History – Page 3 – Anthony G. Flood

Otis Q. Sellers and the “Facts of Scripture”: The Primacy of Historical and Grammatical Interpretation

Stained glass image of Myles Coverdale, Exeter Cathedral

Otis Q. Sellers rarely wrote about hermeneutics, but presupposed there are such things as the “facts of Scripture,” data or “givens” one must first observe and then interpret accurately.[1] By accurately, Sellers meant historically and grammatically, following the precept of Myles Coverdale (1488-1569):

It shall greatly help ye to understand the Scriptures if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom and to whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstances, considering what goeth before and what followeth after.[2]

This is necessary if one would discern the divine intention behind the symbolic expressions of God’s meaning. This assumption followed from Sellers’s belief that Scripture’s human words are θεόπνευστος (theopneustos), that is, God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16):

My conviction in regard to the Old and the New Testament is that they are the verbally inspired Word of God, that they are without error in their original writings, that they are of supreme and final authority in regard to all matters of faith. By “verbal inspiration” I mean that supernatural work of the Holy Spirit by which, without setting aside the personalities and literary abilities of the human instrument, He constituted the words of the Bible in its entirety as His written word to you and to me. I believe that every word of Scripture was produced under the guidance of God’s Spirit, that “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). This conviction has stood the test of more than a half century of personal Bible research and study.[3] Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers and the “Facts of Scripture”: The Primacy of Historical and Grammatical Interpretation”

Newsflash: They’re godless commies!

Bingeing these days on YouTube lectures by Stalin biographer Stephen Kotkin, I had a flashback when I heard his answer to Uncommon Knowledge host, Peter Robinson:

. . . it occurred to me that you have probably spent more time reading Soviet archives than any other person. And I said to you, Stephen, what’s the one central finding? And you replied immediately, “They were communists.” The leaders of the Soviet Union really believed that stuff and they really wanted to achieve the communist goal of worldwide revolution.[1]

This reminded me not only of Kotkin’s documented evaluation of the Bolsheviks in general and Stalin in particular—they were not cynics, but convinced Marxists who expressed themselves behind closed doors as they did in their propaganda—but also of the opening paragraph of Murray Rothbard’s, “Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist.”

The key to the intricate and massive system of thought created by Karl Marx is at bottom a simple one: Karl Marx was a communist. A seemingly trite and banal statement set alongside Marxism’s myriad of jargon-ridden concepts in philosophy, economics, and culture, yet Marx’s devotion to communism was his crucial focus, far more central than the class struggle, the dialectic, the theory of surplus value, and all the rest. Communism was the great goal, the vision, the desideratum, the ultimate end that would make the sufferings of mankind throughout history worthwhile. History is the history of suffering, of class struggle, of the exploitation of man by man. In the same way as the return of the Messiah, in Christian theology, will put an end to history and establish a new heaven and a new earth, so the establishment of communism would put an end to human history. And just as for post-millennial Christians, man, led by God’s prophets and saints, will establish a Kingdom of God on Earth (for pre-millennials, Jesus will have many human assistants in setting up such a kingdom), so, for Marx and other schools of communists, mankind, led by a vanguard of secular saints, will establish a secularized Kingdom of Heaven on earth.[2]

They weren’t cynics, but dreamers. The real-world nightmare that claimed hundred million lives and enslaved billions in the 20^th century began as a 19^th-century Christian apostate’s dream. As Gary North summarized Marx’s legacy:

Karl Heinrich Marx, the bourgeois son of a bourgeois father, was born in Trier, in what is now Rhineland Germany, on May 5, 1818. He was a Jew by birth, but in 1816 or 1817, his father joined the state’s official Christian church, and he saw to it that his children were baptized into his new faith in 1824. After a brief fling with a liberal, pietistic form of Christianity, young Karl became a dedicated humanist. He took his humanism to revolutionary conclusions. Karl Marx, the grandson of rabbis, would become the rabbi of Europe’s most important religious movement: revolutionary humanism.[3]

He inspired generations of murderous missionaries, counter-evangelists—dysangelists, if you will—proselytizers of the bad news of this world’s God (2 Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2; John 12:31). Remember that the next time of “social justice warriors” nonchalantly claim to be “trained Marxists.”[4] Their corrupt plans do not stop at exploiting “white guilt” for pecuniary gain, but extend to society’s every nook and cranny.

Notes

[1] Uncommon Knowledge, 5 Questions for Stephen Kotkin, February 5, 2022. See Robinson’s other interviews of Kotkin, “Hoover Fellow Stephen Kotkin Discusses Stalin’s Rise To And Consolidation Of Power,” October 6, 2015.

