Scofield Acquires Connections and Backers
Scofield met the distinguished theologian D. L. Moody during one of the latter’s evangelical campaigns. In 1886, Moody spoke in Dallas at Scofield’s invitation. A loose association continued between them, and in 1896 Scofield moved to New England, becoming pastor of Trinitarian Congregational, Moody’s home church. It is unclear if this occurred at Moody’s request, but association with Moody gave Scofield another credential that advanced his theologian resumé. In December 1899, Moody died at 62 from an undiagnosed illness.
In 1901, Scofield became a member of New York’s exclusive, invitation-only Lotos Club, a hangout for the financial and literary elite. Members have included Mark Twain, New York Times owner Arthur Hay Sulzberger, the atheist industrialist Andrew Carnegie, and sexual revolution advocate Margaret Mead. The Lotos Club was the sort a place a Fundamentalist preacher would ordinarily be ridiculed, yet somehow Scofield joined its rolls, even though the membership fee alone equaled one-fifth of his salary as a pastor.11 He remained a member until his death in 1921.
Scofield’s Lotos Club admission was approved by the ultra-Zionist attorney on the club’s Literary Committee, Samuel Untermyer. During his lifetime, Untermyer served as President of Keren Hayesod (Zionism’s chief financial angel), played a major role in drafting the Federal Reserve Act, was notorious for blackmailing Woodrow Wilson into appointing Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court, and spearheaded the Jewish “declaration of war” boycott against Germany in 1933. Is it surprising that someone who might be called America’s leading Zionist would sponsor, at the Lotos Club, the theologian who produced the book which birthed “Christian Zionism”?
Samuel Untermyer
According to some sources (e.g., this article), Untermyer introduced Scofield to other leading Zionist financiers, such as Jacob Schiff and Bernard Baruch. This is credible, since Untermyer was close to these individuals, and Scofield’s finances took a turn for the better—he was suddenly able to afford extended trips to Europe in pursuit of producing his reference Bible.
Scofield and his wife Hettie traveled to England in 1904. According to Charles Trumbull’s official, laudatory biography of Scofield, he told a London acquaintance, Robert Scott, that he planned writing a reference Bible, but had no idea who might publish it. As luck would have it, Scott was able to introduce him to Henry Frowde, head of Oxford University Press. Quoting Trumbull:
Mr. Frowde was interested. He said he would consult Mr. Armstrong, then head of the American branch of the Oxford University Press. Mr. Armstrong was immediately enthusiastic at the suggestion that this new Reference Bible be brought out by the Oxford Press, and a preliminary understanding was quickly reached. Mr. Frowde assured Dr. Scofield that, if he finally decided to place the Bible with them, they could readily arrange a proper contract for the publication, in the interests of each party. And so the publishing question was settled . . . . 12
This story is as preposterous as Scofield’s Lotos Club admission. Major publishing houses don’t assure publication of manuscripts they haven’t even seen yet, unless the author has a proven track record of bestsellers (e.g., a Stephen King). Scofield had never written a book before, with the exception of Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth (which was actually self-described as a “pamphlet”). He had no academic background qualifying him to edit a reference Bible.
Furthermore, Oxford University Press was owned by Zionist Jews and run by Fabian Socialists. It was primarily devoted to publishing literary and scholarly books, not Bibles, and like the Lotos Club, was a venue normally hostile to evangelical Fundamentalists.
It is rather apparent that Scofield’s Zionist connections, who got him into the Lotos Club and provided travel funding, also arranged for Oxford’s up-front publication agreement. Is it only coincidence that Scofield’s trip to England came on the heels of the Pope’s rejection (January 26, 1904) of Herzl’s plea to support a Zionist state in Palestine? With the Catholics out, rallying Protestants had become imperative. Oxford University Press, with offices on both sides of the Atlantic, could ensure Scofield’s work would receive the publicity and distribution the Zionists desired.
When the Scofields left England, they moved to Switzerland, where, according to Trumbull, Scofield did nine months of “solid work” on his reference Bible. But why Switzerland? Although John Calvin’s library was there, it was not a very logical place to research and write a reference Bible. It was, however, a center of Freemasonic and covert banking activities, and, perhaps most importantly, where Theodor Herzl hosted the early Zionist congresses.
Scofield came back to America in 1905. In 1906 he returned to England (and according to some sources, Switzerland again). In 1907, Scofield signed his publishing contract at the New York City office of Oxford University Press, and his reference Bible was first published in January 1909.
One immediately notices the volume was produced with astonishing swiftness. For most men, a reference Bible would have required a lifetime’s work. All the more remarkable: Scofield had no seminary or university training, and was not formally schooled in the languages that ancient Biblical texts are written in—Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.
