Category: Theology

Getting to know Otis Q. Sellers, subversive heir to the Bible conference movement

Otis Q Sellers (1901-1992) in study/recording studio.

Otis Q. Sellers typically introduced his radio messages with the following script. (This one’s from forty years ago, September 16, 1979):

 

 

I greet you in the faith and fellowship of our great God and savior the Lord Jesus Christ, Whose we are, Whom we love, and Whom we serve.

May I introduce myself. I am Otis Q. Sellers, a personal and individual believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and my business in life is the study of the Word of God and proclamation of God’s Word. I do this by means of radio broadcasts such as this; I write and freely distribute Bible study literature; I have a tape-recorded ministry, a cassette ministry; I teach Bible classes.

As a personal student of the written Word, I come to my own conclusions after carefully considering all the Biblical material available. As a rule, I seek to study each word in order to bring forth its exact historical and grammatical meaning. I have been doing this for well over fifty years, and I believe I can fill with the Word of God the spiritual vacuum that now exists in the lives of many people.

He never founded a seminary or wrote a systematic theology. Five-hundred seventy tape-recorded messages and 196 four-page leaflets comprise his legacy to the world of Bible study. They bear the marks of his reverence for the Word, an expression of his love for his Savior, Jesus Christ, Whom he received at the age of 18. His journey lasted seven-and-a-half decades until a stroke incapacitated him in 1987. He led small Bible conferences in every state but Alaska. He wrote and recorded in his home office, depending for spiritual, material, and emotional support on wife Mildred, daughter Jane, five grandsons, and scores of friends. He never ceased to thanking God for them.

Throughout his life he’d be warned time and again, “You’ll never get anywhere teaching that!” “That” could refer to his deconstruction of what the churches teach about “the soul,” “heaven,” “hell,” “baptism,” “apostle,” and, most significantly, “church.” But he never wanted to “get anywhere” as the world regards destinations. He only wanted to know what God said so he could believe it. He knew that the work of God was believing on the One Whom God had sent. “My business is believing,” he’d tell his listeners at every opportunity. “Many people go to the Bible to find something to do; I go to the Bible to find something to believe.” Continue reading “Getting to know Otis Q. Sellers, subversive heir to the Bible conference movement”

God’s Prophesied Global Government and Its Blessings

Rather than let another week go by without posting, I’ll give the text of a leaflet by Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), whose life and thought form the subject of a book I’m working on (my ready excuse for neglecting this blog). It’s Seed and Bread No. 49, one in a series of almost 200 tracts he published from 1971 to 1978. He didn’t date the first hundred, but my guess is that this one came out around 1973.

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992)

I selected “A Psalm of Divine Government: Psalm 67” as an introduction to Sellers’s interpretation of Scripture, highlighting as it does what he believed to be the Bible’s theme: the future, but also pre-Parousia (i.e., pre-Millennium), manifest government of God on earth.

Sellers’s affirmation of a future Kingdom that precedes Jesus’ return to Earth set him apart from every other interpreter of Scripture, Protestant and Catholic alike. That’s what attracted me to his thinking over forty years ago. The opportunity to explore it critically is my motivation for undertaking the book project. (Nearly everything Sellers wrote and recorded is freely available on Seed&Bread.org, the website of The Word of Truth Ministry.) Your comments and questions are welcome.

Last March I posted Sellers’s distinctive interpretation of Romans 13:-17, the text of Seed & Bread No. 50, which follows numerically the one I now present:

A Psalm of Divine Government: Psalm 67

The foundation for all that is said in the New Testament concerning the Kingdom of God was laid down in the Old Testament. When John  the Baptist, the Lord Jesus, and the twelve apostles went forth to herald that the Kingdom of God was at hand, they did not need to explain what was meant by this term. If any did not understand, it was because they did not know the Scriptures that God had entrusted to Israel. This is also true of men today; for since the New Testament truth follows the pattern of the Old, it is important that we become completely familiar with those Old Testament passages that declare the coming of divine government upon the earth. One of these passages is a short psalm which, if I were forced to make a choice, I would memorize rather than Psalm 23. We need to know and believe Psalm 67.

Psalm 67 Shviti (in the form of a menorah)

     “God be merciful unto us”  This is, I believe, a Psalm of David, the shepherd king of Israel.  This Psalm is a prayer; almost every statement in it is a petition. And I interpret it on the basis of this principle: every prayer in the Bible is a prophecy, and every prayer will be answered just as every prophecy will be fulfilled. David’s own nation is upon his heart here, laid there by the Spirit of God Who inspired this prayer; and Israel is the subject of this expression of his desire. The Hebrew for “be merciful” here means “be gracious,” that is, show us a love and favor that we do not deserve.

     “And bless us” The desire for God to “be gracious” means to be passively gracious. David knows of the sins of which his nation was guilty and realizes that if the Lord should mark iniquities, none would be able to stand before Him (Psalm 130:3). However, “bless us” is positive and is a plea for active grace. The blessing he desires for his nation is not wealth, grandeur, or territorial expansion. He seeks something far better that will be more enduring. Continue reading “God’s Prophesied Global Government and Its Blessings”