Tag: Kingdom of God

Otis Q. Sellers on ἐκκλησία: his most distinctive theological distinctive? Introduction to a series.

When people first encounter Otis Q. Sellers’s writings, they learn he was virtually alone in holding that God’s global reign, the Kingdom for the coming of which He taught His disciples to pray, will be both future and premillennial.

That is, Christ’s “second coming,” His return to tabernacle among us again, to be present (παρουσία, parousia) because of who He is and what He is for a thousand years (the Millennium), is not His next move.[1] He will return before that Millennium but after that Kingdom has been operation.

His next move is the inauguration of His Kingdom (βασιλεία, basileia) on the Day of Christ (Χριστοῦ, Christou) (Philippians 1:6, 10), characterized by the Second, post-Pentecost Coming of the Holy Spirit.

After centuries of divine government, the Holy Spirit will lift His restraints to test all who have been living under it. He will permit a revolt (ἀποστασία, apostasia) (2 Thessalonians 2:1-3), which will initiate a time of pressure, testing, or “tribulation” (θλῖψις, thlipsis) for subjects of Israel’s restored Kingdom.

At His coming, Christ will crush that rebellion, marking the great and notable Day of the Lord (Κυρίου, Kyriou) (1 Thessalonians 5:2-5; Acts 2:20), the end of Israel’s 70 weeks (Daniel 9:27).

But that’s future. In the present, Christians work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12), not only before Christ’s Parousia, but also before the coming of His Kingdom (no matter how soon it may come).

Almost without exception, Christians do this as members of societies called “churches.” Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers on ἐκκλησία: his most distinctive theological distinctive? Introduction to a series.”

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”

The Maverick Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers: Highlights

Periodically I need to step back from the billboard of my studies of independent Bible teacher Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) and survey that big picture, reviewing the salient points of his teaching, all of which are being sourced for the growing manuscript, Maverick Workman: How Otis Q. Sellers Broke with the Churches, Discovered the Premillennial Kingdom, and Embodied Christian Individualism. One hundred two years and seven days ago, that is, on November 23, 1919, Sellers received Christ as His savior. What he did with from that point onward is the book’s subject.

By “independent”  I mean he wasn’t affiliated with any church after 1932, the year he left Fifth Avenue Baptist Church in Newport, Kentucky which, in the middle of the Great Depression, he had served as pastor for four years. He broke with them over the meaning of βαπτίζω (baptízō), the Greek word that every English-language New Testament transliterates as “baptism,” but never translates. After painstaking study, he concluded neither he nor anyone else had the authority to bring about the reality to which the water ritual of “baptism” referred, namely, “an identification amounting to a merger.” He could no longer, with integrity, subscribe to Baptist theology.

The home of Otis Q. Sellers and family, Fort Thomas, KY, 1932

Later, and by similar reasoning, Sellers reached another conclusion no less radical: not only that “church” is a bad translation of ἐκκλησία (ekklesia)—nothing new there—but also that this governmental term pertains to God’s purposes establishing His Kingdom, which Jesus Christ announced during his earthly ministry, but suspended at the inception of the current dispensation of grace (Ephesians 3:2).

Sellers’s studies convinced him that although the societies we call churches abound—they are among the institutional fixtures of the past two millennia—the meaning of ekklesia does not apply to any of them. There is a diversity of churches today, to be sure, and you may join any of them or not, he held, but none has the authority of an “out-positioned one” or ekklesia. Christians misidentify themselves as out-positioned, and this is the root of all “ecclesiastical” evil and controversy. “Out-positioned” is what Christians were from Acts 2 until Acts 28:28 and will be again when God resumes His Kingdom purposes. Or so is the conclusion his studies brought him to.

Today’s churches have evolved according to the demands and logic of human, not divinely instituted, organizations. Their members may be generated of God, but only as individuals. The societies they form cannot reflect the spirit of their members. As corporations, however, they have no standing before God; their data are primarily of historical, sociological, cultural, and esthetic, and only secondarily of biblical-theological interest.

