Tozer in the Morning – The Last Chapter
The four Gospels tell the story of the life and ministry of Jesus, and in so doing, they follow accurately the ordinary course of biography, giving the facts of His birth, growth, work, death and burial. That is the way with biography: the very word itself suggests it, for it comes from bios, life, and graphein, to write, and means the written history of a person’s life. So says Noah Webster. Now, when we look at the Gospels we note an odd–and wonderful–thing. An extra chapter is added. Why? Biography, by its own definition, must confine itself to the record of the life of an individual. That part of the book which deals with the family tree is not biography, but history, and that part which follows the record of the subject’s death is not biography either. It may be appraisal, or eulogy, or criticism, but not biography, for the reason that the “bios” is gone: the subject is dead. The part that tells of his death is properly the last chapter. The only place in world literature where this order is broken is in the four Gospels. They record the story of the man Jesus from birth to death, and end like every other book of biography has ended since the art of writing was invented. . . . They all agree: Jesus was dead. The life about which they had been writing was gone. The biography was ended. Then, for the only time in this history of human thought, a biographer adds to his book a new section which is authentic biography and begins to write a chapter to follow the last chapter. . . .
Tozer in the Evening – Do You Know Where You are Going?
It is a simple axiom of the traveler that if he would arrive at the desired destination he must take the right road. How far a man may have traveled is not important; what matters is whether or not he is going the right way, whether the path he is following will bring him out at the right place at last. Sometimes there will be an end to the road, and maybe sooner than he knows; but when he has gone the last step of the way will he find himself in a tomorrow of light and peace, or will the toward which he journeys be a of trouble and distress, a of wasteness and desolation, a of darkness and gloominess, a of clouds and thick darkness? The inspired prophet Jeremiah says (and for that matter all the holy prophets who have spoken since the world began say) and our Lord and His apostles say that man does not know the way; indeed he hardly knows where he should go, to say nothing of the way he should take to get there. The worried Thomas spoke for every man when he asked, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? That is the truth and we had better face it squarely: the way of man is not in himself. However severe the blow to our pride, we would do well to bow our heads and admit our ignorance. For those who know not and know they know not, there may in the mercy of God be hope; for those who think they know there can be only increasing darkness.