Scofield Reference Bible

Peters compares Scofield to a quack doctor who confidently gives a terminal diagnosis when a competent trained physician would honestly admit they just don't know for sure.

Peters argued that the Scofield Bible gave theological novices a false, dangerous sense of oracular certainty.

Right.

After just three to six months of tracing these margin notes, a lay person with no historical training suddenly felt they knew more about the complex apocalyptic imagery of Revelation or Daniel than a theologian who had studied ancient languages for 40 years.

But the sources also point out the darker side of this geopolitical theology.

Right.

The 1967 revision of the Scofield Bible in particular has been heavily critiqued by sources like the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

They critique it for allegedly spreading anti-Arab sentiment among evangelicals.

But I think if we look deeper, they really aren't.

Um, but given the publication of the Scofield Bible and all this stuff, there was something about-- And plus their own mythology, their, their self-identification, even if they're totally secular, and these were all completely secular movements, there was something about the Middle East.

And, and keep in mind, as I mentioned before, there were many Orthodox Jews living in, in Jerusalem, who, by the way, wanted nothing to do with Israel then and now.

Um, so, uh, and these people were Talmudists, Kabbalists, whatever, so even they had no real connection with, with the Old Testament des- despite living in, in, in that city.

So, um, and we see the last, the last, uh, line of that paragraph, uh, "We need powerful allies, but no country at the moment proposed it." Well, that will change with, with Joseph Stalin.

We have a few minutes here.

You, you mentioned the Scofield Bible.

Um, there's a certain section on the right, you know, what would call themselves, you know, the dissident right, um, whatever emerged out of the alt-right, who say the Scofield Bible had nothing to do with this.

His time is over, and then they shall reign on Earth." Uh, a very cool, um, kind of pitch here, you know, that this is like a counter-imagination.

This also came up in a lot of other readings of Revelation, that what you're really getting here is not a prophecy in the future in terms of like, you know, here's the Scofield Bible or like the big chart of all the specific discrete events that are gonna happen in like 87 years or something, you know? Like you couldn't peg it to the calendar.

It's rather this like more, it's like a deeper kind of affirmation that the power of empire is temporal, whereas-

Yeah

What?

The Schofield Bible.

Nuh-uh.

Get the fuck out of here.

Basically what he... was told was going to happen in the fdr administration did not happen and something else happened instead so like i hate to even call it the new deal regime because the men at the time saw it as communism being driven by a foreign group of people both within and without and

from without so right the entire new deal regime came kind of crashing down on the uh on him and pretty much all of the other men that stood up to it and now like none of the hell that we live

in today would be possible if it wasn't for this and you could say like oh yeah you know there are still subversives and you know oh yeah this group has been in here doing all this other bad stuff for a very long time look at the schofield bible but nothing nothing like the new deal it fundament it was a it was a revolution no different than 1776 as it fundamentally changed the governance structure and the relationship the dialogue between american citizen and his government forever and i hate to bring up mark andreessen again but he's a really smart guy i uh i respect that guy a lot but i don't think anybody even in our spheres that know how pernicious the regime is i don't think i think what he said on that joe rogan interview came as a surprise to most people it came as a surprise to me and i think about this every day I'm pretty smart.

Like the level of persecution at like a granular level was just shocking to me.

So in terms of, I know that dispensationalism has only been around for about three, 400 years.

And it wasn't just starting with the Schofield Bible, but to me, early theologians felt like we had a young earth, just thousands of years old, most of them.

And to me, now that time has gone on and we've had greater scientific study in geography, we'd go, we have no problem saying the earth is millions of years old, but the primary view was a young earth.

That again, so I think we evolve in terms of our theology, our understanding of the word.

I was so-- wait a minute, I'm not gonna tell you that story.

Anyway, um, I began to pray, "Lord, open up opportunities for me to witness to these people." So when people would come to my office, and I was still at the bank, I would tell the-- I-- we would talk business, but then I would say, "Hey, got some other business I wanna talk to you about." And I had Scofield Bibles in my credenza, and I had tracts in my, my credenza, and I'd give them things like that.

But do you know the Lord arranged it after the prayers that I prayed so often? After I left and went to Bible college, came back, and began to preach, and then came here, there are people that I've known that have passed, and their families wanted me to do the funerals.

I've preached funerals in Beeville to 700 people.

And it's basically monetary, monetary, you know, means.

And because in the rapture deal in 1832, It went into the Schofield Bible.

The Schofield Bible went to Biola University, and there were some oil barons that supported it.

And it really brought in the money.

And that's kind of where it all began.