'No babe shall die there any more in infancy, nor any old man who has

not lived out his years of life; he who dies youngest lives a hundred

years, anyone dying under a hundred years must be accursed of God'

(Isa. 65:20 Moffatt).

In Isaiah 66 we have something even more terrible to contemplate as being in

the newly created heaven and earth:

'And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that

have transgressed against Me: for their worm shall not die, neither

shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all

flesh' (Isa. 66:24).

When we come to Revelation 21, after the words quoted from verse 4 'no more

death', we continue without break to the overcomer, verse 7, where reward is

placed in contrast with:

'The fearful, and unbelieving, the abominable and others whose end is

"the lake of fire" which burneth with fire and brimstone (see Isa.

66:24 "the fire not quenched") which is the second death'.

Those thus denominated are linked with the Great White Throne judgment (Rev.

20:14 'the lake of fire the second death').  We may now give a little more

attention to the words 'in her' (Isa. 65:19), and perceive that we may have

extended the 'no more' of Revelation 21:4 beyond their limits.  The second

reference to this exclusion from the New Jerusalem tells us that such were

not found 'in the Lamb's book of life', which again links up with Revelation

20:15: 'And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into

the lake of fire'.  Everything written in Revelation 21, Isaiah 65 and 66

presents us with an apparent contradiction.  No death, yet carcases, no

crying, yet carcases, premature death, no more curse, yet some being

accursed.  How can these things be?  The answer is awaiting us at the close

of Isaiah 65.  The millennial conditions are still there.

'The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat

straw like the bullock' (Isa. 65:25),

but this is not all.  In the prophecy of Genesis 3:14, 'God said unto the

serpent ... and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life', for at the

very selfsame time that the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, we read:

'Dust shall be the serpent's meat' (Isa. 65:25).

To feed on ashes, to lick the dust, to be brought to dust, for the dust to be

turned into brimstone (Psa. 72:9; Isa. 49:23), 'to lick the dust like a

serpent' (Micah 7:17), are all recognized figures of speech, that are

concentrated in one verse of Revelation, namely in Revelation 20:10:

'And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and

brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be

tormented day and night for ever and ever, (or unto the ages of the

That this lake of fire, second death, torment, feeding on ashes, goes on

beyond the millennial kingdom into the new heaven and new earth, is