C. I. Scofield - Religious Significance

Religious Significance

Scofield's correspondence Bible study course was the basis for his Reference Bible, an annotated, and widely circulated, study Bible first published in 1909 by Oxford University Press. Scofield's notes teach futurism and dispensationalism, a theology that was in part conceived in the early nineteenth century by the Anglo-Irish clergyman John Nelson Darby, who like Scofield had also been trained as a lawyer. Dispensationalism emphasizes the distinctions between the New Testament Church and ancient Israel of the Old Testament. Scofield believed that between creation and the final judgment there are seven distinct eras of God's dealing with man and that these eras are a framework around which the message of the Bible could be explained. It was largely through the influence of Scofield's notes that dispensational premillennialism became influential among fundamentalist Christians in the United States, and these notes became a significant source for popular religious writers such as Hal Lindsey.