Up next in 10
Albert Pike & C I Schofield Wanted War In Israel
1 views
Jul 12, 2025
#ww3 #dispensationalism #antichrist If you’ve ever wondered who funded the Scofield Bible, why Cyrus Scofield’s life seemed to be protected by powerful patrons, or how Christian Zionism became mainstream in American churches — this video lays out the story. 🔍 Follow the money, trace the hidden connections, and see why the truth behind Scofield’s Bible is stranger than you might think. 📚 Sources: The Incredible Scofield and His Book, historical archives, and independent research. 👉 If you enjoy deep dives into religious history, Christian Zionism, dispensationalism, and the hidden forces shaping modern evangelical beliefs — subscribe for more videos like this!
View Video Transcript
0:12
Freemasonry is based on the sorcery of the Jewish cabala.
0:18
The Israeli Supreme Court building has a pyramid on it right here. And in the
0:24
architecture, it has free Masonic symbolism in its design. In this video,
0:29
I will discuss the possibility of World War II as Israel and Iran fire missiles
0:36
at each other. The current battle caused me to think of Albert Pike's vision of
0:43
three world wars designed to push the world into their one world government.
0:50
Some people proclaim that Pike didn't give the vision and that someone else
0:55
made it up. What I know is that the vision of the third world war is
1:00
aligning before our eyes. It says the third world war must be
1:07
fmented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the agentur of the
1:13
Illuminati between the political Zionist and the leaders of the Islamic world.
1:19
The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam and political Zionism
1:26
mutually destroy each other. Meanwhile, the other nations once more divided on
1:32
this issue will be constrained to fight to the point of complete physical,
1:38
moral, spiritual, and economic exhaustion.
1:43
In recent history, we've watched Israel attack Muslim countries around it,
1:48
leading to most of them falling and a regime change and a Rothschild central
1:54
bank being set up in those countries. The latest instance was Syria, which
2:00
didn't appear to have a Rothschild central bank. Iran reportedly doesn't have a
2:07
Rothschild central bank, but I'm not sure as a central bank was set up when the Sha of Iran, a US puppet leader, was
2:15
in power. It's interesting that the Iran parliament building is shaped like a
2:22
pyramid and has 33 windows on the primary side, which is Freemasonic
2:27
symbolism. And here's a picture of that building. So in the shape of a pyramid and count
2:34
them up and there's 10 10 and 13 windows. So 33 windows which is very
2:40
interesting. It seems that the general in Rome uses
2:45
Israel to help take control of the countries in the Middle East. We've seen
2:50
the battle between political Zionist Israel and the leaders of the Islamic world
2:57
as Israel attacks Iran under the premise that it has nuclear capabilities. We see
3:03
other countries posturing against Israel once again aligning with Pike's
3:08
narrative about other nations potentially joining in the war.
3:14
The Samson option is Israel's D-Day strategy to annihilate the whole region
3:20
by employing nuclear weapons in case Israel as a state is on the verge of
3:26
collapse. That would fulfill Pike's vision of Islam and political Zionism mutually
3:33
destroying each other. Pike's vision points to people who are
3:38
disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be
3:44
without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal but without knowing where
3:50
to render its adoration. And that stirred my thoughts about the people who are disillusioned with Christianity.
3:58
The context is the destruction of Zionist Israel. Christians who believe that Israel is
4:05
the primary focus of the fulfillment of the prophecies and revelation will
4:10
become very disillusioned if Jerusalem and Israel were destroyed.
4:16
Most Christians would be without compass or direction as their belief system
4:22
would be damaged as God didn't protect the Jews who many Christians believe are
4:27
God's chosen people. They would not know where to render their adoration as the narrative about
4:34
Israel that they believed would be destroyed. I don't see that taking place soon as it
4:42
would affect the futuristic prophecy fulfillment deception that was created
4:47
by the enemy. The other option about who is disillusioned with Christianity is
4:54
Catholics as they have been misled with the false leader, the son of predition
4:59
and antichrist beast pope. They've been misled with a false gospel of works
5:05
through the sacraments. And they've been misled with a false intercessor in Mary.
5:11
Revelation 16 to18 point to the judgment of the harlot Roman Catholic Church.
5:18
When that takes place, many Catholics will be very disillusioned in their beliefs as God didn't protect the
5:25
supposed one true church. This is Cyrus Scoffield. And in 1909, the prestigious
5:32
Oxford University Press published his reference Bible, a King James Bible
5:38
filled with commentary and footnotes on the same page meant to explain the text.