Continue reading “The Maverick Workmanship of Otis Q. Sellers: Highlights”

Otis Q. Sellers: The Autodidact Who Returned ad fontes

From the Renaissance humanists the Reformers borrowed a motto: “Ad fontes!,” that is, “[Back] to the sources or fountains of truth.” The sources were texts, the Greek and Roman classics for the former, the Bible for the latter.

The phrase comes from Psalm 42:1, or rather from Jerome’s Latin translation of the Hebrew for his Vulgate edition of the Bible:

Quemadmodum desiderat cervus ad fontes aquarum, ita desiderat anima mea ad te Deus.

As the New King James Version renders it:

As the deer pants for the water (מָ֑יִם, mayim) brooks (אֲפִֽיקֵי, ha-pi-que), so pants my soul for You, O God.

“To be short of breath” or “to pant” renders the Hebrew תַּעֲרֹ֥ג (ta-a-rog), which Jerome represented by desiderare: to desire, wish for, long for. It refers to a want or desire that induces gasping, breathlessness.

The psalmist’s desire is, figuratively, for a source of water (ad fontes aquarum). Thirst is symptomatic of a lack, and God is the divine analogate of the thirst-quenching brook, the supplier of the spiritual hydration we need at our core.

Jesus Christ spoke of Himself that way. He promised that

… whosoever drinks of the water (ὕδωρ, hudor; whence our “hydration”) that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. John 4:14

Babbling brooks extinguish the thirst of deer whose throats will again dry up. Jesus’ quenching of spiritual thirst, however, is a gift of a spring of water (ὕδωρ) that wells up (ἁλλομένου, allomenon) into life. What kind of life? Not “eternal” in the sense of “timeless,” but dynamically outflowing (αἰώνιον, aionian).[1] Otis Q. Sellers’s research sheds light: Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers: The Autodidact Who Returned ad fontes”

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: Subversive Heir to the Bible Conference Movement

Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) in the year he was enrolled in Moody Bible Institute, 1921.

This following is from a growing manuscript on the life and independent biblical theology of Otis Q. Sellers.

Otis Q. Sellers’s discovery of the premillennial Kingdom didn’t drop from the sky. Teachers of the Word whom he read and under whom he studied prepared his breakthrough and breakaway. He knew they exposed and resisted the agents of modernism who took over the churches and their seminaries.

“Reactions to this mass of error,” he wrote, “were bound to come, and they took place in the great resurgence of Bible study in the last quarter of the nineteenth and first quarter of the twentieth century.”

In this resurgence the “Social Gospel” was assailed and contradicted with many infallible proofs from the Word of God. It was demonstrated to be a perversion of the Gospel of Christ and its programs foreign to the facts of God’s revealed truth. And the great dispensational-premillennial movement came to the forefront to lead and to challenge in respect to a new and honest approach to the prophetic (eschatological) portions of God’s Word.[1]

From that movement’s leaders Sellers learned how not only to negotiate Bible study, but also, when the time came, to justify breaking out of that movement in the name of the biblical truth they had championed. Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers: Subversive Heir to the Bible Conference Movement”

Otis Q. Sellers’s eschatological distinctives, ordered from the Day of the Lord, documented provisionally

Otis Q. Sellers , independent Bible teacher, born in Wellston, OH, 1901, died in Los Angeles, CA, 1992.

The following are notes for my manuscript, tentatively titled Maverick Workman: How Otis Q. Sellers Broke with the Churches, Discovered the Premillennial Kingdom, and Embodied Christian Individualism, a work in progress.

When the events recorded in the Book of Revelation were revealed to John, he was in the spirit on the Day of the Lord.[1] Before that Day’s arrival[2], however, there will be a seven-year rebellion, [3] during the course of which the Man of Sin will be revealed, sitting in the Temple of God, pretending to be God.[4]

The rebellion’s target will be Israel’s restored kingdom, under the conditions of God’s kingdom. The Apostles asked about this.[5] This event presupposes the miraculous transfer (and, for many, if not most  Jews who have ever lived, resurrection) of Israel’s descendants from the diaspora to the promised land, the subject of an irrevocable divine promise.[6]

In the wilderness, God will plead His case to Israel, woo her as a man a woman, and reveal Jesus to them as the prophesied mashiach (Messiah).[7] Jesus’ messiahship is unintelligible apart from His fulfillment of the promise of the new covenant with Israel and Judah, which fulfillment He announced at His last Passover.[8] Jews today can neither retard nor accelerate their miraculous return to the land.

