Founders of the Pre-Tribulation Rapture Theory--II

In the study of Scripture and future things, perhaps no theory gets more publicity and believers than the pre-tribulation rapture theory, which says the rapture of Christians to heaven will occur before the disastrous tribulation (spoken of in Revelation 6 and Matthew 24-25).  But I believe this “pretrib” view to be faulty, and have laid forth a chronology in three blogs elsewhere in this website. You can also read the bio of John Darby (last week’s blog), who, as a founder of the pre-trib theory, had deep faults The post-trib (or a pre-wrath) view, also shared by many scholars, is not as popular, because it has Christians enduring the tribulation.  But it has the advantage of being based solely on Scripture, as I have lots of verses backing it up.  Their pre-trib view has fascinating books and a movie (“Left Behind”) backing it up.  They also have their Scriptural backup, which are shaky. But one way to decide is to take a good look at their main founders, C.I. Scofield and John Darby. They lack any credibility, as we saw last week—and we’ll see today.    

Even modern believers of the pre-trib idea admit its weakness.  The college that churns out the most pre-trib pastors is Dallas Theological Seminary.  One of its presidents, John Walvoord, wrote over 30 books, many celebrating this view of end-time events.  The only problem is, Walvoord, revered as the academic patriarch of pre-trib, is quoted as saying:  “There is no passage (of Scripture) that teaches the pre-tribulation rapture.”  Attempts to do so, as he said, are “strained.”  Walvoord tried hard to paint the early church fathers pre-tribulationists, too—but he failed, as most objective scholars agree.  Most of the early church fathers (by that I don’t mean Catholic here) were post-tribulational (see last week’s blog for clarification).  Another scholar, Dr. John MacArthur, says the only way you conclude pre-trib is, it’s “between the lines.”  So, in a black-and-white Bible, the pre-trib view is….in the white! Where there’s no print. Saying this, he’s really saying, “I don’t have the proper proof, but this is my opinion.”  But you can hardly make doctrine out of people’s speculations and opinions, but that’s what happened. Popularity really decided it, not Scripture.

It doesn’t help that another one of their believers, Edgar Whisenant, predicted the rapture would occur in 1988, sometime between Sept. 11 and Sept. 13. He published two books about this, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988 and On Borrowed Time. Eventually, 300,000 copies of 88 Reasons were mailed free of charge to ministers across America, and 4.5 million copies were sold in bookstores and elsewhere. Whisenant was quoted as saying "Only if the Bible is in error am I wrong; and I say that to every preacher in town" and "[I]f there were a king in this country and I could gamble with my life, I would stake my life on Rosh Hashana 1988."  Well, it’s a good thing he didn’t bet.  He was clearly deceived—and wrong, since there was no rapture.  (He also predicted the rapture on three more years, but everyone lost interest).

This kind of arrogance of Walvoord and MacArthur, allowing their opinions to become modern-day doctrine, with no Scriptural proof, along with the failed prophecy of Whisenant, make these men false prophets.  So I would like to take the time to go back to the idea’s founders.  Last week it was John Darby.  This week we look at C.I. Scofield.  You will find their biographies  stimulating, to say the least.  

It is well known that Cyrus Ingerson Scofield (1843-1921) was instrumental in bringing the dispensationalist theology to the world through his Scofield Reference Bible, first published in 1909.  To quote Wikipedia:

“It was largely through the influence of Scofield's notes that dispensationalism grew in influence among fundamentalist Christians in the United States. Scofield's notes on the Book of Revelation are a major source for the various timetables, judgments, and plagues elaborated on by popular religious writers such as Hal Lindsey and Tim LaHaye; and in part because of the success of the Scofield Reference Bible, twentieth-century American fundamentalists placed greater stress on eschatological speculation…”

Scofield was really a Bible commentator.  What’s bad about that is that he never had a theological degree.  That did not stop him from the audacity of placing his notes among the pages of Scripture—a new idea at the time—for his Scofield Reference Bible.  The arrogance was breathtaking, but that’s not all.  I would not trust a Bible commentator that had a long series of questionable events in his past—would you?  Carrying on with other women while still married, for example.  Along with several other crimes.  What about the fact that his hijinks continued after he was allegedly saved, publically?  And here’s one:  though he never had a theological degree, he claimed to be Doctor of Divinity.  Let’s look at all the proof. 

Scofield claimed he was a lawyer.  But there was no record of any law degree or passing any bar exam.  He was apprenticed as a lawyer, but as you will see below, too many obstacles prevented his becoming a lawyer. A newspaper hounded him, good thing.  Start with an alias that he used frequently, a sure indication of a con man.