The Scofield Bible’s Strategy
Were, then, some of Scofield’s notes dictated to him by other parties? Even if not, reviewing the Bible makes it evident that Scofield borrowed heavily from John Nelson Darby, James Brookes, and other early proponents of Plymouth Brethren-Dispensational theology. Scofield would undoubtedly have preferred to use Darby’s satanic Bible version, or a Hort-Westcott modernized translation. But since the Zionists wanted to reach the largest cross-section of Fundamentalists, the King James was employed. As James Whisler notes:
Cyrus wanted to use the bible of his heroes, Westcott and Hort, for this project. However, he knew that due to the prominence of the KJV and the meager results of the Revised Version sales, that his dispensationalist teachings would never get anywhere if coupled with the R.V. So he used the KJV, but he subtly showed his contempt for it and his reverence for the Revised Version. This is how he did it. Everywhere that the King James disagreed with the Revised Version in an area of doctrinal importance, Cyrus inserted a footnote stating the KJV was incorrect and he always offered a “more correct” rendering which was almost always identical to the RV.13
Although his reference Bible was first published in 1909, that edition is virtually impossible to find today. It was the revised 1917 edition that was hyper-marketed, with limitless advertising, by Oxford University Press, selling millions of copies. Is it only coincidence that 1917 was also the year of the Balfour Declaration, by which Britain’s government pledged to Lord Walter Rothschild and the Zionist Federation to establish a “national home” for the Jews in Palestine? The simultaneous mass-marketing of Scofield’s Bible would make it appear that God himself had cosigned the Declaration, and “prophecy was being fulfilled” before believers’ eyes.
Why was Scofield’s work so effectual at changing people’s understanding of the Bible? Before this, most commentaries were published separately from the Scriptures themselves. Earlier expositors had regarded the Bible as the sacred Word of God, and that its text should not be adulterated by their unworthy human words. Scofield scorned this tradition, placing his comments right on the Bible’s pages. While this was done under the pretext of reader convenience, its subliminal impact was to give Scofield’s views status competing with the Scriptures. When a reader recalled a specific Bible verse, he was apt to remember Scofield’s words along with it, or even in its place.
Some were not fooled. As Philip Mauro commented in 1927:
It is a matter of grief to me that a book should exist wherein the corrupt words of mortal man are printed on the same page with the holy Words of the living God; this mixture of the precious and the vile being made an article of sale, entitled a “Bible,” and distinguished by a man’s name. . . . For the fact is that dispensationalism is modernism. It is modernism, moreover, of a very pernicious sort, such that it must have a “Bible” of its own for the propagation of its peculiar doctrines, since they are not in the Word of God.14
With Oxford’s intense marketing, people who simply wanted a Bible often found themselves holding a Scofield Bible, and thus became unwitting recipients of “Scofieldism.” To help ensure the Bible sold well, Oxford produced it in beautifully printed cloth and leather editions. To the unsuspecting, this appeared “God-honoring.”
How Scofield Twisted the Bible to Accommodate Zionism
I know some will argue that Scofield’s notes include many theologically sound remarks. Of course they do, because lies are far more effective when mingled with truths. The Bible warns us that “A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough” (Galatians 5:9) and to “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees!” (Matthew 16:6). Scofield’s foremost mission was to harmonize his Bible with Zionism. Central to this was distorting the promises God had made to Abraham (the ancestor of both the ancient Hebrews and Arabs) in Genesis 12:1-3:
Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee: And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing: And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
Although the word “thee” is singular in the Hebrew,15 Scofield pulled a fast one, made it plural, and applied the blessing to modern Jews. He wrote in his notes:
“And curse him that curseth thee.” Wonderfully fulfilled in the history of the dispersion. It has invariably fared ill with the people who have persecuted the Jew—well with those who have protected him. The future will still more remarkably prove this principle.16
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. Tel Aviv has been voted the world’s number one gay city. Look like Biblical holiness?
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.
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.
If Palestine has one fourth of its estimated mineral value it will enable the Zionists to control the destiny of the peoples of the world. The Zionist invasion of Palestine is a gigantic steal and an infamous outrage against Christian civilization. Under present circumstances it means a third world war and that the new state of Israeli will line up with the Bolsheviks. The only way to avoid it and to assure permanent peace is to destroy the Rothschild agencies, – alias Zionist Wall Street. It is indeed the best way to restore the solvency of our country and of the world, and to restore constitutional government.
The “Balfour Declaration” to Lord Rothschild and the gift of this fabulous wealth to him and his fellow Zionists is evidence that he and his fellow Zionists then controlled the British Empire. If the British Government were authorized to give it to the Zionists they had the power to keep it or to give it to us as security for our donations, or to give it to the United Nations for the preservation of world peace. They gave it to the war-promoting Zionists for the obvious purpose of promoting Zionism.
Sources:
