The Scofield Reference Bible was copyrighted by Oxford University Press, not Scofield. This gave the publishing house license to change his words in subsequent printings. Oxford issued a revised edition in 1967 (coinciding with the Six Day War and Israel’s seizure of Jerusalem). That version put Scofield’s Zionism on steroids, adding, for example, this phrase to the above words: “For a nation to commit the sin of anti-Semitism brings inevitable judgement.” The Bible, of course, never refers to “the sin of anti-Semitism.”
In Genesis 15:18, God described the land He was giving Abraham and his seed:
In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.
At Herzl’s Zionist congresses, plans were made to claim all land from the Nile to the Euphrates.
This demarks “Greater Israel”; the Euphrates and Nile rivers are the two blue stripes displayed on the Israeli flag. They enclose a star traditionally used in Satanism, with six points, six triangles, and a hexagon (six-sided) in the middle—666.
To convince Christians that Zionists remained entitled to this land, Scofield made God’s promise “unconditional.” He wrote:
For Abraham and his descendants it is evident that the Abrahamic Covenant made a great change. They became distinctively the heirs of promise. That covenant is wholly gracious and unconditional. The descendants of Abraham had but to abide in their own land to inherit every blessing.17
But as any Bible student knows—or should know—God’s promises to the Hebrews were always conditional upon their faith. When Moses brought the Hebrews out of Egypt, God did not even permit them to enter the land due to lack of faith. Instead, they were compelled to first wander in the wilderness for forty years. Do you think today’s “Israelites” are more faithful to God than those of Moses’ days?
Tel Aviv’s 2016 Gay Pride Parade (left). Tel Aviv has been voted the world’s number one gay city. Look like Biblical holiness to you?
Anyone who believes God’s promises to Israel were “unconditional” should read Deuteronomy 28, which clearly enumerates blessings for obedience, counterbalanced by curses for disobedience. What did John the Baptist think about claims of “unconditional” heritage? He told the Pharisees: “And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.” (Matthew 3:9). Jesus said: “Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.” (Matthew 21:43)
Scofield also made it appear that the Bible prophesied a future return of the Jews to Palestine, in order to give the Balfour Declaration, and Israel’s eventual statehood, the illusion of “fulfilled prophecies.” His notes proclaimed:
The gift of the land is modified by prophecies of three dispossessions and restorations . . . . Two dispossessions and restorations have been accomplished. Israel is now in the third dispersion, from which she will be restored at the return of the Lord as King under the Davidic Covenant.18
Scofield’s claim of three restorations is unscriptural. The Bible prophesies only two restorations: the Hebrews’ original journey from Egypt to the Promised Land under Moses; and the return from the exile in Babylon described in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. To support his claim, Scofield used verses referring to the Ezra-Nehemiah return, or to the coming of Christ, but nowhere does the Bible forecast a third return of the Jews to Palestine, unless ones uses (as Scofield did) imaginative leaps of logic.
A cardinal rule of Scofield Dispensationalism: claim that if any Biblical prophecy was not fulfilled in the past, it still awaits future fulfillment. Of God’s promise to give Abraham’s seed the land from the Nile to the Euphrates, Scofield wrote: “It is important to see that the nation has never as yet taken the land under the unconditional Abrahamic Covenant, nor has it ever possessed the whole land.”19
“Important,” Scofield? Important to whom? Only to your Zionist masters. Although it is claimed that the conquests described in the book of Joshua did not give the Hebrews the whole land, and thus left God’s promise to Abraham “unfulfilled” until the future, a careful reading of the Bible disproves this. Joshua 21:43-45 declares:
And the Lord gave unto Israel all the land which he sware to give unto their fathers; and they possessed it, and dwelt therein. And the Lord gave them rest round about, according to all that he sware unto their fathers: and there stood not a man of all their enemies before them; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand. There failed not ought of any good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel; all came to pass.
Kings 4:21 testifies that the Israelites ruled the entire area Herzl envisioned as “Greater Israel”:
And Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates River to the land of the Philistines, as far as the border of Egypt. These countries brought tribute and were Solomon’s subjects all his life.
Thus the Bible itself refutes Scofield’s claim that the promise was never fulfilled, allegedly justifying the modern Zionist takeover of Palestine.
Scofield’s Legacy: The Damage that Has Been Done
Scofield’s Bible birthed “Christian Zionism,” and with it, untold sorrows over the past century:
• Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. In the 1948 Nakba, the Zionists murderously drove 750,000 Palestinians from their homes at gunpoint. Quoting If Americans Knew:
Zionist forces committed 33 massacres and destroyed 531 Palestinian towns. Author Norman Finkelstein [himself Jewish} states: “According to the former director of the Israeli army archives, ‘in almost every village occupied by us during the War… acts were committed which are defined as war crimes, such as murders, massacres, and rapes’…Uri Milstein, the authoritative Israeli military historian of the 1948 war, goes one step further, maintaining that ‘every skirmish ended in a massacre of Arabs.’”20
Victims of 1948 Deir Yassin Massacre
The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has continued to this day.
