Tag: Acts 28:28

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”

The day Otis Q. Sellers received Christ: November 23, 1919

A century ago today, 18-year-old Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. This future maverick Bible expositor was raised in Wellston, Ohio; when he was 15 the family moved to Cincinnati. Hall of Famer Edd Roush  led the Cincinnati Reds to the 1919 World Series. Evangelist Billy Graham was a year old. Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D. W. Griffith created United Artists. The United Mine Workers struck the coal industry on the first of the month during the first Red Scare. Wilson was President. The armistice ending the Great War was signed ten days later; on the 19th, the Treaty of Versailles failed ratification in the U.S. Senate.

Below are my lightly edited transcriptions of Sellers’s recollections from recordings made in 1975. My work on his life and Biblical theology proceeds. Thanks are due his daughter, Jane Sellers Hancock (she’s all of six in the second photo below), and her son (Otis’s grandson), Rusty Hancock, for the family photos used here and for other indispensable assistance I cannot summarize here.

—Anthony Flood

I was born in a Wellston, Ohio, small town of about 5,000 people; I lived there for the first fifteen years of my life [until 1916]. That had to do with the shaping of my thinking. When I first went to the big city, I was just a country boy in the big city. This town shaped my thinking and my actions. Sometimes I think that was for the good.

TL148 31:46-32:15

It was a warm afternoon in of August [1919], and I was upstairs getting dressed to go out on a Saturday afternoon. I was just 18. I came downstairs to put on my necktie; it was cooler downstairs.

Otis Q. Sellers (1921, age 20)

My father and my brother were sitting near the bay window in our little house, and the windows were open. Dad had his Bible open. I noticed he was talking about a young preacher he very much admired.

My father was a Baptist. He and my brother were talking, and my father was impressing upon him the way of salvation. My brother James said:

Well, I haven’t been a perfect person, but I’ve never robbed any banks. I’ve never killed anyone. I never committed adultery. I’ve honored my father and mother.

And he had.

I think if anything happened to me, I’d be all right.

Otis Q. Sellers, Sr., holding Joann Morton, Otis Q. Sellers’s niece as Jane, his daughter, watches. September 20, 1933

Then my father said something that I’d never before heard in my life. I was baptized when I was 12. I have a pin to show that I had gone to Sunday School every Sunday without missing for fourteen years. (Then I quit!)

Then I heard my father say,

James, you aren’t saved by what you do, your good works; you’re saved by what Christ does. And you’re saved by believing on Him. The Bible says, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.” Continue reading “The day Otis Q. Sellers received Christ: November 23, 1919”