Anthony G. Flood

“The Silence of God”: Anderson’s 1897 book, Otis Q. Sellers’s 1929 turning point—Part 2

Part 1 is here.

Fort Thomas, Kentucky, newspaper notice, November 12, 1928, of the purchase of a home by “the Rev. Otis Q. Sellers, pastor of Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, Newport.” It also notes that “Dr. [sic] Sellers and family have been residing in Mariemont, O[hio]” in Hamilton, Ohio’s southwestern county.

Otis Q. Sellers’s reconsideration of the Acts period sprung from pastoral need, not theological speculation.

In 1929, he had been pastoring a Baptist church in Newport, Kentucky for about a year.[1] He was with them from 1928 to 1932.[2] In 1952, he recalled that members of his congregation had been asking him questions he couldn’t answer, forcing him to reconsider what he had been taking for granted for almost a decade.[3]

They were asking, for example, about the spiritual endowments we read about in Acts. Can we be so endowed? If not, why not? If we can, or if we cannot, is that a barometer of our faith (or lack thereof)?

In the year 1929 [Sellers writes] a new set of circumstances forced me into the task of making my own independent studies of certain doctrines in order to be able to deal faithfully and honestly with teachings which were being vigorously advocated by influential members of the church of which I was then the pastor.

This teaching in the main was that a “divine healing” program was absolutely essential in the work of any church if it stood complete and perfect in the will of God.

The basis of this argument was that Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians revealed God’s program for the visible church at the present time. Here they found “gifts of healing,” “working of miracles,” and “speaking with tongues.”

I was in an exceedingly difficult spot due to the fact that Scofield headed this section (1 Cor. 12:1-14:40): “Spiritual gifts in relation to the body, the church, and Christian ministry.”

“Gifts” translates no Greek word in the cited passage. There’s the adjective πνευματικῶν (pneumatikōn), “spiritual,” but the reader has to supply the noun it modifies. Sellers preferred “endowments” to “gifts.”

Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921) was a leader of the effort to put in the hands of truth-hungry Christians the fruit of the Bible conference movement[4] in the form of a reference Bible.[5] It was “exceedingly difficult,” at least psychologically and socially, for a young minister who had mastered and taught Scofield’s system of seven dispensations to question it.

Continue reading ““The Silence of God”: Anderson’s 1897 book, Otis Q. Sellers’s 1929 turning point—Part 2”

“The Silence of God”: Anderson’s 1897 book, Otis Q. Sellers’s 1929 turning point—Part 1

Cover of 1932 edition, Sir Robert Anderson, “The Silence of God.” Hodder and Stoughton (London) published its first edition in 1897. I’m privileged to own a copy of the third edition (1898).

This blog’s subtitle is “Helping you navigate this dispensation’s last days (2 Timothy 3; Ephesians 3:2). In this and subsequent posts, I’ll elaborate on its meaning. (But see my “Helping you navigate this dispensation’s last days”: What do I mean?,” November 11, 2020.)

In “Christ, our philosophical GPS,” I argued:

If Christ is the Wisdom as well as the Word of God, then He’s the cosmic GPS [global positioning system] that makes possible the intelligible relating of what is immanent within experience to what transcends it, the prerequisite to any sensible development of map-making and map-using.

Scripture’s data are “mappable.” Where are we denizens of the 21^st century located on the map of God’s prophetic timetable?

Presupposed in what follows is the conviction that history is neither an evolutionary outgrowth of natural history nor an absurd parade of “one damned thing after another,” but a process of divine-human interchange under His control and direction.

This process will culminate in the manifest Kingdom of God on earth, which will continue through millennium-long Parousia of Jesus Christ and, ultimately, the everlasting New Heavens and the New Earth.

Different Dispensational Strokes for Different Folks

God’s has not dealt with humanity in the same way at all times.

Continue reading ““The Silence of God”: Anderson’s 1897 book, Otis Q. Sellers’s 1929 turning point—Part 1”

Abortion, euphemism, and moral evasion

“Congratulations, Ms. Smith! The abortion was a success. Here’s your new baby girl!”

