Selling the Apocalypse – From Scofield to Now

 This week on Fortean Winds, Bones and RamX dive into the strange history of how the apocalypse became a product — sold in books, sermons, politics, and even foreign wars. We trace it back to the Scofield Reference Bible and its role in popularizing dispensationalism, Christian Zionism, and the rapture theology that still shapes American culture and geopolitics today. Along the way, we uncover the controversial life of Cyrus Scofield, the extremist roots of John Nelson Darby, and how prophecy moved from fringe theology to mainstream political power. Was the Iraq War influenced by end-times theology? How do charlatans and influencers still profit off selling doomsday today? Join us as we unravel the theology, the history, and the marketplace of the apocalypse. 

And I think we got out of this one without promising links..but how about one regarding Angels. Everybody loves Angels.

https://forteanwinds.com/2022/08/29/angelic-descriptions-in-the-bible/

Transcript

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;22;09
Unknown
Welcome to the Fortean Winds podcast, where we talk about UFOs and all the related high Strangeness. I go by Bones and with us, as always, is the notorious RamX. Hey! Hey, everybody! Hey, Ram. Hope you like that dramatic intro. Yeah. We're going to get dramatic today. We're going to get dramatic because, we're going to be talking about the apocalypse.

00;00;22;13 - 00;00;40;20
Unknown
It's something everyone knows a little bit about. We got to talk about. I know you've been doing a lot of historical research on it. And it really comes down to kind of who's selling it because there's just a there's a lot of apocalypse in the market. Yeah I think that's what ends up calling us over. Is there.

00;00;40;20 - 00;01;00;13
Unknown
Yeah a couple of things that get us involved and I think we'll make this season four. Yeah makes sense. Season three was kind of long. Yeah, I look at it as season one as saying, okay, UFOs are real. Season two was laying out hypotheses and eliminating Some and season three going okay. What are UFOs? What does this all tell us?

00;01;00;16 - 00;01;28;01
Unknown
And see. Yeah, the season four I think, will be us taking that knowledge and applying it to all sorts of things. Yeah. Makes sense. And what calls us to this subject is more the fact that there are some charlatans involved. There's some hoaxers, there's a bunch of mythology, there's some clearing up that needs to happen. What really excites me about telling you this today is that this is like my favorite type of podcast, where I get to start with a what if I told you?

00;01;28;03 - 00;01;48;01
Unknown
And then we get to watch him do a bunch of historical research that hopefully will change your perspective on some things. And if you believe in these things, that's fine. And beliefs are beliefs and we're going to cover some theology today. We're going to cover a lot of history today. But bones and I both do this. The normal scholarly, academic way.

00;01;48;04 - 00;02;15;04
Unknown
When we insert some of our opinions, we'll try to make that apparent right. So what if I told you this Scofield Bible that many of you have never heard of affects your daily life? In many ways, it affects your interactions with some people. It affects the geopolitics all around you through politics. It ends up having an effect on our economic system, and it's at the heart of a lot of things in the culture wars.

00;02;15;07 - 00;02;42;00
Unknown
Yeah, today the apocalypse has become somewhat of a product. There are people trying to sell it in many ways, certainly in our space, like the alternative media space, it's a big winner to talk about the end times. Why is that? There's been some books and movies more recently that were very popular, and leading that charge is the Left Behind series, which ran from about 1995 to 2007, and there were some movies with Kirk Cameron.

00;02;42;00 - 00;03;09;08
Unknown
There was another remake, but these books were wildly popular. They sold 65 million copies worldwide. And you mentioned Kirk Cameron. So you're basically focusing on American evangelical. Yes. We'll get there in the Scofield Bible. And I want to talk about some of the theology. I just want to establish the fact that there's a marketplace here, okay? There's a theology, and then there's some people involved who are selling that theology and who are just selling concepts within it.

00;03;09;08 - 00;03;47;23
Unknown
And then we'll look at the historical and theological basis for all that today. And you'll see that there's a bunch of charlatans running around, and you'll be able to use your own discernment that much better and discerning which ones of them are fake and not right. And there's tours and there's travel that go to Israel. And we'll talk about how this Scofield Bible is at the center of a series of beliefs that have become known as Christian Zionism, and it's a focus on Israel and an end time scenario that, as we'll see today, is really the product of a couple of fringe preachers.

00;03;47;25 - 00;04;14;19
Unknown
Right. And if I can just put my my own personal belief in it, it's also a very easy way to sell something. Hey, the world can follow me. Exactly. And as we'll see, the church kind of pushes back on this idea because this whole concept of the rapture was really considered heretical right around 381 A.D.. So there's a belief by some in the church that this whole idea is heretical.

00;04;14;24 - 00;04;42;19
Unknown
And so let's get into what the idea is, the big idea. And then I'm going to get into the Scofield Bible and how that really popularized the idea and got it into today. So the big idea here is dispensationalism. Scofield popularized the idea in the US, and dispensationalism splits the timeline of humanity into seven dispensations, or phases. And in each phase, God interacts with humanity differently.

00;04;42;22 - 00;05;04;14
Unknown
So one of the things that's really important to dispensationalism theology is that people take the Bible literally and they take certain parts of it more literally than others, which would cause us to say, okay, is the Bible historical document? Where did the original book of Genesis that you're pulling this from? Who wrote that? Like if you're if you're really taking that part literally, we would want to know all of that.

00;05;04;15 - 00;05;27;05
Unknown
Right. But that doesn't really enter into it. And this belief system. So the important thing to note here is that mankind is in the sixth dispensation. That sixth dispensation involves God interacting with Gentiles. Because because during the other parts of history it was the Old Testament God. And then Jesus came. But the Jews didn't accept Jesus as the Messiah.

00;05;27;08 - 00;05;54;11
Unknown
So in the sixth phase, Jesus is using the church. He's talking to the Gentiles. And then here comes the important part and is not really well supported or talked about in the Bible. And that's the idea that these Christians will all be lifted up in a rapture. You've heard this term right? So you didn't really know that that idea of a rapture came from kind of an oddball preacher in Ireland in the mid 18th century.

