Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) was a Bible teacher, not an apologist, although he would defend his faith whenever the occasion demanded it. He presupposed that the Bible was the Word of God in the words of men, but never engaged in the “metapologetics” that vindicates this presupposition against challenges. He left such work to others.[1]
In “The Bible: The Word of God,” the first of his 570 tape-recorded messages (1971-1987), Sellers recalled the occasion of his delivering his first sermon, “about fifty years ago,” he says. As he was ordained a Baptist minister in 1922, I’d date this undated message to 1971, which other evidence suggests is the year he launched his tape recorded “library” series (hence the “TL” series).
In that first sermon Sellers expressed his acceptance, as his epistemological foundation (my word, not his), of the self-representation of the Bible’s human authors as writing under the control of the Holy Spirit, Who safeguarded the original manuscripts from affirming or implying error.[2]
The Holy Spirit not only controlled the writing of the Scriptures, but also has disposed those whom He would enlighten to read them, not merely as the words of men, but as the Word of God.
On Good Friday I thought it appropriate to “resurrect” this post from three years ago. —A.G.F.
When Jesus was brought before Pilate, “it was the day of the Preparation of the Passover” (John 19:14; emphasis added). Passover lay in the near future. And yet Jesus told his disciples, “With desire I have desired to eat this the Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15; emphasis added). What is commonly called “The Last Supper” was the Passover.
If, however, the arguments of Colin J. Humphreys’s The Mystery of the The Last Supperhold up, there is no discrepancy. We may believe Jesus did celebrate the Passover on Nisan 14, not according to the calendar devised during the Babylonian Exile, however, but according to the pre-exilic calendar of ancient Israel. Those calendars were as different from each other as, say, the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar differs from the equally serviceable calendar of the Eastern Orthodox.
The pre-exilic calendar, being 364 days in length, is evenly divisible by 7. In such a calendar, therefore, any given date falls on the same day every year. Therefore, that calendar’s Nisan 14 has always fallen on a Wednesday since the first Passover. Humphreys’s hypothesis, to which I cannot do justice here, dissolves apparent discrepancies that have challenged faithful readers of the Gospels.
For example, even though Jesus was arrested after eating His Passover, John’s Gospel has servants of the high priest Caiaphas conducting Jesus to Pilate’s hall of judgment before the “official” Passover: “and they themselves went not in the judgment hall, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the passover” (John 18:28b).
Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) in his library/recording studio on the second floor of his home, 339 South Orange Drive, Los Angeles
The conclusion of our 13-part series on Otis Q. Sellers’s study of the Hebrew nephesh and the Greek psyche, traditionally translated “soul” in English-language Bibles, is that the soul doesn’t “go” anywhere upon death: the person with whom the soul is identical will be resurrected on earth when God assumes sovereignty, that is, when His will is being done there as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10):
But one day your soul—you—will be brought back to life, resurrected; if, while you were a living soul, you believed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, you will enjoy eonian life (life flowing out of Him; John 3:16) as a subject of the Kingdom of God once He assumes sovereignty. Or you will be alive on that glad day. Either way, your future home is here, on earth. (Anthony G. Flood, “Summing Up Sellers on the Soul: Part XIII,” April 1, 2022)
Sellers had a lot to say about the latter topic. Earth is the venue of the promised and prophesied Kingdom of God. Personal circumstances, however, permit me only to reproduce his words, not comment on his thoughts on this topic. I feel bad about such “cheating”; I hope to be able to make up for that in the future.
For many centuries men have been guilty of discounting or ignoring every declaration that God has made as to the glorious future of the earth. It seems they have been afraid to declare what God has said for fear that men might be attracted to the earth and lose interest in the traditional heaven of hymnology. To them, this planet has no future but to be burned up. In fact, this is a vital principle in one great theological system. It teaches that the time will come when this planet will have ceased to exist, and all mankind will be either in Heaven or Hell. . . .
The objective study of the Word of God is sure to bring the conviction that all of God’s purposes in relationship to man are in some way related to the earth. All the glorious promises of the Bible have the earth as their subject. The earth has a glorious future, and in its future we will have a part.
The first stage of Earth’s glory will begin when God assumes sovereignty, takes to Himself His great power, and governs this planet and all who are upon it. And since Heaven is His throne and the earth is His footstool, we can rest assured that His government will be from the throne and not from the footstool. The redemption, restoration, and renewal of the earth is not in any way related to Jesus Christ coming back again. It is not preceded by the Great Tribulation; and it is not introduced by Armageddon, as so many dispensers of the gospel of fear and frightfulness would have us believe. It could begin at any moment. There is no event that precedes it.
Otis Q. Sellers, “God’s Earth,” Seed & Bread, 70. (Undated, but late ’70s.)