“Thank, Doc! I didn’t want to kill her . . . I just didn’t want to be pregnant anymore. Thanks for making that happen!”

Said no maternity patient ever.

Is there anyone who believes that the death of the unborn child is merely an unintended “secondary effect” of a procured abortion for which the procurer, the mother, is not culpable?

Is not that death the primary, intended consequence of the “procedure”?

Abortion-speak has ever been plagued with euphemisms—like “procedure,” as though snuffing out a life were on the level of a tonsillectomy.

Some recognition of reality is reflected when the “procedure” is conflated with its fatal effect, i.e., a dead human being. One now regularly hears of “aborted babies.”

What is subject to a possible abortion (military, aeronautical, or clinical), of course, is a process. Whenever NASA aborts a scheduled launch, what was going forward is halted. The missile is not destroyed.

A procured abortion—another euphemism—results in the “termination of a pregnancy.” That’s accurate as far as it goes, for the pregnancy is a months-long process whose natural terminus is childbirth.

But no one calls an induced labor an “abortion,” even though it ends a pregnancy as surely as a miscarriage (aka “spontaneous abortion”) or mifepristone.

The woman who procures an abortion, surgical or chemical, doesn’t want to “terminate her pregnancy” as much as she wants what has been living in her since conception dead. The ironic bite of the opening fictitious dialog depends on recognizing that homicidal primary intention.

Again, for her, it’s not enough not to be pregnant anymore, that is, to “reclaim her bodily autonomy.” No, heteronomy—in the extreme form of the destruction of another’s body—is the goal. (And if the latter’s distinctive DNA is not a sufficient criterion of physical otherness, nothing is.)

Nothing above is meant to imply that taking an unwanted pregnancy to term is easy, or that one suffering it isn’t deserving of compassion as well as assistance—material, psychological, and spiritual—from people ready, willing, and able to do for the baby what she cannot do, if only she would let them know.

It is meant only to remind those in her situation (and their loved ones) that not all possible solutions to a problem are morally permissible.

Being “pro-choice” (another euphemism) is meaningless, or at least misleading, if it implies that anything that suits one’s fancy falls within the range of morally permissible choice. That range does not include the intentional taking of innocent human life.

Of course, those who dismember babies in effigy, as one deranged person did on a church’s steps the other day, attempt to intimidate Justices to influence their deliberations and conclusions, or firebomb pro-life offices are not susceptible to attempts at rational persuasion.

And they’re supported by millions who knowingly vote for politicians who will not uphold the law.

To combat evil, reasoning is necessary, but not sufficient. The legal order must compensate for the deficiency of “mere argument.” But what is our recourse if those charged with upholding that order fail to do so?

See also

William F. Vallicella, “Abortion and the Wages of Concupiscence Unrestrained,” May 13, 2022

Anthony Flood, “Murray Rothbard: on my late friend’s lamentable error,” January 7, 2019

Soul polemics: Sellers’s unpublished 1950 letter

Otis Q. Sellers on horseback, Grand Canyon, September 20, 1947. (Detail of larger photo given to me by Jane Sellers Hancock.)

We often learn best by contrast. In this long post, I reproduce much of the text of an unpublished letter, dated July 28, 1950, in which Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) laid out his theology of the soul (psychology) and spirit (pneumatology) against the misapprehension of both by Dr. Keith L. Brooks (1888-1954).

In the November 1949 issue of Prophecy, Brooks had analyzed Sellers’s 1939 What Is the Soul?; Sellers thought it merited a reply. (Some of you know the latter publication was the focus of many recent posts, starting with “Spadework on Display: Sellers the Maverick Workman on the Soul—Part I,” December 14, 2021.) The letter contains an excellent summary of his view that the human being is a unity of diverse “aspects,” but not a composite of discrete “parts.”

During his 1978 New York conference at the Holiday Inn on West 57^th Street, Sellers gave that letter to my friend Sam Marrone. “You can have this,” he told Sam, “this” being a twelve-page, single-space typescript.[1] A couple of weeks ago, Sam gave it to me, another of his many contributions to my effort to tell Otis Q. Sellers’s story.

