by Charles E Carlson
The French author, Alexis de Tocqueville, wrote Democracy in America when he traveled here in the first third of the 19th Century. In ringing tones he sang the praises of America’s invulnerable strength and spirit. He attributed its greatness to its citizens’ sense of morality… even with the abundant church attendances he observed in America. De Tocqueville wrote in French and is credited with this familiar quote: America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.
De Tocqueville could see the power of America, but he could not have known in 1830 that she was soon to be under an attack aimed at its churches and the very sense of morality that he extolled.
First, there was a War Between the States, which scarred the powerful young nation in its strapping youth. A worse attack on America was to commence near the turn of the 20th century. This was the onset of an attack on American Christianity that continues unabated against the traditional, Christ-following church. This attack, which author Gordon Ginn calls ?The final Apostasy,? began with a small very wealthy and determined European political movement. It had a dream, and the American churches stood in its way.
The World Zionist Movement, as its Jewish founders called themselves, had plans to acquire a homeland for all Jews worldwide, even though most were far from homeless, and many did not want another home. Not any land would do. World Zionists wanted a specific property that American Christians called “the Holy Land.” But if these Zionists read Democracy In America or any of the journals of any of America’s churches, which no doubt they did, they could not help but know that Jerusalem was not theirs to have. As self-proclaimed Jews, they were, according to the Christian New Testament, the persecutors of Christ and most of his early followers, and the engineers of his crucifixion. America’s traditional churches in the 19th Century would never stand for a American Christians c
World Zionist leaders initiated a program to change America and its religious orientation. One of the tools used to accomplish this goal was an obscure and malleable Civil War veteran named Cyrus I. Scofield. A much larger tool was a venerable, world respected European book publisher–The Oxford University Press.
The scheme was to alter the Christian view of Zionism by creating and promoting a pro-Zionist subculture within Christianity. Scofield’s role was to re-write the King James Version of the Bible by inserting Zionist-friendly notes in the margins, between verses and chapters, and on the bottoms of the pages. The Oxford University Press used Scofield, a pastor by then, as the Editor, probably because it needed such as man for a front. The revised bible was called the Scofield Reference Bible, and with limitless advertising and promotion, it became a best-selling “bible” in America and has remained so for 90 years.
The Scofield Reference Bible was not to be just another translation, subverting minor passages a little at a time. No, Scofield produced a revolutionary book that radically changed the context of the King James Version. It was designed to create a subculture around a new worship icon, the modern State of Israel, a state that did not yet exist, but which was already on the drawing boards of the committed, well-funded authors of World Zionism.
Scofield’s support came from a movement that took root around the turn of the century, supposedly motivated by disillusionment over what it considered the stagnation of the mainline American churches. Some of these “reformers” were later to serve on Scofield?s Editorial Committee.
Scofield imitated a chain of past heretics and rapturists, most of whose credibility fizzled over their faulty end times prophesies. His mentor was one John Nelson Darby from Scotland, who was associated with the Plymouth Brethren and who made no less than six evangelical trips to the US selling what is today called “Darbyism.” It is from Darby that Scofield is thought to have learned his Christian Zionist theology, which he later planted in the footnotes of the Scofield Reference Bible. It is possible that Scofield?s interest in Darbyism was shared by Oxford University Press, for Darby was known to Oxford University.
The Oxford University Press owned “The Scofield Reference Bible” from the beginning, as indicated by its copyright, and Scofield stated he received handsome royalties from Oxford. Oxford’s advertisers and promoters succeeded in making Scofield?s bible, with its Christian Zionist footnotes, a standard for interpreting scripture in Judeo-Christian churches, seminaries, and Bible study groups. It has been published in at least four editions since its introduction in 1908 and remains one of the largest selling Bibles ever.
The Scofield Reference Bible and its several clones is all but worshiped in the ranks of celebrity Christians, beginning with the first media icon, evangelist Billy Graham. Of particular importance to the Zionist penetration of American Christian churches has been the fast growth of national bible study organizations, such as Bible Study Fellowship and Precept Ministries. These draw millions of students from not only evangelical fundamentalist churches, but also from Catholic and mainline Protestant churches and non-church contacts. These invariably teach forms of “dispensationalism,” which draw their theory, to various degrees, from the notes in the Oxford Bible.
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