Otis Q. Sellers, Gabriel Monheim, Michael Walko, Los Angeles, December 21st or 22nd, 1973
. . . the first great declaration in the Word (excluding Psalm 25:13) concerning man’s future home is that, if he waits upon the Lord, he will have a place and enjoy a portion in the earth. This declaration is immediately repeated in the same Psalm.
For yet a little while and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Psalm 37:10-11
These verses with the one that precedes them emphatically declare the fate of the wicked and the future of the righteous. Evildoers will be cut off; but the meek shall have a place and enjoy a portion in the earth, and in the abundance of peace they will find delight.
Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992). This portrait was shot in 1921, the “second year of my Christian experience,” when he was “enrolled as a student in a Bible school,” i.e., Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. A believer in the Lord Jesus Christ for over 73 years, he was an assiduous of the Bible. His mission was to study and proclaim God’s Word through radio broadcasts, written and recorded studies, and conferences. He came to his conclusions after weighing all the Biblical and any other material that shed light on the subject. He studied Hebrew and Greek words to bring forth their historical and grammatical meanings. Study would occasionally force him to alter some conclusions, so he implored his readers to take only his latest writing to be his latest light—and to do their own studies! Sellers received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior at age 18 on November 23, 1919. In 1922, after leaving Moody, he was ordained a Baptist minister. Throughout the ’20s he traveled with an evangelistic party and served as pastor in Baptist churches. By 1932, however, after his studies led him away from the rituals and ordinances (e.g., baptism, the Lord’s Supper), he left the Baptist Church, never looked back, and never joined another. He began writing pamphlets in 1935; by 1936, he was publishing The Word of Truth (17 Volumes over the next 20 years). He expanded his ministry with booklets, radio broadcasts, and 570 recorded messages covering most books of the Bible and many doctrinal issues. In 1971 he launched Seed and Bread, a series of four-page leaflets, 196 of which he had produced by the time a stroke incapacitated him. With the cooperation of his daughter, Jane Sellers Hancock (1927-2020) and her son Rusty Hancock and the assistance of Sam Marrone (who remembers Sellers teaching in his home when Sam was a boy in the 1950s), I’ve been researching Sellers’s life and thought for a book whose working title is “Maverick Workman: How Otis Q. Sellers Broke with the Churches, Discovered the Premillennial Kingdom, and Embodied Christian Individualism.” I would be grateful to hear from anyone willing to share information, memories, or photos for this study.—Anthony G. Flood
Sellers concludes his 1939 study What Is the Soul with observations on psychikos, the adjectival form of psyche which occurs seven times in the New Testament, unlike “soul sleep” and the soul’s alleged “immortality,” two ideas without a shred of scriptural support.
“The English language,” Sellers begins, “really has no adjective that corresponds to the word soul, so the word soulish was coined many years ago in order to express the Greek adjective.” In the following concordance, note the contrast the apostles Paul and Jude draw between soul/soulish and spirit/spiritual:
But the natural man (ψυχικoς, psychikos) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually (πνευματικῶς, pneumatikos) discerned. 1 Corinthians 2:14
It is sown a natural (ψυχικόν, psychikon) body; it is raised a spiritual (πνευματικoν, pneumatikon) body. There is a natural (ψυχικόν, psychikon) body, and there is a spiritual (πνευματικoν, pneumatikon) body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul (ψυχήν, psychen); the last Adam was made a quickening spirit (πνεῦμα, pneuma). Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual (πνευματικoν, pneumatikon), but that which is natural (ψυχικoν, psychikon); and afterward that which is spiritual (πνευματικoν, pneumatikon). 1 Corinthians 15:44-46
This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual (ψυχική, psychike) devilish. James 3:15
These be they who separate themselves, sensual (ψυχικοί, psychikoi), having not the Spirit (Πνεῦμα, Pneuma). Jude 19
“It is commonly taught,” Sellers continues, “that the soul is the seat of our highest spiritual faculties, but this is not the testimony of Scripture. Man’s spirit is the seat of his spiritual faculties. . . . ‘The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God’ (Romans 8:16).”
[A] soulish man is . . . dominated by the fact that he is a soul, that is, a sentient being. He is moved by his physical sensations. Things that appeal to his eyes, his ears, his feelings, or his emotions are readily received, but the things which appeal only to his faith, the realm in which the spirit operates, are rejected. He requires incense to please his nose, music to delight his ears, architecture to satisfy his eyes before he can get into what he calls the “spirit of worship.” He knows nothing of worshipping God in spirit and in truth; he knows nothing of the Spirit witnessing to his spirit; he can recognize no witness save those that appeal to his senses; he is a soulish man. Continue reading “Summing up Sellers on the Soul—Part XIII”