As for Brooks, except for the titles of his books in the Teach Yourself the Bible series, I could find little information about him. Moody Publishers, the publishing arm of Moody Bible Institute (which Sellers attended for the first eleven months of 1921), has this snippet:

Keith L. Brooks founded the American Prophetic League of Los Angeles in 1930. He was the author of numerous Bible study courses, books, and tracts. Although Keith passed away in 1954, his wife, Laura, continued the ministry of the American Prophetic League until 1960. The League’s Prophecy Monthly eventually merged with Moody Bible Institute’s Moody Monthly. The published Bible study became the Teach Yourself the Bible Series from Moody Publishers.

Sellers starts off irenically enough—“I wish to commend and thank you for the Christian spirit manifested. We see all too little of this in this day.”—but quickly gets down to business.

Continue reading “Soul polemics: Sellers’s unpublished 1950 letter”

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”

Two Passovers? What a difference a calendar makes. [Republished]

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 Supper hold 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. Image result for The Mystery of the Last Supper: Reconstructing the Final Days of Jesus

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).

Continue reading “Two Passovers? What a difference a calendar makes. [Republished]”

Earth: Our future home when His Kingdom comes

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, “Inheriting the Earth, Seed & Bread, 73. (Undated, but late ’70s.) Continue reading “Earth: Our future home when His Kingdom comes”

Summing up Sellers on the Soul—Part XIII

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

[Prior installments: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII]

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”

Psyche in Romans through Revelation: Sellers on the Soul—Part XII

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ for over 73 years, was an industrious student of the Bible. His mission was to study and proclaim God’s Word through radio broadcasts, the writing and recording of Bible studies, and Bible conferences. He arrived at his conclusions after considering all the Biblical and any other material that shed light on the subject under consideration. He studied Hebrew and Greek words to bring forth their historical and grammatical meanings. As study forced him to alter some of his beliefs, he implored his readers always to take only his latest writing to be his latest light. Sellers received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior at age 18 on November 23, 1919. Throughout 1921 he attended Moody Bible Institute; the following year he was ordained a Baptist minister. For several years in 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 this ministry with booklets, radio broadcasts, and 570 recorded messages covering most books of the Bible and many doctrinal issues. In 1971 he began publishing Seed and Bread, four-page leaflets, 196 of which he had produced by the time he passed away in 1992. 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 at his home in the 1950s when Sam was a boy), I’ve been researching his life and thought for a book tentatively entitled “Maverick Workman: How Otis Q. Sellers Broke with the Churches, Discovered the Premillennial Kingdom, and Embodied Christian Individualism.” I would be grateful to anyone who could share information, memories, or photos for the purpose of this study.—Anthony G. Flood

[Prior installments: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI]

From the many occurrences of psyche in the rest of the Greek Scriptures, we must confine our study of Otis Q. Sellers’s What Is the Soul? to those passages that highlight the truth that the “soul” is the human being considered in his or her capacity to enjoy life or to suffer, mentally and physically.

Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man [πᾶσαν ψυχὴν ἀνθρώπου τοῦ, pasan psyche anthropou tou] that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile. (Romans 2:9, KJV)

Otis Q. Sellers believes “human soul” renders the Greek better: tribulation and anguish will be the portion of the “unrighteous” mentioned in the preceding verse.

Who have for my life [ψυχῆς, psyches] laid down their own necks . . . . (Romans 16:4a)

“Aquila and Priscilla,” Sellers writes, “jeopardized their own necks,” by beheading “for Paul’s soul,” not his life.

In 1 Corinthians 15:45a, Paul confirms the equivalency of Greek psyche to the Hebrew nephesh of Genesis 2:7:

And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul [ψυχὴν ζῶσαν, psyche zosan].

“How plain it is,” Sellers comments, “that Adam was made a living soul. He was made this by God breathing into His nostrils the breath of life.”

