Copy of Personal Letter.
Maurice Lloyd's Comments on errors of Otis Sellers with regard to 'mystery' and 'repent'.
metanoia apokrypto apokryphos mustErion
Dear T,
With regard to your recent dispatch the brief not is hardly a suitable or adequate response to my letter, and some information on the background to the enclosures would have been appropriate. According to the accepted norms of civil correspondence you merit no reply from me. I only do do because you appear to have a sincere appreciation of what I may have to comment, and few others seem to have that degree of interest.
When I first looked at your lists I thought you had developed what I had set out in a letter to Mike Waiko of New York, but then I realised you could not have seen it. So what are you up to, are you trying to discredit Otis Sellers ? You must know that he always insisted that metanoia ought to be always rendered "secret".
When I wrote The Messianic Mystery I indifferently used "Mystery" and "secret" as synonyms, but I have since learned better. In my letter to you of 11h October 1993 I mentioned this briefly. A secret is not meant to be discovered but may be found out by insistent probing - as the Press is doing constantly: a mystery is intended to be made known to certain persons in its own time, but can never be discovered by searching. it always has to be revealed. What God secretes becomes not a secret but a mystery, since He only can make it known. Job asks, "Can'st thou by searching find out God ?" --- a leading question to which the answer is "No".
I enclose an extract from the letter mentioned, but Mike did not comment on the three opening points, though they can hardly be refuted. He accepted my criticism of confusing Age and Dispensation, which relates to his Seed & Bread issue which you sent me.
The "friend" alluded to is Luis Casillias, who uninvited wrote me reams of argument which was no more than Sellers' well known teaching. He included a photo-copied page 511 of the Englishman's Greek Concordance with "Mystery" crossed out and replaced by "secret", an example of the absurdity of thought one gets into by following a man rather than the truth. He insisted that a mystery is something one can never understand, which is true unless it is the subject of revelation.
Your study should have included also the words apokrypto and apokryphos, which could be represented by "hidden away" or "secreted".
I also accept mustErion In lCor.2:1 with Bowes, Rotherham aod RV. This is found 1n Codex Alexandrinus and the Greek text of. Souter, also W.and H. and is accepted by Moffat, C.Williams and Barclay who do not translate as Mystery. It relates well to the theme of the chapter and explains the "Behold" of ch.15:51.
If you accept all this you will be at odds with the Sellerian Word Book of Milton Hammond. As I have before mentioned I had some correspondence with him two years ago when I tried to get him to recognise the invalidity of OQS making Repent mean Submit; but you have my study on that subject so I need say no more here.
I am also enclosing my comments on Van Mierlo's work "The evolution of Christendom" which you may or may not have seen. It was a soft-back booklet published in the 1950s by Academy Books. My comments were for the benefit of Ivo Thyssen of Belgium, for whom also my "Chronology Rectified" was produced.
Yours Sincerely Maurice Lloyd 25th July 1996