5:43
But interestingly, Scoffield had no formal theological training to speak of,
5:49
no seminary degree. In fact, Scofield was a pathological liar, a fraud, and a
5:55
deadbeat who abandoned his family. And yet somehow, this guy, well, they would
6:01
create one of the most influential books of the 20th century. A book that convinced generations of evangelicals
6:07
that the return of the Jews to Palestine was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. and that unwavering support for the
6:14
modern state of Israel was part of God's plan for the end of the world. So, how
6:20
does a man like this end up shaping the faith of an entire nation? And in this
6:26
video, we'll explore this, how he got so popular, and we'll explore many of the claims of his funding and his hidden
6:33
connections. If you know anything about this topic,
6:38
you may have recently seen clips flowing around social media like this that and I realized, oh, okay, your Bible was
6:44
funded, you know, the notations in your Bible was funded by Zionists. The Rockile family hired this dude, this
6:52
pastor in the deep south. He made a new version of the Bible called the Scoffield Bible. People will often speak
6:59
about Scofield and his funding within honestly an unwarranted degree of
7:06
certainty, which isn't to say that he wasn't a puppet funded by somebody. He
7:11
most likely was. But the actual evidence isn't quite that direct. It's much more
7:17
like the JFK assassination. You know, throughout all the documents and files, at no point does it say we, the
7:24
government, killed John F. Kennedy. But when you look into it, even for a little
7:29
bit, it becomes blatantly obvious that the government is complicit to some degree. Likewise with Scoffield, there
7:37
is no document that flatly says, "My career was crafted to push Zionist
7:43
political agenda." But there really doesn't need to be because when you follow the breadcrumbs and followed the
7:50
money, the elite social clubs that embraced him for no reason in the legal
7:56
troubles that mysteriously vanished along with him skyrocketing into fame
8:02
despite having no legitimate credentials. It becomes blatantly obvious that someone behind the scenes
8:09
was guiding him. And we'll come back to that shortly because it is a bit
8:14
ambiguous when these connections actually start. So to understand just
8:19
how unlikely his success really was and to get a sense of when these connections
8:26
might have begun, we need to start at the beginning. Also, I'm going to play this sound anytime something suspicious
8:33
or weird. Alpha help from the story of Scoffield's life. Cyrus Scoffield was born in Michigan in
8:41
1843, coming of age right around the time of the Civil War. When he was 17,
8:47
he enlisted to fight for the Confederacy. But after less than a year, it's unclear whether or not he was
8:53
discharged or he deserted. Regardless, he left the army and turned up in St. Louis. He had family there. His sister
9:00
lived there. and Scoffield's sister had married into the wealthy and influential
9:06
Poppin and Shodto family. Sorry if I mispronounced that. They were some of
9:12
the main French Catholic families that founded the city and her husband Sylvester Poppin was president of the
9:19
St. Louis board of assessors. So needless to say they're pretty powerful and fluential. And thanks to this
9:26
connection, Scullfield was able to land a job apprenticing in his brother-in-law's office where he began
9:33
learning the ins and outs of land law deeds, titles, and land grants. This was
9:39
pretty significant for Scoffield because the Poppin Shodto family held numerous
9:46
vague land claims getting back to the French and Spanish colonial rule. And
9:52
with America increasingly expanding westward, those old claims suddenly
9:57
became extremely valuable if you can take all these vague ambiguous
10:03
boundaries and convert them into segmented sellable property.
10:09
That's where Scullfield came in. So, it seems like this wealthy French family
10:15
saw Scofield as useful. And in the aftermath of the Civil War and an increasingly united Anglo-American
10:23
nation, it might be beneficial to have a Anglo Protestant face who could
10:29
represent their interests. In other words, it seemed like he was being groomed to be a frontman for this
10:36
powerful French Catholic family. And it's during this period that Scoffield reportedly made trips to Washington,
10:44
likely acting as their representative. And what he did there, who he met there,
10:51
and the doors these connections may have opened, really don't know. But this has
10:58
to play some role cuz his his social and political position continued to rise.
11:05
But anyways around this time he married his wife who was from another prominent French Catholic family which further
11:11
cemented his place among this elite. A few years later in 1869
11:17
his family moved to Aerson Kansas where Scullfield began apprenticing in the law
11:23
office of John J. Les, a man who would soon become the Kansas State Senator.
11:30
Now, let's talk about Engles for a second. What's important to note about John Les is that he was an abolitionist
11:37
transplant from New England who had come to Kansas in 1858 to sort of weigh the
11:43
scales in favor of the abolitionist cause. This was right in the middle of
11:48
what's called bleeding Kansas, which was essentially the civil war in Kansas that
11:54
preceded the American Civil War, which involved violent clashes between canons
11:59
over whether or not the state would enter the Union as a free or a slave
12:05
state. And things got pretty violent and bloody in this conflict, notably
12:10
culminated with John Brown's raid in 1859, where an abolitionist named John Brown
12:18
attempts to seize a federal armory supposedly to arm and start a slave
12:23
revolt. This event is often cited as the main catalyst that kicked out the Civil War. John Ran was being likened to
12:31
Christ himself by abolitionists or he was likened to being a sort of martyr.