The restoration’s context is the prophesied global Kingdom of God, whose imminence Jesus proclaimed during His earthly ministry.[9] During this centuries-long administration or dispensation of divine government, earth will be the mediatorial planet between heaven and the rest of creation; Israel will be the mediatorial nation between heaven, the seat of God’s government, and that rule’s effects on earth.[10] Resurrected Apostles will rule as tribal governors[11] under David, Jesus’ viceregent.

Jesus will leave His throne to descend to earth in order to put down forcefully the Rebellion[12] and then be personally present[13] on earth to reign for a thousand years from His footstool[14] (after centuries of rule from His throne).[15] He will descend with a shout[16] and proceed to take vengeance those who neither know God nor obey Jesus Christ’s gospel, that is, Christ’s “right message” (evangelion, “gospel”) for that day.[17] Belief in the content of that message is the plan of salvation.

The commencement of  the Day of Christ—the inauguration of the manifest Kingdom of God—will be a quiet affair (unlike the Day of the Lord). God will pour out His spirit on all flesh.[18] When He assumes sovereignty—bringing forth judgment unto truth and causing the nations to trust in His name—He will neither cry nor cause His voice to be heard.[19] (Were the Day of the Lord God’s next move, there’d be no nations left to trust in His name.) Therefore, the Kingdom of God on Earth must have a premillennial phase. Continue reading “Otis Q. Sellers’s eschatological distinctives, ordered from the Day of the Lord, documented provisionally”

The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion (and its Kingdom implications), Part 3

Otis Q. Sellers, 1920. I’d be grateful to the reader who can identify the statue and park (Cincinnati?Chicago?).

Today we conclude our look at Otis Q. Sellers’s critique of the traditional translations of the Hebrew עוֹלָם‎ (olam) and the Greek αἰών (aion) as “eternal” or “timeless” and what it means for eschatology. (See Part 1 and Part 2) Sellers found the idea of “outflowing” to be the key to their meaning. Here is his etymological case for this:

As an example [Sellers wrote] of the thread of truth that runs through a family of words let us consider the word “purse,” indicating the bag which my lady carries. Does this have any relationship to the bursa in my shoulder that at one time flared up into bursitis? And is it also related to pursing the lips, or to the famous Bourse, the French stock exchange? At first glance one might say no, but the fact is that they are all closely related, and the thread that runs through all of them is the idea of hide, that is, a stripped-off skin.

It seems that it all started with the Greek word bursa, and the equivalent Latin word, both of which mean “leather.” [Sellers inadvertently conflated things here. The Latin bursa is the equivalent of the Greek Προύσα (prousa), which means “sack” and is the name of a city in northwestern Turkey.—A.F.] This filtered into the French as bourse, which means “purse,” a leather sack in which money is placed, and became the name of the French stock exchange. And since we have little sacks in our shoulders, these are called bursas. Furthermore, when we contract our lips into folds and wrinkles, it resembles a moneybag when the strings are pulled, and this is called “pursing the lips.” So, as different as some of these words seem to be from one another, there is an essential thread that runs through all of them. (“What Does Aion Mean?,” Seed & Bread 128; all quotations here are to this issue.)[1]

How does this insight illuminate our handling of olam, aion and their cognates?

Since aion was selected by divine inspiration to express the word olam in New Testament quotations of passages containing this word, it is then normal to expect that the same basic idea of “flowing” should be found in every occurrence. . . . I am not suggesting that aion be translated “flow,” “flower,” or “flowing” in any [given] occurrence. In translating I will always use the anglicized forms “eon” and “eonian” to render noun and adjective, but I will know from long and careful study what these words mean. In Ephesians 2:2 where the King James Version reads “the course of this world,” I will translate it “the eon of this world,” but will know that it means “the flow of this world.” Continue reading “The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion (and its Kingdom implications), Part 3”

“Conspiracy theorist!,” our era’s “Red-baiter!” Complementary warnings from Diana West and Murray Rothbard.

