Though the article is particularly about the American evangelical Christian, it sure gives a background as to why Christians in Nigeria and elsewhere support Israel.

The Scofield Bible—The Book That Made Zionists of America’s Evangelical Christians
By Maidhc Ó Cathail

“For a nation to commit the sin of anti-Semitism brings inevitable judgement.”

The New Scofield Study Bible
Since it was first published in 1909, the Scofield Reference Bible has made uncompromising Zionists out of tens of millions of Americans. When John Hagee, the founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), said that “50 million evangelical bible-believing Christians unite with five million American Jews standing together on behalf of Israel,” it was the Scofield Bible that he was talking about.

Although the Scofield Reference Bible contains the text of the King James Authorized Version, it is not the traditional Protestant bible but Cyrus I. Scofield’s annotated commentary that is problematic. More than any other factor, it is Scofield’s notes that have induced generations of American evangelicals to believe that God demands their uncritical support for the modern State of Israel.

BLESSING ISRAEL, CURSING ITS CRITICS
Central to Christian Zionist belief is Scofield’s commentary (italicized below) on Genesis 12:3: “‘I will bless them that bless thee.’ In fulfillment closely related to the next clause, ‘And curse him that curseth thee.’ Wonderfully fulfilled in the history of the dispersion. It has invariably fared ill with the people who have persecuted the Jew—well with those who have protected him. The future will still more remarkably prove this principle.”

Drawing on Scofield’s rather tendentious interpretation, Hagee claims, “The man or nation that lifts a voice or hand against Israel invites the wrath of God.”

But as Stephen Sizer points out in his definitive critique, Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon? (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More): “The promise, when referring to Abraham’s descendants, speaks of God blessing them, not of entire nations ‘blessing’ the Hebrew nation, still less the contemporary and secular State of Israel.”

Notwithstanding this more orthodox reading, The New Scofield Study Bible, published by Oxford University Press in 1984, intensified Scofield’s interpretation by adding, “For a nation to commit the sin of anti-Semitism brings inevitable judgement.”

“Sustained by a dubious exegesis of selective biblical texts,” Sizer concludes, “Christian Zionism’s particular reading of history and contemporary events...sets Israel and the Jewish people apart from other peoples in the Middle East...it justifies the endemic racism intrinsic to Zionism, exacerbates tensions between Jews and Palestinians and undermines attempts to find a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, all because ‘the Bible tells them so.’”

THE INCREDIBLE SCOFIELD
In his 2008 book, The Rise of Israel: A History of a Revolutionary State, Jonathan R. Adelman describes the crucial support Israel receives from Christian fundamentalists as “totally fortuitous.” That assertion is belied, however, by the incredible career of the man who wrote “the Bible of Fundamentalism.”

Two years after Scofield’s reported conversion to Christianity in 1879, the Atchison Patriot was less than impressed. Describing the former Atchison resident as the “late lawyer, politician and shyster generally,” the article went on to recount a few of Scofield’s “many malicious acts.” These included a series of forgeries in St. Louis, for which he was sentenced to six months in jail.

Being a “born again” preacher did not preclude Scofield from becoming a member of an exclusive New York men’s club in 1901, either. In his devastating biography, The Incredible Scofield and His Book, Joseph M. Canfield suggests, “The admission of Scofield to the Lotus Club, which could not have been sought by Scofield, strengthens the suspicion that has cropped up before, that someone was directing the career of C.I. Scofield.”

That someone, Canfield suspects, was associated with one of the club’s committee members, the Wall Street lawyer Samuel Untermeyer. As Canfield intimates, Scofield’s theology was “most helpful in getting Fundamentalist Christians to back the international interest in one of Untermeyer’s pet projects—the Zionist Movement.”

Others have been even more explicit about the nature of Scofield’s service to the Zionist agenda. In “Unjust War Theory: Christian Zionism and the Road to Jerusalem,” Prof. David W. Lutz writes, “Untermeyer used Scofield, a Kansas City lawyer with no formal training in theology, to inject Zionist ideas into American Protestantism. Untermeyer and other wealthy and influential Zionists whom he introduced to Scofield promoted and funded the latter’s career, including travel in Europe.”