12:38
But what people don't know about this is that in reality Brown's raid was
12:43
orchestrated, armed and funded by a group of wealthy Bostononian
12:49
abolitionists known as the Secret Six. Now John J. Engles, although not a
12:56
formal member of the Secret Six, came from that same radical abolitionist world in Massachusetts. And he came to
13:03
Kansas during this period to tick the balance permanently in favor of Boston politics. And with Scoffield now working
13:11
under him, Scoffield was likely grafted into this network. So when he arrived in
13:18
Kansas, he wasn't just getting mentored by a random attorney. He was being brought into a network that had already
13:24
demonstrated his willingness to use any means necessary, including violence,
13:29
deception, to achieve their political goals. Scoffield had to have had some
13:34
sort of support at this point. The evidence for this or some kind of backing becomes clear when you look at
13:41
the logistics of his move to Kansas. The Scoffields moved, but the household of
13:47
seven people and a law apprentice, someone working in
13:52
a law office, can't afford to support that balloon. He had to have received
13:58
some sort of support or been grafted into something by this point. Then
14:03
you'll see why in the next couple of minutes. So through his work with John J. Engles. Scoffield began to rise in
14:09
Kansas politics and eventually Scoffield through his connections able to become a
14:16
Kansas state representative. From this position, he then helped John J. Engles
14:21
become senator. This part's pretty interesting because when the election rolled around as Kansas was preparing to
14:29
elect a new US senator, the incumbent Samuel Palmoroy had fallen out of favor
14:35
and people wanted him out. And Scullfield was asked to give a suggestion for who should run and he was
14:42
given the assurance that who he picked would win and Scullfield reportedly suggested Engles to run against him. And
14:50
when they had the election after all the voting, initially it looked like Paloy had won re-election. But as he stood up
14:57
to give his victory speech, one of the legislators publicly revealed that Palmeroy had offered him a $7,000 bribe,
15:06
which is a lot of money back then. But he apparently bribed him in exchange for
15:11
the vote given the election was thrown out. And then Engles ended up winning the election. But here's the thing. We
15:19
already kind of established that Kansas and just the western states in general were precorrupt of this time. So a lot
15:26
of political deals involve money changing hands to some capacity. Right.
15:31
The revelation of Paul Maroyy's seven cran bribe was honestly less a shocking
15:37
scandal and more political theater to tip the scales in favor of Engles.
15:43
Because in that same room where all of us was exposed, Palmoro had paid out several of the legislators, right? A lot
15:51
of them received money from him. The more interesting thing to notice is not
15:56
the fact that Palmeroy had paid off the legislators. More interesting question is why was he
16:02
exposed and swapped for Engles? We'll leave that there for now. But after being accepted to the Senate, John
16:09
J. Engles nominated and elected Scoffield as a district's attorney, which brings us to his downfall and the
16:16
more mysterious and intriguing parts of his life. [Music]
16:22
So Scofield's time as DA fell apart almost immediately. Like within 6
16:29
months, he was forced to resign under a cloud of corruption charges mostly about
16:34
bribery. Ironically, he accepted a bribe from Palmeroy, the former Kansas
16:40
stadiator. He allegedly bribed Scoffield into not prosecuting his bribery case,
16:46
which is pretty funny. But it is also kind of weird because as we said earlier, everyone was bribing everybody
16:52
in the West was corrupt. So, and this is my opinion, it can't be for no reason
16:57
that Scoffield would run out because he likely could have pulled some strings to get this moved over, but it didn't
17:05
happen. In by the end of 1874, Scoffield had abandoned everything. He fled Kansas
17:12
and left behind his wife and his children, left them poor, and then he vanished from the public life. Following
17:19
this, Scofu just disappears from the historical record for 3 or 5 years. From
17:24
1874 to around 1879 to 80, there is effectively a gap in time where we don't
17:30
really know what he was doing. His official biographer at Trumbull claims that Scoffield returned to law practice
17:37
in St. Louis, but this is kind of unlikely and Scofield probably lied to Trumbull because Scoffield was never
17:43
admitted to the Kansas or Missouri bar. He couldn't legally practice law on his
17:49
own or he couldn't have a law office. So where was he? What was he doing? We don't really know. The only reason why
17:55
it says 3 to 5 years right by this is sort of ambiguous gap is because where
18:01
he does pop up in the historical record is for charges of fraud. Essentially
18:07
writing false checks and foraging his sister's signature multiple times in
18:12
that period. two was also alleged at the time that he had served some jail time in Canada. But regardless, this period
18:19
remained relatively ambiguous until his supposed conversion
18:25
around 1879 or 1880. It's alleged that Scullfield had undergone a dramatic
18:32
conversion to Christianity being led the faith by a man named Tom McFeeders. Who
18:38
was Bigers? So Tom Mcaters was a successful and respected evangelical
18:44
businessman from a prominent St. Louis family. A man who had a reputation for
18:49
being both deeply devout and very discerning, only working with the most capable and reputable attorneys in St.
18:57
Louis. Here's where this gets weird. Scoffield claimed that this conversion
19:02
happened in his own law office in that Mcers came in for legal counsel after
19:09
which they spoke out the gospel and Scoffield decided to become a Christian because a problem with this because as
19:15
we established Scoffield wasn't a licensed attorney at the time. So one,
19:20
why would he have a law office? And two, why would a careful and reputable man like Mcers seek legal counsel from
19:28
Scoffield? Additionally, Scoffield claimed that he was 36 years old when
19:33
this happened, which would place the conversion around 1879. But this is also the same time when he
19:39
was dealing with the fallout from his fraudulent activities. So he presumably what he converted and
19:46
then continued to commit fraud and evade the courts. That doesn't sound right.