00;05;54;16 - 00;06;20;17
Unknown
There were other historical threads, like I mentioned, that would make it seem heretical, but the dispensationalism came from a preacher named John Nelson Darby from Ireland. He did this around 1830, and the important thing to note about Nelson Darby was, first of all, he was an extremist. He was from this extreme outcrop of Christianity called the Plymouth Brethren, like at Plymouth, as in pilgrim type Christianity.

00;06;20;24 - 00;06;47;04
Unknown
And then the Plymouth Brethren are not extreme enough for him. So he starts the Exclusive Brethren. So he's an extremist, and then he goes out and he thinks the end times is now. So Nelson Darby was writing this dispensationalism idea for his flock, and he was looking at what was going on around them, and they were having all sorts of problems with England, and they were all having all sorts of problems with the church, and people were starving.

00;06;47;04 - 00;07;12;20
Unknown
And he was trying to give them hope. And this idea that, hey, don't worry, you come into church and God's going to snatch you up because this is clearly the end of days. He was looking around him in Ireland in 1830 when he comes up with this idea. So that's super important. And then there's, some conspiracy theories that try to link John Nelson Darby to the Rothschilds and the Jews, and that'll come up a few times.

00;07;12;20 - 00;07;34;14
Unknown
And the historical evidence, which is just not well supported. You know, Israel gets involved later in this story. We'll get there. But in the early parts of dispensationalism and the push towards Christian Zionism, it just wasn't really a big part of it. And there's a verse in the Bible in Genesis that says, you know, he who supports Israel will be blessed by me.

00;07;34;15 - 00;08;03;19
Unknown
He who does not, you know, will be cast. I'm I'm paraphrasing. So taking that verse literally is central to this theology because in the end times, in some of the end times stories in the Bible, we'll get into this. But there's multiple, right? Like there's revelations which most people are familiar with. But then there's end time stories. And Daniel, there's end times stories in Thessalonians when Paul is talking to the Thessalonians.

00;08;03;22 - 00;08;23;15
Unknown
And that's interesting, right? Because when Paul's talking to the Thessalonians, he's also kind of telling them, hey, this is the end of days, so don't worry, you're going to get snatched up and you know, you're going to be fine in the end. And then when John the Apostle is writing revelations, he is also talking to people of that time.

00;08;23;21 - 00;08;48;15
Unknown
He is talking to directly to the Romans. And when he's talking about these figures, that would sort of be known as the Antichrist. But that word is only used once, maybe in the Bible when he's talking about these villains in Revelations or Antichrist, he's talking about actual people of the time, and this is not disputed. I want to introduce a term here that we'll use today, and I'm going to call it everybody consensus.

00;08;48;18 - 00;09;16;18
Unknown
And this is when academics agree with Jewish scholars who also agree with Christian scholars. And there's some things that are not well known about the Bible that all of them agree on. And like one of them is the historical and literal nature of the early works of the Bible. They're pieced together from different folklore, and they're different tribes of Israel as well as they adopted some things from some of the kingdoms around them.

00;09;16;20 - 00;09;40;07
Unknown
Treating it as a historical document would be in some parts unreliable, because some parts of it were very much like the succession of Israel in the story of Israel, and other parts were Israeli folklore. And that is something that there is an everybody consensus about. I'll give you an example. Like Moses is not considered to be one guy, and there is everybody consensus about that.

00;09;40;07 - 00;10;02;28
Unknown
I think that's pretty mindblowing. If you've been learning about Moses your whole life and you go, wait, what do you mean? He's not one guy? And how do you know that? Well, it's because there were other stories that were adopted that were found the to proceed, you know, the Old Testament collections, you know, that had stories that were identical.

00;10;02;28 - 00;10;39;07
Unknown
And they said, oh, well, they obviously adopted this story into the Moses story. So it ends up becoming like King Arthur. And that is something that there is everybody consensus about. So trying to treat this as a historical, literal document is tough on its face. But that is what they do. And they say, okay, you know, you have to take this one verse about Israel very seriously because it's very important in the end times story that John tells, which is, you know, Israel has to become ascendant and then rebuild the Third Temple, and then that will signal Jesus, return Jesus comes back, and that's when all the Christians will be taken up.

00;10;39;07 - 00;11;11;10
Unknown
And there would begin a thousand year reign. And in this thousand year reign, Jesus would be ascendant and the Jews would have another chance to accept Jesus as the Messiah. So I think that's an important trait of Christian Zionism is that even though it embraces Israel in this place, you see this play out culturally, you see this play out politically, and this is one of those things that'll maybe help you make sense of it, is that Christian Zionism looks at Israel as necessary and important, but they also look at Jews as having not accepted the Messiah.

00;11;11;10 - 00;11;33;26
Unknown
Right. So there's a right there's a supremacy issue there. That plays out all the time. I might be jumping ahead, but there's that modern belief to when you know, after World War Two the State of Israel was formed that that was seen as by evangelicals as the return. Yes, absolutely. All this came up at that time like the Scofield Bible.

00;11;33;26 - 00;11;57;20
Unknown
And this was supposed to be the fulfillment of end times. Again, every generation thinks that they are in the end times, in this modality and in this theology, like it's like this is it and this is what drives people to televangelists. This is what drives people to leave their church and go to a different church. And we'll get into that in the historical piece.

00;11;57;20 - 00;12;23;03
Unknown
So yeah, it's not like in Christian Zionism, they're like, Jews are awesome. Some people are like that. But right. The the theology itself is more like, well, we need Israel to be ascendant in order to fulfill our prophecy. And this becomes a problem for people in the church. This becomes a problem for people in Christianity. What we're talking about is often referred to as pre millennial dispensationalism.

00;12;23;10 - 00;12;51;29
Unknown
And it's called that because the rapture would happen before this thousand year reign of Christ. And the dispensations mark the time. Now, this is in contradiction to covenant theology, which is, I would say, adopted by most major organized Christian churches. And in covenant theology, the idea was that God had one covenant with Israel. And then Jesus came along and that changed the covenant to be with anyone who would accept Jesus.