[2] Murray N. Rothbard, “Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist,” in Rothbard and Walter Block, eds., The Review of Austrian Economics. 1990, Springer. Republished as Chapter 22 of Rothbard, The Logic of Action Two: Applications and Criticism from the Austrian School, Edward Elgar, 1997. Free pdf.

[3] Gary North, Marx’s Religion of Revolution: Regeneration through Chaos, Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989, 7-8. Free pdf. On North, however, see my “Dominion Theology: Salvation or Snare for Liberty?,” April 20, 2020.

[4] Jason Morgan, “Black Lives Matters Goes Full Marxist,” Crisis Magazine, April 19, 2021

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.

Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers’s presupposition and his first sermon’s subject”

Spadework on Display: Sellers the Maverick Workman on the Soul—Part I

When in 1934 Otis Q. Sellers set about to do his own biblical studies, he meant it: no more “hand-me-down” theology. He would no longer ransack commentaries, concordances, and lexicons to do what he had done the previous decade-and-a-half, that is, landscape a garden path of “evidence” to an opinion he was already inclined to hold (because people he respected held it).

No, he would consult such resources to examine the evidence, verse by verse, draw his conclusions, and let the chips fall where they may. In What Is the Soul?, published in 1939, Sellers shared the fruit of five years of laboring in the Lord’s vineyards. Twenty years into his life in Christ, at the age of 38, he was ready to show what starting from scratch looked like.

It was five years ago [1934] that I determined to place my own shallow, hearsay opinions concerning the soul upon the shelf and to open the Word of God, determined to know and embrace the truth. In presenting in written form the findings that have come from these years of definite study, I desire to present the steps which have led me to my present conclusions. The entire apparatus of study is given in order that the reader can follow the steps one by one and see if by so doing they arrive at the same conclusions. I ask the reader to observe that I do not attempt that seemingly impossible feat, performed by so many, of beginning at the top, then going down certain steps in order to demonstrate that if I had come up the steps I would have arrived at the same position.

There is a price to be paid for such independence of mind.

All truth seekers will come, sooner or later, to this crisis where decisions must be made and results of study must be embraced or rejected. These moments will never come to the one who studies what other men have to say about the Word, neither will they come to the man to whom the Bible is a book of texts upon which he may hang his sermons.

Many subtle men will carefully steer their course so as to avoid these crossroads where definite choice must be made and one path or another must be followed. Thus, they are able to hide behind their own confusion which they have deliberately created, and by continually traveling up and down the same well-worn paths they keep away from those places where the road divides and both paths cannot be taken.

For one’s view of the soul is related to one’s idea of future punishment: if the fear attaching to the latter is lively enough, it may inhibit one’s handling of the former. One hedges one’s bets. If, for example, one learns (as Sellers claimed to have learned) that “hell” is not a possible destination for a “soul,” what becomes of the business plan of countless “fire and brimstone” preachers? Continue reading “Spadework on Display: Sellers the Maverick Workman on the Soul—Part I”

Marksism-Levinism

The following review of Mark R. Levin, American Marxism (Simon & Schuster, 2021) appeared on Amazon on November 12, 2021)

Trained as a lawyer, Mark Levin served under Attorney General Ed Meese during the Reagan Administration. When Levin speaks about the US Constitution, many listen, including this reviewer. And so when he turns his attention to extra-legal affairs, he’s assured of a respectful hearing. His many contributions to the constitutionalist cause have earned him the presumption of competency.

In American Marxism, however, Levin seems to have abused that privilege. Continue reading “Marksism-Levinism”

The History of Herbert Aptheker: Partisanship’s Threat to Truth-telling

The 2021 issue of Opera Historica (Czech Republic) has been published. In its “Historiography and Methodology” section is my “The History of Herbert Aptheker: Partisanship’s Threat to Truth-telling” alongside Sean Wilentz‘s “The 1619 Project and Living in Truth” and Ivo Cerman‘s “America’s Racist Founding? An East-European View.” The whole issue and each article can be freely downloaded as a pdf. My new essay goes beyond Herbert Aptheker: Studies in Willful Blindness to examine (among other things) what is probably the first (1944) academic review of American Negro Slave Revolts, pinpointing where contemporary scholars detected a problem with Aptheker’s treatment of the evidence of slave discontent. I hope those of you who read my “History” will alert others of its existence and maybe even post a comment here. Thanks.

Aptheker-related posts

“Six Popes”: One of “The Six” Gets His Copy

Monsignor Hilary C. Franco presenting a copy of “Six Popes: A Son of the Church Remembers” to Pope Francis during a private audience in the Apostolic Palace, the papal residence, Vatican City, on September 4, 2021. Published here with the permission of Monsignor Franco.