19:51
Additionally was also interesting around this time of his alleged conversion. The
19:57
St. Louis newspaper reported that a forgery charge against Scofield had been
20:02
dropped due to lack of evidence. in the report went on to praise Scoffield as a
20:08
gentleman who had held positions of trust, completely whitewashing his prior fraudulent activities, which rightwe
20:15
leads us to suspect external hands were crafting a false narrative to pave the
20:21
way for his reemergence and for his re-entrance into the public eye. After
20:27
all, if this was a genuine conversion experience, why was he still neglecting his abandoned family? Why? Why didn't he
20:35
go back to his family and make things right? And also, why didn't he make things right with the law? Why was he
20:41
allowing these mysterious benefactors to solve his legal problems? This is all
20:47
confusing and ambiguous. But we do know for certain is that by 1880, Scoffield
20:54
had somehow become connected with Reverend James H. Brooks. Zebros was one
20:59
of the most prominent voices in American evangelicalism at the time being especially known for his strong stance
21:06
on biblical inherency and for popularizing dispensational prophecy in
21:11
the south. His views were really similar to that of John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren and he is reported to
21:20
have had an immense influence on Scoffield. Huba referred to Brooks as a
21:25
quote father in the faith and it was under Brooks's mentorship. The Scullfield began to absorb of this
21:32
dispensational framework that would later define his work. Brooks was also
21:37
instrumental in bringing Della Moody to St. Louis for his 1879 to 1880
21:43
evangelistic campaign and through Brooks Scoffield was introduced into Moody's
21:49
inner circle. This is the weird part here, right? So barely a few months
21:54
earlier, Skullfield writing false Jackson committing fraud and now he's
21:59
becoming a part of DL Moody's evangelism crusade. If you don't know, DL Moody is
22:06
the guy in evangelicalism, right? He was incredibly popular. He was like the
22:11
Billy Graham of that day. He was the most famous evangelist the end of the
22:17
19th century. And yet somehow, despite his shady past, lack of formal training,
22:23
Cyrus Scoffield found himself being one of Moody's key associates. This is
22:30
really suspicious and weird. Why was he there? How did he get there? This is
22:35
really weird considering the turnaround. He goes from fraud to presumably a
22:40
Christian rather than going back to his family who he abandoned instead.
22:47
instead now he joins DL Moody's evangelism campaign. This is weird,
22:53
right? And it's especially weird when you think about the money too. So these campaigns, they weren't paid positions.
22:59
They were basically freelance unpaid ministry and he had to cover your own living expenses and travel and food. Yet
23:05
somehow Scoffield was not only allowed into helping on the campaign, but he was
23:10
able to afford his own provisions and board. This is weird. How was he
23:16
supporting himself? Also, how did he ingratiate himself into this group so
23:21
quickly? So much so that by 1882, Scoffield was given a license to preach
23:28
and was given a local congregational church to be the pastor of less than 3
23:35
years after his legal troubles. He was given this despite having no formal
23:40
education, no theology degree, no seminary training. In fact, you would lie about having a doctorate in
23:47
divinity. The timeline of this is just absolutely insane. It makes no sense.
23:52
Most people spend years studying before entering ministry. I went to a Bible college. I've seen how long it takes to
23:58
do that. Scofuel went from like a disgraced fraudster to licensed pastor
24:05
in under 3 years. That's ridiculous right now. Other said earlier, it's like
24:13
the JFK assassination. Nowhere does it say we killed JFK, but when you just
24:19
look at these connections, it's obvious someone was funding it. I the timeline
24:25
is insane. And you see these little snippets all over the place. Like in 1901, Scoffield was preaching a sermon
24:33
at Moody's church in Chicago. Indie casually mentioned something about, you know, when I'm in London, as if that
24:39
were just like a normal thing, like he goes to London all the time. There's no public record of him going to London
24:45
prior to writing the Scoffield Bible. So who sent him to London? Why was he there? How does he afford going on
24:52
transatlantic trips like that? And yet somehow Scoffield, ignoring the fact that he somehow was able to become
24:58
connected to DL Moody, the most popular evangelist of that day, ignoring all of that, he had just all this money that
25:05
wouldn't make sense. Scoffield had multiple homes that he would just live at while he's traveling. Scofu clearly
25:13
had some kind of connection, which is what leads us to talk about the Lotus
25:19
Club. This is probably the most significant
25:24
and most talent connection. This one is the source of the quote conspiracy
25:31
theories about Scoffield because really it's not a conspiracy theory. It's just the most blatant of uh oh the evidence
25:40
when it comes to the money aspect. So in 1901, Cyrus Scoffield was admitted to
25:47
membership in what's called the Lotus Club, which was an elite invitationonly
25:54
social club in Manhattan that catered primarily to journalists and artists and
26:00
cultural influencers, right? It wasn't just like any drinking beer with the Bros kind of thing. This was a a big
26:07
deal, right? The membership included former presidents like Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevelt and media figures
26:15
like Joseph Pulitzer or Mark Twain even. It was a lot of big names and somehow
26:22
Scoffield was nominated to be a part of that. Right? This is prior to making his
26:28
reference bible which came out in '09. He was admitted in ' 01 and there's no
26:33
way that he could have afforded it. There was membership fees and there was annual dues plus the cost of meals and
26:40
rooms. There's no way Scoffield would have been able to afford this from his ministry work alone.
26:47
His membership is sponsored by a wealthy man named Paratio Nelson Fraser and
26:52
seconded by John Eldakin who is a key figure within the club's committees.
