The following are notes for my manuscript, tentatively titled Maverick Workman: How Otis Q. Sellers Broke with the Churches, Discovered the Premillennial Kingdom, and Embodied Christian Individualism, a work in progress.
When the events recorded in the Book of Revelation were revealed to John, he was in the spirit on the Day of the Lord.[1] Before that Day’s arrival[2], however, there will be a seven-year rebellion, [3] during the course of which the Man of Sin will be revealed, sitting in the Temple of God, pretending to be God.[4]
The rebellion’s target will be Israel’s restored kingdom, under the conditions of God’s kingdom. The Apostles asked about this.[5] This event presupposes the miraculous transfer (and, for many, if not most Jews who have ever lived, resurrection) of Israel’s descendants from the diaspora to the promised land, the subject of an irrevocable divine promise.[6]
In the wilderness, God will plead His case to Israel, woo her as a man a woman, and reveal Jesus to them as the prophesied mashiach (Messiah).[7] Jesus’ messiahship is unintelligible apart from His fulfillment of the promise of the new covenant with Israel and Judah, which fulfillment He announced at His last Passover.[8] Jews today can neither retard nor accelerate their miraculous return to the land.
The restoration’s context is the prophesied global Kingdom of God, whose imminence Jesus proclaimed during His earthly ministry.[9] During this centuries-long administration or dispensation of divine government, earth will be the mediatorial planet between heaven and the rest of creation; Israel will be the mediatorial nation between heaven, the seat of God’s government, and that rule’s effects on earth.[10] Resurrected Apostles will rule as tribal governors[11] under David, Jesus’ viceregent.
Jesus will leave His throne to descend to earth in order to put down forcefully the Rebellion[12] and then be personally present[13] on earth to reign for a thousand years from His footstool[14] (after centuries of rule from His throne).[15] He will descend with a shout[16] and proceed to take vengeance those who neither know God nor obey Jesus Christ’s gospel, that is, Christ’s “right message” (evangelion, “gospel”) for that day.[17] Belief in the content of that message is the plan of salvation.
The commencement of the Day of Christ—the inauguration of the manifest Kingdom of God—will be a quiet affair (unlike the Day of the Lord). God will pour out His spirit on all flesh.[18] When He assumes sovereignty—bringing forth judgment unto truth and causing the nations to trust in His name—He will neither cry nor cause His voice to be heard.[19] (Were the Day of the Lord God’s next move, there’d be no nations left to trust in His name.) Therefore, the Kingdom of God on Earth must have a premillennial phase.
Many blessings will characterize the Kingdom that Christ announced, and for the coming of which He taught His disciples to pray: the earth will radiate His glory[20]; the heavens will communicate His righteousness, and everyone will see His glory to the same degree and at the same time[21]; God will open His hand to satisfy every creature’s needs[22]; God’s judgments will inform and reform the earth, and its inhabitants will learn justice[23]; perfect health (death will not work in any Kingdom subject): no one will say “I’m ill”[24]; God will open rivers in high places and fountains in the midst of valleys[25]; the desert will blossom like the rose bush.[26]
The Kingdom is terrestrial. Prophecies about it affirm that earth, not heaven, is the future home of the saved (including Elijah). The heavens are what is over-and-above the earth.[27] Death, the return of the breath of life to God its giver, is the penalty for the first Adam’s sin, which the second Adam, Christ, has defeated.[28] Death is not life in another form. A human being doesn’t “have” a soul, but is a soul[29]; the soul that sins will die[30]; the dead know nothing[31]; only God is immortal.[32] God will raise the dead to live in the Kingdom, each in his or her order.[33] The saved will be resurrected to aionian life, life flowing out of Christ; the dead will be resurrected equally aionian destruction.
