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About the Book
"Epic Battles of the Last Days" by Rick Joyner is a book that explores the spiritual battles that are said to take place in the end times. Joyner delves into biblical prophecies and presents insights on how believers can effectively engage in these battles through prayer, worship, and spiritual warfare. The book highlights the importance of preparing for the challenges that are to come and offers encouragement for those facing spiritual warfare.
A.W. Tozer (Aiden Wilson Tozer)
Early life
Tozer hailed from a tiny farming community in western La Jose, Pennsylvania. He was converted to Christianity as a teenager in Akron, Ohio: While on his way home from work at a tire company, he overheard a street preacher say, "If you don't know how to be saved ... just call on God, saying, 'Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.'" Upon returning home, he climbed into the attic and heeded the preacher's advice.
Pastor
In 1919, five years after his conversion and without formal education in Christian theology, Tozer accepted an offer to serve as pastor of his first church. That began 44 years of ministry associated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA), a Protestant Evangelical denomination, 33 of them serving as a pastor in several different congregations (his first, a small storefront church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia). Later, he served thirty years (1928 to 1959) as the pastor of Southside Alliance Church in Chicago; the final years of his life he spent as pastor of Avenue Road Church in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Observing contemporary Christian living, Tozer felt that the church was on a dangerous course toward compromising with "worldly" concerns.
Born into poverty, Tozer was self-educated and taught himself what he missed in high school and university.
Author
Tozer began writing in 1931 for the denominational magazine of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Alliance Weekly (now Alliance Life), which became the platform from which his writing career emerged. He later wrote the monthly column “There’s Truth in It” (1936–37) and “A Word in Season” (1944–46). In May 1950, he became the editor of the Alliance Weekly, a position he filled until his death in 1963.
At the urging of David W. Fant, publications secretary of the C&MA, Tozer wrote biographies of A. B. Simpson (1943) and Robert A. Jaffray (1947). It was the publication of his third book, The Pursuit of God (1948), that made Tozer a household name among evangelicals. In addition to the 12 books he published in his lifetime, more than 40 other books have been compiled from his magazine features, editorials, and transcribed sermons.
During his lifetime, Tozer’s works were published by Christian Publications, Inc., the denominational press operated by the C&MA. The publishing house declared bankruptcy in 2006 and was purchased by WingSpread Publishers of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.[8] In November 2013, Moody Publishers acquired Wingspread from parent company Zur Ltd., a transaction that included more than 60 Tozer books and pamphlets. Some of Tozer’s works are now in the public domain and have been issued by multiple publishers.
Personal life
Tozer had seven children, six sons and a daughter. Living a simple and non-materialistic lifestyle, he and his wife, Ada Cecelia Pfautz, never owned a car, preferring bus and train travel. Even after becoming a well-known Christian author, Tozer signed away much of his royalties to those who were in need.
Prayer was of vital personal importance for Tozer. "His preaching as well as his writings were but extensions of his prayer life," comments his biographer, James L. Snyder, in the book In Pursuit of God: The Life Of A.W. Tozer. "He had the ability to make his listeners face themselves in the light of what God was saying to them," writes Snyder.
Death and legacy
Tozer died on May 13, 1963, after suffering a heart attack. He was buried in Chicago, and later the family had his remains reinterred at Ellet Cemetery, Akron, Ohio. A simple marker reads: A. W. Tozer—A Man of God. The Alliance Weekly ran a memorial issue with numerous tributes and excerpts. The same issue also featured “God’s Greatest Gift to Man," a transcription of his final sermon. A few months prior to his death, Tozer had submitted the manuscript to The Christian Book of Mystical Verse, which was released in 1964 as his final book. His official publisher, Christian Publications, released many titles after his death, based on his magazine articles and sermon transcriptions. These continue in print with Moody Publishers. Several other publishers have released his public domain works.
In 2000, The Pursuit of God was named to Christianity Today’s list of 100 “Books of the Century.” In 2006, Knowledge of the Holy was named in “The Top 50 Books That Have Shaped Evangelicals.” Contemporary Christian music artist Lauren Barlow of BarlowGirl later published a compilation of stories told by 59 artists, writers, and leaders about A.W. Tozer’s personal inspiration.