Last May in “Monsignor Hilary C. Franco’s wonderful life,” I announced the launch of Six Popes: A Son of the Church Remembers (Humanix Books, 2021), which I ghostwrote after interviewing him in late 2019, early 2020.

This morning he sent me several photos taken last Saturday during his audience with one of The Six, Pope Francis, in the papal residence. The one you see on the left is posted here with his permission.

Edward Pentin, the National Catholic Register Rome correspondent who has speculated about Francis’s successor in The Next Pope, has this to say about Six Popes:

With a life spanning six pontificates, Monsignor Hilary Franco’s new book offers insights into current crises within the Church and society, highlighting his work with Venerable Fulton Sheen, and even helping Mother Angelica during EWTN’s first days … Now in his eighties, the Bronx-born priest has just completed Six Popes: A Son of the Church Remembers, a fascinating and colorful memoir of a life that has included attending the Second Vatican Council as an expert adviser, working as an official at the Congregation for Clergy for 24 years and, most recently, serving as an adviser at the Holy See’s Mission to the United Nations in New York.

Since last May, Six Popes has almost continuously numbered among the top ten in Amazon’s “Clergy” category. The stats, as of this posting, are:

Best Sellers Rank: #5,919 in Books

- #2 in Religious Leadership (Books)
- #2 in Christian Leadership (Books)
- #2 in Christian Popes

Take a peek at its product page to see if you’d like to help it climb higher. The first chapter’s text is appended to that page’s About the Author section. (Click on Read more.)

Otis Q. Sellers on the Premillennial Kingdom

Otis Q. Sellers believed that Christ’s second advent would precede his millennial Parousia (personal presence), but differed with millions of other Christians in this respect: the inauguration of centuries of God’s rule on earth will be premillennial, but future to us.[1]

Contrary to the Social Gospellers (who, in a sense, also believed in a premillennial Kingdom), no human effort at social melioration inaugurates the divine government that is the Kingdom.

No two events differ more than Christ’s future assumption of sovereignty and His future Second Advent. Serenity and light suffuse the one, violence and destruction the other. Expositors virtually always conflate them.

In Matthew 12:9-21 we find Jesus citing Isaiah 42:2-3, “He will not cry . . . nor cause His voice to be heard in the street. He shall bring forth judgement unto truth,” adding “And in His name shall the nations trust.” They’re certainly not trusting in His name today, but they will when God governs them. He doesn’t have to leave his heavenly throne to get that done.

Otis wondered how His bringing forth judgment unto truth, exercising His right to govern, His assumption of sovereignty, could refer to the event prophesied in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, “the Lord will descend with a shout,” or the one in 2 Thessalonians 1:8, “in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Shouting doesn’t harmonize with not being heard. Incinerating nonbelievers today would leave no nations trusting in Him.

Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers on the Premillennial Kingdom”

Otis Q. Sellers: Wellston’s Son, Revival’s Heir

The high school in Wellston, Ohio, which Otis Q. Sellers attended in last century’s second decade.

“I was born in a small town of about 5,000 people [and lived there] for the first fifteen years of my life. When I first went to the big city, I was just a country boy. This small town shaped my thinking and actions. Sometimes I think that was for the good.” [1]

In her ninth month with her third child, Ellen Agnes Moore Sellers must have heard the heartrending news. On March 17, 1901, a stove fire had raced through the Hill family’s log cabin, just west of her home in Wellston, Ohio, and north of the Catholic cemetery. The blackened remains of Jefferson Hill, wife Amanda, and their little ones, Julia (born 1892), Willie, Effie, Harry, and Della (born 1900) were not recovered until the next day. Mr. Hill had been a miner for Wellston Coal. Townspeople erected a tombstone in their memory.

An octave of days later on March 25th, Ellen gave birth to Otis Quinter Larger memorial image loading... Sellers, Jr. Conceived in the 19th century, he was born a dozen weeks into the 20th. Fellow Ohioan President William McKinley, the fifth of seven chief executives who hailed from the Buckeye State, was felled by an anarchist’s bullet when Otis was a half-year old. McKinley’s successor, Teddy Roosevelt, the leader of the Progressive movement that gave the era its name, was the first president of whom Otis was cognizant. America’s Philippines adventure would last another year. The era ended with America’s entry in the European war.

But the global carnage was not even on the horizon. America at the turn of the 2oth century was flush with optimism, fueled by industrial growth and confidence in the science’s promise. The month before Otis’s nativity, US Steel became the first billion-dollar corporation. On the day he was born, inventor Alexander Graham Bell typed a seven-page scientific and business letter to his wife Mabel,[2] and Gottlieb Daimler introduced the Mercedes automobile in Nice, France.[3] Bad news, be it local or national, could not dampen the progressive spirit.

