great injury to mankind when we divide these two
voices -- exhortation and promise. We have no excuse for insisting that we make
a solo out of that which God meant to be a duet... it takes both sides of a half
dollar to be worth fifty cents." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The teaching of forgiveness without any turning from sin
is a great error and it has filled the churches with deceived members and helped
to fill hell with deceived souls." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"The idea that a believer is accountable to God for the
deeds done in the body has completely passed out of the theological thinking of
the modern fundamentalist church." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Time is a treasured gift which God has given to us but He
has not given it to use foolishly." The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"I find myself indignant concerning much preaching and
teaching which portrays the Christ as a soft and pliant friend of everybody, a
painted, plastic figure without any spine and involved in no way with justice...
But that Christ that is being so preached is not the Christ of God, nor the
Christ of the Bible, nor the Christ who will actually deal with mankind, for
that Christ has eyes as a flaming fire, His feet are like burnished brass and
from His mouth comes a sharp, two-edged sword. He will be the judge of mankind."
The Tozer Pulpit, Vol II
"Those who think poorly of God and well of themselves may
chatter idly of "the deity within," but the man who trembles before the high and
lofty One that inhabiteth eternity whose name is Holy, the man who knows the
depth of his own sin, will detect a moral incongruity in the teaching that One
so holy should dwell in the spirit of one so vile." The Divine Indwelling
"Of the many compelling reasons why we ought to know our
Saviour better than we do certainly the first is that He is a person, Jesus
Christ. We all agree that he is a person, that he is the Eternal Son, but have
we gone on to adore him because he is the source and fountain of everything that
you and I are created to enjoy? He is the fountain of all truth, but he is more
-- he is truth itself. He is the source and strength of all beauty, but he is
more -- he is beauty itself. He is the fountain of all wisdom, but he is more --
he is wisdom itself. In him are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden
away!" I Talk Back To The Devil
"A man may attend church for a lifetime and be none the
better for it." The Tragedy Of Wasted Religious Activity
"In our private prayers and in our public services we are
forever asking God to do things that He either has already done or cannot do
because of our unbelief." The Tragedy Of Wasted Religious Activity
"To most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a
deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; ;but He remains personally
unknown to the individual." Apprehending God
"For millions of Christians, nevertheless, God is no more
real than He is to the non-Christian. They go through life trying to love an
ideal and be loyal to a mere principle." Apprehending God
"The Bible assumes as a self-evident fact that men can know
God with at least the same degree of immediacy as they know any other person or
thing that comes within the field of their experience." Apprehending God
"God and the spiritual world are real. We can reckon upon
them with as much assurance as we reckon upon the familiar world around us."
Apprehending God
"Any belief that does not command the one who holds it is
not a real belief; it is a pseudo belief only." True Faith Brings Commitment
"To many Christians Christ is little more than an idea, or
at best an ideal. He is not a fact. Millions of professed believers talk as if
He were real and act as if He were not." True Faith Brings Commitment
"We boast in the Lord but watch carefully that we never get
caught depending on Him." True Faith Brings Commitment
"Pseudo faith always arranges a way out to serve in case
God fails it. Real faith knows only one way and gladly allows itself to be
stripped of any second way or makeshift substitutes. For true faith, it is
either God or total collapse." True Faith Brings Commitment
"What we need very badly these days is a company of
Christians who are prepared to trust God as completely now as they know they
must do at the last day... It would be better to invite God now to remove every
false trust, to disengage our hearts from all secret hiding places and to bring
us out into the open where we can discover for ourselves whether or not we
actually trust Him. That is a harsh cure for our troubles, but it is a sure one.
Gentler cures may be too weak to do the work. And time is running out on us."
True Faith Brings Commitment
"Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He
must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard
a voice from the Throne. When he comes (and I pray God there will be not one but
many), he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth
civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of
God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom.
Such a man is likely to be lean, rugged, blunt-spoken and a little bit angry
with the world. He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of
willingness to die for the glory of the One and the salvation of the other. But
he will fear nothing that breathes with mortal breath." The Size of the Soul
"Without doubt there are activities that take precedence
over works of charity. One is the work of witnessing to the grace and power of
God as expressed through Jesus Christ." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"The task of the church is twofold: to spread Christianity
throughout the world and to make sure that the Christianity she spreads is the
pure New Testament kind." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"The identical message preached to the heathen by men of
differing degrees of godliness will produce different kinds of converts and
result in a quality of Christianity varying according to the purity and power of
those who preach it. Christianity will always reproduce itself after its kind. A
worldly-minded, unspiritual church, when she crosses the ocean to give her
witness to peoples of other tongues and other cultures, is sure to bring forth
on other shores a Christianity much like her own." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"The popular notion that the first obligation of the church
is to spread the gospel to the uttermost parts of the earth is false. Her first
obligation is to be spiritually worthy to spread it... To spread an effete,
degenerate brand of Christianity to pagan lands is not to fulfill the
commandment of Christ or to discharge our obligation to the heathen." The
Warfare Of The Spirit
"Evangelical Christianity, at least in the United States,
is now tragically below the New Testament standard. Worldliness is an accepted
part of our way of life." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"Everyone admires Jesus, but almost no one takes Him
seriously... We can only conclude that Jesus is universally popular today
because He is universally misunderstood... the teachings of Christ are wholly
contrary to the beliefs of the modern world. The spiritual philosophy underlying
the kingdom of God is radically opposed to that of civilized society. In short,
the Christ of the New Testament and the world of mankind are so sharply opposed
to each other as to amount to downright hostility. To achieve a compromise is
impossible." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"The contradiction between Christ and unregenerate society
is sharp and irreconcilable, but the contrast between society and its own
mistaken conception of Him is scarcely noticeable. So the world can cherish its
image of Christ and ignore His commandments without a qualm of conscience." The
Warfare Of The Spirit
"When a Christian ignores the commandment of Christ, he is
guilty of sin doubly compounded. He violates holy vows, is guilty of rebellion
against God and commits the grotesque sin of calling Jesus Lord with his words
and denying His Lordship with his deeds." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"The teachings of Jesus were never intended for the nations
of the world. Our Lord sent His followers into all the world to make and baptize
disciples... To expect of once-born nations conduct possible only to the
regenerated, purified, Spirit-led followers of Christ is to confuse the truth of
Christianity and hope for the impossible." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"Inspired prophets will prove a fine antidote to the
uninspired scientists." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"The Bible is an organic unity, one with itself throughout,
and must be received in toto or in toto rejected." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"The man who will not believe in hell must surrender his
right to believe in heaven." The Warfare Of The Spirit
"The Holy Spirit did not come upon the disciples to unite
them. The Holy Spirit came upon the disciples because they were already united."
Sermon, God's Great Promise To The Church