Like “church,” “hell” is a misnomer. Traditionally, it mistranslates a Hebrew word, sheol[34] and three Greek words: hades[35] (which translates sheol), gehenna[36], and tartaroo.[37] Sheol/hades is the state of death. Gehenna, a garbage dump outside Jerusalem’s borders, served as Jesus’ metaphor for the wicked’s destiny, which is destruction[38]. Tartaros is the lake of fire and brimstone into which the beast and the false prophet will be cast, where they will be tormented for the temporal duration (not timeless or “eternal”) of the aion of the aions.[39] Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus does not teach eschatology—the “bosom of Abraham” has no inspired pedigree—but is rather a satire aimed at His enemies, that is, the Pharisees, Sadducees, scribes, lawyers, and priests.[40]
The rebellion against the Kingdom, “an insurrection of the workers of iniquity,”[41] will arise after the Holy Spirit lifts the restraints that had been in place for centuries, the voice that every Kingdom subject heard as they faced the alternative or turning right or left: this is the way, walk accordingly.[42] This will test everyone who has enjoyed life in the Kingdom.
Like earthquakes, there will be wars and rumors of war[43] during the seven-year rebellion following lifting of the Holy Spirit’s restraints after centuries of government. Today, such events continue to occur as they have for centuries. They therefore cannot serve as prophetic signs of the Kingdom’s arrival. The occurrence of earthquakes will, however, be significant after centuries of their nonoccurrence.
Before the Man of Sin can defiled the Temple, however, it must first be restored. (No Temple of God has stood since 70 A.D.) The restoration has preconditions: the Lord will commission Elijah before the Day of the Lord[44]. Jesus (Yahweh incarnate) affirmed that Elijah must first come and restore all things.[45] Until Jesus commissions Elijah to do that, Jesus will retain the rights of God[46] reigning from His throne, not His footstool.[47] Elijah is not currently restoring all things.
Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom of God during His earthly ministry (the Kingdom’s Blade stage); His Apostles expanded its territory (during the Pentecostal dispensation, or the Ear Stage).[48] These stages provided foretastes of the Kingdom: the truth was proclaimed, and miraculous signs followed. Before fully manifesting the Kingdom (the Full Grain in the Ear Stage), however, God deigned to realize a purpose previously hidden,[49] a mysterion or secret, namely, to demonstrate the grace inherent in His character by means of a dispensation exclusively of grace.[50]
In the administration of grace God acts, but in secret. If God cannot act in grace today, he will not act at all. God, therefore, brought the good work that He had initiated in the Pentecostal dispensation to an end, suspending it until the Day of Christ, that is, His assumption of sovereignty.[51]
The present dispensation of grace is a “parenthesis” or interruption in the unfolding of God’s Kingdom purposes. As in grammar a parenthesis forms no part of the sentence it interrupts, so the current dispensation forms no phase of the Kingdom of God. We must, therefore, read Paul’s letters with this dispensational boundary line in mind, for some are written before it, the rest after.
The inauguration of the current dispensation was implicit in Paul’s declaration that the salvation-bringing message of God has been authorized to the nations.[52] That is, the evangelion (“gospel”) was authorized, not just to the children of Israel, to whom Jesus was exclusively commissioned[53] and to whom He commissioned men (His Apostles) to proclaim the Kingdom exclusively[54]; not even to the Jew first, as was the case later on in the period of which the Book of Acts is the divinely inspired record.[55]
All nations are now joint-bodies, that is, on equal footing today.[56] That was not true in previous dispensations; it will not be true in the future manifest Kingdom of God. No event since the close of the Acts period fulfills any prophecy, including the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948.
“Church” is a misnomer. Ekklesia, the word traditionally, but misleadingly, translated “church,” is a governmental term pertaining to God’s Kingdom purposes. Since God has suspended those purposes, no one has a position out of God today. That is, ekklesia has no real reference today.
Under the present dispensation, there is the undeniable sociological and historical fact of Christian self-organization, but no ekklesin, no “out-called ones,” except prospectively, that is, with a view to the role they will play in the Kingdom.
Believers today form a company of those who, having not seen what the Apostles saw (or do what they did), yet have believed.[57] In the Kingdom they will extol the riches of His grace to those who will know only God’s government.
