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'For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall
remain before Me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name
remain'.
It is indubitable, and not open to question, that Scripture purposely
associates Jerusalem, earthly and heavenly, with the new heaven and new
earth. By admitting this, however, we admit much more. We return to these
passages by Isaiah and John to establish the next point. Both Isaiah 65 and
Revelation 21 assure us that:
'The voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of
crying' (Isa. 65:19).
'And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be
no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any
more pain' (Rev. 21:4).
'The former troubles are forgotten' (Isa. 65:16).
'The former shall not be remembered' (Isa. 65:17).
'For the former things are passed away' (Rev. 21:4).
Once again no further argument is necessary to establish this second
feature, 'no more' death, sorrow, crying or pain. By admitting this,
however, we must admit very much more. Upon continuing our reading of the
passages in Isaiah, we discover the presence of 'death' and 'sin' and
'curse':
'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 after the words already 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'), which brings the Great White
Throne, which is not seen until 'the earth and the heaven fled away', into
the new heaven and new earth of Revelation 21:1.
The second reference to this exclusion from the New Jerusalem tells us
that such were not found 'in the Lamb's book of life' (Rev. 21:27), 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'. It should be remembered
that Gehenna was a possible alternative to the blessing of the meek that
shall inherit the earth in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:5 and 22).