host as you are - practicing hospitality as a family
Love God and love your neighbor . This is the Butterfield family motto. It makes us humble, messy, and on the frontline in our neighborhood. And being on the frontline isn’t pretty. “Hospitality means being profoundly unselfish, and small children need help to see the blessing in this.” Take for example last March, when the pandemic hit. We were supposed to batten down the hatches, disinfect everything, including the family cat, and remain socially distanced at all times, but schools closed before parents were home from work. So after the first week of lockdown, I looked like the little old lady who lived in the shoe. Our house was open, boisterous, noisy, and full of students who would have been in class. I could visualize getting arrested in my apron for violating governor’s stay-at-home and social-distancing orders. While that hasn’t happened, other things have happened that have made me realize that children play a vital and central role in Christian hospitality. Indeed, I couldn’t practice hospitality without them. Consider six touch points for children’s central role in Christian hospitality. 1. Hospitality is a mission of the church. Sometimes we American Christians privatize hospitality in false ways. Hospitality isn’t a Butterfield thing. It’s a church thing. And children are a blessed part of our church. Jesus loves children and so do we. As the church seeks to evangelize the world, the homes of church members become gospel outposts, places where we bring the gospel to the neighborhood. This is very good news for people with young children. It means that the burden is not on you to be different. It means that your unsaved neighbors will benefit from seeing that you also decorate with plastic dinosaurs and LEGOs. And it also means that you do not always have to be in hospitality mode. As Edith Schaeffer said, doors have hinges for a reason. 2. Hospitality puts the church on the frontline. When inviting unsaved neighbors over, Kent and I always invite our church family, too. The more the merrier, especially in the summer. Your unsaved neighbors will benefit from seeing many different models of the covenant family, including singles (whose church membership renders them a covenant family) and older people. Many Christian hands make the care of little ones easier. Also, with the church family on deck, your children will not feel neglected or isolated as they participate in hospitality. Hospitality means being profoundly unselfish, and small children need help to see the blessing in this. 3. Hospitality puts hot-button topics on the frontline. Our family is made by adoption and all of our children are biracial. Christians know that oppression, violence, and discrimination are sin, but we do not believe that racism, for example, is itself a “meta-narrative” — a paradigm that declares all white people are racists, all black people victims, all social structures complicit in a white hegemonic hatred machine, and any white family who has adopted children of color as colonizing micro-aggressionists. If these things were true, then the Butterfield family doesn’t exist. And yet here we stand, opening the door to everyone. When your family is on the frontline, it has the opportunity to showcase the love of Christ, the purpose of natural law, the harmony of the biblical callings of male and female, and the shallowness of the modern social construction of race. It exposes idols and tears down strongholds and reveals how the love of Christ transcends sociology (shocking as this may be). 4. Hospitality builds relationships within the family. Hospitality is a joy for small children when they get to have some agency in the process. Especially when you are opening your home to others in the neighborhood with small children, your children should be enlisted as hosts. They can set the kids’ table and make the kids’ menu. And with platters of chicken nuggets, watermelon, and popsicles, don’t be surprised if some of the neighborhood dads are found sampling the children’s fare. Your children can also be prepared to think like Jesus would about having children over who haven’t gone to church and don’t (yet) know Jesus. Your children need to be guided in how to be good hosts who lead and set examples (and don’t follow bad ones). And you should set clear boundaries for safety. In our house, there is no playing in children’s bedrooms. Ever. We have a big back yard with a trampoline, and we think that a knock on the head is safer than anything that happens behind a closed door. Working together to have a hospitable home also puts all hands on deck — from the smallest to the largest. Children can’t clean the house as well as you can, but even a small child can sweep up tumbleweeds of dog hair and throw trash in the kitchen can. Value their contributions. 5. Hospitality cares about what neighbors care about. When you open your home to neighbors, you set a table that welcomes them. You ask them about food allergies and other sensitivities. You remember these things and you go out of your way to care about what they care about. You practice becoming all things to all people in the hopes of saving some (1 Corinthians 9:22). You help your children to respect differences that they don’t understand (yet). 6. Hospitality is all for one and one for all. If you have small children whose bedtime is 7:30, consider having neighbors over for Saturday lunch instead of Saturday dinner. Don’t think of your children as a burden — ever. Work with the capacities, limitations, and skills of each member of your family. Be a team. Be in sync with each other’s rhythms and needs. “Hospitality isn’t a performance. It’s a Christian grace that involves the whole family.” And when guests arrive, don’t segregate the children, but integrate them. We live in a world that segregates everything. Show the beauty in working together. And at the end of the meal, the older children can put the dishes in the sink and distribute the Bibles. The little children can play with LEGOs on the floor while the family patriarch opens the Bible to the watching world and prays for the power of the resurrected Christ to guide, encourage, correct, and save. Your children will grow up watching you plead for your neighbors to put their faith in Christ. They will inherit an integrated faith, not a compartmentalized one, where parents act like Christians from ten to noon on Sunday, but the rest of the time operate in an orbit of selfish ambition. Hospitality isn’t a performance. It’s a Christian grace that involves the whole family.
