01 - INTRODUCTION

As a historian I am always digging through library archives, searching for documents in out-of-the-way places, and tracking down people who might remember the times, events and people I intend to write about. Recently my attention has been focused on A. W. Tozer. Except for C. S. Lewis and perhaps Oswald Chambers, it is difficult to find a twentieth-century Protestant author who has a wider audience than Tozer. Best known for such classics as The Knowledge of the Holy and The Pursuit of God, Tozer wrote numerous books during his lifetime. Since his death in 1963, many of his sermons, as well as editorials he wrote for The Alliance Weekly (now Alliance Life), have been dusted off, transcribed and published in book form. Indeed, a century after his birth—he was born in 1897—over forty titles bearing Tozer’s name are in print. These works are widely circulated, frequently quoted from pulpits and platforms, and often used to illustrate points made by countless writers of books, articles, and missionary letters.

If it is rather common knowledge that A. W. Tozer wrote well and his books continue to find a wide readership, it is less well known that he had a particularly profound impact on college students. Like D.L. Moody, who ministered in the late 19th century, Tozer had a keen sense of his calling to encourage and equip young people to glorify God and fulfill the Great Commission. The impetus for this concern can be traced to his own pilgrimage. Tozer heard a call to ministry while a teenager. Converted at age eighteen, this farm lad who had been educated in a country school house, immediately embarked upon a rigorous program of Bible study and devotional reading. Along the path to full time pastoral ministry, a few people encouraged young Tozer, pointed him to good books, and taught him to seek an intensely deep and personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. The efforts of these saints were well directed. Tozer took his first church—a small Christian and Missionary Alliance church—in West Virginia when he was barely old enough to vote. A decade and three pastorates later, Tozer arrived to fill the pulpit of Chicago’s South Side Alliance Church. It was there, beginning in 1928, that this young minister without the benefit of extensive formal schooling began to go out of his way to encourage young people called to career ministry. From the late 1920’s until he moved to Toronto in 1959, Tozer targeted students at Moody Bible Institute. He frequently spoke at MBI, and his church was always open to students from the Institute. Over the years a steady stream of young people made their way to Tozer’s Alliance church—a place where they were welcomed, inspired and taught biblical truth by a man whose preaching set them ablaze. By the 1940’s A. W. Tozer had become close friends with Dr. V. Raymond Edman, a dedicated Alliance man with a Ph. D. in History. Edman fully embraced the Alliance pillars of Jesus Christ as Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King. Paying more than lip service to these truths, this college professor who served as President of Wheaton College from 1941 through 1964 stood committed to the deeper life. He had personally experienced a transformational work of grace after his conversion. He also knew from church history and personal experience that the Spirit of Jesus Christ wants to work and flow through men and women in profound, God-glorifying ways that are seldom realized by committed Christians. Tozer and Edman became close friends. Among the consequences of this relationship were regular invitations to Dr. Tozer to interact with Wheaton College students, particularly as a chapel speaker. A year seldom passed during the post-World War II years without Tozer speaking at Wheaton College’s chapel. There is no way to measure Tozer’s influence on college students, but it must have been enormous. Several sources I have uncovered reveal that next to Dr. Edman, the most popular speaker at Wheaton College during the 1940’s and 1950’s was Tozer. “We loved to hear him preach,” one former student recalled. “He enthralled us,” said another, “because he spoke with a different voice.” Tozer seemed like a breath of fresh air to these young people for several reasons. First, he avoided the stained glass voice. He loathed pompous sounding God-talk, and he absolutely refused to use hackneyed fundamentalist and evangelical jargon. Second, Tozer loved words. He was a splendid communicator, and he excelled at presenting biblical truth in clear ways replete with vivid illustrations. Tozer also intrigued his college audiences because of his transparency. He admitted his shortcomings and he preached on what he personally had experienced from biblical truth and his intimate relationship with Christ. These discerning students knew the difference between men who could exegete Scripture and those whose hearts had been truly changed by the Bible. Another reason why Tozer’s words flowed with ease through Wheaton chapel audiences can be attributed to his lack of a traditional theological education. To be sure an ignorant speaker is apt to offend or bore a congregation of college women and men. But Tozer’s mind was neither empty nor undisciplined. Although he preached without the benefit of Bible school, college, or seminary training, his head was full of years of self-directed education. The man who only had about eleven years of formal schooling steeped himself in history, theology, poetry, and philosophy. He drank deeply from the rich nectar of the early church fathers, and his knowledge of deeper life writers, whose works spanned centuries of church history, would have impressed the finest historians of ancient and medieval church history. Tozer introduced college people to writers they had never read. He likewise shared stories with them of mystical experiences—stories that stirred young people’s hearts. In brief, when Tozer set foot on the Wheaton College campus, student expectations ran high. People expected to be intellectually stimulated and spiritually inspired; and they were not disappointed. A. W. Tozer had properly diagnosed the condition of the Church in post-war America. People cried out for spiritual food but they were not being fed. Heads were full of doctrine and biblical truth, but hearts were cold and spirits were comatose. We need a revival of “personal heart religion,” he cried. The president of Wheaton College agreed, and so did the students. To be sure there were critics. One faculty member at Wheaton College confronted Tozer after a chapel with no intentions of complimenting the preacher. He said: “Tozer, you’re a bit of a mystic aren’t you?” Tozer’s reply delighted students: “Of course I’m a mystic. How else can you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ today?” In many ways Tozer’s messages are just as timely now as they were a generation ago. In the following pages eleven of A. W. Tozer’s messages to Wheaton College students are published for the first time since he preached them in the early 1950’s. The first sermon was delivered in chapel in spring, 1952. The next nine messages comprise a week of evangelistic services given during autumn 1952. The concluding sermon was presented at the college chapel on March 4, 1954. Upon discovering these sermons I was convinced that Brother Tozer had spoken words that are as appropriate for college students today as they were a half century ago. If he could speak to university men and women today, I think he would want to convey the same timeless truths. It is my prayer that he will speak to you with the same life-changing power that he spoke to his generation.

Lyle W. Dorsett

Wheaton College Wheaton, Illinois