“For behold, I create new heavens and a new Earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in My people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not fill out his days…”
Isaiah 65:17-20
As I am wont to remind everyone, the ultimate hope of the Christian faith is not dying and going to Heaven but being risen from the dead and entering eternal life in the new creation. Don’t get me wrong, dying and going to Heaven is good, and it is the promise of every Christian, but Heaven is not the end for the Christian. The end is the new heavens and the new Earth, just as Isaiah prophesied—yes, long before John (Revelation 21). Let us consider three things here.
First, in the new creation, “the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind” (v. 17). Imagine that! When you are risen from the dead to enter the New Jerusalem, you will not remember any of your suffering from this life! This makes me think of my favourite video game, Destiny. In the franchise, the character you play as is risen from the dead in a post-apocalyptic world by a sapient machine called your Ghost that was created by a giant, enigmatic, spherical machine being called the Traveler. Your Ghost uses the Light from the Traveler to raise you from the dead, and it gives you all your powers to be a Guardian of humanity to push back the Darkness. Here’s the catch: you don’t remember anything about your former life.
I seriously doubt the developers at Bungie had Isaiah 65:17 in mind when they were writing this lore of Destiny, but it does sort of capture what the bodily resurrection will be like when Christ, the Light of the world, returns in glory. Not that we’ll absolutely forget everything, but we will not remember all the former sufferings of this life, “for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
Second, John gives a more detailed image of what Isaiah means when he prophesied, “no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress” (Isaiah 65:19). As John writes, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God dHimself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4).
There won’t be any more mourning or weeping because we won’t remember the things that cause us grief! After all, we cry when we grieve because we remember the pain. When Jesus said, “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away” (Matthew 24:35), not only does this mean the current heavens and Earth will pass away (to make room for the new heavens and the new Earth), but it also means everything within them—suffering, death, and pain—will cease to exist!
Lastly, there is hope for the young and the old alike. Specifically for the young, there is a wonderful hope for those who’ve suffered miscarriage. “No more shall there be in it an infant who lives but a few days” (Isaiah 65:20). When I was at seminary, it seemed commonplace that my best friend, the wives of my friends, and others suffered the heart wrenching tragedy of miscarriage. It always shocked me. I don’t know if miscarriages are more common than I think, or if the devil just loves to attack the families of pastors and seminarians this way. Maybe it’s both. One of my favourite things about Concordia Seminary is that every year, they hold a service of prayer and lament for parents who’ve lost children to miscarriage. Yet the awesomeness of God is amazingly ineffable. In the new creation, these little ones will live forever!
In the same way, there is hope for the old. “No more shall there be in it… an old man who does not fill out his days” (v. 20). In the new creation, the old will also live forever. They will not grow decrepit and incapable of doing what they were once able to do in their youth, for they shall live to see all the days of eternity.
The glory of the new creation is cessation of suffering (and no memory of it), our joy for God and God’s everlasting joy for His people (vv. 18-19), and eternal life for young and old alike. This is not “afterlife” as we often think of it. This is eternal life in the eternal presence of God Almighty with the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Lutheran Column 