Will you please explain Isa. 65:20? C. A. R., W. O., R. E. C., and others. This is one of the difficult texts for many. It is not a particularly profitable scripture, and we wonder many times why so many people are anxious to have it explained. There are other texts which seem to us vastly more important which are hard to be understood and worthy of great study; but to the text. Please notice first the context. Verse 17 predicts the new heavens and the new earth in which there shall be no such conditions as we see now. Verse 18 points forward to that New Jerusalem that shall be created a rejoicing and her people a joy. Verse 19 declares there shall be no more thence the voice of weeping and the voice of crying; consequently there shall be no more death. Verse 20, there shall be no more in that great realm of God an infant of days, or an old man that hath not filled his days. There is no one to die; no one shall be born in sorrow and trouble, as in this world. Then the last part of the verse tells us the reason of that; the time is past when the infant dies and the sinner is passed away. "The child shall die a hundred years old, and the sinner being a hundred years old shall be accursed." Now that expression can not refer to the new earth, and the New Jerusalem, because there shall be only there the voice of gladness and joy and rejoicing. To what time does it refer? There are those who believe that there is a real connection between that and Rev. 20:3 in which it is declared that Satan shall be shut up, and shall deceive the nations no more till after the thousand years, and then he must be "loosed for a little season." During the thousand years, according to verse 5, the wicked dead are in their graves. When the thousand years are finished, verse 7, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth. This will take some time. All the earth must be deceived and gathered together. They must be armed and equipped and drilled. How long this period is we do not know from the passage in Revelation. The text in Isaiah, if it applies to that time, would indicate that it was a hundred years; that during that time when the wicked dead were raised, children who had reached the age of accountability were brought again to life. The Lord would permit them to live during that period of time; a little season as compared with all the other time with which it stands connected. During all this six thousand years of earth's history Satan has endeavored to make man believe that his salvation was in himself. In the beginning it was told to man: "Ye shall not surely die; ye shall be as God," and every false religion of earth has endeavored to exalt man to that position. One of the great errors of the present day is that man has God within himself; that faith is but the recognition of that fact, and that all man needs to do is to exert the God within himself and live; yet on the other hand Christ has told us that no man shall come to Him except the Father draw him; that if He is lifted up He will draw men to Himself; that by nature men are alienated from the life of God, without hope, and without God in the world; that the only hope in the world is by living faith to grasp God's promises, God's life, and God's regeneration. Those who do this will be saved. Those who do not do this shall remain condemned and God will in the period which follows the thousand years demonstrate the truth of His word to all the universe in the negative as well as in the positive. In the negative He will show that the great mass of the wicked will in and of themselves have no desire whatever to worship Him or do His truth. On the contrary, they will be deceived by Satan into believing that the city of God can be taken, that God Himself can be dethroned, and they rule in His kingdom. Yet at the end of that time the great white throne will be seen, the great majesty of God will appear, and in the glory of that presence they will perish. He will demonstrate His truth in a positive way in the fulfilment of all the blessed promises that He has given to the redeemed. This, it seems to us, is in brief the meaning of Isa. 65:20.