Tag: eon

“. . . for the young man shall die a hundred years old.”

Yes, but because of the eonian (“eternal”) life flowing from the King—from Him Who is Life itself—to His subjects . . . not by organ transplants!

No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days, for the young man shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed. Isaiah 65:20 (ESV)

The fiend in the Kremlin—the KGB alum who, we’re told, was “caught” the other day in a “hot mic” moment—fantasized to his equally fiendish Beijing host that “human organs can be continuously transplanted” and “the longer you live, the younger you become, and [you can] even achieve immortality.”

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.” Genesis 3:4 (ESV)

In the future manifest Kingdom of God, the divine dispensation that will follow the present dispensation of grace (Ephesians 3:2; KJV), death will no longer be an enemy that eventually catches up with you, no matter what you eat, how much you exercise, or how many organs are transplanted from someone else’s body into yours. No infant will die prematurely, and centenarians will be considered boys and girls. If you die, it will be because something you do earns God’s wrath, as Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11), who lived in the “ear stage of the Kingdom” (Mark 4:26-29), earned that wrath by lying to the Holy Spirit. The present dispensation is a “parenthesis,” a regnum interruptum, if you will, between that stage and the “full grain in the ear stage,” the manifest Kingdom of God. Disease and death are outworkings of the curse of the Fall of man, not particular judgments. When God acts today, He acts only in grace.

Christian Individualism: The Maverick Biblical Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers will, God willing, be published in 2026. In the meantime, searching <Otis Q. Sellers> on this site will provide answers to many of the questions that my dogmatic assertions above may have occasioned. But you can always ask one below.

The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion (and why it matters), Part 2

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992), in his study, probably early 1980s.

The previous post ended with the question, “What is an eon?” Before answering it (by putting more of Sellers’s spadework in front of you), let me address a question you may be asking (if you’re a Bible-believing Christian, that is): who cares whether the meaning of olam should control that of aion?

You might not care if you belong to a church whose doctrines presuppose the veracity of traditional translations of key words. For upon that presupposed veracity hangs your confidence in the doctrines. Anything that undermines the former threatens the latter, which are nonnegotiable for you.

If your church membership is a dogmatic commitment—socially determined and psychologically reinforced in ways that have nothing to do with the meanings of Hebrew and Greek words—then those meanings don’t matter. You can skip these posts.

Still, however, I’d ask you to reflect on what you mean when you say the Bible is true in all that it affirms, teaches, or implies. (Of course, if you don’t say that, then we would need to have a different conversation before proceeding.)

But if you belong to a church that at least pays lip service to that principle—whether it’s a parish of the Roman Catholic Church or a Baptist storefront—then it does matter what olam and aion, nephesh and psyche, qahal and ekklesia mean. (There are many other examples.)

You may not say, however, at least not integrally, that you believe both in the inspiration of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures God and in doctrines that are rooted in mistranslations thereof. That unstable conjunction only reveals your fidelity, not to the Scriptures as the Word of God, but rather to the organization. In America, that choice may be constitutionally protected, but that won’t relieve the cognitive dissonance it expresses. Continue reading “The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion (and why it matters), Part 2”