The Silence of God – Anthony G. Flood

Only God can calm the perfect storm

Over at “Maverick Philosopher,” Bill Vallicella’s blog, yesterday’s post got airplay and commentary, for which I’m grateful. I expect he’ll post my response to a commenter, but here are its key paragraphs.

The perfect storm that I conjecture is not necessarily an existential threat to humanity. No member of the crew of the fishing vessel Andrea Gail survived, but their survivors held a memorial service. Millions of Germans and Russians are alive today because, even in the worst years of Stalin and Hitler, people still fell in love, married, and had children. For tens of millions, however, there was no memorial service. They would not have the privilege, as we do, of reading and reflecting upon the history of their era in their golden years. It was simply “over” for them. They await resurrection.

If my mind were a quantum computer with all historical and current data at my fingertips, I could score the accuracy of my Antonesque “cry.” But it’s not, so I can’t. I’m only a Christian struggling to make sense of a fallen world in the light of God’s Word in the day of God’s (relative, gracious, and temporary) silence. (See my series on this topic: “The Silence of God”: Anderson’s 1897 book, Otis Q. Sellers’s 1929 turning point—Part 1.)

Offsetting the gloom-and-doom is knowing that the human drivers of the storm’s vectors are not omniscient or omnipotent. And neither is the Prince of this World (kosmos; or age, aiōnos). It’s a safe bet that he inspires them, even coordinates some of their actions (John 14:30; Eph 2:2-3, 6:12; 2 Cor 4:4). But I foresee no programmatic response to their programmatic attacks except the blazing forth (epiphaneia) of His Kingdom (not yet His second advent) for which I live in expectation (1 Tim 6:14; 2 Tim 1:10, 4:1, 4:8). That is to say, there is a programmatic response, but it’s divine.

“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”