Don K Preston, in his book, In Flaming Fire (2005), delves deeply into the question of whether or not the tribulation in the letters of the apostle Paul to the Christians at Thessalonica is spelled with a capital "T," as asserted by followers of the Scofield Reference Bible (revised 1917), an annotated King James Version study Bible, edited by Cyrus I Scofield, and published by the Oxford University Press.

The Greek word for tribulation is "thlipsis," which means "persecution." The antithesis to "thlipsis" is "anesis," which means "relief."

Preston points out that 2 Thessalonians 1:1-7 clearly reveals that Paul was writing to a group of living Christian believers suffering persecution (thlipsis) at the hands of their persecutors (the Jewish Church leaders) and he clearly promises these Christians relief (anesis) in their lifetime (v. 7) when Jesus returns. Preston states that either Paul lied to the Thessalonians (his prediction failed and he is therefore a false prophet), or he told them the truth and their persecutors were persecuted (thlipsis) in kind at the coming of Christ (v. 6-8).

Those who claim that Paul was writing to Christians 2000 years hence should try applying that logic to any letter written to themselves by any missionary or teacher sending a message of hope to them.

Preston states that Jesus came "in flaming fire" as a spiritual force of retribution at the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, just as God had at its prior destruction as described in Isaiah 2:10, 19, and 21, and 4:2, which Paul quotes in his first letter to the Thessalonians (2:15-17).

Dave MacPherson, author of the book The Rapture Plot (2005) and Ed Tarkowski, a Christian essayist, trace the origin of pretribulation rapture. From the early Church fathers until the Reformation, the generally accepted view of Bible prophecy was "linear historic," that Revelation was in the process of being fulfilled throughout the Christian era. But in the 16th century, a new view of Bible prophecy was devised by a Jesuit priest to stop the Reformers from teaching that the Catholic Church was probably the "whore of Babylon" of Revelation 17:3-6.

In 1591 AD, the Jesuit Ribera invented a "futurist" view. He claimed that Revelation would not be fulfilled until the end of the Christian Era. Ribera taught of a rebuilt Babylon, a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and an end-time Antichrist, near the end of the age of the "three and a half years" when the books of Daniel and Revelation would be fulfilled. The Antichrist would be a person to rise in the future. He also brought forth the idea of a rapture, but not at the beginning or end of Daniel’s "70th week" (see Revelation and the Rothschild connection). He wrote that the Church would be taken to heaven 45 days before the end of the three and a half years.

In 1767, a Chilean-born Catholic Priest, Manuel de Lacunza y Diaz came to Imola, Italy, when the Jesuits were expelled from Spain because of their brutality. There he claimed to be a converted Jew named Rabbi Juan Jushafat Ben-Ezra. Under that alias, he wrote a 900 page book titled, The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty. Lacunza theorized that the Church would be taken to be with the Lord to escape the reign of Antichrist in the last 3-1/2 years of the age, some 45 days before Jesus’ final return to Earth. During that 45 days (while the Church was in heaven), God would pour out His wrath upon the wicked remaining on Earth.

In 1828, "Glory and Majesty" was translated into English by a radical cultist London preacher named Edward Irving. Lacunza’s views could have died there, for most in England saw Irving as a heretic.

At the same time Margaret MacDonald from Port Glasgow, Scotland, claimed she received divine revelations from God about a rapture. According to MacPherson, Miss Margaret had occultic ties, including a friendship with a girl who was into psychic powers and automatic writing. She sent her vision in a letter to Irving and, shortly thereafter, her revelation showed up in print. In September, 1830, The Morning Watch, a periodical put out by Irving’s church, published, "Commentary on the Epistles to the Seven Churches in the Apocalypse."(1)

According to James Whisler (2), the MacDonald clan was intimately associated with the Knights Templar - Margaret’s hometown being in one of the main areas that the Templars sailed to and settled in when they left France. He added, these "Satanic bloodlines" often chose the Christian religion as a cover to hide their origins and their true religion.

