[See Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.]
Among late 19th—early 20th century Anglophone Bible students, there is one learned, eloquent, and prolific public figure who stands out: Sir Robert Anderson, KCB[1] (29 May 1841–15 November 1918). Within the ambit of a blog post, I can do justice neither to the man nor to the book that profoundly affected Otis Q. Sellers’s progress in and toward the truth. The following is the briefest of sketches.
A Dubliner by birth, Anderson was New Scotland Yard’s expert on the Irish Republican Brotherhood (the Fenians), serving as the Assistant Commissioner (Crime) of the London Metropolitan Police (1888-1901) during the investigation of the Jack the Ripper murders.
His heart, however, lay in searching out the truth of what God revealed in
His Word, a search that yielded 21 books, including The Silence of God.[2]
Anderson befriended, worked, and corresponded with such Scripture scholars and Bible conference leaders such as Horatius Bonar (1808-1889; Scottish premillennial covenant theologian), Ethelbert William Bullinger (1837-1913; Anglican “ultradispenationalist” compiler of The Companion Bible), Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921; organizer of the study Bible bearing his name), James Martin Gray (1851-1935; Reformed Episcopal teacher of Otis Q. Sellers at Moody), and Amzi Clarence Dixon (1854-1925; publisher of The Fundamentals).
Most notably, he preached with the “great-grandfather” of modern dispensationalism John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) in Ireland.[3]
A member of the Plymouth Brethren, first with Darby then with the Open Brethren, Anderson returned to the Presbyterianism in which he was raised.
* * *
It is not that there is mercy for some men, but that God has now made a public declaration of His grace, “salvation-bringing to all men.”[4]
In quoting Titus 2:11 and citing its Greek in a footnote—σωτήριος πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις (sotērios pasin anthrōpois)—Anderson highlights σωτήριος, which he rightly renders “salvation-bringing.” It’s an adjective, so: salvation-bringing what?, we ask.
Sellers asked that question when he queried, years after accepting the significance of Acts 28:28, that passage’s Greek. There Paul proclaimed that God’s σωτήριον (sotērion) has been made freely available (ἀπεστάλη, apestale) to the nations and that they will hear it (ἀκούσονται, akousontai).
Something was at first restricted to Israel (“Go ye not into the way of the Gentiles . . . ,” Matthew 10:5).
Then it was prioritized to them (“to the Jew first . . .” Romans 1:16, 2:10).
Now it has been made freely available to the nations (τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, tois ethnesin).
“It” is something that can be heard. A message. God’s “public declaration of His grace” is the salvation-bringing message addressed to all people. The right message, the εὐαγγέλιον (evangelion) or “gospel.”
But it is plain matter of fact [Anderson continues] that before this great characteristic truth of Christianity was revealed [that is, during Jesus’ earthly ministry and the Pentecostal administration], there was immediate Divine intervention upon earth. In a word, there were miracles; whereas after this truth was revealed, they ceased. The era of the reign of grace is precisely the era of the silence of God. To grace, therefore, we look to explain the silence. Christianity is the supreme and final revelation of the Divine “kindness and lovetowardman (φιλανθρωπια, philanthropia)” (Titus 3:4).[5]
Why is the cessation of miracles an issue? Because we suffer and look to heaven for relief therefrom or for a sign that relief will one day come. Today, however, we do so in vain.
“Keep not Thou silence (דֳּמִי־, do mi), O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God” (Psalm 83:1). Does God not hear the cry of His people?
Infidelity trades upon the silence of Heaven, the inaction of the Supreme. If there be a God, almighty and allgood, why does He not use His power and give proof of His goodness in the way men choose to expect of Him? The answer usually offered by the Christian apologist fails either to silence the opponent or to satisfy the believer. And rightly so, for it is lacking not only in cogency but in sympathy. The God of the Bible is infinite both in power and in compassion; and in other ages His people had public proof of this. Why, then, is He so silent?
The question is not why He does not always declare Himself, but why He never does so. If, as already urged, even whole generations passed away without experiencing any direct manifestation of Divine power on earth, then His people in the presence of some crushing sorrow or some hideous wrong might well exclaim with Gideon long ago, “If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where are all His miracles which our fathers told us of?” (Judg. 6:13.) But what concerns us is the fact that throughout the entire course of this Christian dispensation since Pentecostal times, “the finger of God” (Luke 11:20) has never been openly at work upon earth; never once has a public miracle been witnessed—“a single public event to compel belief that there is a God at all!” Are we left to grope in darkness for the answer? Does revelation throw no light upon it? To suggest the solution of this mystery, these pages have been written.[6]
Anderson’s suggested solution is that from the time Israel allegedly rejected[7] Jesus as their long-promised Messiah (מָשִׁיחַ, mashiach), evidentiary miracles confirming an apostolic message were no longer appropriate, the commission’s having been fulfilled. A dispensation utterly of untraceable grace began; what is untraceable is virtually “silent.”
But they [Israelites] mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people till there was no remedy” (2 Chr. 36:15, &c.). But though the public event which marked their fall was thus deferred, the death of Stephen [Acts 7:54-8:2] was the secret crisis of their destiny. Never again was a public miracle witnessed in Jerusalem. The special Pentecostal proclamation (Acts 3:1926) was withdrawn. The Pentecostal Church was scattered. The apostle of the Gentiles forthwith received his commission, and the current of events set steadily and with continually increasing force toward the open rejection of the longfavored people and the public proclamation of the great characteristic truth of Christianity. Within that truth lies concealed the key to the mystery of a silent Heaven.[8]
Sellers denounced the idea that “the Jews rejected Christ,” no matter who propounded it (including writers like Anderson whom he respected). Yes, the preamble of Paul’s “dispensation proclamation” was a harsh reprimand of Israel for the hardness of their hearts and the dullness of their perception (Acts 28:26-27; Isaiah 6:9-10). But this followed Paul’s recent experience of addressing the Jews of Rome.