The November 29, 1877 edition of the Milwaukee Daily Sentinel reported that:

"A fellow named Charles Ingerson, who for 2 weeks past boarded at the Metropolitan Hotel, is under arrest for vagrancy. The fellow pretended to be the owner of a 1,300 acre plantation near Mobile and was paving the way to a union with a fair daughter of the South side, when his career here was suddenly brought to a close by the landlord of the hotel, Mr. Sam D. Maynard, who cared more to save the lady than to call him to account for the amount of the board-bill."

The same newspaper on December 4, 1877 followed up on this developing story, saying, "Ingerson, arrested on a charge of vagrancy by the landlord of the Metropolitan Hotel, is to be set free. His affianced settled his board-bill and the course of true love will again run smooth."

On December 17, 1877 we read further: "The fellow Ingerson, who talked freely of his large cotton plantation away down South, is again under arrest for vagrancy. He wheedled his affianced into paying his board-bill at the Metropolitan Hotel and has since managed to exhaust her pin-money and the loose change of a number of South Siders."

Luckily for "Ingerson," the local reporters did not find out that he was already married, having a wife and two daughters who were living in Atchison, Kansas.

We hear yet more of "Ingerson" from the October 3, 1878, issue of the paper, which was still off slightly on his real name that they had found out:

"Cyrus Schofield [sic] alias Chas. Ingerson, who has been hanging around here since the first of July, and who figured conspicuously at the Metropolitan Hotel in Milwaukee a year ago, was arrested here [Horicon, Wisconsin] Tuesday morning on a charge of forgery, dispatches having been received by Deputy Sheriff A. E. Hart from parties in St. Louis to hold Mr. Schofield until an officer should arrive to take him in charge. Mr. Hart lodged the gentleman in our county jail, where he awaits the arrival of the Chief of Police of St. Louis."

All of this is significant, because many years later, Scofield, who eventually became famous as a Congregationalist preacher and editor of the Scofield Reference Bible, also made the claim that he had maintained a successful law practice in St. Louis during the very same period of time that he was experiencing all these problems with the law in Wisconsin.

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How could Scofield have maintained a large law practice in St. Louis in this period, if he spent most of that time either in Wisconsin or in jail?

Wikipedia’s comments include that he was a “self-confessed” heavy drinker, and his dirty tricks included, most spectacularly, his time period helping a Kansas Senator, Ingalls, around 1873.  Mr. Ingalls was forced to fire him the same year he hired him because Scofield accepted bribes, stole political contributions intended for Ingalls, and forged signatures on bank promissory notes.  The last of those charges earned him jail time.

By now, some of my patient readers may be thinking, "What do we care about his background, as long as Scofield was saved in 1879?" and, "It is unfair to bring up offenses committed by Scofield before he was saved."  Well, fact was, he returned from Milwaukee to St. Louis around the end of 1877, and then left St. Louis in the late summer of 1878 to avoid a forgery charge. He was returned to St. Louis on October 8, 1878, and spent much of the following year in jail, until his case was finally dismissed in November, 1879.  But we have further: let’s see if his ‘salvation’ made a difference:

Scofield's conversion to Christianity is variously claimed to the year 1879 or 1880. He testified that he was saved through the witness of one of his “law clients,” Thomas McPheeters

Scofield's biographer Charles Trumbull states that McPheeters witnessed to Scofield and won him to the Lord in Scofield's law office. BUT efforts have been made to locate that office without success.

To add to the confusion, there are other stories of how Scofield was converted. A story that appeared in the Atchison, Kansas Patriot, and the Topeka, Kansas Daily Capitol, in 1881 stated that Scofield, having spent 6 months in jail in St. Louis, was converted while in jail. (I thought it was in his law office with a client?) But his ways did not change, even if that story is true; after his release from jail, he began a courtship with a Christian woman, alleging that he was now divorced from his wife in Kansas (which was not true - they were still married until 1883).

More to the story:

As of 1899, Scofield still owed a lot of people in Atchison, Kansas, a lot of money which he had not yet paid back. This was noted in an article in the Kansas City Journal on December 28, 1899. Scofield had attracted the notice of the paper by officiating at the funeral of the famous evangelist D.L. Moody.

D. Jean Rushing of East Tennessee State University, in her unpublished paper on the life of Scofield, notes,

"Atchison residents still sought restitution from Scofield after he became a clergyman, the paper reported, 'when approached by his Kansas creditors, Parson Scofield declared that he is poor and unable to pay.' Perhaps what Rev. Scofield owed in Atchison, Kansas, far exceeded his income sources--but  if he didn’t take 7 months’ vacation abroad, he might have made some headway in paying the debts."

Most fundamental Baptist churches today would expel such a scoundrel from the membership. They certainly would not make such a man into an almost infallible source of Christian doctrine, and yet that is exactly what modern dispensationalists have made out of Scofield.

What about Scofield's marriage? When he got saved, surely he returned to the wife and children he had abandoned in Kansas, and took up his proper role as husband and provider, like a Christian man should. Right? Wrong!

