What if I told you that millions of American Christians have traded away their own inheritance without even knowing it? They have been told that the promises God made to Abraham belong to somebody else, and that the Church is a Gentile afterthought while the real action happens in a secular republic in the Middle East. Back in 2018 (eight years ago) I wrote that the Catholic Church is the Kingdom of Israel. I stand by it. Today I want to show, from the Scriptures and the Catechism, that Jesus Christ fulfilled every promise God ever made to Israel and to the children of Abraham — the land promises included — and why Christian Zionism is a severe theological error that, in my judgment, is very likely heresy.
THE PROMISES WERE MADE TO ONE SEED
Let’s start at the beginning. God called Abram out of Ur and made him three big promises: a great nation, a land, and a blessing that would reach the whole world. “I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves” (Genesis 12:3). The land is promised in Genesis 15:18–21 and again in Genesis 17:8, “all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.” Then, after Abraham is willing to offer up Isaac, God swears an oath: “by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:18).
Now, who is that descendant? We don’t have to guess. St. Paul tells us flat out…
“Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, ‘And to offsprings,’ referring to many; but, referring to one, ‘And to your offspring,’ which is Christ.” (Galatians 3:16)
There it is. The promises were made to ONE seed, and that seed is Jesus Christ. “All the promises of God find their Yes in him” (2 Corinthians 1:20). Not some of them. All of them.
So who inherits what Christ inherits? Paul answers that too: “So you see that it is men of faith who are the sons of Abraham” (Galatians 3:7). And: “if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise” (Galatians 3:29). The Catechism agrees. The people descended from Abraham “would be the trustee of the promise made to the patriarchs,” called to prepare for the day “when God would gather all his children into the unity of the Church,” and “they would be the root on to which the Gentiles would be grafted, once they came to believe” (CCC 60). A trustee holds an inheritance until the heir comes of age. The heir has come. His name is Jesus.
WHAT ABOUT THE LAND?
This is where the Christian Zionist digs in his heels. “The land promise is everlasting! God can’t break it!” He’s right. God didn’t break it. God kept it, twice.
First, he kept it in the plain historical sense. Read the end of the Book of Joshua: “Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land which he swore to give to their fathers… Not one of all the good promises which the LORD had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass” (Joshua 21:43–45). Scripture itself says the promise was delivered.
Second, and far more importantly, he kept it by making it bigger. Look at how Paul reads the land promise: “The promise to Abraham and his descendants, that they should inherit the world, did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith” (Romans 4:13). Did you catch that? Not Canaan. The world. Jesus, quoting Psalm 37, says the same: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).
And Abraham himself knew it. The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that he lived in the land of promise “as in a foreign land, living in tents,” because “he looked forward to the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” The patriarchs “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city” (Hebrews 11:9–10, 16). That city is not Tel Aviv. “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22). Notice the tense. You HAVE come. Christians are already citizens of Zion.
The Bible ends right where the land promise was always headed: “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2), with the twelve tribes of Israel named on its gates and the twelve apostles on its foundations (Revelation 21:12–14). One city. One people.
Even the apostles had to learn this. Right before the Ascension they asked, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” Jesus didn’t hand them a map. He said, “you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:6–8). At the Council of Jerusalem, St. James explained the conversion of the Gentiles by quoting Amos 9: God would “rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen” (Acts 15:16). The tent of David was being rebuilt, and it was the Church.
WHO IS ISRAEL?
Gabriel told Mary that her Son “will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:33). The King of Israel was born. He reigns now. So where is his kingdom?
St. Paul tells us: “not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel… it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as descendants” (Romans 9:6, 8). “He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and real circumcision is a matter of the heart” (Romans 2:29). Christ “has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility,” so that Gentile believers “are no longer strangers and sojourners, but… fellow citizens with the saints” (Ephesians 2:14, 19). St. Peter takes God’s words to Israel at Sinai (Exodus 19:6) and applies them to the Church: “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people” (1 Peter 2:9). Paul even calls the Church “the Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16).