26:58
Here's the kicker though. One of the members of a literary committee that had to approve his admission was a man named
27:06
Samuel Unmier. Untier was a powerful New York attorney and political figure and
27:14
committed Zionist. So this is where the source of theories typically come from,
27:19
but they're pretty blatant. Honestly, Unreer was so powerful that he
27:26
allegedly, but he did blackmailed President Woodrow Wilson into putting
27:33
Brandeise on the Supreme Court. So, let's think about this for a second. A man like that was in charge of allowing
27:40
Scofield into this elite club where he gets to rub elbows with all these
27:45
powerful men. And up until this point, Scoffield's literary output consisted of
27:51
what? Like tracks and pamphlets. He wrote rightly dividing the word of
27:56
truth. That's it. There's no logical reasoned why these elite gears would
28:03
find Scoffield to be a acceptable fit for their exclusive club. Unless of
28:09
course his theological work was seen as being able to serve some other purpose.
28:15
And the fact that Untermire accepted Scullfield in this group kind of indicates why, right? This was a man
28:22
whose life was completely removed from the circle Scoffield ran. Yet somehow
28:28
Unto accepted Scoffield into the group. All right. So why would a committed Zionist support the membership of a hick
28:35
Bible teacher? Well, it's obvious because the theology with its emphasis on a future restoration of Israel was
28:42
extremely helpful in getting fundamentalist Christians to back Zionist interests. His theology provided
28:50
the religious justification for supporting the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Now, this isn't just
28:57
a pin all of us on one man. That's dumb, right? The theology was such that all it
29:03
took was a little push in America for it to spread like wildfire. There wasn't
29:08
this massive overarching thing, but nevertheless, there was a little bit of
29:14
manipulation in it, which brings us to the actual Scofford Reference Bible.
29:19
Now, the development of the Scofford Reference Bible was financed by a small group of wealthy men.
29:27
I don't know if they were Zionists or not. Honestly, it's a little ambiguous
29:32
and everything about it. It's kind of mundane the parts of him creating it.
29:38
There's some stuff, but it's not. It's interesting. But what's more remarkable is the fact that the Bible was published
29:46
by Oxford University Press. This is the probably next to the Lotus Club. This is
29:52
one of the more absurd parts of a scope for reference Bible. Oxford Press, it's
29:58
one of the world's most prestigious academic publishers, right? They didn't
30:04
publish study Bibles, especially ones with such a specific theological agenda
30:11
behind it, and especially one where theology was closer to that of a cult
30:20
rather than that of being mainline Protestant. This was a massive, credible, respected
30:27
institution that published this book. They didn't publish stuff like this,
30:32
right? There's no way it didn't do it without some strings being pulled or
30:38
without some small tier motive. Which is why it's important to know the way that
30:43
Oxford University worked. Prior to the 1950s in England, there are only two
30:48
main universities, Oxford and Cambridge, with Oxford being the preferred
30:54
university for aspiring politicians. Which is why it's not a leap to assume
31:00
that Oxford University Press would function as be sort of propaganda arm of
31:06
the British Empire in order to present people in politics with the use at a
31:13
range of opinions that are within the British imperialist orthodoxy. This is
31:18
why it's also important to note that the second edition of a Scullford reference Bible came out in 1917,
31:26
the same year as the bow for declaration. Make whatever you want with that, but it is kind of clear in that in
31:34
regards to the bow for declaration, the Scullfield Bible in England helped to prepare the way for Britain Middle East
31:42
imperialist ambitions. But as far as the elf trial connections that you hear
31:48
about, I look, I can't find anything. But that might just be me not finding
31:54
it. So if you know anything, just comment down below and tell me whatever links you have or whatever you got. But
32:01
apart from that, this has just been a general overview over the life of Scofield, adding some context for a lot
32:08
of the theories you might hear about the funding of the reference Bible and of
32:13
just his weird career in the weird money involved. But hopefully you found this
32:20
helpful. And as I mentioned earlier, there's no document at any point that
32:26
says, you know, we hired Scoffield to promote a Zionist agenda. But when a
32:33
disgraced fraudster becomes the most influential Bible teacher in American history and all of his legal troubles
32:40
disappear and he's accepted into an elite literary club by a committed
32:47
Zionist in one of the most powerful men in American politics. The pattern
32:53
becomes pretty obvious. So with that, if you want any more information over
32:59
Scoffield, but more specifically dispensational theology, a theology that
33:04
came from his reference Bible,
33:10
why are so many American evangelicals, people who presumably should love thy
33:16
neighbor and pray for your enemies, why are they giving wholehearted support for
33:23
a war and what really looks like an ethnic cleansing. We have a mandate from heaven to speak
33:29
out in defense of Israel. This is called Christian Zionism, which
33:35
is a theological and political ideology rooted in a relatively recent idea known
33:42
as dispensationalism. a theology that teaches that the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral
33:49
homeland is a necessary precursor to the second coming of Christ and the
33:55
beginning of the end of the world. This is pretty relevant for everybody. So
34:00
when you understand this theology, you'll be able to understand why US foreign policy has long backed Israel
34:07
regardless of the consequences, how it spread, and how this apocalyptic theology conquered American Christianity
34:15
and reshaped the modern world. But first, we need to understand some
34:22
crucial terms in history that most people skip over, which is that Israel is not Israel.
