Removing the Veil - A.W. Tozer

Moses met with God in a "tent of meeting" that was setup outside the Israelite camp. He used to go out there to talk with God face to face as a man would talk to his friend. Moses true heart for God became evident as he pled with God to reveal to him His glory. Moses pled with God asking Him not to send him unless His presence went with him. When God promised He would go with Moses, Moses with boldness and seeming arrogance asked God to reveal His glory to him. God honored Moses' faith and hid him in the cleft of the rock and made His glory pass before Moses. How much of the Christian life is lived in the presence of God and with the power of God? How much do we do without the presence of God in our lives. We have figured out how to live the Christian life in our own strength and in our own imaginations. What we need is a visitation from God, a renewing of our passions and devotion not to the work of God but to the person of God. As Tozer says, "we need to be worshippers first and workers second." Oh that we would seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and let God do His work in our midst.


Below is a portion of A.W. Tozer's book the pursuit of God. It was the first book I read as a christian other than the bible.

The presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His presence. That type of Christianity which happens now to be the vogue knows this Presence only in theory. It fails to stress the Christian's privilege of present realization. According to its teachings we are in the presence of God positionally, and nothing is said about the need to experience that Presence actually. The fiery urge that drove men like McCheyne is wholly missing. And the present generation of Christians measures itself by this imperfect rule. Ignoble contentment takes the place of burning zeal. We are satisfied to rest in our judicial possessions and, for the most part, we bother ourselves very little about the absence of personal experience.

Who is this within the veil who dwells in fiery manifestations? It is none other than God Himself.

"One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible." It is "one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God; begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God; begotten, not made; being of one substance with the Father."

And it is "the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, Who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified." Yet this holy Trinity is one God, for "we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance. For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one: the glory equal and the majesty co-eternal."

So in part run the ancient creeds, and so the inspired Word declares.

Behind the veil is God, that God after whom the world, with strange inconsistency, has felt, "if haply they might... find him" (Acts 17:27). He has discovered Himself to some extent in nature, but more perfectly in the Incarnation. Now He waits to show Himself in ravishing fullness to the humble of soul and the pure in heart.

The world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God and the Church is famishing for want of His presence. The instant cure of most of our religious ills would be to enter the Presence in spiritual experience, to become suddenly aware that we are in God and God is in us. This would lift us out of our pitiful narrowness and cause our hearts to be enlarged. This would burn away the impurities from our lives as the bugs and fungi were burned away by the fire that dwelt in the bush.

— Pursuit of God, The