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    The Knowledge of the Holy
    The Knowledge of the Holy
    The Knowledge of the Holy
    Ebook188 pages3 hours

    The Knowledge of the Holy

    By A. W. Tozer

    5/5

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    • Faith

    • Redemption

    • God's Attributes

    • Theology

    • Divine Revelation

    • Divine Intervention

    • Fear of the Unknown

    • Spiritual Journey

    • Spiritual Awakening

    • Divine Love

    • Divine Wisdom

    • Divine Justice

    • Chosen One

    • Self-Discovery

    • Power Struggle

    • Sin

    • Atonement

    • Human Limitations

    • Time & Eternity

    • Justice

    About this ebook

    The Knowledge of the Holy by popular evangelical author and Christian mystic A.W. Tozer illuminates God's attributes-from wisdom, to grace, to mercy-and in doing so, attempts to restore the majesty and wonder of God in the hearts and minds of all Christians. A modern classic of Christian testimony and devotion, The Knowledge of

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSamaira Book Publishers
    Release dateSep 1, 2020
    ISBN9789387550957
    Author

    A. W. Tozer

    The late Dr. A. W. Tozer was well known in evangelical circles both for his long and fruitful editorship of the Alliance Witness as well as his pastorate of one of the largest Alliance churches in the Chicago area. He came to be known as the Prophet of Today because of his penetrating books on the deeper spiritual life.

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    • 5/5
      This book goes in to depth of the characteristics of God. Very good book for an older believer and an excellent book for a new comer!!
    • 4/5
      A thoughtful book which helped remind me of the glory and utter completeness of God. It discussed His attributes not to scare us but to remind us that He is worthy and capable. I particularly liked the last two chapters of the book where the author discussed his thoughts on Arminianism and Calvinism and why he believes they are both correct and can function simultaneously. Thoughtful book.

    Book preview

    The Knowledge of the Holy - A. W. Tozer

    Cover.jpgFront.jpg

    Published by

    © SAMAIRA BOOK PUBLISHERS

    First Edition : 2020

    Revised Edition : 2021

    ISBN : 9789387550957

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publishers.

    2 0 1 2 2 0 2 1

    Contents

    Preface

    Chapter 1

    Why We Must Think Rightly About God

    Chapter 2

    God Incomprehensible

    Chapter 3

    A Divine Attribute: Something True about God

    Chapter 4

    The Holy Trinity

    Chapter 5

    The Self-existence of God

    Chapter 6

    The Self-sufficiency of God

    Chapter 7

    The Eternity of God

    Chapter 8

    God’s Infinitude

    Chapter 9

    The Immutability of God

    Chapter 10

    The Divine Omniscience

    Chapter 11

    The Wisdom of God

    Chapter 12

    The Omnipotence of God

    Chapter 13

    The Divine Transcendence

    Chapter 14

    God’s Omnipresence

    Chapter 15

    The Faithfulness of God

    Chapter 16

    The Goodness of God

    Chapter 17

    The Justice of God

    Chapter 18

    The Mercy of God

    Chapter 19

    The Grace of God

    Chapter 20

    The Love of God

    Chapter 21

    The Holiness of God

    Chapter 22

    The Sovereignty of God

    Chapter 23

    The Open Secret

    Preface

    True religion confronts earth with heaven and brings eternity to bear upon time. The messenger of Christ, though he speaks from God, must also, as the Quakers used to say, speak to the condition of his hearers; otherwise he will speak a language known only to himself. His message must be not only timeless but timely. He must speak to his own generation.

    The message of this book does not grow out of these times but it is appropriate to them. It is called forth by a condition which has existed in the Church for some years and is steadily growing worse. I refer to the loss of the concept of majesty from the popular religious mind. The Church has surrendered her once lofty concept of God and has substituted for it one so low, so ignoble, as to be utterly unworthy of thinking, worshipping men. This she has done not deliberately, but little by little and without her knowledge; and her very unawareness only makes her situation all the more tragic.

