The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

On 27 October 2025, Nick Fuentes appeared on Tucker Carlson’s podcast.  On Carlson’s show, Fuentes assailed “organized Jewry” as the obstacle to American unity and “these Zionist Jews” as the impediment to the right’s success, while calling himself a fan of Joseph Stalin. Carlson said Fuentes should make his remarks about Jewish subversion of America more “universal,” so they cannot be dismissed as easily. But mainly the two agreed. Mr. Carlson shared with the Hitler admirer that he, too, despises Israel and Christian Zionists such as Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Senator Ted Cruz. “I dislike them more than anybody,” Mr. Carlson said. They found common ground.  After the interview, Mr. Fuentes said in another broadcast that conservative Jewish commentators Josh Hammer, Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro, also frequent targets of Mr. Carlson’s ire, will never be Americans and should “get the f— out of America and go to Israel.”

Both Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlosn claim to be Christians or at least reflect a version of what is now called Christian Nationalism.  But at the heart of Carlson’s diatribes against Israel and Jews is something called Replacement Theology.  I doubt if Carlson or Fuentes have ever investigated this theological framework or even know about it.  But knowingly or unknowingly that is what they are advocating.  What is it and why is it so dangerous?

In God’s promise to Abram (Genesis 12:1-7), the father of the Jewish people, He declared that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars and the sand, that He would give him land and that He would bless the world through Abram.  This three-fold promise is called the Abrahamic Covenant, and it provides the key framework for explaining how God has dealt with Israel throughout its long history.  Connecting Genesis 15:17-21 with 12:1-7 is critical, for these verses describe how God “cut a covenant” with Abram.  In the ancient world, especially the ancient Akkadian world from which Abram came, animals were killed, cut in two, and their respective parts were then laid opposite one another.  The parties making the covenant then walked between them together, signifying that if either party broke the covenant, that party would become as dead.  However, in this narrative, God (in the symbolic form of the oven and the torch) walked between the severed animals alone.  God, who is holy and perfect, was binding Himself to this covenant.  He would fulfill His unconditional and eternal covenant promises, for His promises to Abram and his descendants are forever.  In the narrative (15: 6), it says that “Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.”

In Genesis 12:3, God also made this profound promise to Abram: “I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse” [ESV]. Then God adds, “All the families of the earth shall be blessed” [ESV].  This promise of God is central to understanding God’s dealings with humanity.  Those who bless and honor Abram (later called Abraham) and his descendants will experience God’s blessing.  Those who do not will experience God’s curse.  The disease of anti-Semitism bears this out.  Those who have persecuted, killed and dishonored the Jews have experienced God’s curse.  Furthermore, the blessing that “the families of the earth” will experience is the blessing of salvation offered in and through Jesus Christ (see Galatians 3:8-9).  Jesus Christ was a Jew and He declared to the Samaritan woman that “salvation comes through the Jews” (see John 4:22).

What does Replacement Theology teach about Israel?  Replacement theology (aka Supersessionism) contends that, in God’s plan, the church has replaced Israel.  God is done with Israel, and the Jews have no prophetic role in God’s plan for the future.  The church inherits and fulfills all of the covenant promises God made to the patriarchs.  In other words, the Abrahamic Covenant, the Davidic Covenant and the New Covenant have no application whatsoever to the Jewish people.  God’s covenant promises to the Jewish people are fulfilled only in the church.  A dimension of this teaching is that when the term “Israel” is used in the New Testament after Pentecost, it means the church.  In effect, the church now constitutes God’s chosen people.

Two giants in the early church best explain the theological origins of Replacement Theology:

1. Augustine (354-430) taught that God was done with the Jews and he rejected any type of premillennial teaching.  He vehemently rejected any persecution of the Jews, but he believed they had no remaining place in God’s plan.
2. A contemporary of Augustine, John Chrysostom (347-407), preached and then published a series called “Homilies on the Jews.”  This series of messages characterized the Jews as killers of Christ, rapacious, greedy and worthless.  God hates the Jews and so should Christians, he argued.  Such teaching became institutionalized in medieval Roman Catholicism (AD 600-1500), and the Roman Catholic Church officially adopted a form of Replacement Theology as the official dogma of the church.   A corollary of this teaching is that God will not restore the Jews to their land; He will not fulfill His covenant promises to Abraham; and the New Covenant promises of Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36-37 do not apply to the Jews but to the church.