Deeming it worthy (ἀξιοῦμεν, axioumen) to hear what Paul had to say, the rabbis gave him a day to “expound and testify the kingdom of God, persuading (πείθων, peithōn) them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening.” (Acts 28:22-23). The result of his effort?
And some [indeed] (οἱ μὲν, oi men) believed (ἐπείθοντο, epeithonto, that is, “were persuaded,”) the things which were spoken, and some [however] (οἱ δὲ, oi de) believed not (ἠπίστουν, ēpistoun, that is, “refused to believe”). And when they agreed not among themselves (πρὸς ἀλλήλους), they departed . . . . (Acts 28:24-25; Emphasis added.)
If among themselves they agreed not, then not all of them disagreed with Paul, and those whom he persuaded remained Jews.[9] On this point Sellers quoted Lutheran commentator Richard Charles Henry Lenski (1864-1936):
We feel safe in saying that in all Paul’s career he scored no greater success in a single day’s work than on the day which Luke describes in [Acts] v. 23, etc. He converted half of the rabbis and leaders of the eleven synagogues in the capital of the world! Oi men oi de (v. 24) equals 50-50 according to our way of speaking . . . . Converting the rabbis and the leaders could mean only one thing, namely that these rabbis took the gospel of Paul into their synagogues with the result that whole synagogues were converted, and the members who refused withdrew to other synagogues.[10]
The word “rejection” when indiscriminately applied to Jews not only in the land, but also those scattered over the Roman Empire, denies the truth and tragically fuels what Sellers called “this great conspiracy”
to get the Jew out of all God’s plans and purposes and to get the Gentile in; to take every precious promise that God had made to Israel and apply each of them to organized religion called “the church,” and this a Gentile church, of course; to take the glorious Old Testament concept of the Kingdom of God upon the earth and make it to be a promise of “the church” in heaven.[11]
Jewish reception/rejection of the Gospel during the “Pentecostal dispensation” was a “fifty-fifty” affair. Mission accomplished. Under divine inspiration, Paul declared that God was moving on with his Kingdom purposes. Paul’s commission was at an end.
Anderson was hardly alone in his belief in Israelite “rejection” of their Messiah, and in exposing this error, we’re not singling him out. Indeed, Sellers may (for all we know) have shared that very view in 1929.
But what he got from Anderson was the inkling that the fulfillment of one of God’s purposes—“that every Israelite upon the earth should hear the salvation-bringing Word of God and have a clear-cut opportunity to receive or reject the man Jesus as Israel’s long-promised Messiah and as a personal Savior”[12]—gave way to completely different oikonomia, a dispensation that had heretofore been a secret.
The nature of the difference as Sellers understood it will occupy us in the rest of this series.
Notes
[1] Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.
[2] For a listing, go here. According to Anderson in The Coming Prince, Daniel said the Messiah would come 483 years after Artaxerxes of Persia called for the rebuilding and restoration of Jerusalem. Anderson calculated that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the precise day that Daniel had prophesied (Luke 19). On prophecy, Sellers did not follow Anderson, a story for another time.
[3] Sellers was one degree removed from Bullinger through his friendship with Charles Henry Welch (1880-1967). When work on the Companion Bible compelled Bullinger to give up editing Things to Come, Bullinger gave that task to Welch. Welch was an early, pre-Sellers advocate of the idea that Acts 28:28 marked a dispensational boundary line. In 1908, at age 28, Welch met Bullinger. In Charles H. Welch: An Autobiography (1960), he recalled suggesting to Bullinger that this line should affect the interpretation of Paul’s letters. Welch referred to this conversation in The Berean Expositor, November, 1949, 36 years after the death of Bullinger, who therefore could not corroborate the admission Welch attributes to him. For a critical remark on this exchange, see Major R. B. Withers, “Dr. Bullinger and Mr. Welch,” The Differentiator, Vol. 21, New Series, April 1959. No. 2. Bullinger had recognized the importance of sorting Paul’s epistles no later than 1907.
[4] Sir Robert Anderson, The Silence of God, Third Edition, 1898, 163. Emphasis in original.
[5] Anderson, Silence, 164. Emphasis added.
[6] Anderson, Silence, 161-162. Emphasis in the original.
[7] “And not until the testimony had been rejected by the favoured people did the word go forth, ‘The salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and they will hear it.’” Anderson, Silence, 50. Emphasis added
[8] Anderson, Silence, 82-83.
[9] “The Divine religion of Judaism in every part of it, both in the spirit and the letter, pointed to the coming of a promised Messiah; and to maintain that a man ceased to be a Jew because he cherished that hope, and accepted the Messiah when He came—this is a position absolutely grotesque in its absurdity.” Anderson, Silence, 85. Sellers quoted this passage several times in his recorded messages; he cited it in “Truths concerning Acts,” Seed & Bread, No. 9. ND, but probably 1971.
[10] Quoted in Otis Q. Sellers, “Israel in the Acts Period,” Seed & Bread, No. 44. ND, but probably 1974-1975. Sellers does not cite his source, but it is probably Lenski’s The Interpretation of the Acts of the Apostles, 1944.
[11] Otis Q. Sellers, “The Theological Conspiracy,” Seed & Bread, No. 45. ND, but probably 1974-1975.
[12] Otis Q. Sellers, “The Biblical Gift of Tongues,” Seed & Bread, No. 6. ND, but probably 1971.