A.W. Tozer: A Twentieth-Century Prophet

By David J. Fant Jr.

Aiden Wilson Tozer is applauded by contemporary evangelicals as a "towering figure," "a timeless treasure," "a spiritual mentor" and "one of the great Christian writers of this century." His writings continue to create a thirst for the knowledge and pursuit of God in the hearts of millions.

This volume presents an overview of the life of this twentieth-century scholar, mystic, theologian, pastor, author and editor. These pages reflect not only a prophet but a saint—a man of indefatigable zeal with an insatiable craving for God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Release date: Aug 2, 2010
• ISBN: 9781600669880

Book preview

1964

CHAPTER 1

A new spirit will I put within you

The fact that A. W. Tozer was born and reared on a farm proved an invaluable asset. Throughout his long, distinguished career it paid regular dividends in grass-roots common sense, graphic illustrations, and parables for tongue and pen. While at times his spirit took flight, his feet remained firmly fixed on earth.

Lessons learned on the farm he did not forget but often used: Each man reaps his own sowing and more than he sows. Plowing is like prayer, planting resembles prophecy, and harvesting testifies to the faithfulness of the Almighty. Farming is not so much a business as an occupation.

A. W. Tozer was born April 21, 1897, in La Jose, now Newburg, Pennsylvania, the third of six children. His father’s name was Jacob Snyder Tozer, and his mother’s maiden name, Prudence Jackson. Jacob’s father was Gilbert Tozer, an Englishman who came to the United States about the middle of the nineteenth century.

The locale of Dr. Tozer’s birth was rocky, mountainous terrain near the town of Mahaffey, scene of old-fashioned camp meetings where he was later to preach year after year. At times the gifts of life and money laid on that consecrated rural altar were astounding.

The name Tozer comes from the Scotch word thistle. A tool used for carding flax was called a thistle because it was rough, and the workmen were said to tease the flax. Because a dog had sharp teeth it was called a teaser or towser, and from this came the name. Doctor Tozer commented that it was humbling to learn this, but that apart from the grace of God he was little more than a thistle.

Henceforth, for the sake of brevity, I shall refer to the subject of this book familiarly as Tozer. That is how he would want it; that is how most of his friends addressed him. Few people knew that the initials A. W. stood for Aiden Wilson, a name borrowed from a humble La Jose storekeeper whose wife and Tozer’s mother had been friends since girlhood. Tozer never liked the name; he became identified by his initials.

As a child Tozer was bright and mischievous, warm and loving. Early he manifested a fondness for babies and animals. An undernourished pig touched his heart, and Tozer raised him on a bottle. He cuddled a lamb when he discovered that the soft little creature had been tossed aside by its mother because of a malformation; it had three ears. Both pig and lamb became family pets. This love for the small and helpless never left him.

Not always in early years was his conduct exemplary. On the slightest provocation he would pick a quarrel with the neighborhood children, drawing the wrath of their mothers upon him. One day Tozer and his sister Essie climbed an apple tree. Swinging back and forth on a high limb he burst into song: Is there any room in heaven for a little lad like me? A response came quickly: If there’s going to be any room for you in heaven you’ll have to mend your ways! and a neighbor’s discerning wife emerged from the brush.

In a magazine article Tozer referred to his father, saying, My old English father, who was something of a cracker-barrel philosopher, used to ask, Why did God create mosquitoes? He thought there was no use for them. Of course his error was in becoming—what do they call it?—‘anthropocentric.’ He was thinking of himself only. He forgot that mosquitoes might find themselves useful to each other.

Zene, the eldest of the family, took a job with the Goodrich Rubber Company in Akron, and this left young Tozer on the farm with a man’s work to perform—plowing, planting, and filling in when no hired hand was available.

About this time tragedy struck. The homestead burned to the ground, the fire traced to some pine chips which an aged grandmother threw on coals laid for baking bread. Flames climbed the chimney, setting the wooden shingles ablaze. Dry weather and a stiff breeze made a quick job of it.

But the ten-year-old Tozer was prepared. Rounding up his younger brother and his sisters, he led them to safety in the woods. By him in a dream the fire had been previewed, and he had related it to the family, telling them what he proposed to do if such a thing should occur.

In a Chicago sermon Tozer referred to his grandmother. She was not a Christian and knew little about the Bible, though she was the main source of information he had until he was about fifteen years old. She owned a dream book, badly dog-eared and thumb-marked, in which she placed supreme confidence. Until she consulted this oracle she would not drink her morning coffee. Grandma indulged in a dream or two every night, and the first thing in the morning off to that dream book she would go. It had an alphabetical index, with A for apple, let us say. If the dream was about apples it interpreted the dream, on down the line to Z for zebra. Grandma was a hustler, he said, but she must have been a miserable one, trying always to escape anger or achieve happiness. She was sharp, with a tongue like a razor. She believed in dog barks; if a dog barked under the window somebody would die. Tozer commented that if he had died every time a dog barked under his window he would have been the best customer an undertaker ever had! Said he: Dogs delight to bark under my window, and mosquitoes make themselves at home in my room. If there is a fly in the rectory it heads direct for me. I have a magnetic attraction for such things. If dreams meant anything, long since I would have been in a padded cell.