00;12;52;02 - 00;13;20;22
Unknown
Okay, so the whole concept of end time is takes on a different power. If you believe that instead of the dispensationalism theory, which has Israel had one covenant with God and then everybody else has another covenant right now with Jesus, and then Israel gets another chance at that in the thousand years. Okay. So it's very different. The study of Christian end times is often referred to as eschatology.

00;13;20;24 - 00;13;57;05
Unknown
And this eschatology has become far more popular with the rise of the internet. And people just talking about the end times all the time. Selling the apocalypse, right? Right. But end times prophecies shape Christian hope, and they shape their worldview. They encourage like moral living and perseverance if you're following the life of Christ. But if you think, oh well, all I have to do is get Israel to a certain point and then get taken up in the rapture, there's just not there's not as much motive for you to live your life in the life of Christ and be active in the church, whatever.

00;13;57;07 - 00;14;20;00
Unknown
Right. And I'm going differences in the Christian community because when we talk about religion, like in our religion episodes, we talk. I end up talking a lot about Christianity. But there's a good reason for that, because we live in the West. And when we talk about religion in the whole world, you're talking about more Christians than religiously unaffiliated Christians make up the majority.

00;14;20;00 - 00;14;41;07
Unknown
If you if you broke people out into whatever religion you want and then had one block of people who say that I'm not any religion, Christians would still be the largest group. Okay, so when we talk about religion, you know, we're talking a lot about that. And then the second biggest group would be Muslims. So Christians are about 2.3 billion, Muslims would be 2 billion.

00;14;41;07 - 00;15;11;18
Unknown
And Muslims have a similar version of something along this end times prophecies too, but that ends up getting varied in a different direction. Then after Muslims would come religiously unaffiliated people. And that's 1.9 billion slightly slower than Muslims. And then after that comes Hindus, which are 1.2 Buddhists go all the way down to 0.3, while other religions make up 0.2, and then Jews make up 0.1% of the people on the planet.

00;15;11;18 - 00;15;30;11
Unknown
And this is actually going to become really important when you go, okay, who's really behind the political push and things like that? Like who's really is that? And let me give you another factoid. There's only 20 million Jews on the entire planet. And a minority of them live in Israel. So when you do all this blame the Jews stuff, it doesn't really work.

00;15;30;13 - 00;15;54;18
Unknown
You can be mad at Israel and what happens there that that's history. You're only talking about 20 million people. And when you're talking about Christian Zionists, you're talking somewhere between 30 to 50 million people in the US alone. Yeah. So only about 10 million Jews would consider themselves to be Zionists, according to polls. You're talking about five times that amount of Christian Zionists and in the US alone.

00;15;54;20 - 00;16;25;09
Unknown
So yeah, if you want to identify this, look at the numbers. Right. Yeah. So you got that many people basically taking a literal interpretation, accepting a literal interpretation of the Bible, a literal interpretation that involves the ascendancy of Israel. Right. It's worth talking about how the organized Christian sects tend to divide on the subject as well. There's a few different isms that they use to look at end times, and there's futurism, which means.

00;16;25;11 - 00;16;49;26
Unknown
But I think this would be what dispensationalism would most likely fall under. And that's mostly future events. So it's going to happen in the future. It's a literal event, and there's a rapture focus on it. And this is popular with evangelical Protestant groups, mostly non-denominational. And we'll get into why. And then there's predator ism, which means that end times events happen mostly in the past that were in the thousand year reign of Christ.

00;16;49;26 - 00;17;24;13
Unknown
Now, and this is popularized or this in the Greek Orthodox Church. And then there's historicism, which is that throughout church history, biblical prophecies are fulfilled, end times are fulfilled. And then there's idealism, which is that these are timeless spiritual prophecies, and they happen all the time. And this is becoming a more popular theory with progressives, where it's like the Bible was meant to be a guidebook on how to live your life and then it tells you what's going to happen after it all plays out in your lifetime every time.

00;17;24;15 - 00;17;53;03
Unknown
And I've also heard something similar from Lutherans who structure their sermons around this idea of basically every year they take you from the birth of the world to through end times, and that's how it plays out in theirs. So there's wildly different views of end times from different Christian groups. And I think that 1.9 billion, the religiously unaffiliated, I think that they tend to see Christianity as monolithic and that as we'll see today, that's just not the case.

00;17;53;03 - 00;18;34;11
Unknown
There's a lot of differences between the church on a lot of different things. But I always think, when I think end times, when I think apocalypse, fire and brimstone, I'm always thinking about American evangelical churches who take and promote a literal interpretation of the Bible. Right. So I always think of and they and they, they believe that, that our reality is basically our world is, is, is like a fight of good and evil, like, like our earth is like a is just, a battle arena between Jesus and the devil and how that plays out, that battle.

00;18;34;14 - 00;18;59;28
Unknown
Because I think that that could be perceived as, a lot of different theologies. But how that plays out as a battle is very different between the different faiths. So, you know, in a lot of faiths, you're fighting against the devil every day when you're trying to do the right thing, right? And Christianity is there and God is there to help you do the right thing, and the right thing will lead you to a better life.

00;19;00;05 - 00;19;21;11
Unknown
But the rapture concepts and some of these things end up being more of a revenge fantasy where it's like you're going to get taken up and everyone that you think is evil is going to go to hell. And you were right all along. They were, you know, and then this is not really traditional Christianity. So how did it start?

00;19;21;17 - 00;19;47;03
Unknown
Where did it start? I mentioned John Nelson Darby, who originally came up with the idea. But then how does it get into America that gets into the Scofield Reference Bible, right. Have you heard this, this name before? Scofield Reference Bible I have it's kind of like a Bible with, like guidelines written in, in the margins. Basically it is.

00;19;47;03 - 00;20;18;21
Unknown
That's what was different about the Scofield Bible is that it included Scofield's footnotes. Right. So Cyrus Anderson Scofield was a Civil War veteran, a lawyer, and he was a politician from Kansas. His personal history included desertion from the Confederate Army, allegations of corruption, and a brief stint in jail. And he there's some good stories about him. He starts as sort of a legal clerk, and then he goes on to say that he's a lawyer in some cases.