How should we think about Replacement Theology?  Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said: “I think we do not attach sufficient importance to the restoration of the Jews.  We do not think enough of it.  But certainly, if there is anything promised in the Bible it is this.”  Walter C. Kaiser, Jr., eminent theologian of the late 20th century, said: “To argue that God replaced Israel with the church is to depart from an enormous body of biblical evidence.”  I offer here a critique of what I believe is a pernicious theological system:

1. There are many Old Testament (OT) passages that clearly promise the future restoration of Israel.  Without question, the two most important of these passages are Jeremiah chapters 30, 31 and 33 and Ezekiel chapters 36-37.  But also consider this sampling of other OT texts:  Zechariah 12-14, Amos 9:11-15, Deuteronomy 30:1-6 and Zephaniah 3:14-20.  [Also see crucial passages in all the Major Prophets, including Daniel, and virtually all of the Minor Prophets.]
2. The nature of two biblical covenants requires God’s restoration of His people Israel—the Abrahamic Covenant (Genesis 12:1-7; 15:18-21, etc.) and the New Covenant (Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36-37).  Both of these covenants are unilateral and unconditional covenants.  If God did not keep His promises in these two covenants, we would find His other promises to be suspect.  In effect, God’s integrity is at stake with the fulfillment of these two covenants promises.
3. Jeremiah 31:35-37 insist that God will never cease to love and maintain His covenant commitments to the people of Israel:

35 Thus says the Lord,
who gives the sun for light by day
    and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night,
who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—
    the Lord of hosts is his name:
36 “If this fixed order departs
    from before me, declares the Lord,
then shall the offspring of Israel cease
    from being a nation before me forever.”

37 Thus says the Lord:
“If the heavens above can be measured,
    and the foundations of the earth below can be explored,
then I will cast off all the offspring of Israel
    for all that they have done,
declares the Lord.”  [ESV]

1. Romans 11:26-27 constitute an adamant declaration by God that there is coming a day when, in conformity with His New Covenant promises (Jeremiah 31), “all Israel will be saved.”  Exegetically, there is simply no way this passage can mean anything other than ethnic, national Israel at the time of Christ’s return.  The highly recognized New Testament scholar, C.E.B Cranfield, whose exegetical commentary on Romans is one of the best, writes: “It is only where the Church persists in refusing to learn this message, where it secretly-perhaps quite unconsciously-believes that its own existence is based on human achievement, and so fails to understand God’s mercy to itself, that it is unable to believe in God’s mercy for still unbelieving Israel, and so entertains the ugly and unscriptural notion that God has cast off His people Israel and simply replaced it by the Christian Church.  These three chapters (Romans 9-11) emphatically forbid us to speak of the Church as having once and for all taken the place of the Jewish people.”
2. The New Testament (NT) never uses the term “Israel” to refer to anyone but ethnic, national Jews.  In other words, the term “Israel” is never used in the NT to refer to the church.  In fact, the term “Israel” is used 77 times in the NT and always refers to ethnic Jews and/or ethnic, national Israel.  Further, theologian Michael Vlach writes: “The book of Acts maintains a distinction between Israel and the church.  In Acts, both Israel and the church exist simultaneously.  ‘Israel’ is used 20 times and ekklesia (church) 19 times, yet the two groups are always kept distinct.”
3. Not only does the NT never refer to the church as the “new Israel,” nowhere does it argue that God has permanently rejected the nation of Israel.  In fact, passages such as Matthew 19:28 and 23:37-39, Luke 13:35, 21:24 and 22:30 along with the entire chapter of Romans 11 teach just the opposite—the restoration of Israel as a fulfillment of God’s covenant promises.

Conclusion:  If one is intellectually honest, the only conclusion one can reach is that Replacement Theology is not biblical.  It ignores a massive amount of evidence that indeed God is not finished with the Jewish people; He will restore them to their land; He will restore the Davidic monarchy in Jerusalem; and He will fulfill completely the New Covenant promises to His people that He so clearly made in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36-37.