Isaiah 65:17

This verse is an overview of what follows. God announced, in substantiation of everything He had said since Isaiah 56:1, that He would create a restored and renovated universe (cf. Genesis 1:1). Things will be so much better than they are now that people then will not even think about things as they used to be (cf. Romans 6:14; Revelation 21:4). This should motivate God’s people to obey Him in the present. Not only would God perform another Exodus, bringing Israel out of Babylon and into the Promised Land, but He would also create another Creation. Watts, who understood chapters 40-66 of Isaiah to refer only to the Jews’ return to Palestine following the Exile, believed that the renovation in view is not eschatological or worldwide but restricted to Jerusalem and Judah. [Note: Watts, Isaiah 34-66, p. 354.]

Isaiah described the future in general terms as "a new heaven and a new earth." In the New Testament, we have further particularization of what this will involve: the making of all things new for those in Christ presently (Galatians 2:20), the millennial kingdom (Revelation 20:4-6), and the "eternal state" (2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1). Thus Isaiah’s use of "new heavens and a new earth" is not identical with the Apostle John’s (Revelation 21:1). What Isaiah wrote about this new creation is true of various segments of it at various stages in the future; it is not all a description of what John identified as "new heavens and a new earth," namely: the eternal state.

"The designation new heavens and a new earth is applied to the Millennial kingdom only as a stage preliminary to the eternal glories of heaven (the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21; Revelation 22)-just as Pentecost was to be regarded (Acts 2:17) as ushering in the ’last days,’ although it occurred at least nineteen centuries before the Second Advent." [Note: Archer, p. 653.]