Old Wellston Post Office, early 20th century.

Wellston, then a bustling town of 5,000 on Jackson County’s northern border in Ohio’s southeast, occupies the upper edge of America’s Bible Belt. Otis’s roots in the industrial powerhouse that Ohio was ran deep, back to the country’s founding. John H. Sellers, Otis’s great-grandfather, an early settler of Greenfield, Ohio (founded 1799), sold furniture. One son, James, owned that city’s marble works. Another, Grover Comstock Sellers (1848-1899), Otis’s grandfather, was a near-contemporary of Harvey Wells (1846-1896). Wells was the entrepreneur (and Ohio Constitutional Convention committeeman) who founded the city (and named it after himself) in 1873. Otis mentioned Grover rarely, but then he “never cared a great deal about” genealogy.[4] Grover was of the last century, Otis of the new.

Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers: Wellston’s Son, Revival’s Heir”

Otis Q. Sellers on “fortifying,” and then examining, one’s beliefs

Otis Q. Sellers, 1920. Whereabouts unknown to this writer. Perhaps the bench he was leaning against was in a Cincinnati park. If so, maybe the statue behind him provides a clue.

In 1940 Otis Q. Sellers reviewed the approach to Bible study he had exhibited during his early years as a believer (1920-1921). It was marked, he admitted, by the tendency to study only to validate what one already believes. Today we’d call it “confirmation bias.” He achieved victory over it, but it took about fifteen years.

The following account, first made in The Word of Truth, IV:2, March-April 1940, was essentially carried over into “Early Experiences,” a section of his The Study of Human Destiny: A Testimony and an Appeal, Los Angeles, 1955, 7-12. His reverie’s homespun air contrasts refreshingly with the academic prose I’m used to reading (and, I confess, often guilty of falling into).

The Study of Human Destiny (excerpts)

It has now been almost seven years [1934-1940] since I determined that the entire subject of the nature of man and the destiny of man should be reinvestigated, reexamined, and restudied. This determination became a powerful conviction, that in turn became a consuming passion, and this has kept me steadily engaged at the task throughout the years that have passed. . . . (25)

It is now my earnest desire to lead others over the steps that I have trod, in order that they may see for themselves the things that I have seen, and discover for themselves the things that I have discovered. My reward for doing this will be to see things again for myself, to see them more clearly, and to discover things that I had not uncovered before. . . . It troubles me to hear that those to whom I once ministered the Word of God are saying that I “have taken up with some new belief.” This is not true. The truth is that the student you knew, came as a result of his studies to a place where certain inexorable facts and all their implications had to be faced. I came to a place where a decision had to be made and the results of my own studies in the Word of God had to be embraced or rejected. (25)

. . . I had not known the Lord many months before I was busily engaged preaching on the streets, in mission halls, and in churches. Inasmuch as I went from place to place, such work did not require many messages, and the half dozen that I had developed, on as many subjects, soon became very familiar to me. I was soon able to give them with all the assurance of an experienced veteran. I had no background of Biblical knowledge, but by putting together the things I did know, condemning things that were wrong, commending things that were good, adding to this some anecdotes and illustrations, I was able to satisfy that class of people who have no thirst for knowledge, but who do like to hear a lively and interesting message. (26)

This group was predominant at that time, and it still dominates the religious world today. It is this group that the average minister keeps in mind in all his study and service. They provide the character for the church today. The hireling shepherd feels it is best to go along with them. He does not permit his messages to rise above the level of their superficial knowledge. Neither does he say anything that will disturb them or cause them spiritual exercise. He excuses his own superficiality by saying that all that his people want is just the simple gospel. I remember well how I covered up my own lack of knowledge by claiming to be a preacher of the simple gospel. (26)

As I look back upon my first year of Christian experience [1920] I am both amazed and amused at how little a man can know and yet satisfy the average audience that comes to hear a sermon. . . . [I]n those few messages I had quite a bit to say about hell fire and eternal conscious torment. No hesitation was shown in declaring these things and, since they were in harmony with what the world and religious men believed, they were usually good for some resounding “amens.” It was with some satisfaction that I felt I held men over the pit until they smelled the smoke. I fear now that it was true of me that I spoke about hell with all the assurance and knowledge of one who had recently been there. I am still wondering just where all this knowledge came from. I had never been a student of the Bible, had never sat under the ministry of a Bible teacher, yet my beliefs on the nature of future punishment had already reached finality of truth. At that time I would have readily admitted that I could learn more about my beliefs. but I would not have admitted that I could learn a thing to change my beliefs. These were fixed before I ever began to study. (26) Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers on “fortifying,” and then examining, one’s beliefs”