Israeli settlers abuse a Palestinian
For those Christians who think the book of Joshua somehow still justifies this, I wish to point out that the Canaanites whom Joshua and the Hebrews fought against were giants; satanically transhumanized beings and worshippers of Satan. (See my article “Making Sense of the Supernatural.”) Today’s Palestinians do not equate to the ancient Canaanites, and contrary to what “Christian Zionists” typically believe, many Palestinians are Christians.
Israel destroys a Gaza town, 2014:
Israelis celebrate their bombs:
Christian Zionists have bought into the myth that Israel is only “defending its right to exist” and that Palestinians are “terrorists.” The Israelis have over 4,000 tanks and over 400 combat aircraft, thanks to a steady flow of about $3 billion annually from American taxpayers. The unarmed Palestinians have not one tank or plane; they fight their illegal occupiers primarily with stones.
George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 on the pretext that it was avoiding UN inspections of weapons of mass destruction (which, it turned out, didn’t even exist). Israel, on the other hand, has hundreds of nuclear weapons which it refuses to let the UN inspect; the United States grants it a free pass, and has even given Israel the hydrogen bomb.
• False-flag Terrorism and War for the Rest of the World. Contrary to the Zionist media’s spin, Israel has been the world’s number-one sponsor of terrorism, implemented “by way of deception”—the motto of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. This has included, for example, the 1946 King David Hotel bombing, the 1954 Lavon Affair, the vicious 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, the 1986 “Trojan” deception that led Reagan to bomb Libya (scroll down a little if clicking link), and of course, the mother of them all, 9/11, covered with Zionist-Israeli fingerprints. 9/11 led to the countless and unnecessary Middle East wars which were already foreknown in 2001. Those wars in turn produced the refugee crisis ravaging Europe today.
• Provoking Hostility of Muslims toward Christianity. Christian Aid is a leading Christian charity and missionary organization, founded in 1945. Here is an informative 2003 quote from Bob Finley, Christian Aid’s founder and CEO:
Christian support for the Zionist movement began in England a century ago when a few Bible teachers began to interpret certain Old Testament prophecies regarding the ancient Hebrews as being applicable to the present day Jewish people. Apparently those teachers did not know that (according to the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia) the Ashkenazi, or Yiddish, majority of Jewish people originally came from the empire of Khazaria in Southern Russia and are not biologically related to Abraham. So when a few Ashkenazi Zionists began trying to take over parts of Palestine through acts of terrorism about 70 years ago, some Christians started saying it signified the fulfillment of some obscure Old Testament prophecies.
Christians today fail to realize how such statements have had a destructive effect on our fellow believers in many parts of the world, so Christian Aid has begun to call attention to these facts. Since 1940 the Zionists have killed, driven out or displaced over two million of the original residents of Palestine. Their lands, houses and businesses have all been stolen, and most of their personal property as well. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled to refugee camps in surrounding countries over a 20-year period. Yet all the while, unbelievably, some Christians in America were cheering for the Zionists, and proclaiming their atrocities as being blessed of God. . . . Our thoughtless expressions of approval have been destructive in three ways.
- What we have done to our fellow Christians in Islamic Lands.
When Americans speak favorably about Zionist aggression in Palestine, we bring needless persecution on multiplied thousands of our fellow believers now living in Islamic countries. Christian citizens of those countries are suspected of being in agreement with what the Americans are saying, though not one in a thousand of them are. When Muslims hear of Baptists in America praising Zionist atrocities, what are they to think of the Baptist churches in their countries? Or the Pentecostals? Or Presbyterians? How can we expect them not to retaliate against those who favor killing their fellow Muslims?
- What we have done to missionary work among the Muslims.
Fifty years ago millions of Muslims were open to the gospel. There was a great missionary opportunity for reaching them for Christ. Muslims make up the largest segment of unreached peoples on earth, and they were very open until American Christians began to praise Zionist conquests in Palestine. Since most of the violence has been against Muslims, it is to be expected that Muslims in other countries would be sympathetic toward the victims and resentful toward the Christians who support Zionist expansion. This political development has served to cut off millions of Muslims from their previous receptivity to the gospel. . . . Our missionary opportunity among them has been ruined.
- What Zionism has done to our churches.
Until 50 years ago most Christians accepted events recorded in the book of Joshua as something special for that particular time. We believed that the coming of the Saviour brought a New Covenant under which we no longer resort to violence to advance the kingdom of God. But when the Zionist movement began in Palestine around 1920, some Christians started to disregard New Testament principles. We would say it’s wrong for us to kill our neighbor and steal his property, but if Jewish people did it in Palestine, then it was O.K. First it was thousands, then tens of thousands, and eventually hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were driven from their homes. All of their property was stolen by the Zionists. Forty percent of the victims were professing Christians, many of whom were born again believers. Yet, to our everlasting shame, many Christians in America have stood on the sidelines and cheered for the murderers. It’s all O.K., we say, because Zionism is a fulfillment of prophecy. It is hard to imagine how any Bible believer with reasonable intelligence could endorse such things, particularly when so many thousands of conscientious Jews the world over have objected strenuously to Zionist aggression in Palestine.
Some of our faithful friends in Christ have told us that if we dare to say anything about the tragedies that have resulted from Christians endorsing Zionist atrocities we may lose some financial support as a result. That doesn’t bother me. My Bible says, “We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)
Faithfully yours in Him,
Bob Finley
Chairman and CEO21
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