A new house arose on the foundations of the old and the Tozers remained on the farm five more years. In 1912 the family moved to Akron, where Tozer joined his brother in employment at the Goodrich plant, as did his father and his sister Essie. After leaving the farm Tozer never cared to return except to reminisce. At times he would slip away from Mahaffey Camp with some companions to visit the old homestead. Only the barn remained, but he would point from one spot to another: That was home plate (where the house formerly stood); that was first base (where a chicken coop had been); and out yonder (the pasture) was center field.

Gauged by modern standards, Tozer’s education was meager. He attended the Wood School, named for its pine-tree setting, where he finished only the grammar grades. But Sundays on the farm were devoted to reading and, like Abraham Lincoln, Tozer availed himself of the few books at hand. No gift for music was evident; offered piano lessons, he gladly transferred his rights to a sister. But at fifteen, in Akron, the artist within began to emerge. He enrolled for cartoon lessons and showed considerable promise; the sharpness of his wit was forecast in his sketches. However, he lost all interest in this after his conversion.

At Akron the family had opportunity for the first time to attend church and Tozer accompanied his younger brother and sisters to Sunday school.

And at Akron the big event happened. In 1915, shortly before his eighteenth birthday, Tozer was converted, and it was for him a transforming experience like Saul’s on the road to Damascus. Certainly the results were the same, though time and place differed. This was on a busy city street corner, with an elderly man the open-air preacher. But his words were pricks: If you don’t know how to be saved, just call on God, saying, ‘Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.’ Tozer sought sanctuary in the attic and there wrestled with God. When he emerged he was a new creation. He joined Grace Methodist Church in Akron and was baptized by immersion in the Church of the Brethren.

Conversion was immediate, but as is generally the case the seed had been planted long before. It would appear that God had laid His hand on this young man very early in life. The soil for the planting had been prepared by his paternal grandmother, Margaret Weaver Tozer, who often talked to the children about God.

At once Tozer began to witness for Christ. He attached himself to his new-found friends in preaching on the streets and conducting neighborhood prayer meetings. For these last he did not await some special moving of the Spirit, but boldly ringing doorbells, requested the privilege of holding a meeting in the home.

Only once did he miss the way. With a boyhood chum he forsook home and job, taking a small boat down the Ohio River with no particular destination in view. The boat capsized and all their possessions were lost, and he sheepishly returned to Akron. The experience was not without value, however, for it made him sympathetic with the backslider. Henceforth there was to be no wavering in his Christian life. Sister Essie, now Mrs. John S. Jeffers, at the time of his death observed: He lived the most consistent Christian life I have ever known.

It was in Akron, where the family took in some roomers, that Tozer developed the habit of appraising people and often reacted instinctively. It was there too that the wit and humor, which later became so pronounced, began to manifest itself.

As a youth he was inclined to be cynical, turning to agnostics or infidels for counsel. An attitude of approaching people and events with a question mark never entirely forsook him, but as time passed, tempered by the soft breezes of the Spirit, his doubts were replaced by unshakable Christian faith.

Conversion worked a miracle in Tozer’s life; to it he traced the awakening of his intellect and every other gift, and family and friends were quick to note the difference. But the long ascent of the pilgrim walk had just begun. Character must be molded by experience; growth in grace and the knowledge of God must come. It requires time for the varied fruits of the Spirit to mature, but gradually, day by day and more and more, cynicism gave way to faith, and kindness and consideration displaced a quarrelsome and argumentative spirit. Tozer was off to a fast start, and as he approached the end of the walk he said, I have found God cordial and generous and in every way easy to live with.

Often the neophyte would withdraw from others to seek a quiet place for Bible study, prayer, and close communion with the Most High. With space scarce in the house, he made a sanctuary of the basement. There Essie, descending the stairs in quest of a jar of fruit, would hear his groanings, recognize that he was wrestling with God, and softly retrace her steps.

Thus began a life of prayer, for Tozer not only preached prayer but practiced it. Always he carried with him a small notebook in which he had noted requests for himself and others, usually requests of a spiritual nature. His prayers bore the same marks as his preaching—honesty, frankness, metaphors, humor, intensity. The praying deeply affected his preaching, for his preaching was but a declaration of what he learned in prayer. Often he would lie prostrate on the floor, a piece of paper under his face protecting against carpet dust. There, humbling himself before the Lord, he beheld the beauty and glory of the Trinity, witnessing one divine attribute after another pass in kaleidoscopic splendor before his raptured sight.

When Tozer sensed that his lay preaching was frowned on by the church authorities he transferred his membership to the Locust Street Church of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, of which the Reverend S. M. Gerow was pastor. Much of his spiritual growth he attributed to the ministry of this godly man. He was also greatly influenced in his Christian life by the saintliness and spiritual counsel of his mother-in-law.