During the two millennia of the present dispensation of grace, Christians have organized themselves in many ways, e.g., into “churches,” but none are apostolically or governmentally continuous with the “outcalled ones”[58] of the Acts period or with their divine mission to give every Israelite in the Roman Empire an opportunity to hear the Gospel preached by a divinely commissioned herald. That herald mediated between God and humanity. No one, individually or collectively, enjoys that position today.[59]
The truth of the one mediator did not apply during the days of Israel’s patriarchs and prophets. John the Baptist was a mediator, as were the Apostles during the Acts period. Even Paul was a mediator, until the Pentecostal administration came to an end. Thereafter, he mediated between God and a scroll of parchment, even in that letter to Timothy. There will be many mediators in the Kingdom. Now, however, the salvation-bringing message of God is freely authorized[60] to the nations. God is dealing with Christians strictly as individuals. Today, the Scriptures are our sole apostolic authority.
Notes
[1] τῇ κυριακῇ ἡμέρᾳ (Revelation 1:10).
[2] ἡμέρα τοῦ Κυρίου.
[3] ἀποστασία.
[4] 2 Thessalonians 2:2-4.
[5] Acts 1:6.
[6] Jeremiah 23:7-8; Ezekiel 20:33-36, 28:25-26, 34:11-15, 22-24; Zechariah 8:7-8.
[7] Hosea 14:23
[8] Matthew 26:28
[9] Psalm 67:4, Isaiah 2:2.
[10] The ekklesia or qahal of all nations and peoples: Genesis 28:3, 48:4.
[11] Matthew 19:28.
[12] 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9.
[13] parousia.
[14] Isaiah 66:1
[15] Revelation 20:6
[16] 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
[17] 2 Thessalonians 1:8
[18] Joel 2:28.
[19] Isaiah 42:2-3; Matthew 12:9-21
[20] Psalm 72:19
[21] Psalm 97:6; Isaiah 40:5
[22] Psalm 145:15-16
[23] Isaiah 26:9
[24] Isaiah 33:24
[25] Isaiah 41:18
[26] Isaiah 35:1
[27] שָׁמַיִם, shamayim; Οὐρανός, ouranos
[28] 1 Corinthians 15:26
[29] נֶ֫פֶשׁ Genesis 2:7
[30] Ezekiel 18:20
[31] Ecclesiastes 9:5
[32] 1 Timothy 6:16
[33] 1 Corinthians 15:23
[34] שְׁאוֹל
[35] ᾅδης
[36] Γέεννα. Referring to גֵּי בֶן־הִנֹּם that is, the valley of Ben-Hinnom (Sons of Hinnom)
[37] Ταρταρόω. That is, “send to Tartaros.”
[38] ἀπώλεια Philippians 3:19
[39] εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων Revelation 20:20
[40] Luke 16
[41] Psalm 64:2
[42] Isaiah 30:21
[43] Matthew 24:6
[44] Malachi 4:5-6
[45] John 17:10-12
[46] dexion δεξιῶν of God. See discussion in Otis Q. Sellers, “The Rights of God,” Seed & Bread 187. Psalm 63:8, Psalm 110:1, Acts 7:55-56, Romans 8:34,Ephesians 1:20, Colossians 3:1, Hebrews 1:3, 8:1, 10:12, 1 Peter 3:22, Matthew 22:44
[47] Isaiah 66:1
[48] Mark 4:26-29
[49] apokekrummemou; mysteriou Ephesians 3:9
[50] Ephesians 3:2
[51] Philippians 1:6, epitelesei achri “bring to a full end until”
[52] Acts 28:28
[53] Matthew 15:24
[54] Matthew 10:5-6
[55] Romans 1:16
[56] Ephesians 3:6, sussoma
[57] John 20:29
[58] ekklesin
[59] 1 Timothy 2:5
[60] ἀπεστάλη; root: ἀποστέλλω
Links to other posts on Otis Q. Sellers
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- The Passover, the new meaning Christ gave it, and our relationship to it
- Discovering Otis Q. Sellers: an autobiographical vignette
- Otis Q. Sellers: Maverick Workman (2 Tim 2:15)
- Getting to know Otis Q. Sellers, subversive heir to the Bible conference movement
- Otis Q. Sellers in New York, 1978
- Sellers’s Eschatology: Some Distinctives
- The day Otis Q. Sellers received Christ: November 23, 1919
- God’s Next Move? The Second Coming, not of Christ, but of His Spirit
- From (mostly) Jewish “ekklesiai” to anti-Jewish “churches” in 80 years: Dean Stanley’s questions
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