    The low view of God entertained almost universally among Christians is the cause of a hundred lesser evils everywhere among us. A whole new philosophy of the Christian life has resulted from this one basic error in our religious thinking.

    With our loss of the sense of majesty has come the further loss of religious awe and consciousness of the divine Presence. We have lost our spirit of worship and our ability to withdraw inwardly to meet God in adoring silence. Modern Christianity is simply not producing the kind of Christian who can appreciate or experience the life in the Spirit. The words, Be still, and know that I am God, mean next to nothing to the self-confident, bustling worshipper in this middle period of the twentieth century.

    This loss of the concept of majesty has come just when the forces of religion are making dramatic gains and the churches are more prosperous than at any time within the past several hundred years. But the alarming thing is that our gains are mostly external and our losses wholly internal; and since it is the quality of our religion that is affected by internal conditions, it may be that our supposed gains are but losses spread over a wider field.

    The only way to recoup our spiritual losses is to go back to the cause of them and make such corrections as the truth warrants. The decline of the knowledge of the holy has brought on our troubles. A rediscovery of the majesty of God will go a long way toward curing them. It is impossible to keep our moral practices sound and our inward attitudes right while our idea of God is erroneous or inadequate. If we would bring back spiritual power to our lives, we must begin to think of God more nearly as He is.

    As my humble contribution to a better understanding of the Majesty in the heavens I offer this reverent study of the attributes of God. Were Christians today reading such works as those of Augustine or Anselm a book like this would have no reason for being. But such illuminated masters are known to modern Christians only by name. Publishers dutifully reprint their books and in due time these appear on the shelves of our studies. But the whole trouble lies right there: they remain on the shelves. The current religious mood makes the reading of them virtually impossible even for educated Christians.

    Apparently not many Christians will wade through hundreds of pages of heavy religious matter requiring sustained concentration. Such books remind too many persons of the secular classics they were forced to read while they were in school and they turn away from them with a feeling of discouragement.

    For that reason an effort such as this may be not without some beneficial effect. Since this book is neither esoteric nor technical, and since it is written in the language of worship with no pretension to elegant literary style, perhaps some persons may be drawn to read it. While I believe that nothing will be found here contrary to sound Christian theology, I yet write not for professional theologians but for plain persons whose hearts stir them up to seek after God Himself.

    It is my hope that this small book may contribute somewhat to the promotion of personal heart religion among us; and should a few persons by reading it be encouraged to begin the practice of reverent meditation on the being of God, that will more than repay the labor required to produce it.

    A.W. Tozer

    Chapter 1

    Why We Must Think Rightly About God

    02.jpg

    O, Lord God Almighty, not the God of the philosophers and the wise but the God of the prophets and apostles; and better than all, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, may I express Thee unblamed?

    They that know Thee not may call upon Thee as other than Thou art, and so worship not Thee but a creature of their own fancy; therefore enlighten our minds that we may know Thee as Thou art, so that we may perfectly love Thee and worthily praise Thee.

    In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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

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

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

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

    Without doubt, the mightiest thought the mind can entertain is the thought of God, and the weightiest word in any language is its word for God. Thought and speech are God’s gifts to creatures made in His image; these are intimately associated with Him and impossible apart from Him. It is highly significant that the first word was the Word: And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We may speak because God spoke. In Him word and idea are indivisible.

    That our idea of God corresponds as nearly as possible to the true being of God is of immense importance to us. Compared with our actual thoughts about Him, our creedal statements are of little consequence. Our real idea of God may lie buried under the rubbish of conventional religious notions and may require an intelligent and vigorous search before it is finally unearthed and exposed for what it is. Only after an ordeal of painful self-probing are we likely to discover what we actually believe about God.

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

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

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

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

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

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

    A god begotten in the shadows of a fallen heart will quite naturally be no true likeness of the true God. Thou thoughtest,

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