This talk is based on “The Incredible Scofield and His Book” by Joseph M Canfield. John S. Torell, an author I like, wrote a good biographical sketch on John M. Canfield and says, “The Incredible Scofield and His Book is a must read for all Christians who are hungry for the truth and not afraid to face their false doctrine.” I can’t find a PDF download this book, and so I am posting what the YouTube narrator, Josh Mumbi, says about it.

After I first got saved in January 1971 while serving in the USAF, my fellow Airman from Huntsville Alabama, David Weeks, the person who the Lord used to lead me to Christ, recommended me to get a Scofield Reference Bible for my first study Bible. I bought a Zondervan KJV instead. In retrospect, I don’t know why I didn’t follow his advice other than the Holy Spirit troubled my spirit about getting a Scofield Reference Bible. I had no logical reason not to follow David’s advice. He was a solid dedicated follower of the Lord Jesus Christ and one of the leaders in the Navigators, the Christian fellowship he was a member of. I was just a babe in Christ and he was my spiritual elder. I knew nothing about Scofield or his doctrines of Dispensationalism. I know now it had to be the Lord to lead me buy a different Bible. But though I didn’t get a Scofield Reference Bible, I was still under the influence of Christians who did read Scofield. Thankfully only 3 years later I broke away from Christian Zionism and pre-tribulation rapture doctrines, but was it only from 2015 when I broke completely away from all of Scofield’s doctrines.

If you find any errors in the spelling of the names of persons mentioned in the transcription, please tell me about it and I will correct them.

Transcription

Narrator: This is Cyrus Scofield, and in 1909, the prestigious Oxford University Press published his Reference Bible, a King James Bible filled with commentary and footnotes on the same page meant to explain the text. But interestingly, Scofield had no formal theological training to speak of, no seminary degree. In fact, Scofield was a pathological liar, a fraud, and a deadbeat who abandoned his family. And yet somehow, this guy was able to create one of the most influential books of the 20th century, a book that convinced generations of evangelicals that the return of the Jews to Palestine was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and that unwavering support for the modern state of Israel was part of God’s plan for the end of the world.

So, how does a man like this end up shaping the faith of an entire nation? And in this video, we’ll explore this, how he got so popular, and we’ll explore many of the claims of his funding and his hidden connections.

If you know anything about this topic, you may have recently seen clips floating around social media like this.

Candice Owens: That and I realized, oh, okay, your Bible was funded, you know, the notations in your Bible was funded by Zionists.

Social media commentator: The Rothschild family hired this dude, this pastor in the deep south, he made a new version of the Bible called the Scofield Bible.

Narrator: People will often speak about Scofield and his funding with an, honestly, an unwarranted degree of certainty, which isn’t to say that he wasn’t a puppet funded by somebody, he most likely was. But the actual evidence isn’t quite that direct. It’s much more like the JFK assassination. You know, throughout all the documents and files, at no point does it say, we the government killed John F. Kennedy. But when you look into it, even for a little bit, it becomes blatantly obvious that the government is complicit to some degree.

Likewise with Scofield, there is no document that flatly says, my career was crafted to push the Zionist political agenda, but there really doesn’t need to be because when you follow the breadcrumbs and follow the money, the elite social clubs that embraced him for no reason, and the legal troubles that mysteriously vanished, along with him skyrocketing into fame, despite having no legitimate credentials, it becomes blatantly obvious that someone behind the scenes was guiding him. And we’ll come back to that shortly, because it is a bit ambiguous when these connections actually start.

So to understand just how unlikely his success really was, and to get a sense of when these connections might have begun, we need to start at the beginning.

Cyrus Scofield was born in Michigan in 1843, coming of age right around the time of the Civil War. When he was 17, he enlisted to fight for the Confederacy. But after less than a year, it’s unclear whether or not he was discharged or he deserted. Regardless, he left the army and turned up in St. Louis.

He had family there, his sister lived there, and Scofield’s sister had married into the wealthy and influential Papin and Chouteau family. They were some of the main French Catholic families that founded the city, and her husband, Sylvester Papin, was president of the St. Louis Board of Assessors.

