There is a point in time that changes history all together, it is the time that all of God's grace was poured out on earth and salvation was secured for anyone willing to take up his* cross and follow. The things Jesus did as He lived changed the lives that He touched. His final act was to lay His own life down so that ANYONE can receive God's grace and that's when history changed. A W Tozer wrote this book before 1963 (not sure of the exact date), but what Tozer says in this book is sooooooooooooooooooooooo relevant to today's society and today's problems that it seems like it was written yesterday. One thing about this book is that the truth is the truth, regardless of the circumstances, regardless of the Supreme Court decisions, regardless of my wishes for what it could be. Truth is Truth and only God is the Truth.
I found some quotes from the book that can stand on their own, but they tie so well to all that Tozer has to say in the book:
“When God justifies a sinner everything in God is on the sinner's side.”
“In every Christian’s heart there is a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne till he puts himself on the cross. If he refuses the cross he remains on the throne. Perhaps this is at the bottom of the backsliding and worldliness among gospel believers today. We want to be saved but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king within the little kingdom of Mansoul and wear our tinsel crown with all the pride of a Caesar, but we doom ourselves to shadows and weakness and spiritual sterility.”
“The cross stands high above the opinions of men and to that cross all opinions must come at last for judgment.”
“The work of Christ on the cross did not influence God to love us, did not increase that love by one degree, did not open any fount of grace or mercy in His heart. He had loved us from old eternity and needed nothing to stimulate that love. The cross is not responsible for God's love; rather it was His love which conceived the cross as the one method by which we could be saved. God felt no different toward us after Christ had died for us, for in the mind of God Christ had already died before the foundation of the world. God never saw us except through atonement. The human race could not have existed one day in its fallen state had not Christ spread His mantle of atonement over it. And this He did in eternal purpose long ages before they led Him out to die on the hill above Jerusalem. All God's dealings with man have been conditioned upon the cross.”
To consider the last fifty or so years we can see that the order of God's world deteriorate even further into chaos, and that in itself is a clarion call for everyone to pick up his own cross and experience the grace of God.
Five solid stars!
My thanks to Wingspread for allowing me to read and review this book.
*I am not at all threatened by using he/him/his as a gender-neutral pronoun.
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