On one of these European trips, Oxford University Press publisher Henry Frowde “expressed immediate interest” in Scofield’s project. According to a biography of Frowde, although the OUP publisher was “[n]ot demonstrative in his religious views, all his Christian life he was associated with brethren known as ‘Exclusive.’” The “Exclusive Brethren” refers to the group of Christian evangelicals that, in an 1848 split in the Plymouth Brethren, followed John Nelson Darby, the Anglo-Irish missionary generally considered to have been the most influential figure in the development of Christian Zionism, and a major influence on Scofield.

SCOFIELD’S LEGACY
Had the Scofield Bible never been published, American presidents influenced by Christian Zionism such as Truman, Johnson, Reagan and George W. Bush might have been less sympathetic to Israeli demands, and consequently more attentive to U.S. interests. Moreover, the American people could have been spared the pseudo-Christian rants of John Hagee, Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, not to mention the lucrative End Times Rapture “prophecy” peddled by Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye.

But it is the people of the Middle East who have been most affected by an expansionist Israel emboldened by the unswerving allegiance of Christian Zionists led to believe that Scofield’s words are God’s will. Not least among the many victims of the Scofield Bible are 5 million Palestinian refugees whose right to return is fervently opposed by America’s Zionized Christians. Thanks to their indoctrination by Scofield’s unholy book, they believe that Palestine belongs not to the Palestinians—many of whom are fellow Christians—but exclusively to “God’s chosen people.”

https://www.wrmea.org/2015-october/the-scofield-bible-the-book-that-made-zionists-of-americas-evangelical-christians.html

It is churchgoers who support isreal and not Christians for Christians know that their is nothing to support other than a country dealing with its own boko haram terrorists.

Dtruthspeaker:
It is churchgoers who support isreal and not Christians for Christians know that their is nothing to support other than a country dealing with its own boko haram terrorists.

k, yeah right!

AbuTwins:
Though the article is particularly about the American evangelical Christian, it sure gives a background as to why Christians in Nigeria and elsewhere support Israel.

So, what you are trying to have us believe is that Nigerian Christians who support the current nation of Israel have all read this Scofield Bible, abi?

Kobojunkie:
So, what you are trying to have us believe is that Nigerian Christians who support the current nation of Israel have all read this Scofield Bible, abi?

They they were wholly or partially influenced by it.

AbuTwins:
■ That they were wholly or partially influenced by it.

Without ever reading it?

Kobojunkie:
Without ever reading it?

Are you talking about you or everyone?

AbuTwins:
■ Are you talking about you or everyone?

This is what is in your OP

AbuTwins:
Though the article is particularly about the American evangelical Christian, it sure gives a background as to why Christians in Nigeria and elsewhere support Israel.

So?

Kobojunkie:
This is what is in your OPSo?

Yes

AbuTwins:
Yes

So, If you believe they were influenced by the Scofield bible, explain to us how that came about given that most Nigerian Christians instead swear by the King James Bible.

Kobojunkie:
So, If you believe they were influenced by the Scofield bible, explain to us how that came about given that most Nigerian Christians instead swear by the King James Bible.

See it below!

AbuTwins:
■ See it below!

As it says right there in the image, the Scofield bible is instead a study Bible which is different from the Old King James Bible which many Nigerian Christians swear by. How many Nigerian Christians have you in fact met carrying around a study Bible? .

Kobojunkie:
As it says right there in the image, the Scofield bible is instead a study Bible which is different from the Old King James Bible which many Nigerian Christians swear by. How many Nigerian Christians have you in fact met carrying around a study Bible? .

You don't need to carry the book about to be influenced by it. In the write up you can see some popular preachers named right there.

Many MOGs here too preach as such!

And the Scofield Bible apart from the notes has exactly the KJV.

And the notes popularized what is now know as the dispensionalism in Protestant Christianity.

AbuTwins:
■ You don't need to carry the book about to be influenced by it. In the write up you can see some popular preachers named right there. Many MOGs here too preach as such! And the Scofield Bible apart from the notes has exactly the KJV.
■ And the notes popularized what is now know as the dispensionalism in Protestant Christianity.

How many Nigerian preachers own this Scofield Bible and preach exactly that which those listed equally preach then?

2. Dispensationalism predates the Scofield study Bible so why do you now insist this book is to credit for its popularity?