Diana West

In American Betrayal, Diana West exposes the role that name-calling plays in inhibiting, even shutting down, critical thinking about vital subjects. Her words are worth quoting at length, given the relevance of our conditioned reflex both to criticism of Islam and how we’ve been conditioned to disarm before the Communist threat (present as well as past).

Bat Ye’or (pen name of Gisèle Littman)

She had been reading Bat Ye’or’s investigations into the decades-long self-subjugation of the West to Islam, including The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: from Jihad to Dhimmitude, and Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide–all of which debunk the proposition “Islam is peace.” No, West learned . . .

Continue reading ““Conspiracy theorist!,” our era’s “Red-baiter!” Complementary warnings from Diana West and Murray Rothbard.”

Otis Q. Sellers: Prophetic Prayers about God’s Kingdom

“I will be a king over you.” Ezekiel 20:23

The cumulative effect of the following 25 prophecies is the conviction that God is going to govern this planet. What they pray for has not occurred, but will. Yes, they express happy thoughts—“Wouldn’t it be great if God one day governed the earth . . . ?,” but they do much more. They speak God’s word authoritatively. And that’s what it means to prophesy.

Like the prayer Jesus taught His disciples (Matthew 6:9-13), these prayers are prophecies that are also predictions. Not one describes present conditions. They all await realization. God’s word never returns to Him void (Isaiah 55:11).

I’ve excerpted the following from This I Believe, a 1963 pamphlet by Otis Q. Sellers, the subject of a biography I’m working on.

—Anthony Flood

As the pages of the Old Testament are turned, one reads of a time to come when the entire flow of satanic evil will be overwhelmed by a greater flow of righteousness from one who is the seed of the woman, even Christ (Genesis 3:15).  He goes on to read of a time when

  • All the ends of the earth will remember and be turned to the Lord (Psalm 22:27)
  • All the earth will fear the Lord and all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him (Psalm 33:8)
  • The meek will inherit the earth and delight themselves in the abundance of peace (Psalm 37:11)
  • The streams of God’s river will make glad the city of God (Psalm 46:4)
  • Wars will cease and God will be exalted among the nations (Psalm 46:8-10)
  • God’s way will be known upon the earth and His saving health will be the portion of all nations (Psalm 67:2)
  • God will judge the peoples righteously and govern the nations upon the earth (Psalm 67:3-4)
  • God will bless Israel and all the ends of the earth will fear Him (Psalm 67:7)
  • all nations will call Him blessed and the whole earth be filled with His glory (Psalm 72:17, 19)
  • The world will be established so that it cannot be disrupted (Psalm 96:10)
  • The nations will fear the name of the Lord (Psalm 102:15)
  • One generation will praise His works to another and declare His mighty acts (Psalm 145:4)
  • God will turn His hand upon Israel and purge away her dross (Isaiah 1:25)
  • The mountain of the Lord’s house will be established in the top of the mountains and all nations will flow unto it (Isaiah 2:2)
  • Nations will beat their swords into plowshares and turn all instruments of destruction into instruments of peace (Isaiah 2:4)
  • The wolf will dwell with the lamb and the leopard will lie down with the kid and a little child will lead them (Isaiah 11:6)
  • None will hurt or destroy, and the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11:9)
  • God’s judgments will be in the earth and the inhabitants of the earth will learn righteousness (Isaiah 26:9)
  • The eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf be unstopped
  • The lame will leap as a hart and the tongue of the dumb sing (Isaiah 35:5, 6)
  • the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh will see it together (Isaiah 40:5)
  • God will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, put His law in their inward parts and write it upon their hearts (Jeremiah 31:27,33)
  • God will fulfill His great promise to Israel to seek them out, bring them out from all peoples and all countries and bring them to their own land, and to set one shepherd over them, even David (Ezekiel 34:11-24)
  • Out of Bethlehem will come One to be ruler in Israel, whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting (Micah 5:2)
  • The Lord will be king over all the earth (Zechariah 14:9)

Check out related posts
Here are a few short studies on the Kingdom by Otis Q. Sellers (PDFs at Seed&Bread.org)
Otis Q. Sellers (1901-1992) in his library and recording studio