reSee.it Video Transcript AI Summary
The transcript argues that Oxford University Press launched a deliberate attack on Christianity by publishing the Schofield Reference Bible in 1908, a Bible whose notes purportedly inject reinterpretations that connect the future state of Israel to access to God. It states the book’s importance led OUP to open its first American branch, publishing it and promoting it through key American seminaries and Bible schools, thereby shaping future pastors’ beliefs to align with a peacemaking tradition favorable to the state of Israel. The speakers claim many pastors were unaware of the danger at the time, and that the Schofield Bible would later be used by secular powers to steer Christians toward political and financial servitude to present-day Israel.
They assert American Christianity became increasingly Zionized after 1948 with the appearance of the state of Israel, aided by Oxford University Press’s Zionist influence and its New York publishing branch, which published the Schofield Reference Bible as a foundational document for Christian Zionism and evangelicalism, contributing to its growth through deception. The narrative links the founders of world Zionism, especially Chaim Weizmann, to efforts to involve the United States in World War I and to gain land in Palestine, arguing that a small number of dominant American scientists influenced President Wilson to enter the war, resulting in substantial American casualties while enabling Zionist aims in Palestine after the Balfour Declaration.
The Schofield Reference Bible is described as copyrighted in 1909, an old and new testament with many notes added originally in the Old Testament, with later additions in the New Testament and a radical 1967 revision. The cover features Cyrus I. Scofield and an editorial board including James M. Gray, president of Moody Bible Institute, and other seminary leaders. Distribution allegedly occurred through seminaries, influencing new pastors who returned to churches with the Schofield Bible in hand.
A critical examination of a page from Genesis 12:3 is used to illustrate the alleged distortions: the verse, part of the Torah and quoted in the Koran, is presented as a basis for Christians and Zionists to claim that present-day Israel should own all land in the Middle East beginning with Palestine. The 1967 Scofield edition reportedly contains more footnotes than the 1909 version, with a footnote claiming an unconditional promise of land to Israel forever, which the speakers assert is not stated in the passage. They argue that the footnotes render Abraham’s promise as a perpetual land grant to Israel, and that the note uses the later term “Jew” unjustly to describe biblical figures from before the existence of Judah or the Jews.
The transcript contends that Oxford’s notes imply blessings or curses based on support for Israel, and that a nation’s supposed sin for not aiding Israel would invite divine judgment, a claim the speakers label as a form of antisemitism manufactured by Christian Zionism. They argue that the concept of national sin is flawed, and that individuals alone sin, not nations.
Historical figures like Philip Morrow and Doctor F. Furman Curley are cited as Orthodox Christian critics who warned against dispensationalism and Christian Zionism. Morrow warned in 1927 that Schofield Bible had usurped authority from Scripture, while Curley in 1983 linked premillennialist advocacy of Israel to wars in the Middle East and urged Christians to seek peace rather than war, criticizing figures like Hal Lindsey and Jerry Falwell. The final note emphasizes that Jesus’ simple New Testament teachings do not support Christians taking life abroad, urging a reconsideration of the doctrine behind Christian Zionism.