So needless to say, they were pretty powerful and influential. And thanks to this connection, Scofield was able to land a job apprenticing in his brother-in-law’s office, where he began learning the ins and outs of land law, deeds, titles, and land grants. This was pretty significant for Scofield because the Papin-Chouteau family held numerous vague land claims dating back to the French and Spanish colonial rule.

And with America increasingly expanding westward, those old claims suddenly became extremely valuable if you can take all these vague, ambiguous boundaries and convert them into segmented, sellable property. That’s where Scofield came in. So it seems like this wealthy French family saw Scofield as useful.

And in the aftermath of the Civil War, in an increasingly united Anglo-American nation, it might be beneficial to have an Anglo-Protestant face who could represent their interests. In other words, it seemed like he was being groomed to be a frontman for this powerful French Catholic family. And it’s during this period that Scofield reportedly made trips to Washington, likely acting as their representative. And what he did there, who he met there, and the doors these connections may have opened, we really don’t know. But this has to play some role because his social and political position continued to rise.

But anyways, around this time, he married his wife, who was from another prominent French Catholic family, which further cemented his place among this elite. And a few years later, in 1869, his family moved to Atchison, Kansas, where Scofield began apprenticing in the law office of John J. Ingalls, a man who would soon become the Kansas state senator.

Now, let’s talk about Ingalls for a second. What’s important to note about John Ingalls is that he was an abolitionist (reformer who favors abolishing slavery) transplant from New England who had come to Kansas in 1858 to sort of weigh the scales in favor of the abolitionist cause. This was right in the middle of what’s called “Bleeding Kansas,” which was essentially the civil war in Kansas that preceded the American Civil War, which involved violent clashes between Kansans over whether or not the state would enter the Union as a free or a slave state. And things got pretty violent and bloody, and this conflict notably culminated with John Brown’s raid in 1859, where an abolitionist named John Brown attempted to seize a federal armory, supposedly to arm and start a slave revolt. This event is often cited as the main catalyst that kicked off the Civil War.

John Brown was being likened to Christ himself by abolitionists, or he was likened to being a sort of martyr. But what people don’t know about this is that in reality, Brown’s raid was orchestrated, armed, and funded by a group of wealthy Bostonian abolitionists known as the Secret Six.

Now, John J. Ingalls, although not a formal member of the Secret Six, came from that same radical abolitionist world in Massachusetts. And he came to Kansas during this period to tip the balance permanently in favor of Boston politics. And with Scofield now working under him, Scofield was likely grafted into this network. So when he arrived in Kansas, he wasn’t just getting mentored by a random attorney. He was being brought into a network that had already demonstrated his willingness to use any means necessary, including violence and deception, to achieve their political goals.

Scofield had to have had some sort of support at this point. And the evidence for this or some kind of backing becomes clearer when you look at the logistics of his move to Kansas. The Scofields moved with a household of seven people. And a law apprentice, someone working in a law office, can’t afford to support that alone. He had to have received some sort of support or been grafted into something by this point. And you’ll see why in the next couple of minutes.

So through his work with John J. Ingalls, Scofield began to rise in Kansas politics. And eventually, Scofield, through his connections, was able to become a Kansas state representative.

And from this position, he then helped John J. Ingalls become the senator. This part’s pretty interesting because when the election rolled around, as Kansas was preparing to elect a new U.S. senator, the incumbent, Samuel Pomeroy, had fallen out of favor and people wanted him out. And Scofield was asked to give a suggestion for who should run. And he was given the assurance that who he picked would win. And Scofield reportedly suggested Ingalls to run against him.

And when they had the election, after all the voting, initially, it looked like Pomeroy had won re-election. But as he stood up to give his victory speech, one of the legislators publicly revealed that Pomeroy had offered him a $7,000 bribe, which is a lot of money back then. But he apparently bribed him in exchange for his vote. And then the election was thrown out. Then Ingalls ended up winning the election.

