Aiden Wilson Tozer Biography Quotes 14 Report mistakes

Early Life
Aiden Wilson Tozer was born on April 21, 1897, in the rural community of La Jose, Pennsylvania. His early years were marked by modest means and strenuous work, experiences that shaped his later insistence on simplicity and humility. During his adolescence his family moved to Akron, Ohio, where the bustle of industrial life and the world of factory labor exposed him to the pressures and distractions he would later critique from the pulpit. In Akron, as a teenager, he heard a street preacher urge listeners to seek God personally. That challenge pierced him. He retreated to pray, confessed faith in Christ, and emerged with the unshakable conviction that God had called him to proclaim a deeper, truer life of worship.

Calling and Formation
Tozer had almost no formal theological education, a fact he confronted not by retreat but by reading voraciously. He devoured Scripture and the classic devotional writers, especially Thomas a Kempis, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Brother Lawrence, and others whose insights into the holiness of God and the interior life became the scaffolding of his thought. Within the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), founded by A. B. Simpson, he found a denominational home that emphasized the deeper life, missions, and the centrality of Christ. He married Ada Cecelia Pfautz in 1918, and the partnership, though often lived under financial restraint, became a steadying force as he accepted early pastorates and refined his voice. From the beginning, his sermons mingled plain speech with piercing analysis, urging hearers to pursue God Himself rather than merely the benefits of religion.

Pastoral Ministry
Licensed and ordained in the C&MA, Tozer served small congregations before being called in 1928 to Southside Alliance Church in Chicago, Illinois. There he remained for roughly three decades, and the city became the crucible of his national influence. In Chicago he gave himself to prayer, study, and preaching, often closing his office door for extended hours of private devotion. He cultivated a disciplined inner life and expected the same seriousness from his flock, challenging the spiritual complacency he saw in American church culture. He criticized the reduction of worship to entertainment and insisted that the church be consumed with the presence and majesty of God. Colleagues and lay leaders at Southside Alliance recognized his unusual gravity and guarded his time so he could prepare messages that would eventually reach far beyond their neighborhood.

Writer and Editor
Tozer's pen amplified his pulpit. Beginning with articles and editorials for the denominational periodical The Alliance Weekly (later Alliance Witness), he became, in mid-century, one of its most distinctive voices. As an editor he taught by way of essays: compact, incisive meditations calling for repentance, reverence, and obedience. Christian Publications, the C&MA's publishing arm, brought his books to print. His longtime editor, Harry Verploegh, helped shape manuscripts and distill sermons into volumes that bore Tozer's unmistakable cadence. David J. Fant Jr., a colleague in the Alliance, also championed his work, later gathering and interpreting Tozer's writings so that new generations could hear him. Among Tozer's enduring books are The Pursuit of God (1948), The Root of the Righteous, Born After Midnight, Of God and Men, Man: The Dwelling Place of God, and The Knowledge of the Holy (1961). He wrote with aphoristic force; one line, now famous, encapsulates his program: What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

Convictions and Influences
Tozer's preaching and writing revolved around the character of God, the necessity of true worship, and the call to holiness. He warned that evangelicalism could gain the world's applause while losing the awe of God. The classical writers he read became personal companions; he quoted Thomas a Kempis, Augustine, and Brother Lawrence not as curiosities, but as living teachers. Within his own tradition, the example and teaching of A. B. Simpson gave him a framework for Christ-centered proclamation and missionary urgency. Alliance leaders such as Paul Rader, known for evangelistic innovation, broadened the horizons of the movement that Tozer served. Younger preachers and evangelists, including figures like Leonard Ravenhill, found courage in Tozer's unbending message that revival begins with a broken, worshiping church. Through print and platform, he formed a quiet fellowship of seekers who wanted not religious success but the presence of God.

Life of Simplicity
Tozer's private habits mirrored his public appeals. He sought a pared-down life, wary of materialism and status. He and Ada opened their home to guests and parishioners, but he guarded long stretches for prayer and reading. He avoided luxury, traveled simply, and gave most of his book royalties to Christian causes and to those in need. Behind the sternness that some heard in his sermons was a tender burden for worshipers to see the beauty of the Lord. He felt that the church's first calling was adoration, and he labored to curate an atmosphere in which people could encounter God without distraction.

Chicago to Toronto
After decades in Chicago, Tozer accepted a call in 1959 to the Avenue Road Church in Toronto, Canada. There, without the long institutional memory of Southside Alliance, he was received as a pastor-teacher whose words carried unusual weight. He continued to contribute essays to the Alliance periodical and to shape manuscripts with the help of Harry Verploegh and the Christian Publications team. Visitors who came to Toronto often found him the same as ever: reserved until the subject turned to God, then fervent, urgent, and clear. He balanced the work of a local pastor with a wider ministry of conferences, always pressing toward the realities of worship over the mechanics of religion.

Final Years and Death
In Toronto Tozer's health began to show strain, the natural cost of relentless labor and travel. Still, he refused to dilute his message. The Knowledge of the Holy, a late masterpiece exploring the attributes of God, appeared as a fitting capstone to his life's emphasis. On May 12, 1963, he died in Toronto after a heart attack. He was remembered by congregants, colleagues, and readers across North America as a prophetic voice within evangelicalism. His grave marker famously summarizes how he wished to be known: simply, a man of God.

Legacy
Tozer's legacy endures through congregations he shaped, articles he penned, and books that continue to be read by pastors, missionaries, students, and laypeople. The Alliance editorial community, including David J. Fant Jr., worked to preserve and circulate his thought, while Christian Publications and later houses kept his titles in print. Posthumous collections assembled from sermons and editorials maintained his tone of urgent devotion. More than a stylist, he offered a diagnosis and a prescription: recover the knowledge of the Holy, and everything else in the church will find its proper size. Leaders across traditions have cited him for courage and clarity, because he spoke the same way in a committee room as he did in a pulpit or on a printed page. A. W. Tozer's voice remains bracing because it was ultimately God-centered; he sought to make God high in the minds of people, and in doing so he called the church to its first love.

Our collection contains 14 quotes who is written by Aiden, under the main topics: Motivational - Free Will & Fate - Faith - Mortality - Bible.