David Lutzweiler, in his Scofield biography, In Praise of Folly, notes that:

"Leontine [Scofield] had drawn up that first pleading for divorce. The papers were filed on December 9, [1881] charging that her husband had 'absented himself from his said wife and children, and had not been with them but abandoned them with the intention of not returning to them again.' The divorce was final in December 1883.

Scofield's followers have made all sorts of excuses for his divorce. They say that there was no way the newly saved Scofield could be expected to get along with a fanatically Roman Catholic spouse.

However, it is not clear that Scofield ever made any attempt to reconcile with his wife. But his Christian “scruples” (if he had any) about being unequally yoked to an unsaved spouse had nothing to do with it.

The August 27, 1881, the Topeka Daily Capital reported:

"Cyrus I. Schofield [sic] formerly of Kansas, late lawyer, politician,… has left the state and a destitute family and took refuge in Canada... In the latter part of his confinement, Schofield became converted, or professedly so. After this change of heart his wealthy sister came forward and paid his way out by settling the forgeries, and the next we hear of him he is ordained as a minister of the Congregational Church.

“In the meantime the courtship between himself and the pretty young representative of the Flower Mission continued.  Schofield represented at first that his wife had obtained a decree of divorce. When the falsity of this story was ascertained by inquiries of our district clerk (ed note:  She did not even file for divorce until several months later), he started on another lie that a divorce would be obtained, that he loved his children better than his life, but that the incompatibility of his wife's temper and her religious zeal in the Catholic Church was such that he could not possibly live with her.

Rushing reports on how Scofield's divorce was hurriedly finalized, right around the time that he was being ordained by the Congregational Churches of North Texas:

"Leontine Cerre Scofield filed for divorce just days before the council held the ordainment ceremony...later freed from 'being unequally yoked,' Scofield took notice of Hettie Hall Van Wartz, another northerner who relocated to Dallas, Texas, from Michigan. Hettie and her sister Mattie joined First Congregational Church just one day after the court filed Scofield's divorce.  Dallas County, Texas, issued a marriage certificate to Cyrus Scofield and Hettie H. Van Wartz and they married on March 11, 1884."

In the information that Scofield submitted for publication in the 1912 edition of "Who's Who," he omitted any reference to his first wife and his children. At that time, knowledge of his divorce and remarriage would have been very damaging to his reputation.

The 1912 "Who's Who" entry contains other errors that could have been based only on information supplied by Scofield. It states that Scofield served in the Tennessee Infantry from May 1861 "to the close of Civil War." But the Civil War ended in April, 1865. It is a matter of record that Scofield was discharged, then conscripted, then deserted to the Union—in 1862.

Scofield moved to St Louis, Missouri, and was living there at the time of General Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, in April, 1865. However, he told his biographer Trumbull that he was "12 miles from Appomattox" at the time of the surrender, and said he claimed his share of Union Army food supplies that were transferred by General Grant to Lee's troops.

In his "Who's Who" entry, he gave the date of his second marriage as July 14, 1884, which is 4 months after the correct date of March 11. There was a simple reason for this lie. Canfield states, "It was reported by Trumbull and others that Cyrus and Hettie were married after a friendship of about 6 months. Now backdating 6 months from March, 1884, takes us back to September, 1883. So Cyrus was seeing Hettie before he was divorced.  Cyrus was then still legally bound to Leontine and not morally free to court Hettie or anyone else."

Scofield prudently omitted any mention of his alleged, and totally undocumented, D.D. degree (Doctor of Divinity) in his "Who's Who" entry. There is no record of any educational institution granting Scofield such a degree, but that did not stop him from claiming to have such a degree on the front page of his Scofield Reference Bible. Actually, we have no record of Scofield receiving any formal theological education.

Not only did Scofield expunge from the public record any mention of his first wife and children, but it is a matter of record that he never provided them any substantial financial support, even after he started receiving generous royalties from sales of the Scofield Reference Bible.

Nowadays there are serious legal penalties, as well as social ostracism and disgrace, for fathers who fail to pay child support, but for Scofield it was evidently okay.

On May 4, 1921, Scofield wrote to his daughter Abigail, in response to a request for money, and advised her to pray to a Roman Catholic saint for the money.

The purpose of delving into Scofield's personal history is to point out that a man with his serious failings and problems ought not to be considered a good source of doctrine and practice for fundamentalist churches today. Actually, his continual habit of lying, according to Scripture, meant he was unsaved, and bound for hell.  See Revelation 21:8:

But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

So let’s throw him out for a source of doctrine on such an important subject.  Next week, let’s have a look at John Nelson Darby, who came up with the idea originally.

Acknowledgements: 

Wikipedia

Thomas Williamson, “C.I. Scofield, The Rest of the Story”