Isaiah 65:20 by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Oct 24, 1911

By Editor

3593 — Isaiah 65:20

Please explain the 20th verse of Isaiah 65. H. A. G.

Note the context. Verse 17 is God's promise of a new heaven and a new earth. Verses 18 and 19 are expressions indicating the rejoicing that there will be over the new Jerusalem, and the joy which God shall have in His people. He declares that at that time the voice of weeping shall be no more heard, nor the voice of crying. Then comes the verse in question, verse 20: "There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed." This end of sin and sinners seems to be just previous to the time when the children of God shall enter upon the new heavens and the new earth. Revelation 20 and 21 throw great light upon this passage. At the second resurrection the wicked are raised. Then they are deceived by Satan and gathered into great armies. It will take some time for Satan to organize these armies, to form governments, to forge weapons, to devise instruments of torture and destruction; and it may be safely said that the enemy of all righteousness will do everything in his power to make these things perfect and complete.

This period of time will be a hundred years in length. During that time children will be born, doubtless, to the wicked, who will be raised from the dead as they went down. There will be a mighty lesson for all the universe of God. Satan, who has charged God with unrighteousness and injustice, will have the earth, and absolute control of the peoples of the earth, so that he may demonstrate what kind of government he will have, what kind of characters will be developed in children born under such conditions. But at the end of that hundred years the children shall die, as those found worthy of death. They have not within them the seeds of life, which can come only by faith. And the wicked man raised at the beginning of that hundred years dies at the close a wicked man. God's character is vindicated in the destruction of sin and sinners. Then, too, the universe learns this lesson: Men have claimed to be able to persist in and of themselves alone, naturally immortal; but their experience at the end of the thousand years, in preparing to fight against God, shows that they are not worthy to be immortal, and are not immortal, for at the end of that time they die. Then God's children shall enter upon the new heavens and the new earth, upon which there shall be no remembrance of the curse, which has perished with sin. For fuller answer see the book "Questions and Answers," No. 238, page 228.