Aiden Wilson Tozer

Aiden Wilson Tozer (born April 21, 1897 in La Jose (now Newburg), Pennsylvania , United States , † May 12, 1963 in Toronto , Canada ), better known as AW Tozer , was an American Protestant pastor and author . His works are assigned to evangelicalism .

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Childhood and youth

Aiden Wilson Tozer was born in Clearfield County, in the Pennsylvania rural mountains , and grew up the third of six children in a farming family. His father, Jacob Tozer, raised the children to be disciplined and hard at work, but he showed no affection or personal closeness to them. When Aiden was ten years old, the Tozers' home burned down due to Grandmother's inattention. After the house was rebuilt, the older brother Zene left the family to work in Akron's nascent tire industry. Due to the high workload, the father suffered a nervous breakdown in the fall of 1907, which was followed by severe depression . As a result of the subsequent stay in the clinic, there was only temporary improvement, and further stays in the clinic followed over the next five years. Aiden now had to replace the older brother and father, even though he was not yet eleven years old. His childhood ended with that.

In 1912 his father left the farm and the family moved to Akron , Ohio , where he and Aiden got goodyear jobs in the tire industry. When Aiden was 17 years old, he listened to a street preacher who said, "If you don't know how to pray, go home and sit down and say, 'O God, have mercy on me, for I am a sinner.' “That's exactly what he did alone in the attic. A few weeks later he joined the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church where he was baptized . It was in this community that he met his future wife, Ada Cecelia Pfautz, who was two years his junior. He later went to the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) church. Here, in addition to the basics of the Christian faith, he also learned to preach publicly in street meetings. He felt called by God to become a preacher. During a prayer with his future mother-in-law, Kate Pfautz, he had an experience which he said was "baptized with a mighty gift of the Holy Spirit ." This experience became decisive for the rest of his life.

Ministry as a pastor

Aiden and Ada married on April 26, 1918. This marriage had seven children. Soon after marriage, Tozer quit his job to go full-time as an evangelist and minister. Because of the First World War , he was called up for military service in September, but was no longer used. In 1919 he got his first pastorate in a C & MA church in Stonewood ( West Virginia ), although he did not have any theological training or higher education. During this time he became known within the C&MA as a gifted preacher.

Tozer had previously served as a pastor in various C&MA congregations when he accepted a call to serve 31 years in the Southside Alliance congregation in Chicago in 1928, after first refusing twice . Adoration of God and a lot of time for prayer were central to him, his simple, powerful sermons were actually only extensions of it. During this time the congregation grew from 80 to 800 members. From 1950 he became an editor and regularly wrote articles for the magazine of the C&MA The Alliance Weekly (later The Alliance Witness ); within a short time their circulation doubled. In 1943 his first book was published, a study of Albert Benjamin Simpson , the founder of C&MA, on the occasion of his hundredth birthday. From 1951, Tozer had a regular radio broadcast on Sunday mornings on the Moody Bible Institute station , which made him known nationwide.

Last years

After the church leadership decided to sell the existing church building to an African American church and build a new building in another part of the city, Tozer gave up his pastor's position. In late 1959, he accepted an offer from a Toronto congregation that only required him to preach two sermons each Sunday. Since he was released from the usual duties of a pastor, he was able to go on lecture tours and write other books. During this time, his most successful book was The Knowledge of the Holy (dt. The essence of God ).

Tozer died suddenly of a heart attack on May 12, 1963 in Toronto .

A year after his death, his wife, whose needs he had often not paid enough attention to, married the widower Leonard Odam. She said of this marriage: “I have never been happier in my life. Aiden loved Jesus Christ, but Leonard Odam loves me. "

Works (selection)

• The Knowledge of the Holy.
  • The essence of God.
• The Divine Conquest. Fleming H. Revell, New York 1959
  • The forgotten power. Of the nature and effects of the Holy Spirit. Brockhaus , Wuppertal 1975 and 1982. ISBN 978-3-4170-0524-0
• Gain spiritual depth. Zapf & Hoffmann 1998. ISBN 978-3-9314-8916-8
• I Call It Heresy!
  • Do you have to fear God? The postmodern image of God. CLV , Bielefeld 2001. ISBN 978-3-8939-7281-4
• How can you please God? Revival and spiritual growth. CLV, Bielefeld 2001. ISBN 978-3-8939-7285-2
• Changed in his image. Daily devotions. CLV, Bielefeld 2001. ISBN 978-3-8939-7614-0
• The Pursuit of God.
  • Seek God's closeness. SCM Hänssler , Holzgerlingen 2008. ISBN 978-3-7751-4523-7 (translated from English by Christina Wuttke, 2nd edition)
• Founded in the word, burning in the spirit. Christian Media Service Hünfeld 2010. ISBN 978-3-939833-31-4

literature

• Lyle W. Dorsett: Passionate about God - The Life of AW Tozer. Translated from English by Barbara Lux, SCM Hänssler, Holzgerlingen 2009, ISBN 978-3-7751-5011-8 (A Passion for God)

Web links

• Works by Aiden Wilson Tozer in Project Gutenberg ( currently not usually available to users from Germany )
• Sermons from AW Tozer as audio files (English). Retrieved June 15, 2012
• Devotions by AW Tozer . Retrieved June 15, 2012

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, pp. 33-34
2. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 33
3. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, pp. 35-36
4. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, pp. 39-41
5. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 49
6. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 49
7. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 49
8. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 51
9. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 60
10. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, pp. 62-66
11. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, pp. 68-69
12. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, pp. 70-72
13. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 80
14. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 138
15. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 158
16. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 172
17. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, pp. 205-206
18. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 210
19. ↑ AW Tozer: Playing religion or experiencing strength? About being a Christian in the power of the Holy Spirit. AufAtmen 3-1999, Bundesverlag , Witten; Pages 36-40
20. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 19
21. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 217
22. ↑ Dorsett: Passionate about God. 2009, p. 218