00;20;18;21 - 00;20;42;21
Unknown
Then he goes on to claim a doctorate in theology, which he never even had formal theological training. Okay, this pattern of lying happens throughout Scofield's life, and he begins a sort of this legal work, and he ends up working his way into a group of radical abolitionists in Kansas. And he's trying to get this guy named Engels into the Senate.

00;20;42;28 - 00;21;16;06
Unknown
And so they set up his opponent, Pomeroy, to take a bribe. And he does. And then they bust him out in front of everybody. And then Engels goes on to win, and he makes Scofield de oh, my God, I didn't know that. And Scofield only last six months because he's taking so many bribes and he's so corrupt. And the one bribe that he takes that I find really hilarious, is that Pomeroy comes back to him and bribe Scofield to not persecute him for the bribe that Scofield set him up for.

00;21;16;08 - 00;21;41;14
Unknown
It's a wild West. Yeah. It's pretty sad to see how we think America's corrupt today. And it is. You know, look at just lay Maxwell. But it's pretty bad back then, too. Yeah, but Scofield ends up saying that he converts. In 1879, after a period of drinking and shady dealings following his dismissal as Da. And he also ditches his family.

00;21;41;17 - 00;22;21;14
Unknown
He's got this wife and kids back in Kansas that he completely abandons, and they sort of don't come up again in the story, even as he's writing the Scofield Reference Pot Bible. Right? Yeah, I remember hearing about that hypocrisy. It's kind of I can't help but chuckle a little. So after his conversion, and this is where a lot of the allegations that he was helped by the Israeli's or Jewish people at the time come from, but one of their smoking guns that they're using is that Scofield was a part of this Lotus club in Manhattan, and there was a member by the name of Samuel de Meyer, who was Jewish, and he happened to be

00;22;21;14 - 00;22;43;16
Unknown
on one of the committees that had to approve Scofield's membership. That is your smoking gun is that one Jewish guy was on that was on the committee. Right. Like there's really not good evidence there. I think it misses the point of how and why this Bible takes off. So Scofield ends up working his way into this group of very powerful evangelicals at the time.

00;22;43;16 - 00;23;11;22
Unknown
They're well known. Brooks is the guy who takes them under his wing, and he's also a fan of Darby's work. So we know who introduced Scofield to dispensationalism. It was Brooks, and that's where Scofield ends up getting a lot of his ideas. And Brooks is well-regarded in the evangelical world and the other guy that Scofield somehow ends up getting in good with is Ian Moody, you know, from, like, Moody Bible Institute.

00;23;11;24 - 00;23;32;02
Unknown
Okay, the you probably if you were in the church in the 80s or 90s, you definitely heard about the Moody Institute, the movie Bible Institute, which, dispensationalism. We'll get there. But dispensation really takes off and then it ends up taking over in the 90s and the 2000, and it ends up playing a part in the Satanic Panic and all that stuff.

00;23;32;03 - 00;23;54;02
Unknown
Scofield writes this Bible, published in 1909, and it includes his footnotes. And up until then, there hadn't really been Bibles published in the US with someone's footnotes on it. So when people picked up this Bible, they just assumed that the footnotes were part of the original Bible, like it was. They just assumed that it was telling them the truth.

00;23;54;02 - 00;24;13;22
Unknown
And and they liked it. They really like to include all these charts. And yeah, they were there was I listened to a lot of good Christian podcasts on this and Christian scholars, when you find the honest ones that don't have an agenda behind them are fantastic. So are Jewish scholars like the ones who just really want to get to the truth.

00;24;13;25 - 00;24;36;07
Unknown
They're really good and no one cares about it more than that. So they go way deeper than any conspiracy theorist would. And they they genuinely want the truth. So I would suggest looking at those sources. So when it's published in 1909, it's paired with the King James Version, which was more popular at the time. And then later it ends up in the NIV version, the, New International Version.

00;24;36;09 - 00;24;59;02
Unknown
And one thing that's notable here is that this is 1909. So this is right in the midst of the industrial Revolution. Again, people are like, looking for answers. I mean, we talked about this type of nebulous life affecting the people of Germany, which ends up informing Himmler and Hitler. We talked about Blavatsky theories which are going off at this time.

00;24;59;02 - 00;25;23;21
Unknown
Crowley and his staff is going off at the same time. So there's a lot of emphasis on spirituality and radical ideas within spirituality at this time. So people liked it. Long story short, right? Like this bookish movement. And within dispensationalism, there's a push towards returning to the land. And this really came from Darby. Darby was like, we need to return to the land.

00;25;23;24 - 00;25;42;08
Unknown
And he was telling people to break away from their organized churches. And that was really important because that ends up happening when the Scofield Reference Bible really takes off. People like, I don't want to listen to your stuff that tells me to go be a good Christian every day. I want to go run up and down the aisles and scream about the rapture.

00;25;42;10 - 00;26;06;27
Unknown
So that ends up happening, right? And it starts off this whole new branch of Christianity, because for the first time, when people are reading Scofield's notes, it really blur the lines. And it made Scofield's interpretations become authoritative. I mean, less than ten years before Scofield writes this Bible, he's forging checks with his sister's name on it and leaving his family the entire time.

00;26;07;01 - 00;26;31;07
Unknown
So this is where it's coming from. But it's in that period of time again, you know, at the earliest early 20th century, we see so much kind of develop socially because, you know, when we have we've talked about it in previous podcasts, the rise of kind of natural sciences and even art was changing, you know, surrealism was starting to gain ground.

00;26;31;07 - 00;26;51;14
Unknown
And, and, there was there was a lot of reactions. And it sounds like this was another reaction. Right? The context of the time is super important because when Scofield is telling people this, he's looking around and saying, these are and these are the end of days. Crowley was saying the same thing at the same time. This was a very common thing for people to say.

00;26;51;14 - 00;27;15;05
Unknown
It was then, like I said, the industrial Revolution and the economy was not doing well in a lot of parts of the world. Right. This gets into America's DNA. It takes off. People start leaving some of the traditional branches and going out, which was encouraged by Darby in the first place. He said, get away from your organized churches, start your own little dispensation, list offshoots and get ready for the end of days.

