Divine Conquest

Book Review.

Tozer, A.W.  The Divine Conquest.  Christian Publications.  1950

Comment.  Henry.

The reading of older ‘classics’ helps with maintaining balance in our ‘world view’.  I felt that way about this book, stimulating and thought-provoking.  Tozer writes with great confidence and authority.  His ‘colors of interpretation’ are pretty much black and white.  He does not mince words. His views on liberalism and fundamentalism and some other ‘isms’ are very clear.

“The worst thing a book can do for a Christian is to leave him with the impression that he has received from it anything really good; the best it can do is point the way to the God he is seeking.” Preface.

To be able to know the God of “eternal continuum” (9) is a wonderful truth.  There is a huge difference between knowing the Word intellectually and knowing it in power.  The transition from pleasing man to pleasing God requires a “supernatural act”. (41)  The old life is replaced by the new life.

Tozer maintains an interesting position with reference to the sovereignty of God and the free will of man.  Man can choose to say ‘no’ to God’s offer of eternal life but it God (not man) who chooses to say yes to those who are predestined to be drawn. 

The life of joy and victory is by way of the cross.  Eternal life is preceded by death, victory by defeat.  Before Jacob could enter into the relationship with God that resulted in him becoming the patriarch he was he was defeated by the Lord in a way that left him with a permanent physical reminder. 

“The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is buried dynamite.” (66)  “God is never anywhere present in one person without the other two.” (73)   The comprehension of spiritual truth does not happen without the illumination by the Holy Spirit.  The intellect reveals the shell only of truth.  The Spirit reveals the kernel within the shell. 

Tozer unpacks the meaning of Acts 1:8, “But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you.”  Although no human language can adequately describe who God is he is often represented in Scripture by the idea of fire, e.g. the iron is in the fire and the fire is in the iron and so they become one even though they remain different. At Pentecost he appeared as a flame.  This flame is “moral, spiritual, intellectual, and volitional”. (99-102) 

The contrast between the flesh and the Spirit is set forth very strongly and the pitfalls of compromise are clearly explained as totally unacceptable, e.g. tolerance.  “Be filled with the Spirit.” Eph.5:18  This is both a command and a promise.