The Catechism agrees. God “chose the Israelite race to be his own people,” but all of this “happened as a preparation for and figure of that new and perfect covenant which was to be ratified in Christ,” calling together “a race made up of Jews and Gentiles which would be one, not according to the flesh, but in the Spirit” (CCC 781). The New Covenant promised to “the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (Jeremiah 31:31) is the one Jesus ratified in his blood (Luke 22:20), and he instituted the Twelve as “the seeds of the new Israel” (CCC 877). That’s us.
WHY CHRISTIAN ZIONISM IS SO DANGEROUS
Christian Zionism grows out of Dispensationalism, the system of John Nelson Darby, popularized by the Scofield Reference Bible. It teaches that God has two peoples with two destinies: an earthly Israel with an earthly land, and a heavenly Church. From there, Christians are told they must back the modern State of Israel politically, as though that were the fulfillment of Genesis 12:3.
Let me be careful here. The Catholic Church has never issued a formal condemnation of “Christian Zionism” by that name. But it doesn’t need to, because the premises it rests on contradict what the Church already teaches. Ephesians 2 says there is one people. Christian Zionism says there are two. Galatians 3 says the promise belongs to Christ and those in him. Christian Zionism says the land promise still belongs to an ethnic nation, whether or not it believes in Christ. The Catechism teaches that the Church “has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism” (CCC 676), and back in 1944 the Holy Office ruled that even a “mitigated” millenarianism, an earthly reign of Christ before the final judgment, cannot be safely taught. Dispensationalism is millenarianism through and through. When you build a doctrine on premises the Church has rejected, and when that doctrine splits the one people of God in two, you are not dealing with a pious opinion. You are dealing with something that, in my judgment, is very likely heretical.
And look at what it does to the gospel. It tells Gentile believers they are guests at someone else’s banquet. It tells Jewish people, in effect, that their destiny can be discussed apart from their own Messiah. It turns the blessing of Genesis 12:3, which comes to the nations through Christ, into a foreign-policy position. Worst of all, it robs Christians of their own heritage. Every Christian is a child of Abraham. Every Christian is a citizen of Zion. Why would we hand that away?
THE JEWS ARE NOT REJECTED
Now here comes the part that both the Christian Zionist and the anti-Semite get wrong. Has God rejected the Jewish people? St. Paul answers: “I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!” (Romans 11:1). Israel is the cultivated olive tree. Some natural branches were broken off for unbelief, and we Gentiles were grafted in, but Paul warns us not to boast, because “God has the power to graft them in again” (Romans 11:17–24). “As regards the gospel they are enemies of God, for your sake; but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers. For the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable” (Romans 11:28–29).
The Second Vatican Council said the same: “God holds the Jews most dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues,” and “the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures” (Nostra Aetate 4). The Catechism quotes Romans 11:29 directly and calls the Jews “the first to hear the Word of God” (CCC 839).
But irrevocable does not mean optional. The calling of the Jewish people is a calling to their own Messiah. The gospel is “to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). The Catechism teaches that Christ’s glorious return “is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by ‘all Israel,'” and it looks forward to “the ‘full inclusion’ of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of ‘the full number of the Gentiles'” (CCC 674). That’s the hope. Not a separate path, but a homecoming. The Church is not a Gentile institution the Jews must join as strangers. It is their own house, built on their own patriarchs, ruled by their own King. Their calling is their birthright. As a man of partial Jewish ancestry myself, I can tell you there is no better place to be a son of Abraham than at the altar of the Son of David.
CONCLUSION
Call it “Replacement Theology” if you want. I don’t see any replacement. I see fulfillment. God promised Abraham a seed, and he gave us Christ. He promised a land, and he gave us the world and the heavenly Jerusalem. He promised a kingdom with a son of David on the throne forever, and Jesus reigns right now over a kingdom with no end. Christian Zionism shrinks all of that back down to a strip of real estate and a political agenda. Don’t let anyone talk you out of your inheritance. If you are baptized into Christ, you are Israel. Act like it. Pray for the conversion of our elder brothers, love them, and invite them home. And then lift up your eyes to the city whose builder and maker is God, because that’s the Promised Land, and it was always meant for us.
Shane Schaetzel is an author of Catholic books and he is an Evangelical convert to the Catholic Church. His articles have been featured on LifeSiteNews, The Remnant Newspaper, Forward in Christ, and Catholic Online. You can read Shane’s books at ShaneSchaetzel.Com
