A Transforming Vision of God
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If A. W. Tozer was right,
stating that the Church was in Babylonian captivity in the middle of the 20th
Century, then where is it now? I was a young boy at that time and I can testify
today of a spiritual state that none of us in those days would have believed
possible. The Church is in a free-fall, tumbling rapidly towards total
apostasy. Tozer spoke of a low concept of God, but I, and others, are now speaking
about idolatry, worshiping gods conceived in the minds of individuals. Although
they may quote texts from the Bible, they have joined those texts with
psychological ideology, mixed in dreams and visions, and have conjured gods and
christs, who they can manipulate, foreign to the general tenor of Scripture.
Now, anyone can tear down
and destroy… and destruction of that which is built upon deceit and humanism is
necessary… but it takes an anointed man like Tozer to re-build. He offers hope
and demonstrates biblically how the walls can be restored! And we may do
likewise, for while the general trend of the visible church (Do not eliminate
Evangelicals, Pentecostals and Charismatics from that number!) today is downward,
God is calling forth an honest and sincere people, who are hungry for truth and
reality. The rapture may take place before too long and these are preparing for
the Wedding Supper of the Lamb. Let’s follow Tozer’s six steps to a knowledge
of the Holy God (because they are biblical steps) and experience in our times
another, and perhaps final, move of the Spirit of God.
 |
| A. W. Tozer |
Allow me to explain
briefly that the paragraphs copied below are excerpts from the final chapter of
The Knowledge of the Holy:
“When viewed from the perspective
of eternity, the most critical need of this hour may well be that the Church
should be brought back from her long Babylonian captivity and the name of God
be glorified in her again as of old… What can we plain Christians do to bring
back the departed glory? Is there some secret we may learn? Is there a formula
for personal revival we can apply to the present situation, to our own situation?
The answer to these questions is yes.
Yet the answer may easily
disappoint some persons, for it is anything but profound… The secret is an open
one which the wayfaring man may read. It is simply the old and ever-new
counsel: acquaint thyself with God. To
regain her lost power the Church must see heaven opened and have a transforming
vision of God.
But the God we must see
is not the utilitarian God who is having such a run of popularity today, whose
chief claim to men’s attention is His ability to bring them success in their
various undertakings and who for that reason is being cajoled and flattered by
everyone who wants a favor. The God we must learn to know is the Majesty in the
heavens, God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, the only wise God
our Saviour. He it is that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, who stretcheth
out the heavens as a curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in, who
bringeth out His starry host by number and calleth them all by name through the
greatness of His power, who seeth the works of man as vanity, who putteth no
confidence in princes and asks no counsel of kings.
Knowledge of such a Being
cannot be gained by study alone. It comes by a wisdom the natural man knows
nothing of, neither can know, because it is spiritually discerned. To know God
is at once the easiest and the most difficult thing in the world. It is easy
because the knowledge is not won by hard mental toil, but is something freely
given. As sunlight falls free on the open field, so the knowledge of the holy
God is a free gift to men who are open to receive it. But this knowledge is
difficult because there are conditions to be met and the obstinate nature of
fallen man does not take kindly to them.
Let me present a brief
summary of these conditions as taught by the Bible and repeated through the
centuries by the holiest, sweetest saints the world has ever known:
First, we must forsake
our sins…
Second, there must be an
utter committal of the whole life to Christ in faith…
Third, there must be a
reckoning of ourselves to have died unto sin and to be alive unto God in Christ
Jesus, followed by a throwing open of the entire personality to the inflow of
the Holy Spirit…
Fourth, we must boldly
repudiate the cheap values of the fallen world…
Fifth, we must practice
the art of long and loving meditation upon the majesty of God… We may also
need… to protest the frivolous character of much that passes for Christianity
among us. By this we may for a time lose friends and gain a passing reputation
for being holier-than-thou; but no man who permits the expectation of
unpleasant consequences to influence him in a matter like this is fit for the
kingdom of God…
Sixth, as the knowledge
of God becomes more wonderful, greater service to our fellow men will become
for us imperative…”
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