34:31
The modern state of Israel is not the same thing as biblical Israel. These are
34:37
conflated all the time. The United Kingdom of Israel, the one ruled by
34:42
Saul, David, and Solomon, lasts at only about 120 years, roughly 3,000 years
34:51
ago. And after King Solomon's death around 9:30 BC, and under the harsh rule of his
34:57
son Rahab, the kingdom made up of the 12 tribes split into two kingdoms. 10 tribes broke
35:04
away and formed the northern kingdom of Israel. And the remaining two tribes of Benjamin and Judah became the southern
35:10
kingdom of Judah. Eventually, those northern tribes were conquered by Assyria in 7:22 BC. And
35:16
those 10 tribes were lost to history. Whenever you hear people mention the whole lost tribes of Israel, they're
35:22
talking about that. So, this was 2700 years ago. And then basically a 100
35:27
years later the southern kingdom was conquered by Babylon in 586 BC. This was
35:34
what is called the Babylonian exile when the Babylonians essentially evicted the
35:39
people of the southern kingdom from their land and displaced them. And although 50 to 70 years later a remnant
35:47
of Judeans returned from exile and rebuilt Jerusalem and the temple, the
35:53
ontological Israel. The identity of Israel was gone.
35:59
So when we're talking about Jews in the Bible, we're talking about the people from Judah, Judans,
36:06
right? They were part of Israel, but they are not the whole thing. This is a really important distinction that gets
36:11
conflated all the time. On the other side was a Jewish people and out of the Jewish people came the 12 tribes and the
36:18
faith known as Judeo-Christianity. By the way, when a country turns against
36:25
Israel, I mean this is the way God orchestrated it. I God will bless those
36:31
who bless the Jewish people. That's right. I God will curse those who curse
36:36
the Jewish people. Right? And this isn't just like a semantic argument, right? This was important because this fracture of
36:42
Israel is what led to the first century messianic hope. The desire for the
36:48
Messiah to come and reconstitute, reunite Israel into one thing. So by the
36:54
time of Jesus, Israel no longer referred to a united anything. It didn't exist.
37:00
All the tribes were gone. The biblical kingdom of Israel had ceased to exist centuries before the New Testament. But
37:06
instead, this idea of Israel referred to a theological messianic hope, a longing
37:14
for restoration. And the hope was that the Messiah, God's chosen one, would come and set the world
37:21
in order and throw off the yoke of the oppression of the Romans and reunite their people and retake their land.
37:27
Christ was in fact the long awaited Messiah. That he was the one to reestablish Israel, defeat their
37:34
enemies. But rather than doing it through warfare, through his death and resurrection, he in fact did conquer and
37:42
defeat their enemies. Not the Roman occupation in a physical sense, but the dark spiritual forces that control them.
37:48
And Christ's ascension and at Pentecost, he did in fact reconstitute and reunite Israel, the people of God. Is Pentecost
37:57
was where people from every nation heard the gospel in their own language. a direct reversal and inversion of the
38:04
division at the Tower of Babel, reuniting the world and creating one people from many nations.
38:11
And whether or not you believe all this is true, that it kind of doesn't matter, right? It's besides the point because
38:16
this is meant to explain that for 1600ish years or so, this is what
38:21
Christians believed. You know, as St. Paul writes in his letter to the church of Rome, not all who are descendants
38:28
from Israel are Israel. He writes to the Galatians, "If you are Christ's then you
38:34
are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promises." In other words, Israel, according to the
38:41
Christians, for forever. Israel wasn't just a matter of blood or tribe of the sun. It was a theological identity
38:48
rooted in Christ through his church. Historically, the church saw itself not
38:53
as a replacement but as the continuation in the true reunification of Israel.
39:01
And this view lasted for basically 16 to700 years until these modern
39:09
theological innovations like dispensationalism began to pop up.
39:16
the apostles and the early church fathers would just be completely bewildered and confused at some of the
39:22
language of the dispensationalists or the Christian Zionists because contrary
39:27
to Christian tradition and history, evangelicals will often state that the modern state of Israel is the
39:34
fulfillment of this Old Testament prophecy of the reunification of Israel.
39:40
This is something that no one has an explanation to unless you read Bible
39:46
prophecy and you know that God promised the nation of Israel that at the very
39:51
end he will bring them back to their land. Notice this like what what
39:57
Christians have historically believed happened 2,000 years ago at Pentecost.
40:02
The evangelicals and Christian Zionists will claim that this was actually fulfilled 80 years ago with the
40:08
establishment of the secular state of Israel. This is really weird historically. And this confusion, funny
40:14
enough, is the result of a really simple, like a really stupid simple error that Christian Zionists and
40:20
dispensationalists make all the time, which is that in the aftermath of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th and
40:27
17th century, it became increasingly common for Protestants to collapse all
40:33
of these terms into one thing, conflating metaphysical Israel with Jew
40:39
and using those terms interchangeably. So with this out of the way, we could
40:46
begin to talk about the origins of Christian Zionism in the aftermath of the reformation.
