3657 — From One Sabbath to Another, Isa. 66:23
By Editor
In this text it says, "From one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before Me, saith the Lord." But others tell us, from Rev. 21:23 and 22:5, that there is no night there; and therefore Isaiah has no reference to the Sabbath, but one eternal rest. Please explain. T. W. F. First of all, Isa. 66:23 could not have reference to one great eternal rest, because it would be absurd to speak of "from one eternal rest to another," for an eternal rest does not provide any successive eternal rests. Then, too, that Sabbath is indicated, is also shown by the connection, "from one new moon," which would also stand for one month — from one month to another, and from one Sabbath to another; or from month to month and week to week; and the great day of the week then as now will be the Sabbath. Now what it means in Rev. 21:23 and 22:5 is not that there shall not be a succession of day and night, or that day shall not follow day, — that is not the thought at all. The implied contrast is with other cities of the world. Cities of this world have walls and gates, or did in those days, and those gates were shut by night to keep out robbers and marauders and hostile armies, who would come in under the darkness of night. That will not be the case in that New Jerusalem. God's glory will be so great in that city that there shall be no night there, no darkness under which robbers can hide or the lawless can devise or plan destruction. It will be all light, and nothing more than this is implied. It is also spoken regarding the city itself, and not the new earth. When God's children come up from all parts of the earth, where there is a difference between day and night, as indicated by Isa. 30:26, the Sabbath will be observed there just as truly as it can be here, only with perfect holiness to the Lord. The light of the moon shall fall upon that earth, but it will be like the light of the sun now; but the light of the sun in the new earth will be sevenfold what it is now. And yet when they come up there in the very presence of God, His glory will be so great that "the moon shall be confounded, and the sun ashamed; for Jehovah of Hosts will reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem; and before His elders shall be glory." Isa. 24:23. There are some parts of our cities at the present time which on some occasions are as light as the day, when under the tremendous effulgence of a number of arc lights; but it does not take away the night, nor change the succession of days; nor will God's ineffable glory, far surpassing anything artificial, or even in the natural world, take away from the earth its succession of days or months, or its Sabbath.