And here’s the thing. We already kind of established that Kansas and just the Western states in general were pretty corrupt at this time. So a lot of political deals involved money changing hands to some capacity. The revelation of Pomeroy’s $7,000 bribe was honestly less a shocking scandal and more of political theater to tip the scales in favor of Ingalls. Because in that same room where all of this was exposed, Pomeroy had paid out several of the legislators. A lot of them received money from him. The more interesting thing to notice is not the fact that Pomeroy had paid off the legislators. The more interesting question is why was he exposed and swabbed for Ingalls?

We’ll leave that there for now. But after being accepted to the Senate, John J. Ingalls nominated and elected Scofield as a district attorney, which brings us to his downfall in the more mysterious and intriguing parts of his life.

Scofield’s Downfall

So Scofield’s time as DA fell apart almost immediately. Within six months, he was forced to resign under a cloud of corruption charges, mostly about bribery. Ironically, he accepted a bribe from Pomeroy, the former Kansas senator. He allegedly bribed Scofield into not prosecuting his bribery case, which is pretty funny. But it is also kind of weird because as we said earlier, everyone was bribing everybody and the West was corrupt. So, and this is my opinion, it can’t be for no reason that Scofield was run out because he likely could have pulled some strings to get this smoothed over. But it didn’t happen.

And by the end of 1874, Scofield had abandoned everything. He fled Kansas and left behind his wife and his children, left them poor, and then he vanished from the public life. Following this, Scofield just disappears from the historical record for three to five years from 1874 to around 1879 to 80.

There’s effectively a gap in time where we don’t really know what he was doing. His official biographer, Trumbull, claims that Scofield returned to law practice in St. Louis. But this is kind of unlikely and Scofield probably lied to Trumbull because Scofield was never admitted to the Kansas or Missouri bar. He couldn’t legally practice law on his own or he couldn’t have a law office. So where was he? What was he doing? We don’t really know. And the only reason why it says three to five years, there’s a sort of ambiguous gap is because where he does pop up in the historical record is for charges of fraud, essentially writing false checks and forging his sister’s signature multiple times in that period.

It was also alleged at the time that he had served some jail time in Canada. But regardless, this period remains relatively ambiguous until his supposed conversion.

Scofield’s Suspicious Rise

It might seem mean, honestly, to say supposed conversion. But I think once you hear the details, it’s fine. Around 1879 or 1880, it’s alleged that Scofield had undergone a dramatic conversion to Christianity, being led to faith by a man named Tom McPheeters. Now, who was McPheeters? So Tom McPheeters was a successful and respected evangelical businessman from a prominent St. Louis family, a man who had a reputation for being both deeply devout and very discerning, only working with the most capable and reputable attorneys in St. Louis.

Now, here’s where this gets weird. Scofield claimed that this conversion happened in his own law office in that McPheeters came in for legal counsel, after which they spoke about the gospel and Scofield decided to become a Christian. But there’s a problem with this because as we established, Scofield wasn’t a licensed attorney at the time. So one, why would he have a law office? And two, why would a careful and reputable man like McPheeters seek legal counsel from Scofield?

Additionally, Scofield claimed that he was 36 years old when this happened, which would place the conversion around 1879. But this is also the same time when he was dealing with the fallout from his fraudulent activities. So he presumably, what, he converted and then continued to commit fraud and evade the courts? That doesn’t sound right.

Additionally, it was also interesting, around this time of his alleged conversion, a St. Louis newspaper reported that a forgery charge against Scofield had been dropped due to lack of evidence. And the report went on to praise Scofield as a gentleman who had held positions of trust, completely whitewashing his prior fraudulent activities, which rightly leads us to suspect external hands were crafting a false narrative to pave the way for his reemergence and for his re-entrance into the public eye. After all, if this was a genuine conversion experience, why was he still neglecting his abandoned family? Why didn’t he go back to his family and make things right? And also, why didn’t he make things right with the law? Why was he allowing these mysterious benefactors to solve his legal problems?