About the same time as Margaret Macdonald’s vision, John Nelson Darby was playing with the dispensationalist idea of dividing history into ages or "dispensations." Many prophecy teachers of today credit John Darby with the origin of these teachings because he was a well-educated man who authored many books. In fact, Darby went to see Margaret and her family shortly after she gained notoriety for her vision, and in later years, claimed them as his own.

Darby then headed out, promoting, improvising and adding to his new doctrine. He came to America several times and traveled all across the country to preach dispensation. As "luck" would have it, there always seemed to be wealthy benefactors nearby. This included men like eccentric banker Henry Drummond, who was involved from the beginning, making his resources available to Irving’s church in London and continuing to support the movement. Researcher Robert L. Pierce noted "…Darby’s unusual mobility, for his day and time and his seeming lack of financial problems."

On at least one occasion Darby went to Saint Louis and met with Presbyterian minister James H. Brookes (1830-1897), Scofield’s mentor and a key leader in the Niagara Bible Conferences. The conferences were held annually from 1876 to 1897, initially in different resort locations around the U.S. and, as of 1883 at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario—the Queen’s Royal Hotel. It was there that the fundamentalist movement was born and solidified. It then began to shape the Christian landscape in the United States and laid the foundation for "Premillennialism," the foundation for Christian Zionists.

The conferences attracted some of the most well known Christian leaders of the time, including D. L. Moody, a world known evangelist who founded the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA). Cyrus Scofield’s financiers knew that if Scofield could be moved into those organizations, the dispensationalist doctrine could be spread faster and further into the Christian community.

At the outbreak of the American Civil War, Cyrus I. Scofield (1843-1921), a Michigan native, lied about his age in order to enlist in the Confederate Army in 1861, where he served in the 7^th Tennessee infantry for a year.

In 1866 he married a Roman Catholic girl named Leontine Cerre. They had two girls, Abigail and Helene.

According to sweetliberty.org (3), as a young con-artist in Kansas after the Civil War, Scofield met up with John J. Ingalls, an aging Jewish lawyer/senator. Pulling strings both in Kansas and with his compatriots back east, Ingalls assisted Scofield in gaining admission to the Bar and procured his appointment as the federal attorney for Kansas. Scofield committed perjury when he took his oath, stating that he had never voluntarily borne arms against the United States. He was forced to resign after six months because of questionable financial transactions.

By 1877, Scofield was making a living on swindles and schemes and writing bogus checks. Ingalls and Scofield became partners in a railroad scam which led to Scofield serving time for criminal forgery.

In 1879, while he was in prison, a group of Christian women who had a jail ministry witnessed to Scofield and he made a profession of faith in Christ. He then began to study the writings of John Darby and embraced Darby’s theology about the rapture and the need for Jews to resettle the land of Israel

Upon his release from the prison, Scofield began to work in the evangelical campaign of D. L. Moody. In 1879, Scofield became acting secretary of the YMCA and was licensed to preach in 1880. (4)

Torell (3) stated he believes that Ingalls informed his Jewish peers that Scofield would be the perfect candidate to develop and penetrate fundamental Christian churches and denominations. All it would take was the right "handlers" and cash.

At this time Scofield "happened to be in the one city" singled out by Darby for "planting the seed" of his "special brand of Bible teaching," and they met.

Then on November 6, 1879, a criminal case against Scofield was dismissed in an Appeals Court.

In 1877, Scofield had deserted his first wife and his two daughters and left them destitute. According Wikipedia, this was "perhaps because of alcoholism," but Joseph Canfield (3) asserts: "The very sudden quashing of the criminal charges without proper adjudication suggests that Scofield’s career was in the hands of someone who had clout never available to either Ingalls, Pomeroy, or anyone of the Choteau Clan. But, the career was to be of such a nature that Leontine, the Catholic wife, had to go."

Scofield then took as his mistress a young girl from the St. Louis Flower Mission. He later abandoned her for Hettie Hall von Wartz whom he married in 1884. Leontine filed for divorce in 1881, finalized in 1883, listing "abandonment" as a reason.