00;27;15;12 - 00;27;39;22
Unknown
So it encourages this prepper mentality. It's like disconnect. And we heard this before too, right? With Himmler and the Voguish movement, which was that everything was about retreat. So was just kind of like a guidebook where it would basically be how to be the easy guide into being, missionary. Is that what this was? Kind of it ends up becoming that in many cases, but not all.

00;27;39;22 - 00;28;06;05
Unknown
I mean, there are people out there, maybe, who are listening to this right now who are devout believers in this, but it ends up being this is the complaint of the clergy, is that it ends up selling tickets to God. Right. And your sounds like it was like a guidebook, like, because, I mean, that's one of the another, real basic characteristic of American evangelicalism is, is the fact that they have these real small town churches.

00;28;06;07 - 00;28;28;27
Unknown
Right? And they're kind of anti-establishment in a way, and they can do their own thing, and they're independent. And that's that's the American spirit. That's behind them. And it sounds like this book was kind of a guideline. Hey, do your own thing. Don't worry about the movement. And the more organized churches. Absolutely. This book fit into America in several different ways that I think you can miss.

00;28;28;27 - 00;28;54;00
Unknown
You rush to the wrong conclusion. It fit into America's ethos of libertarianism and independence. And and it also fit into America's concepts of the devil, which are way more realized than a lot of other nations. Because we were founded by Christian pilgrims who had these. They saw the devil everywhere, right? Right. The Salem witch trials and things like that.

00;28;54;00 - 00;29;27;18
Unknown
And we'll discuss all that at some point. So for millions, Scofield became the guide to understanding prophecy, future events. And that's really attractive. That's what's sexy, right? That's what you can sell. And it's tough to be on the other side of that, trying to sell, you know, penance. Right? Right. So by embedding Christian Zionism in his node and treating the establishment of Israel as a prophetic necessity, he ends up laying the groundwork for a US political stance that would endure into the 21st century and shape some of our policies today.

00;29;27;20 - 00;29;52;24
Unknown
I mean, we just dropped a bomb on Iran because of some of this, so it couldn't be more relevant, right? Right. So as you mentioned, some of these things fit in the timeline and help dispensationalism take off to 1909. Scofield publishes. And then between then in 1948, it's starting to grow. It's just growing. It's getting bigger. And then in 1948, this is the founding of the modern state of Israel.

00;29;52;26 - 00;30;11;23
Unknown
So to dispensationalism at the time, like you point out, it feels like is is it this is the miracle of prophecy. And it becomes even more popular at the time. And then there's a Six-Day War that happens in 67, almost 20 years later. And in this war, Israel captures East Jerusalem, which was also seen as a sign of end times.

00;30;11;23 - 00;30;41;22
Unknown
Right? And in the 70s and 80s, there were a bunch of Christian authors that started jumping all over this. And then these ideas of Satan and the rapture and things like that. They start to become more realized all the way in the 1970s and 80s. So these are not ancient Christian secrets, right? These are things people were making up in the 70s and 80s and making a lot of money on, and still do today.

00;30;41;25 - 00;31;09;05
Unknown
The Scofield Reference Bible obviously makes its way into the Moody Institute, which is a big Bible college in Dallas. So it really takes off in Baptist and Pentecostal circles. It doesn't take off in any of the other established religions. Okay. And it also gives rise to a lot of nondenominational churches. Right. Which are most megachurches. Right. Or that you want to call exactly.

00;31;09;08 - 00;31;38;10
Unknown
But televangelists, and they're much bigger in the South, but they are spread out all over. You can find dispensationalism ideas everywhere. So when the Scofield Bible gets into the Moody Bible Institute, it starts to get everywhere, right? And it becomes part of the clergy and it becomes a part of what preachers are talking about. So in the 80s and 90s, if you were going to church, which most people were at the time, you were probably hearing about some of this dispensation list ideas.

00;31;38;10 - 00;32;02;19
Unknown
If unless you were a Catholic or Greek Orthodox or if you were a Protestant, you know, you were most likely hearing about these ideas. And then a lot of people left the church. There has been a massive decline in religion, and Christianity has been no exception. There's just a lot of people that have left the church or just not going to church anymore, but still claiming what is today called a Christian identity.

00;32;02;22 - 00;32;29;29
Unknown
Right? And this Christian identity tends to be more tied to this dispensation list idea, which is more of a revenge fantasy. So then it gets worked into politics. It's been used by many politicians to manipulate that group, and it constantly gets mixed up in our politics. And let's just skip to it and get it out because it's mixed up today, right?

00;32;30;02 - 00;32;54;29
Unknown
Dropping the bomb on Iran that dispensationalism played a part in that Iraq one dispensationalism played a part in the George Senior was a dispensationalism as well as George Junior. You know, they're from that Texas dispensationalism mindset. Senator Ted Cruz was on Tucker Carlson the other day, and he was saying, I was taught that those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who do not will be cursed.

00;32;55;02 - 00;33;27;01
Unknown
He said this very recently, and that was it. So like in Iraq, too, we all know no one found weapons of mass destruction. But George Bush Jr famously went to his people right after 911 and said, what do you got on Iraq? Right? Two years prior to that, Bibi Netanyahu was at a hearing in front of Congress saying, if you cause regime change in Iraq, it will have reverberations around the world.

00;33;27;03 - 00;33;48;27
Unknown
So he made it very clear, and he has for a long time that he wants regime change in Iraq and Iran. Netanyahu, from my point of view, more than any politician in Israeli US history, is willing to play into this Christian Zionist idea. So when I said the Scofield Bible ends up having effects on big things that can affect you, like even affects Gaza, right?

00;33;49;00 - 00;34;14;21
Unknown
And people's attitudes towards Gaza and people's attitudes for the genocide that's happening there. And we're against genocide just period. I think we made it very clear how we feel about the Holocaust. Bad. It's bad. Yeah. Genocide bad. I mean, basically that's our 114 witness policy. I don't know. Yeah. Right. So the genocide that started is bad and the genocide that's continuing it has killed ten times as many people like we we yes.