This is all confusing and ambiguous, but what we do know for certain is that by 1880, Scofield had somehow become connected with Reverend James H. Brooks. So Brooks was one of the most prominent voices in American evangelicalism at the time, being especially known for his strong stance on biblical inerrancy and for popularizing dispensational prophecy in the South. His views were really similar to that of John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren. And he is reported to have had an immense influence on Scofield, who would later refer to Brooks as a, quote, father in the faith. And it was under Brooks’s mentorship that Scofield began to absorb this dispensational framework that would later define his work.

Brooks was also instrumental in bringing D.L. Moody to St. Louis for his 1879 to 1880 evangelistic campaign. And through Brooks, Scofield was introduced into Moody’s inner circle.

This is the weird part here. So barely a few months earlier, Scofield was writing false checks and committing fraud. And now he’s becoming a part of D.L. Moody’s evangelism crusade. If you don’t know, D.L. Moody is the guy in evangelicalism. He was incredibly popular. He was like the Billy Graham of that day. He was the most famous evangelist at the end of the 19th century. And yet, somehow, despite his shady past, lack of formal training, Cyrus Scofield found himself being one of Moody’s key associates.

This is really suspicious and weird. Why was he there? How did he get there? This is really weird. Considering the turnaround, he goes from fraud to presumably a Christian. And rather than going back to his family, who he abandoned, instead now he joins D.L. Moody’s evangelism campaign? This is weird!

And it’s especially weird when you think about the money too. So these campaigns, they weren’t paid positions. They were basically freelance, unpaid ministry, and you had to cover your own living expenses and travel and food. Yet somehow, Scofield was not only allowed into helping out on the campaign, but he was able to afford his own provisions and board? This is weird. How was he supporting himself?

Also, how did he ingratiate himself into this group so quickly? So much so that by 1882, Scofield was given a license to preach and was given a local congregational church to be the pastor of, less than three years after his legal troubles. He was given this despite having no formal education, no theology degree, no seminary training. In fact, he would lie about having a doctorate in divinity.

The timeline of this is just absolutely insane. It makes no sense. Most people spend years studying before entering ministry. I went to a Bible college. I’ve seen how long it takes to do that. Scofield went from like a disgraced fraudster to licensed pastor in under three years. That’s ridiculous, right?

Now, as I said earlier, it’s like the JFK assassination. Nowhere does it say we killed JFK, but when you just look at these connections, it’s obvious someone was funding it. The timeline is insane. And you see these little snippets all over the place.

In 1901, Scofield was preaching a sermon at Moody’s church in Chicago, and he casually mentioned something about, when I’m in London, as if that were just a normal thing, like he goes to London all the time. There’s no public record of him going to London prior to writing the Scofield Bible. So who sent him to London? Why was he there? How does he afford going on transatlantic trips like that? And yet somehow Scofield, ignoring the fact that he somehow was able to become connected to D.L. Moody, the most popular evangelist of that day, ignoring all of that, he had just all this money that wouldn’t make sense.

Scofield had multiple homes that he would just live at while he’s traveling. Scofield clearly had some kind of connection, which is what leads us to talk about the Lotos Club.

The Lotos Club

This is probably the most significant and most telling connection. This one is the source of the, “conspiracy theories” about Scofield. Because really, it’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s just the most blatant of the evidence when it comes to the money aspect.

So in 1901, Cyrus Scofield was admitted to membership in what’s called the Lotos Club, which was an elite invitation only social club in Manhattan that catered primarily to journalists and artists and cultural influencers. It wasn’t just like any drinking beer with the bros kind of thing. This was a big deal. The membership included former presidents like Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevelt and media figures like Joseph Pulitzer or Mark Twain, even. It was a lot of big names.

And somehow Scofield was nominated to be a part of that. This is prior to making his reference Bible, which came out in 09. He was admitted in 01. And there’s no way that he could have afforded it. There was membership fees and there was annual dues plus the cost of meals and rooms. There’s no way Scofield would have been able to afford this from his ministry work alone. And his membership was sponsored by a wealthy man named Horatio Nelson Fraser and seconded by John Alderkin, who was a key figure within the club’s committees.