1 Thessalonians 5:23 provides a pretext for unbiblical theories of the soul:

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit [πνεῦμα, pneuma] and soul [ψυχὴ, psyche] and body [σῶμα, soma] be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Sellers believes

that many people desire just five words out of this passage—spirit and soul and body. They are not interested in its message; they care not for the truth it sets forth. They care only for the few words which they can use to support some theory. The first question that should arise when this verse is read is, what is Paul teaching? Does this passage deal with the nature of man, or is it a prayer for the blameless preservation of the whole man

that is, your spirit, soul, and body “completely [ὁλοτελεῖς, holoteleis] and entirely [ὁλόκληρον, holokleron]”

unto the coming of the Lord? Is not the condition of the soul at the coming of the Lord just as important as the condition of the spirit and body? This passage does not deal with the relationship of the soul to the spirit and body.

Continue reading “Psyche in Romans through Revelation: Sellers on the Soul—Part XII”

Psyche in Mark, Luke, John, and Acts: Sellers on the Soul—Part XI

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ for over 73 years, was an industrious student of the Bible. His mission was the study and proclamation of God’s Word through radio broadcasts, the writing of Bible-study literature, a tape-recorded ministry, and semiannual Bible conferences. He arrived at his conclusions after considering all the Biblical and any other material that shed light on the subject under consideration. He studied Hebrew and Greek words to bring forth their historical and grammatical meanings. As study forced him to alter some of his beliefs, he implored his readers always to take his latest writing to be his latest light. Sellers received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior at age 18 on November 23, 1919. Throughout 1921 he attended Moody Bible Institute; the following year he was ordained a Baptist minister. He traveled with an evangelistic party for years and served as pastor in Baptist churches. By 1932, however, after his studies led him away from the rituals and ordinances (e.g., water baptism), 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 this ministry with booklets, radio broadcasts, and 570 recorded messages covering most books of the Bible and many doctrinal issues. In 1971 he began publishing Seed and Bread, four-page leaflets, 196 of which he had produced by the time he passed away in 1992. 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 at his home in the 1950s when Sam was a boy), I’ve been researching his life and thought for a book tentatively entitled “Maverick Workman: How Otis Q. Sellers Broke with the Churches, Discovered the Premillennial Kingdom, and Embodied Christian Individualism.” I would be grateful to anyone who could share information, memories, or photos for the purpose of this study.—Anthony G. Flood

[Prior installments: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X]

In What is the Soul, Sellers has much to say about common interpretations of psyche in the New Testament. Having looked at the Gospel of Matthew, we’ll turn to salient passages in the other two synoptics as well as John and Acts.

In the King James Version, Mark 8:36-37 reads:

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul (ψυχην, psychen)? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul (ψυχῆς, psyches)?

Sellers comments:

The customary sermon on this text usually contains thoughts such as the following: All the wealth of the world—the gold, the silver, the precious stones, the coal, the oil, the grain, the land, the buildings—is placed on one side of the balance, and the human soul is placed on the other side. It is discovered that the soul is worth more than all these, but the speaker has proved something that no one but a fool ever doubted. It can also be proved that one glass of water is worth more than all these. Let a man be dying of thirst in the midst of a great desert, and let that man be given the choice of the wealth of this world or one glass of water, and he will choose the water. He will not even weigh the matter.

Sellers thinks this misses the point:

This passage does not teach the value of a soul, but it does teach that it would profit a man nothing if he should gain the whole world if in doing it, he loses his power to enjoy it, his power to use it, yes, even to lose his own soul. All man’s wealth cannot purchase the redemption of his soul. (My emphasis.—A.G.F.)

. . . Men have said that God looked at the lost souls of men on earth; looked at the most precious thing in heaven; then determined that those souls were so precious that He gave His precious Son that the souls should be saved. The exact words of one such preacher were, “What exceedingly precious creatures we must be that God would give His Son to die for us.” All such teaching is a lie; it contradicts the Word of God; it denies the gospel of grace; it originates in the base pride of the depraved human heart.

Continue reading “Psyche in Mark, Luke, John, and Acts: Sellers on the Soul—Part XI”