About Our Authors

Dr. Sellers S. Crain, Jr., has been teaching and preaching for fifty years and has served congregations in Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee. A graduate of Athens State University in Alabama, Crain holds master’s degrees from Alabama Christian School of Religion (now Amridge University) and Luther Rice Seminary. He earned his D.Min. degree at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (now Trinity International University) in Deerfield, Illinois. Crain has been a teacher in the Tennessee public school system and several schools of biblical studies, serving as director for the School of World Evangelism in Guin, Alabama, and Mid-South School of Biblical Studies in Madison, Tennessee. He has also taught in Ukraine, Greece, Peru, and Panama and has made twenty-three mission trips to eleven countries. A prolific writer, Crain has authored more than 1,500 articles and thirty-seven curriculum books. His articles have appeared in various journals, including Gospel Advocate and Power for Today. For five years, he wrote the Gospel Advocate Companion, an annual adult lesson commentary. He has served on the board for The World Evangelist and has edited junior and senior high Bible class materials for 21st Century Christian.

In addition, he has spoken at numerous lectureships, gospel meetings, and special events. His lessons have also been broadcast on radio and television programs.

Sellers and his wife Wanda were married in 1961. They have three children and four grandchildren.

Dr. Earl D. Edwards has devoted a lifetime to serving the Lord in preaching, missions, and scholarship. He attended Central Christian College (now Oklahoma Christian University of Science and Arts), and he earned the B.A. degree in communications at David Lipscomb College. He received the M.Th. degree from Harding Graduate School, and he completed his D.Miss. at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. Edwards began preaching in 1952 and has served as a minister in Kansas, Arkansas, Sicily, and Florence, Italy (1960-1976). He has written for Gospel Advocate, Spiritual Sword, and other periodicals and is the author of Protecting Our “Blind Side.” Edwards taught at Harding University as the visiting professor of missions from 1976 to 1977. In 1982, he began teaching Bible at Freed-Hardeman University, where he served as dean of the School of Biblical Studies from 1991 to 1993 and director of graduate studies in Bible from 1989 to 2008. He has been honored multiple times by Freed-Hardeman for his outstanding teaching. Oklahoma Christian named him the alumnus of the year for the College of Biblical Studies in 1998. In 2004, he was honoree of the Appreciation Dinner at the annual FHU lectureship.

Edwards was married to Gwendolyn Hall from 1953 until her death in 1986. Together they had two children, Terry and Karen, and eight grandchildren. Edwards remarried in 1988 to the former Lora Young.

Dr. William W. Grasham has been preaching for over sixty years in Texas, California, Arizona, Germany, and Scotland. He received a B.A. in 1962 and an M.A. in 1968 from Pepperdine University and the M.Div. from Abilene Christian University in 1975. He was awarded a Ph.D. in 1985 from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, upon completion of a dissertation that examined the nature of the Qumran community, the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls. From 1975 to 1978, Grasham and his family lived in Kaiserslautern, Germany, where he preached for an American military congregation. Then they moved to Aberdeen, Scotland, so he could continue his education. While there, they helped to establish a local congregation of the Lord’s church. Grasham did post-doctoral studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and also participated in archaeological digs at Tel Dor in Israel. For over fifteen years, he taught Old and New Testament and Biblical Theology courses at the Center for Christian Education in Dallas, Texas. He retired in 2005 but continued to present seminars for graduate students on the Bible and archaeology and on the gospel in the Old Testament.

He and his wife, Eleanor, have been blessed with four children, seventeen grandchildren, and eleven great-grandchildren.

Dayton Keesee is a graduate of Abilene Christian University and earned his M.A. at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, also studying language and counseling. He has served as a full-time preacher in Indiana, Louisiana, Texas, and Oklahoma, and has conducted Bible-training schools and preaching seminars in Nigeria, Africa. His teaching and mission work have also taken him to Canada, Ukraine, India, South Africa, Trinidad, and Russia. For twenty-one years he was an instructor at the Sunset School of Preaching (now Sunset International Bible Institute) in Lubbock, Texas. During this time he conducted gospel meetings, leadership workshops, Christian home seminars, and teacher-training courses in at least thirty-five states. Brother Keesee’s work as a classroom teacher has expanded to Sunset’s satellite school program, which features his taped courses on the Christian home and Book of Jeremiah. As an author, he has published works on Restoration Revival: The Way (Back) to God, Hebrews: A Heavenly Homily, A Re-Evaluation of the Eldership, Teacher Training Tools, A Chronological Survey of the Old Testament, and The Churches of Christ during the Civil War.

He and his wife, Ruth, have three grown children: Dita Simeona of Hawaii, Tonja Rambow of Alaska, and Darren Keesee of Texas.

He was a featured speaker for many lectureship programs at Christian colleges. He was a member of the editorial boards of Restoration Quarterly and of Journal of Hebraic Studies; he also edited The Last Things. He authored more than a dozen books, including Questions You’ve Asked about Bible Translations, The Major Prophets, The Minor Prophets, The Interpretation of Noah and the Flood in Jewish and Christian Literature, Biblical Archaeology, Gospel of Matthew, The English Bible from KJV to NIV, Exegesis of Difficult Passages, Hebrew Wisdom and Poetry, and Leadership Questions Confronting the Church. Also, he led tour groups to the Holy Land, the British Isles, Scandinavia, and Eastern Europe.

He is the author of Values in Thought and Action and Religious Versus Secular Ethics—A Religious Response to Some Contemporary Secular Views of Ethics and co-author of Instrumental Music—Faith or Opinion and The Lipe-Lewis Debate on Pentecostalism. He has contributed to other books, such as The Living Messages of the Books of the Old Testament and Your Marriage Can Be Great, and has edited lectureship books for Magnolia Bible College, International Bible College, Southeast Institute of Bible Studies, and Freed-Hardeman University.From 1990 to 2010, Lipe was a professor of Bible and Philosophy at Freed-Hardeman University. He served as Director of the Annual Bible Lectureship there, continuing through 2015. He was the Director of the Southeast Institute of Biblical Studies in Knoxville in 2012–14 and still teaches courses there. Lipe preaches for the Cherry Creek church of Christ in Sparta, Tennessee.

He and his wife, Linda, reside in Baxter, Tennessee. They have three children, four granddaughters, and one grandson

After returning to the US, Jack worked with congregations in Austin and San Angelo, Texas, and was a teaching assistant in German at the University of Texas. He later taught both French and German at Abilene Christian College (1952–1955). He conducted mission work in Frankfurt and Chemnitz, Germany, and Zurich, Switzerland. Jack returned to Abilene Christian College, where he completed a master’s degree in Greek (1966). During that period, he preached for the church of Christ in Trent, Texas. The family then returned to Zurich for mission work (1966–1974). Toward the end of that time, Jack also served as a Bible instructor at Pepperdine University in Heidelberg. For approximately the next twenty years, Jack taught Bible and Biblical Languages at Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas (1974–1992). He went on to be with the Lord in 2014, at the age of 86.

Jack and his wife, the former Joanne Wilkinson, were blessed with four children, eight grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.