A. W. Tozer

Aiden Wilson Tozer (* 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 evangelical pastor and author. His works are assigned to the evangelicalism.

Curriculum vitae

Childhood and youth

Aiden Wilson Tozer was born in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania ( United States) on 21 April 1897. He grew up as the third of six children in a peasant family. His father Jacob Tozer educated the children about discipline and hard work, but he showed them any affection and did not develop personal relationships with them. When Aiden was ten years old, the residence of the Tozers burned down through the carelessness of the grandmother. After the house had been rebuilt, leaving Zene, the elder brother, the family to work in Akron in the emerging industry for rubber tires. Due to the heavy workload of father suffered in the fall of 1907 a nervous breakdown followed by a severe depression. Through the subsequent hospitalization occurred only a temporary improvement, and more clinic visits followed over the next five years. Aiden now had the older brother and the father substitute, although he was not yet eleven years old. To listen to his childhood.

In 1912, the father gave to the farm, and the family moved to Akron, where he and Aiden got work in the tire industry. When Aiden was 17 years old, he heard a street preacher who said, "If you do not know how to pray, go home, sit down back and asks: " O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner. " "That's what he did alone in the attic. A few weeks later, he joined the church Grace Methodist Episcopal Church, where he was baptized too. In this community, he met his future wife, who is two years younger Ada Cecelia Pfautz to know. Later he went into the church of the Christian and Missionary Alliance ( CMA). Here he learned besides the basics of the Christian faith and to preach publicly in street meetings. He felt called by God to become a preacher. During a prayer with his future in-law, Kate Pfautz, he had an experience of which he said that he " was baptized with a tremendous gift of the Holy Spirit." This experience was decisive for the rest of his life.

Service as Pastor

Aiden and Ada were married on 26 April 1918. From this marriage seven children were born. Soon after the marriage was Aiden on his work to full-time to go as an evangelist and preacher at the service. Because of the First World War he was indeed convened in September for military service, but was no longer used. In 1919 he got his first pastorate in a CMA church in Stonewood (West Virginia ), although he had no theological training or higher education. During this time he became known within the CMA as a gifted preacher.

He had already served as a pastor in various CMA communities, when he after he had first rejected twice in 1928, accepted the appointment to a church in Chicago. He wrote regular articles for the Journal of the CMA The Alliance Weekly ( later The Alliance Witness ). In 1943 his first book appeared. It was a book on AB Simpson, founder of the CMA, the occasion of his hundredth birthday. In 1951, Tozer had a regular radio show on Sunday mornings in the transmitter of the Moody Bible Institute, which made him nationally known.

Last years

After the church leadership had decided to close the existing church building on an African- American community to sell and build a new building in another part of town, Tozer gave up his pastorate. He took the end of 1959 the offer of a community in Toronto, the only obliged him to keep every Sunday two sermons. Since he was released from the usual tasks of a pastor, he could make lecture tours and write more books. During this time, his most successful book, The Knowledge of the Holy arose (Eng. The essence of God).

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

His wife, whose needs he had often not sufficiently taken, married a year after his death, the widower Leonard Odam. About this marriage she said: " Never in my life have I been happier. Aiden loved Jesus Christ, but Leonard Odam loves me. "

Works (selection)

• I Call It Heresy! ( dt 's to fear God? The Image of God of postmodernism. CLV, Bielefeld 2001)
• The Knowledge of the Holy. (Eng. The essence of God. )
• The Pursuit of God. ( search dt closeness to God. Translated from English by Christina Wuttke, 2nd edition, SCM Hänssler, Holzgerlingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-7751-4523-7 )