00;34;14;23 - 00;34;43;28
Unknown
Mass starvation. It's it's horrible. At some point the conversation of reciprocity went out the window and it just became genocide on top of genocide. So how people feel about this theology, even if they don't understand where it came from, ends up informing some of that. And the Iraq War connection in 2003 2004 is just very solid, because there was key decision makers in Bush's cabinet that were all dispensationalism.

00;34;44;00 - 00;35;11;03
Unknown
This was well known. I remember hearing about, high level officers, military officers that, held biblical views on being in Iraq. It was creepy. So when I say this affects your everyday life, if you happen to be in one of those wars or around one of those wars, or know someone who's affected by those wars as part of the 22 veterans a day, they commit suicide.

00;35;11;05 - 00;35;35;04
Unknown
These things affect all of that because they were one of the reasons for the war. Right? So prophecy ends up moving from fringe culture into mainstream US evangelical culture to that. But it's actually on its way out. And the way we know that is through polls. But religious polling is actually very hard because you have to define what do you mean by someone's religion?

00;35;35;04 - 00;36;05;10
Unknown
What do you mean by someone's religious affiliation? Does that mean they go to church? How many times, year do they have to go to church in order to be considered? You know, you have to define all of these things, right? If you just go once a year, does that mean you're practicing Christian? Exactly. I think people would be shocked if they looked at the difference between Christians who go to church and Christians who don't go to church in terms of how much money they make, in terms of how they vote, in terms of everything.

00;36;05;13 - 00;36;25;24
Unknown
There's a big difference between those two groups that I think, again, would shock mostly the people who are religiously unaffiliated. The religious polls in this case are pretty strong because pastors are pretty honest people, and they surveyed pastors about how they feel about this theology. So that ends up being pretty strong as far as figuring out, is this on its way up?

00;36;26;00 - 00;36;55;16
Unknown
Is it down this way? Down? When did it peak? So it appears to have peaked around 92,000, and it's been on its way out since then, because I think the last stat that I saw was that pastors under the age of 45, 70% of them were for covenant theology and only 30% were for dispensationalism. And and it flips in terms of the majority in Protestant circles and those specific Protestant circles.

00;36;55;16 - 00;37;17;17
Unknown
Obviously, you can't survey. Again, this is the challenge of religious polling is you can't go survey Catholics. And that wouldn't be an accurate poll. So you have to figure out, okay, are we going to do not non-denominational, etc.. But these were pretty solid. So it's basically saying that the new way of thinking in Christianity is dispensationalism is on its way.

00;37;17;20 - 00;37;40;26
Unknown
It's also a big change in the church. The older generation tends to be more towards this dispensation. This idea, and the newer generation tends to be more toward the covenant theology. Okay, but either way, the apocalypse is an evergreen commodity. This idea will never go away. It just this idea of rapture. And I mean, like even in hearkens back to our pilgrim past.

00;37;41;01 - 00;38;04;26
Unknown
What does the Bible actually say about the end times? Well, like I said, it's actually different depending on which part of the Bible you're looking at. But theologians would say that there's a cohesion to all of them. So what does that say? Basically, all end times Christian prophecies have this beginning and a middle. And then the middle is when the Messiah shows up.

00;38;04;29 - 00;38;26;05
Unknown
Okay, most organized Christian churches take that to mean Jesus Christ showed up right then, and that signaled we're in the end phase. Okay. And by the way, since we've talked about people who are saying right now, like Chris Bledsoe, that Jesus is coming back or whatever, I always have the one question, did he say his name was Jesus?

00;38;26;08 - 00;38;51;29
Unknown
Because that wasn't his name. His name was Yahushua. I think Yahushua would know his own name. So did he say, hey, I'm Jesus, I'm coming back. I just want to throw that out there that I have that one hang up, because it's actually pained me a bunch of times to be calling. Yeah, I was sure what Jesus today, but for clarity, I'm doing so after Yahushua made himself known.

00;38;52;01 - 00;39;15;25
Unknown
We know we're in the end phase and how that plays out, like I said, comes back to your view on predator ism, futurism, idealism, that sort of thing. But an important component to the dispensationalism philosophy is this idea of an Antichrist or multiple Antichrist. And they're also usually naming celebrities as the Antichrist or politicians, you know, and they're like that, that guy's the Antichrist.

00;39;15;29 - 00;39;47;08
Unknown
You know, it's a needed component. It is a needed you need a villain, right? It's this is a story and you need a villain also, by the way, those dispensationalism charts look definitely a cult. The term Antichrist might appear, depending on who you're talking to once in the Bible, and it's in John, and it refers broadly to those who would deny Christ and incarnation people who are saying, you know, Christ isn't the Messiah.

00;39;47;10 - 00;40;11;23
Unknown
And what he was referring to were people who are already in the church. So he was saying that the Antichrist was going to come from there. Okay. So then in Thessalonians, Paul is speaks of a man of lawlessness, which we assume is the Antichrist. And this is a man of sin. It's a powerful figure who opposes God, and he exalts himself.

00;40;11;26 - 00;40;34;06
Unknown
So he's not showing up and saying, hey, guys, worship the devil. He's saying, hey, worship me. I'm, I'm your God. I should be like, what do you care about God for? And he deceives many. And I feel like this gets left out a lot, is that this was a big part of all of these end times prophecies, is that the Antichrist is going to come from the church, and he's going to deceive the church.

00;40;34;06 - 00;40;55;06
Unknown
He's going to break off a part of the church. He's going to break off. So, you know, if you were looking at it in some Christians do, they were like, well, that's dispensationalism, that's doing that. You know, so there's big divisions about this stuff. And then in revelations, John's describing to be someone from the sea, which is interpreted as political power.

00;40;55;08 - 00;41;22;00
Unknown
And that's often linked to the Antichrist and then one from the earth that just like the false prophet, and that would be the beast which we assume symbolizes like oppressive evil powers that oppose God and persecute believers. So this is where that persecution thing really hits home. Now in revelations I really have to hit home that John was talking about events during his time.