Here’s the kicker, though. One of the members of the literary committee that had to approve his admission was a man named Samuel Untermyer. Untermyer was a powerful New York attorney and political figure and committed Zionist.

So this is where the source of theories typically come from. But they’re pretty blatant, honestly. Untermyer was so powerful that he allegedly, but he did, blackmail president Woodrow Wilson into putting Brandeis on the Supreme Court.

So let’s think about this for a second. A man like that was in charge of allowing Scofield into this elite club where he gets to rub elbows with all these powerful men. And up until this point, Scofield’s literary output consisted of what, like tracts and pamphlets he wrote, Rightly Dividing The Word of Truth, but that’s it? There’s no logical reason why these elite figures would find Scofield to be an acceptable fit for their exclusive club. Unless, of course, his theological work was seen as being able to serve some other purpose.

And the fact that Untermyer accepted Scofield in this group kind of indicates why. This was a man whose life was completely removed from the circle Scofield normally ran in. Yet somehow Untermyer accepted Scofield into the group. So why would a committed Zionist support the membership of a Hick Bible teacher? Well, it’s obvious because the theology with its emphasis on a future restoration of Israel was extremely helpful in getting fundamentalist Christians to back Zionist interests. His theology provided the religious justification for supporting the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

Now, this isn’t just to pin all of this on one man. That’s dumb. The theology was such that all it took was a little push in America for it to spread like wildfire. There wasn’t this massive overarching thing, but nevertheless, there was a little bit of manipulation in it.

Which brings us to the actual Scofield Reference Bible. Now, the development of the Scofield reference Bible was financed by a small group of wealthy men. I don’t know if they were Zionists or not. Honestly, it’s a little ambiguous. And everything about it, it’s kind of mundane. The parts of him creating it, there’s some stuff, but it’s not as interesting.

But what’s more remarkable is the fact that the Bible was published by Oxford University Press. This is the probably next to the Lotos Club. This is one of the more absurd parts of the Scofield reference Bible. Oxford Press is one of the world’s most prestigious academic publishers. They didn’t publish study Bibles, especially ones with such a specific theological agenda behind it. Especially one where the theology was closer to that of a cult rather than that of being mainline Protestant.

This was a massive, credible, respected institution that published this book. They didn’t publish stuff like this, There’s no way they didn’t do it without some strings being pulled or without some ulterior motive.

Which is why it’s important to note the way that Oxford University worked prior to the 1950s in England. There are only two main universities, Oxford and Cambridge, with Oxford being the preferred university for aspiring politicians. Which is why it’s not a leap to assume that Oxford University Press would function as the sort of propaganda arm of the British Empire in order to present people in politics with the sort of range of opinions that are within the British imperialist orthodoxy. This is why it’s also important to note that the second edition of the Scofield Reference Bible came out in 1917, the same year as the Balfour Declaration.

Make whatever you want with that. But it is kind of clear in that in regards to the Balfour Declaration, the Scofield Bible in England helped to prepare the way for Britain’s Middle East imperialist ambitions. But as far as the child connections that you hear about, I looked. I can’t find anything. Now that might just be me not finding it. So if you know anything, just comment down below and tell me whatever links you have or whatever you got.

Apart from that, this has just been a general overview over the life of Scofield, adding some context for a lot of the theories you might hear about the funding of the reference and of just his weird career and the weird money involved.

But hopefully you found this helpful. And as I mentioned earlier, there’s no document at any point that says, you know, we hired Scofield to promote a Zionist agenda. But when a disgraced fraudster becomes the most influential Bible teacher in American history and all of his legal troubles disappear, and he’s accepted into an elite literary club by a committed Zionist and one of the most powerful men in American politics, the pattern becomes pretty obvious.

So with that, if you want any more information over Scofield, but more specifically dispensational theology and the theology that came from his reference Bible, you might find my video about Christian Zionism to be pretty interesting. Thanks for watching. God bless.