Saturday
Saturday
The New World
As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me, … so will your name and descendants endure.
Isaiah 66:22
Isaiah’s prophetic eyes now peer into the future and focus on the universal mission of the church (vv. 18–21) and on the ultimate regeneration of the universe (vv. 22–24). As for the Christian mission, the prophet singles out three aspects of it. Firstly, its scope is all the nations. Four times in verses 18–20 he refers to the nations being gathered together. Secondly, its occasion (what triggers it) is the rejection of the gospel by Israel. Luke affirms this fact on four separate occasions in the Acts. This is the apostle Paul’s vision of Jews and Gentiles united in Christ. Thirdly, the goal of the Christian mission is the glory of God (vv. 18–19)—proclaimed by the missionaries and seen and acknowledged by their converts.
Now with verse 22 the prophet makes a big jump to the end of history when God will create a new heaven and a new earth. He has already referred to it in the previous chapter (65:17), and later Jesus and his apostles will make the same prediction (Matt. 19:28; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 21:1, 5). Two features of this expectation are noteworthy. Firstly, the new universe will be partly material, since it will include a new, transformed, and glorified earth. As Paul wrote later, the whole creation will be liberated from its present bondage (Rom. 8:18–25). As our resurrection bodies will enjoy both continuity with and discontinuity from our present bodies, so the new earth will also enjoy continuity and discontinuity. Secondly, the new heaven and earth will be as enduring as their inhabitants. Only those who have deliberately rebelled against God will be destroyed (like the rubbish consigned to the dump outside Jerusalem [Isa. 66:24]).
These two emphases (universal mission and ultimate regeneration) were linked in the teaching of Jesus. For he told us to take the gospel to the ends of the earth and added that only then the end of time would come. The two ends will coincide. Meanwhile, the gap between the first and second comings of Christ is to be filled with the worldwide mission of the church.
For further reading: 2 Peter 3:1–13