A pious woman, she had been praying that her daughter Ada might meet a Christian young man, and on April 26, 1918, five days after his twenty-first birthday, Aiden Wilson Tozer and Ada Celia Pfautz were married. From this union came seven children: Lowell, the eldest, then Forrest, Aiden, Wendell, Raleigh, Stanley, and Rebecca (Mrs. John Pol). All are now grown and scattered from Florida to California, with Wendell and Forrest in Chicago, Stanley in Detroit, and Rebecca in New York State.

Mother Pfautz’s long-term project was by no means complete when Tozer became her son-in-law. She encouraged him to pursue a studious life and loaned him her religious books. Before him in the home and in her service as a home missionary she set a laudable example.

Believing that Christianity as well as charity begins at home, Tozer speedily pointed his parents and two sisters to Christ. He spent the first summer after his marriage, with his brother-in-law, John S. Jeffers, holding evangelistic meetings in West Virginia schoolhouses. Then he was called to the United States Army where he served until the end of World War I.

Thenceforth his was to be a spiritual warfare. His gifts were recognized by Dr. H. M. Shuman, then superintendent of the area, and in February, 1919, without the advantage even of Bible school training, Tozer was appointed pastor of the Alliance church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia. He was ordained at Beulah Beach, Ohio, on August 18, 1920. He did not take this matter lightly. After the ordaining council withdrew he sought the Saviour in the secret place and there uttered a prayer and took a vow. In later years¹ he formalized this in the following words:

O Lord, I have heard Thy voice and was afraid. Thou hast called me to an awesome task in a grave and perilous hour. Thou art about to shake all nations and the earth and also heaven, that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. O Lord, our Lord, Thou hast stooped to honor me to be Thy servant. No man taketh this honor upon himself save he that is called of God as was Aaron. Thou hast ordained me Thy messenger to them that are stubborn of heart, and hard of hearing. They have rejected Thee, the Master, and it is not to be expected that they will receive me, the servant.

My God, I shall not waste time deploring my weakness nor my unfittedness for the work. The responsibility is not mine, but Thine. Thou hast said, I knew thee—I ordained thee—I sanctified thee, and Thou hast also said, Thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak. Who am I to argue with Thee or to call into question Thy sovereign choice? The decision is not mine, but Thine. So be it, Lord. Thy will, not mine, he done.

Well do I know, Thou God of the prophets and the apostles, that as long as I honor Thee Thou wilt honor me. Help me therefore to take this solemn vow to honor Thee in all my future life and labors, whether by gain or by loss, by life or by death, and then to keep that vow unbroken while I live.

It is time, O God, for Thee to work, for the enemy has entered into Thy pastures and the sheep are torn and scattered. And false shepherds abound who deny the danger and laugh at the perils which surround Thy flock. The sheep are deceived by these hirelings and follow them with touching loyalty while the wolf closes in to kill and destroy. I beseech. Thee, give me sharp eyes to detect the presence of the enemy; give me understanding to distinguish the false friend from the true. Give me vision to see and courage to report what I see faithfully. Make my voice so like Thine own that even the sick sheep will recognize it and follow Thee.

Lord Jesus, I come to Thee for spiritual preparation. Lay Thy hand upon me. Anoint me with the oil of the New Testament prophet. Forbid that I should become a religious scribe and thus lose my prophetic calling. Save me from the curse that lies dark across the face of the modern clergy, the curse of compromise, of imitation, of professionalism. Save me from the error of judging a church by its size, its popularity or the amount of its yearly offering. Help me to remember that I am a prophet; not a promoter, not a religious manager—but a prophet. Let me never become a slave to crowds. Heal my soul of carnal ambitions and deliver me from the itch for publicity. Save me from bondage to things. Let me not waste my days puttering around the house. Lay Thy terror upon me, O God, and drive me to the place of prayer where I may wrestle with principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world. Deliver me from overeating and late sleeping. Teach me self-discipline that I may be a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

I accept hard work and small rewards in this life. I ask for no easy place. I shall try to be blind to the little ways that could make my life easier. If others seek the smoother path I shall try to take the hard way without judging them too harshly. I shall expect opposition and try to take it quietly when it comes. Or if, as sometimes it falleth out to Thy servants, I should have grateful gifts pressed upon me by Thy kindly people, stand by me then and save me from the blight that often follows. Teach me to use whatever I receive in such manner that will not injure my soul nor diminish my spiritual power. And if in Thy permissive providence honor should come to me from Thy church, let me not forget in that hour that I am unworthy of the least of Thy mercies, and that if men knew me as intimately as I know myself they would withhold their honors or bestow them upon others more worthy to receive them.

And now, O Lord of heaven and earth, I consecrate my remaining days to Thee; let them be many or few, as Thou wilt. Let me stand before the great or minister to the poor and lowly; that choice is not mine, and I would not influence it if I could. I am Thy servant to do Thy will, and that will is sweeter to me than position or riches or fame and I choose it above all things on earth or in heaven.

Though I am chosen of Thee and honored by a high and holy calling, let me never forget that I am but a man of dust and ashes, a man with all the natural faults and passions that plague the race of men. I pray Thee, therefore, my Lord and Redeemer, save me from myself and from