40:56
So after the reformation, which was when a large segment of Western Europe broke
41:01
away from the Catholic Church, many Protestant theologians face a challenge,
41:07
right? how to ground their new religious tradition and establish continuity with
41:13
biblical and apostolic faith without relying on historical Catholic authority.
41:21
So many Protestants increasingly began to look to Jews and their current culture as representing a more direct
41:27
line to their biblical roots. And this tendency led to a crucial
41:33
reinterpretation of scripture. The reformers and especially, sorry to
41:39
beat a dead horse, but the Puritans instead of seeing the church as Israel, they began to conflate the Old Testament
41:46
Israel with the contemporary Jews of their day.
41:52
This theological shift had pretty profound implications, right? If the Jews were Israel and if Old Testament
42:00
promises about restoration and reunification of Israel were to be taken literally rather than spiritually, the
42:06
logic demanded that the Jewish people must one day return to Palestine.
42:12
This marked a notable departure from the traditional Christian view because if the church is Israel,
42:18
then all of the Old Testament prophecies were fulfilled in Christ. But instead, if the tribe of Judah, the Judeans, the
42:26
Jews, if they were Israel, then the prophecies were still yet to come.
42:32
This belief became increasingly common among Puritan thinkers and leaders. Notable figures like Jonathan Edwards,
42:39
increase in coffin matter. They all wrote about their belief and the supposed prophecies the Jews would one
42:46
day be restored to their ancestral homeland. However, this early Puritan
42:52
belief in the Jewish restoration was pretty different than what would later emerge. It wasn't until much later that
42:59
it was systematized and became mainstream. And all of this didn't begin to happen
43:05
until John Nelson Darby.
43:10
He was an Irish clergyman who in the 1830s would gather all these various
43:16
ideas in the cultural millu and compile them into a comprehensive theological framework.
43:22
During his day, Darby was frustrated with the established Anglican church and
43:28
its perceived spiritual deadness. And through this and partly as a response to
43:33
what he saw as the failure of institutional Christianity or organized religion or whatever he developed his
43:40
dispensationalist system. You see, in Darby's view, if the visible
43:46
church had become so corrupted and spiritually dead, Darby reasoned that
43:53
maybe God's true plan was operating on a different path or plan altogether.
43:59
Rather than the historical view of seeing the church as the culmination and
44:04
fulfillment of God's promises to Israel, Darby argued that what he called the
44:11
church age was simply a temporary interlude or a parenthetical gap or
44:18
interruption in God's plan for ethnic Israel.
44:23
This idea was part of Darby's broader dispensationalist system which divided
44:28
all of history into distinct periods called dispensations where God supposedly dealt with humanity
44:35
differently. There's the age of innocence, the age of law, the church age and so on. And each dispensation has
44:42
its own covenant and requirements. And within this framework, it did allow
44:48
Darby to explain contemporary spiritual decline. Right. The perceived failures
44:53
of the church didn't invalidate God's promises because those promises were
44:58
never about the church in the first place. Instead, in his view, God would
45:04
soon rapture. This is where we get the idea of the rapture from. He would rapture away the true believers, ending
45:12
the current dispensation, the church age, and then return to his original
45:17
plan of working through the Jews, the ethnic descendants of Israel, culminating in Christ's second coming
45:25
and Christ ruling physically like seated on a throne materially in Jerusalem for
45:32
a thousand years. But anyways, despite this, Darby's dispensationalism remained relatively
45:39
obscure during his lifetime. Even among the Plymouth Brethren, which was a group that he helped establish, it
45:45
was kind of just one idea among many ideas. It didn't really explode in
45:51
popularity until it found fertile ground in America at the end of the 19th century.
46:01
At the end of the 19th century, America saw a lot of change in the religious landscape. In the aftermath of the Civil
46:08
War, in the Second Great Awakening, there was increasingly an appetite for
46:14
new and novel apocalyptic ideas. This period saw the rise of movements
46:20
like the Millerites, the Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and the increasing rise of charismatic
46:27
Pentecostal groups. What you'll notice about all these groups and what they have in common is that they're all to varying degrees apocalyptic. And they're
46:35
all kind of emphasizing and focusing on the end times. And often they were directly responding to all the rapid
46:41
social changes, industrialization, urbanization, mass immigration.
46:47
This was the perfect environment for innovative theologies that promised to make sense of the contemporary upheaval
46:55
through biblical prophecy, which is where Cyrus Scoffield comes in. In 1909,
47:02
Scoffield and Oxford University Press published the Scofield Reference Bible, which was a King James Bible with
47:09
extensive footnotes explaining dispensational theology. Prior to this, Scofield was a corrupt lawyer, a fraud,
47:17
and a deadbe who deserted his family. So, how does a man like this, a man
47:23
without seminary training or any theological credentials to speak of, how does he suddenly reemerge as a respected
47:30
Bible teacher? Well, sometime in the 1870s and 1880s,
47:36
Scoffield encountered the writings of John Nelson Darby. And after becoming a devoted follower of his theology, he
47:43
became determined to popularize this theology in America. And what made Scofield's approach unique
47:50
was his idea to publish a study Bible, a format that was pretty rare at the time.
