A Consideration Of Isaiah 65.17-20.

Gary North in his commentary on Deuteronomy says of these verses:

“For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. 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 (Isa. 65:17-20).

This prophesied era cannot refer to eternity, for sinners will still be dwelling among the righteous. Death will still be present. The prophesied millennial blessing of extended life expectancy is earth-bound. No verse in Scripture more clearly refutes the amillennial system of interpretation. This is why amillennialist Archibald Hughes, in his book, A New Heaven and New Earth (1958), refuses comment on this passage. He writes as though this passage did not exist, despite the fact that his book invokes its language. He comments exclusively on the New Testament's passages where this phrase occurs. He knows exactly what he is doing. He refuses to discuss the historical aspects of kingdom inheritance in a book devoted to the eternal inheritance. This is the heart of amillennialism: it asserts a radical discontinuity between New Covenant history and eternity.”

Now we cannot speak for Archibald Hughes, but we can certainly refute Gary North’s rather extreme claim and assure him that no well taught believer in Scripture who like Jesus Christ, Paul and Peter do not believe in an earthly Millennium of the type that Gary North has in mind has any problem with these verses. (We deliberately avoid speaking of a-millennialists. The branding of people with names which are only half true does no one any good and prevents rational thought)..

We should firstly note what the passage is saying. It is refuting the thought of infant mortality (no more infants of days) and premature death (nor an old man who has not fiiled his days) as a possibility in the new heaven and the new earth. And Isaiah does it by descriptions which cancel out that possibility. If a child were to die it would not be until it was a hundred years old (some child!) and no sinner could survive there for a hundred years, for if he did so the experience would be so terrible for him that he would see himself as accursed

. Now it is quite clear from looking at the verses that this cannot be taken literally. On the one hand we have a child who is a hundred years old (twenty years in nappies?), on the other no sinner can survive that long (is the child not a sinner then?). Taken literally the statements contradict each other. But what Isaiah is actually doing is to bring out by exaggeration the impossibility of infant mortality and premature death (which would be caused by a person being a sinner) in the brave new world. He is saying that the new heavens and the new earth will be such that no child will die young, and no sinner will be able to stand being there. It is NOT really saying that people will die there, for the one hundrd year old child described is not a real child, it is an invention in order to get over the impossibility of infant death. And the sinner writhes at the thought of being there.

Does Gary North seriously ask us to see people in his so-called Millennium as being children until they are 100 years old? Is that really what his Millennium is all about, extended childhood? We in fact know people who are still children far into their adult life, but we certainly do not see them as representative of a near perfect society. We recognise that there is something wrong with them. The problem with people like Gary North is that in their enthusiasm they do not think their positions through.

So in fact these verses confirm that there can be no earthly Millennium because the conditions described here would be ridiculous in an earthly Millennium. What is decribed here can only be true in the everlasting kingdom.

As our Lord Jesus Christ Himself made clear we enter under the Kingly rule of God once we believe in Him on this earth (entering into the period which Revelation 20 spoke of as being ‘a thousand years’), and we go on to enjoy that Kingly Rule in eternity. Having experienced the true Gospel of the grace of God we would see the supposed ‘Gospel of the Kingdom’ as being a watering down of the true Gospel, and the hybrid but failing kingdom which incorporates people from both heaven and earth as a monstrosity. The truth is that modern Christ-rejecting Jews and the nation which now calls itself Israel have been cut off from the covenant when they initially rejected their Messiah. They thus have no part in the Old Testament promises which apply to the true Israel, made up of His followers, to carry on in the line of promise. The New Testament knows nothing of a Millennium, or of a future earthly Temple. It sees the Temple as transferred to Heaven (Galatians 4.21-31; Hebrews 12.22) and israel as the new people of God who have arisen as a remnant from the old.