00;41;22;04 - 00;41;45;14
Unknown
When he is talking about the horror of Babylon, he is talking about Rome. This is not disputed. This is everybody consensus. He is talking about Rome. But the characteristics that we draw from that is that the Antichrist would be deceptive and blasphemous, that he would oppose God for Christ leads more of an apostate movement and persecute the faithful.

00;41;45;16 - 00;42;10;26
Unknown
That is part of the the prophecy and is often associated with miracles or signs of the time. So you know, so people are doing it today, right? They're like, look, the drones are showing up. They're pointing to people. Exactly. And they're like, this guy is deceiving the church, etc. like it's yeah, there's always that persecution complex. I think, it's, it's a tool.

00;42;10;26 - 00;42;40;26
Unknown
Also, you know, in American churches to, to gain followers, you know, we're, we're in dire straits, you know, we're we're being you know, you're treading on us and follow me and I'll show you the way out of this. Yeah. And the con artists tap into that. So I'm not saying everyone who believes in dispensationalism is a con artist, but there's a lot of them in that movement because of the nature of the movement, that it's a charismatic movement.

00;42;40;28 - 00;43;02;07
Unknown
Right? So they can take advantage of people's emotions, they take advantage of people's beliefs. They target people who don't have a lot of information or have access to some sort of Bible study. Yeah. And that's how they sell kind of the idea of having just hidden knowledge to exactly. So depending on how you view theology is how you would also view the Antichrist.

00;43;02;07 - 00;43;30;05
Unknown
And a futurist would view this as an actual individual and world leader who appears before Christ's return and would be linked to a revived Roman Empire or global government. Right. And you can see why people would say that. I mean, I don't think you're crazy. It's just that this always happens. Like, if you look at John and I have a good friend who's a pastor of a pretty big church, and he tells me his philosophy is this just keeps happening.

00;43;30;07 - 00;43;48;14
Unknown
It's the same cycle. And this really reminds me of the Hindu philosophy, which we can actually work. The Hindus, a version of the apocalypse in here. And that's what it's basically in cycles, right? It's just always like that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. So it happens, but it's rebirths and it's happened multiple times. Yes. And it will happen again.

00;43;48;17 - 00;44;22;14
Unknown
Yeah. Right. This actually aligns with our thoughts and research. What we found through our years of ten research that this is somehow how the universe maybe works. Right. To a predator ist who saw this happening in the past, the Antichrist was primarily the Roman emperor, as I mentioned, that that's the literal translation of it. Okay. If you don't say John was recording this as a metaphor, which would teach me something about my times, and you take it as a literal translation and you go the Antichrist was the Roman emperor, right?

00;44;22;17 - 00;44;51;15
Unknown
And a historicist would look at the Antichrist as a succession of figures or institutions that oppose Christ throughout history, and they're often identified with the papacy or corrupt religious power. So, like, you know, there's a lot of rumors about the Pope and the Antichrist floating around all the time. So Protestants aren't the only one with wild beliefs about end times, right?

00;44;51;18 - 00;45;27;09
Unknown
But as an idealist that it takes religion is more symbolic roadmap. You look at the Antichrist as a spirit of opposition to Christ. So someone who opposes Christ, central teachings, Hitler, Himmler, Antichrist, right. Crowley, who was wearing that Antichrist mantle proudly. Antichrist. Yeah, I could really see this definition in an idealist point of view. This keeps happening kind of similar to Soros's point of view, where it just keeps happening.

00;45;27;11 - 00;45;57;14
Unknown
Right. And if we look at history, they'd be right. There's precedent. Yeah, but the idea of the rapture is certainly helped along by pop culture and movies, because it's sexy. Yeah. I mean, even isn't there even criticism and the Book of Revelations, because it was kind of added later on and in the timeline, there's a lot of skepticism about why revelations was even added to the Bible.

00;45;57;16 - 00;46;28;04
Unknown
It's a good question. I mean, that's written by John the Apostle, not John the Baptist. So there's even good questions about why you were including Paul the Apostles works. Yeah. That the disciples obviously make sense, but there's good question. So that's all I'm saying. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can't no one wants to think about politics. But there was a political situation in biblical times, obviously, with the Romans and, even John the Baptist in the, you know, Dead Sea Scrolls.

00;46;28;10 - 00;47;01;05
Unknown
Yeah. Where Dead Sea Scrolls put John the Baptist in more of, of like, kind of anti-establishment figure. Right. So I think from a pastoral point of view, if you feel like taking advice from a heretic. Is that the End Times encourages faithfulness. It encourages vigilance, and it calls believers to be discerning. It calls them to hold fast to Yahushua is central message, right?

00;47;01;07 - 00;47;26;13
Unknown
And it also tells you the end of the story. That's the best part. It provides hope that evil will be overcome through Yahoshua is return and how you view these things will end up determining how you live your life. As a Christian. Speaking of contemporary events, let's look at Moses Mike Johnson likes to call himself right. Well known dispensation list.

00;47;26;16 - 00;47;56;21
Unknown
Just recently visiting Israel looking at these red heifers, which they're now trying to clone into red heifers that have no white hairs on them so that they can get this end times thing going. Are you serious? Yep. Wow. And then let's look at what Moses Mike Johnson did right before the recess, which was to end the session early so that he could get out of a vote on the Epstein files.

00;47;56;23 - 00;48;20;16
Unknown
Yeah. So when you if you were looking at this from a different point of view than a dispensation list, this was a number of the bees movement. You clearly knew this was evil. It's really reminds me of what the other side told me, which is everyone's ideas of good and evil are different. You're wrong. And I didn't believe that.

00;48;20;16 - 00;48;51;20
Unknown
Right. Because it's like if someone like Mike Johnson really believed in the Bible, wouldn't he be after these people from the Epstein files, would he ever let just lain Maxwell out on work release? Yeah, like if you it's like if you thought the hey, know, if you thought the sky was going to crack open tomorrow, right. If you, if you thought trumpets were blaring, would you be like, yeah, okay, let's try to get this guy out of, you know, trafficking charge, right?