47:57
Traditionally, Bible commentaries were published as separate volumes that you had to read alongside your Bible. But
48:03
Scofield Study Bible integrated his notes directly on the same page as the scripture, making it easier for the
48:10
average reader to access, but also harder to recognize where God's word
48:15
ended. and some random guy's interpretation began. This gave his theological views a sense
48:22
of authority that it honestly shouldn't have had and it would have stayed that way if not for his financial backers.
48:30
What I will speak on is the book being published through Oxford Press.
48:36
It is really important to note how abnormal it was for Oxford to publish
48:41
this book. Oxford University Press is known for being very prestigious and scholarly. And up until this point, it
48:48
had never before published a study Bible like this, with its commentary advancing
48:54
such a one-sided sectarian interpretation, let alone a fringe
49:00
interpretation from a group that is closer to a cult than it is with being traditionally Protestant. And yet
49:06
somehow they chose this man with no theological training to publish this book. But anyways, the main things to
49:12
note about Scofield though is that within his writings, he emphasized the idea of a Jewish return to Palestine,
49:20
even more strongly than Darby did. And Scofield also popularized the concept of
49:26
the rapture among American evangelicals. But anyways, the Scoffield Bible became
49:31
immensely popular. Bible colleges and seminaries taught from it. Pastors preached from it. It sold millions of
49:38
copies and became the theological foundation for American fundamentalism
49:45
and this contributed heavily to the American obsession with Israel and all
49:52
of this coalesed at precisely the right time. The early 20th century would
49:57
provide the historical events that seemed to validate dispensational prophecy. Right? Dispensationalist
50:04
expected tribulation. Right? They would expect that the world would get worse before the rapture and World War I
50:11
seemed to confirm this perfectly. The war brought the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and also it had the
50:19
Balffor Declaration in 1917 in which Britain expressed support for a national
50:25
home for the Jewish people in Palestine. And while British support was driven by
50:32
both dispensationalist inspired Zionism among British elites as well as
50:38
imperialist ambitions for the Middle East. For American dispensationalists, the Balffor Declaration felt more like
50:44
divine providence. It felt like all the pieces were beginning to fit into place.
50:50
And the same pattern continued with World War II and the Holocaust. It felt like signs of the times meant
50:58
Christ was going to return soon. So then when Israel declared independence in
51:05
1948, dispensationalists and Christian Zionists saw this as a prophetic
51:10
confirmation. They saw this actually as the reconstitution of Israel. The
51:16
scattered Jewish people had returned to their ancestral homeland after nearly 2,000 years, just as Scofield's Bible
51:23
had taught. But despite this, American Christian
51:30
support still wasn't immediately overwhelming or unified. This is because in the 1950s, mainline
51:37
Protestant denominations like the Presbyterians, the Methodists, and the Lutheran still dominated American
51:44
Christianity numerically. And these denominations had not widely adopted dispensational
51:51
theology, right? They kind of maintained a more traditional interpretation of scripture.
51:58
But all of this was until the 60s and onward. This theology further solidified
52:06
as those same mainline Protestant churches began to implode. Basically,
52:12
their numbers tanked while evangelical churches exploded in growth. And thanks
52:18
to decades of influence from the Scoffield Bible and seminaries and Bible colleges, more Americans were now
52:25
attending churches that taught dispensational inspired theology without even knowing it.
52:33
But even still, Israel wasn't really on people's radar until the Six-Day War.
52:44
When the six- day war happened in 1967 when Israel captured Jerusalem in the
52:51
Temple Mount, this is what really kicked off Christian Zionism in the West.
52:56
Especially now, dispensational prophecy seem to be unfolding in real time in
53:02
front of people's eyes. And in response, in the aftermath, books like how
53:07
Lindsay's The Late Great Planet Earth became the best-selling nonfiction book of the decade, selling over 28 million
53:14
copies. And they also made a movie based on it, narrated by Orson Wells, in which
53:20
Pal Lindsay framed the current events, the Cold War, nukes, Israel. He sort of
53:28
framed this through a dispensational lens leading people to anticipate more
53:33
the imminent second coming of Christ and the rapture. From here is where Christian Zionism
53:40
became really really mainstream where supporting Israel was almost necessary.
53:46
Evangelical pastors began teaching that quote blessing Israel or basically
53:52
supporting them as a nation was a Christian duty directly commanded by God.
53:58
I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you.
54:03
And then lastly solidifying this cultural dominance came in the 1990s
54:08
with the Left Behind series by Tim Lehei and Jerry Jenkins. These novels based
54:15
entirely on dispensational theology shaped an entire generation's understanding of biblical prophecy.
54:22
Right? Whether they knew it or not, they just took it for granted that all these things are biblical.
54:28
Today, Christian Zionism is so thoroughly embedded in American evangelicalism that most believers just
54:35
assume it's always been there. Right? Stats show that white evangelicals are
54:41
often more supportive of Israel's government than Jewish Americans are.
54:48
And hopefully through this video, you've been able to understand why this is.
54:54
It's pretty crazy how all of this came from the logical conclusion made 200
55:00
years ago of conflating biblical Israel with the Jewish people of that day.
55:07
Anyways, if you found this topic interesting, it may be worth noting that the same theology that led to Christian
55:15
Zionism and the evangelical justification of war in ethnic cleansing
55:21
also influenced how early colonial Americans justified slavery and racial
55:28
hierarchy.