Otis Q. Sellers’s presupposition and his first sermon’s subject

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.

What follows is my transcription of a portion of TL001. Due to someone’s uploading error, that message is not available on the Seed & Bread website: the audio file associated with that number is duplicate of TL002 (“The Foundation Is Christ”). I’m grateful to Sam Marrone for sending me a CD containing TL001. I plan to share this with the folks at Seed & Bread. The transcription starts at the 4:27 mark.

* * *

Just about 50 years ago, I stood in a pulpit and spoke to a church gathering for the first time.

I do not know exactly how many people were present that day, but remembering the size of the auditorium, and knowing that almost every seat was filled, as the congregation was a growing congregation—the auditorium was almost too small for it—I would say that there were probably from 250 to 300 people present.

And I stood there for the first time, a very young man [of 21 years?] and gave the first sermon that I ever preached.

Now I took as my text—as I thought I was expected to have a text—the statement of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 2:13 where it says “When ye received the Word of God which you heard of us you received it not as the word of man, but as it is in truth the Word of God.” [Sellers went on to quote I. M. Haldeman, but without attribution]

. . . [T]he apostle here testifies that he believes himself to be the bearer of a revelation direct from God, that the words he speaks and the words he writes are not the words of man, but the Word of God. Warm with his breath, filled with his thoughts, and stamped with his will.

Now in the very same epistle he writes, 1 Thessalonians 4:15: “For thus we say unto you by the Word of the Lord.”

And writing to the Corinthians the apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:13, “which things we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches, but in the words which the Holy Ghost teaches.”

Now according to Paul’s testimony, therefore, the fourteen epistles which he wrote to the churches were not letters written by a mortal man, giving expression to the ideas and thoughts of man, but are the very words of the infinite God, giving utterance by the Holy Ghost of the thoughts of God.

Now those were the things that I said fifty years ago. They were not really my own words. I had been called upon to give this study; I had no material for such a study, but I had a little pamphlet written by Dr. I. M. Haldeman [i.e., Isaac Massey Haldeman, D.D., 1845-1933], a pastor [First Baptist Church, Broadway at 79th Street] in New York City, and the title of this little pamphlet was The Bible.

I found out afterwards that it was one portion of a book, a book on Christ, Christianity and the Bible [1912], but the only part I had of it at that time was this pamphlet on the Bible. And those thoughts that I took then and set forth became my own view, they became my own belief, and I set them forth then; I am still setting them forth today almost fifty years later.

Oh, I remember that day quite well. There was in the audience a young girl named Mildred Shirley. I had not met her at that time, and she had not met me. But we did meet about two weeks afterwards, and that was the girl that became my wife. And so I remember it quite well. And the beliefs that I had that day are the beliefs that I hold and proclaim today, that the Bible is the verbally inspired Word of God.

I have Dr. Haldeman’s book before me, and I would like to read to you some of the things that he said. This was about the first things that I ever learned about the truth, and therefore I prize them very highly today. He says here, in regard to the writers of the Old Testament, that:

Constantly, the writers of the Old Testament introduce their message with the tremendous sentence: “Thus saith the Lord.” Again and again they declare the Lord has spoken by them. David says: “The words of the Lord were in my tongue.” Jeremiah says the Word of the Lord came to him and the Lord said: “Take a roll of a book and write therein all the words that I have spoken to thee.” Then we are told that “Jeremiah called Baruch, the son of Neriah; and Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord, which he had spoken unto him, upon a roll of a book.”

After these words had been read to the princes of Israel, they asked Baruch, saying, “Tell us now, how didst thou write all these words at his mouth?” Then Baruch answered them, “He pronounced all these words unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book.”

The process is clear enough. The Lord spake his words in Jeremiah. Jeremiah received the words direct from the Lord, dictated them word for word to Baruch, Baruch wrote them as they were pronounced in a book; and when written, the words were the written words of God.[3]

Those are the words of Dr. I. M. Haldeman. They were precious to me then, and they are still precious to me today.

* * *

Such was Sellers’s epistemology; such also is my own.

Notes

[1] On this blog I’ve argued that the Bible’s worldview it is the presupposition of intellectual defense itself and, a fortiori, of defending Christian theism. See, for example, here and here.

[2] The multitude and multilocality of extant copies, rather than justifying skepticism about our having the content of the Bible’s original manuscripts, assures us that we do. Yes, the more manuscripts we have, the more variants—and we have more New Testament manuscripts than any other work of antiquity. But that’s a good thing: “The more manuscripts you have to compare,” James White argues in a brilliant presentation, “the better off you are and the better certainty you have of still possessing the original reading.” “New Testament Reliability—Can You Trust the Bible?,” Wretched TV [podcast], November 2, 2013, @18:47. “1,500-2,000 meaningful and viable variants [White continues], over two million pages of hand-copied text spanning approximately 1,500 years (prior to the invention of printing), is an amazingly small percentage of the text reflecting an amazingly accurate history of transmission.”

[3] I. M. Haldeman, Christ, Christianity and the Bible, New York, Charles Cook, 1912. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30160/30160-h/30160-h.htm

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