00;48;51;20 - 00;49;12;07
Unknown
Right. Yeah. I don't know how it's justified. I mean, maybe because the big picture in their heads is that, they have to keep, you know, they're doing God's work, and they have to. I'm sure they have a name for it, but they have to, brushed aside to keep keep the the agenda. This idea of Christian Zionism starts to replace morality.

00;49;12;09 - 00;49;37;04
Unknown
Yeah. It's like as long as you're promoting Israel and getting the five red heifers, you don't have to promote justice. You don't have to protect children. Like, what is wrong with you, man? Yeah. If you hear trumpets blaring tomorrow, don't be surprised if two heretics shuffle by you and you're going to hear Saint Peter go roar. Max and bones in the house.

00;49;37;06 - 00;50;06;29
Unknown
I see you down there rebuking, rebuking? Yeah. You know, maybe not all that glitters is gold, right? Right. Yeah. It's a strange turn of events. We're in a we're kind of in a in a reset almost when it comes, morality basically a discussion of morality in America. But, you know, we talked about Q you know, remember when QAnon came up, we were talking about the Epstein stuff because they're just kind of a link to that, too, right?

00;50;06;29 - 00;50;28;22
Unknown
Because weren't they really big into like, hidden the idea of hidden knowledge where they were, they were finding meaning in anything they saw on the, on the internet, even like, like certain numbers that were typed and a tweet, you know, you bring up a good point. This is gamification and that's what Scofield did. You know, he created the charts and he let people do that.

00;50;28;22 - 00;50;51;12
Unknown
And then, by the way, other people have come up with different phases of dispensation. So there's like some people have nine, some people have 11. So if this was anywhere close to anything theologically sound, they wouldn't do that right? Right. But it kind of it kind of leads to the conspiracy mindset that we see today. I mean, it does it plays in very well.

00;50;51;12 - 00;51;14;10
Unknown
And we know, you know, our audience is into it. Like, and there's a big crossover of eschatology and ufology n times and UFOs are like hot right now. Right? And people are trying to back it in and say, oh, it's the Nephilim from the Book of Enoch who actually took the on anarchy who? And they love this stuff.

00;51;14;10 - 00;51;37;19
Unknown
Right? It's the same idea. It's a progression of a sensationalist mindset. And Greer plays into this too. And they know who they're playing into. They know what you already believe, right? Right, right. And they go, okay, how can I spin it? And then they spin it one way and they look at their numbers and they go, oh, I see where it dropped off.

00;51;37;19 - 00;51;58;17
Unknown
Let me next time try this. I mean, this is how these people are playing you. This is how the influencers are playing you too. What they do is they go, okay, I need to make a video today. Look at Superman and Sydney Sweeney, right. So oh yeah, these two nothing burgers. No one was that mad about any of that, right.

00;51;58;19 - 00;52;20;16
Unknown
And how that happens is that the influencers get up every morning and they look at what's trending in hashtags on YouTube, what's trending on Twitter, what's trending on TikTok, and then they make videos about that. So if you're a political influencer and you see Superman is hot and it's number one Google thing, you go, I gotta make a video about Superman.

00;52;20;19 - 00;52;49;05
Unknown
How can I make something up about Superman? Like, and then they just manufacture rage and people do the same thing with Sydney Sweeney. So what? I don't care if she has genes. I don't care that Superman is Superman. It doesn't matter to me like this is completely manufactured rage. And they know who they're talking to. Yeah, it's just the difference is the reach and the just the amount of information is just so astronomical.

00;52;49;05 - 00;53;12;26
Unknown
I mean, because I think about before the internet, who, who was who was doing that kind of stuff before the internet, it was people in rural areas with, shortwave radios. Right. And with, you know, building antennas in their backyards and broadcasting the end times from from a farm. No. And before that, it was pamphlets. Yeah. Right. That and you have to trace it that far.

00;53;12;26 - 00;53;37;01
Unknown
And, you know, there's been a lot of truth that's been told through those mediums. Right? I'd like to hope that believe that one of those. Right. But if you use the internet as an example, it's also now become the father of lies, right. To bring it all home, you know. Right now I'm adding to the eschatology. Oh, gosh, let's get out of here right?

00;53;37;03 - 00;54;02;02
Unknown
And time is a little bit better. Our numbers are going to go up. You know? Wait, wait. There might be some. Well, I hope that that information made you look at things differently. And you go to process this for a while. And I would encourage you to do it with emerging data. Go, okay, who's doing what. And does this dispensation list mindset play into that?

00;54;02;04 - 00;54;25;15
Unknown
Right. And you'll start to look at how some of that information warfare is conducted, how the mysterious they have enveloped Christianity in that two. And you know what? I think we're going to do an episode in the near future on who the mysterious they are and all of us. Right? Yeah. I think we have some good ideas on that.

00;54;25;17 - 00;54;46;17
Unknown
Yeah, well, I gotta say, it really does. I mean, when you look at the whole picture, it's a really kind of amazing, the history of it and, and where we are today, like I mentioned, the internet, but, you know, it's not just the internet. It's just kind of amazing. You got a lot of online conspiracies that are just out of control.

00;54;46;19 - 00;55;19;23
Unknown
Politics just enter every facet of our lives, you know? And it really it really kind of comes back to this, this is this was the foundation. It didn't happen. Yeah. It laid the foundation. Let me let me try to say it for our listeners. Dispensationalism. Got it. Good. That's a tough one. Yeah it did. It laid the groundwork for the type of paranoia that would come to color a lot of our politics and culture wars, etc..

00;55;19;25 - 00;55;42;20
Unknown
Yeah, for sure. That was good stuff. I have a feeling we're going to touch on this topic again, and, we are in season four, so man, anything goes. Yeah, yeah, this is this this is kind of anything goes. We're going to we're going to name who's at the top of all of the conspiracies all the time.

00;55;42;23 - 00;56;03;16
Unknown
Now that's the goal. The season for nothing. There you go. And maybe by the end we'll figure out what a Fortean this. Yeah. To fort to fort. All right, everyone will. Hey, thanks for listening. Once again. Please visit our website at 14 windsor.com. Thanks, Rob. Thanks for.