The apostle Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 3:2-4: "A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre….One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity."

Scofield’s supporters kept his background secret for a long time in order to make him a licensed minister of the Gospel. The only biography his life is a collection of "Sunday School" articles by Charles G. Trumbull. Published into a book, The Life Story of C.I. Scofield in 1920 by the Oxford Press, it is the official "white wash" to clean up Scofield for future generations. It contains many inaccuracies, including a "conversion" story that happens, not in jail, but at a law office that did not even exist at the time.

In 1895 Scofield was asked to be a pastor at one of Moody’s churches in Northfield, MA. By now he had built up a "clean" reputation and was ready to be moved there to larger work. 

He seemed to have access to money above what he earned as a minister; his backers included New York Jewish lawyer Samuel Untermeyer and Union 76 oil baron Lyman Stewart.

In 1901, Scofield was offered a membership in the Lotus Club of New York, a prestigious club in the literary circles of the United States catering to non-Christians. This was a club in which one had to be invited and have a sponsor. He settled there and listed it as his residence for the next 20 years.  It was here that he presented his ideas for a new Christian Bible concordance, and was taken under the wing of Untermeyer (1858-1941)—a criminal attorney well known for his political connections, bribery and for being a fanatical Zionist agent of the Rothschild banking cartel.

Untermeyer introduced Scofield to numerous Zionist and socialist leaders, including Samuel Gompers, Fiorello LaGuardia, Abraham Straus, Bernard Baruch and Jacob Schiff. These people financed Scofield’s research trips to Oxford and arranged for the publication and distribution of his concordance.

One of Scofield’s first moves in producing his reference Bible was to take a trip to the British Isles for research. He immediately sought out the controversial scholars Westcott and Hort in London. Hailed as Bible scholars, both men were very active in occult rituals. Westcott had formed a secret club called "Hermes," noted for aggressive homosexual activities between its members. In 1851, Hort and Westcott also started the Ghost Society, which was first billed as the study of spiritual events, but in time it became more of a séance group. Its members included Arthur Balfour who, in 1917, bequeathed Palestine to the Rothschilds as "a national home for the Jewish people."

The following passage is from page two of the Introduction to the 1945 edition of the Scofield Bible: "….The discovery of the Sinaitic MS, and the labours in the field of textual criticism of such scholars as…..Westcott and Hort, have cleared the Greek Textus Receptus of minor inaccuracies….."

The comment memorializes Scofield’s reliance on Wescott and Hort and explains Scofield’s justification for tampering with the word of God.

"Why would a wealthy German Jew like Untermeyer living in America sponsor Scofield and spend money on a man who was working on a new Bible translation and preaching Jesus Christ?" Torell asked.

Jewish leaders long ago recognized the bonanza for them if they could force the teaching of an imminent rapture on Christians and move them to abandon their moral hold on society. Darby was financially supported and Scofield, Darby’s successor, could make this teaching central in all Christian churches. Removal of Christians from politics and public schools would leave the door open for Jewish writers and political leaders to move in and remove the Bible and prayer from public schools and political institutions. The ACLU is a Jewish organization, having only a few Gentiles in it for window dressing, he stated.  

In 1907, the International Zionist movement had its "payday" when, after some 120 years they were finally able to have a document produced that would forever change the theology of Christian churches around the world so that, in time, believers in Christ would be transformed into Christian Zionists. Even though they had to "pay good money" to further the cause of fundamentalism, it was worth it to them because the fundamentalists would be led like a bull with a ring in his nose in the direction the Jewish masters wanted them to go.

Forty-one years later, the political state of Israel came into existence. "Without the Scofield Bible, it never would have happened," Torell said.

It is impossible to overstate the influence of Cyrus Scofield on 20th century Christian beliefs. The Scofield Bible is the standard reference work in virtually all Christian ministries and divinity schools. It is singularly responsible for the Christian belief that it is Hebrew Prophecies that describe the pre-Tribulation Second Coming of Jesus, and not, instead, a Zionist vision of a man-made New World Order.