The Scofield Factor--Part 1

The plans for a sovereign Zionist state in Palestine had its beginnings in the latter part of the 1800's. According The House of Rothschild (by Nial Ferguson, the Rothschild's official biographer), a Zionist state was first proposed about 1830:

"But could not the Jews return to their biblical place of origin? The notion that the Rothschilds would use their wealth to restore the Jewish kingdom of Jerusalem in the Holy Land dated back as far as the 1830's; and it too lived on in the Pale: 'Was not Rothschild a fit prince to . . . restore scattered Israel to the Land of Promise [and] ascend the throne of David? . . . [I]t was only much later that a Rothschild first seriously began to consider the possibility of founding Jewish colonies in Palestine. Edmond, James's youngest son, became interested in this idea in 1882 under the influence of Zadok Kahn and Michael Erlanger of the Central Committee of the Alliance Israelite Universelle." (Vol. 2, p. 279)

The early idea was for a member of the Rothschild family to be the king of a Jewish kingdom. In fact, they already considered themselves to be royalty, referring to the head of the family as "king." Ferguson tells us,

"The key to the Rothschild attitude was that, as the nearest thing the Jews of Europe had to a royal family, they considered themselves the equals of royalty....Contemporaries often used the phrase 'Kings of the Jews' when they talked about the Rothschilds: the evidence of the family's own correspondence suggests it was not an unwelcome compliment." (Vol. 2, p. 251, 252)

Edmond Rothschild's idea was to establish Jewish colonies that were fully under his personal control.

"Edmond's highly paternalistic approach inevitably generated what would now be called a 'dependency culture'.... Altogether he spent around 5.6 million [British pounds] on his settlements." (p. 280)

Apparently, he opposed a sovereign Jewish state, believing that such would cause conflict with the Arabs and Turks which would jeopardize the position of his colonies. There were two competing forces at work here. The Rothschild plan was to establish settlements in a "homeland," while the Pike plan was "to institute a sovereign state of Israel in Palestine." (See Albert Pike's letter in my blog dated 10/22/11, "A Short History of the Coming War with Iran, Part 4.)

So we see these two views conflicting through the decades leading up to 1948. The Balfour Declaration of Nov. 2, 1917 merely called for "a national homeland for the Jewish people." Even the United Nations resolution on Nov. 29, 1947 merely called for a "Jewish Homeland," not a Jewish state. But in practice, it became a Jewish state, according to Pike's plan to purposely cause irritation that would be used later to foment the third World War.

The Scofield Factor

In the early years of Zionism, Scofield was preaching his doctrine of the Postponed Kingdom, in which a Jewish Kingdom would rule the world. He had adopted John Darby's idea that Christ would rule from the old Jerusalem in a Jewish setting, and hence, they believed it necessary for the Jews to establish a Jewish state in Palestine.

This caught the attention of certain powerful Jews, and so Scofield was contacted by Samuel Untermeyer, a prominent Jewish lawyer who was one of the framers of the Federal Reserve Act.

"He took an active part in preparing the Federal Reserve Bank law, the Clayton bill, the Federal Trade Commission bill, and other legislation curbing trusts."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Untermyer

Untermeyer was not a Christian, but he found Scofield to be very useful in the Jewish plans for a state of Israel. He introduced Scofield to many Zionists and financed "research" trips to Oxford. As chairman of the Lotos Club in New York, an exclusive club for journalists, Untermeyer recommended that Scofield be admitted as a member, and the same Club also provided him with free living quarters to support his writing of the "Scofield Bible."

The marginal notes of the Scofield Bible set forth his brand of Dispensationalist theology. With his views being placed in a Bible, it had an incredible psychological effect upon Christians, for they were unable to separate Scofield's views from Scripture itself. Eventually, even the term "Dispensationalism" was dropped from Church vocabularies, because it was no longer simply a viewpoint--it became the mainstream Christian viewpoint among Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Charismatics.

The view set in stone the idea that the Jews were Israel and that the Jewish state was the fulfillment of Bible prophecy of the regathering of the ancient House of Israel. Biblical history showed the Israelites to be the 10 tribes of the Northern House of Israel, who were deported to Assyria and "lost." But Scofield identified the Jews as Israelites.

Further, the Bible speaks prophetically of the House of Israel by the name Gomer. In the book of Hosea, the prophet, representing Christ, had married a harlot named Gomer--representing the House of Israel. Gomer (Gomri, or Gimirra) was what the Assyrians called Israel. The name was actually derived from King Omri (1 Kings 16:23-28), which, at the time, was pronounced Gomri.

Hence, the Gomri, or Gimirra, were the Israelites that had been deported to Assyria near the Caspian Sea. Assyrian records of these Israelites were unearthed in the excavation of Nineveh in the year 1900 and published fully in 1930 by the University of Michigan Press.

The problem was that there are two Gomers in the Bible. The one, of course, was the wife of Hosea, who prophetically represented the Israelites in captivity. The other was a son of Japheth mentioned in Gen. 10:2. Scofield's notes for that verse identify Gomer, son of Japheth, in this way:

Progenitor of the ancient Cimerians and Cimbri, from whom are descended the Celtic family.

http://www.studylight.org/com/srn/view.cgi?book=ge&chapter=010

Dr. Bullinger, another Dispensationalist from the Scofield era, wrote virtually the same thing in hisThe Companion Bible:

"Gomer. In Assyrian, Gimirra (the Kimmerians of Herodotus). Progenitor of the Celts."

Both of them mixed up the two Gomers. The Gimirra, or Celts, were descended from the Israelites that the Assyrians called Gomri, Humri, or Gimirra, named for King Omri of Israel. But both Scofield and Bullinger identified the Celts with the earlier Gomer, who was the son of Japheth.

Merrill Unger's book, Archeology and the Old Testament, clears up this misconception:

". . . The initial contact between Israel and Assyria evidently occurred during Omri's day, for from that time on, Israel appears in cuneiform records as Bit-Humri ('House of Omri')." (p. 243)

This mixup laid the foundations for Christian support of the Jewish state.