The vast majority of Christians (at least those who believe in a literal New Heaven and New Earth), and even most members of the body of Christ, believe that there won’t be any death on the New Earth. I can’t agree with this assumption, however, because of what Isaiah 65:17-25 says:
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. And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.
Verse 17 of the chapter gives us the context of this passage, which is the New Earth, telling us that, yes, there will still be sin and death on the New Earth, even if a lot less of it.
Now, I know that nearly everybody is going to point to Revelation 21:1-4 in order to try to prove their assumption that there won’t be any death on the New Earth. Those who are making this claim, however, need to go and read that passage over again very carefully, and then consider some facts they likely haven’t thought of before:
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. 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: for the former things are passed away.
I trust that you can see how the context of these verses seems to be not only the New Earth, but also the New Jerusalem on the New Earth. And so, for those who are thinking that this passage means there won’t be any death on the New Earth at any time, while that technically could be one possible interpretation of the passage, at least if we interpreted that passage on its own (without taking the context of the rest of Scripture into consideration), there are also various other possible interpretations of these verses in Revelation which don’t contradict what Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 65, including the idea that it means only those who get to reside within the walls of the New Jerusalem won’t ever drop dead (or suffer in any way) anymore, not to mention the possibility that Revelation 21:4 might be separated from the first three verses of the chapter by the “Mountain Peaks” of prophecy, setting verse 4 at the end of the age, with verses 1 through 3 being set at the beginning of the New Earth, long before the final age draws to an end.
For those who aren’t familiar with the “Mountain Peaks” aspect of prophecy, it refers to how there can be prophetic “valleys,” meaning events taking place within the same timeframe of a part of a specific prophecy, but which were not explicitly mentioned within said prophecy and which the prophet himself is not necessarily even aware of, yet which are later revealed to us in other prophecies, with these prophetic “valleys” being situated between the prophetic “mountain peaks,” meaning the events that the prophet actually did foresee and foretell within said prophecy; for example, while Jesus’ earthly ministry and reign as King of Israel was foreseen and foretold in various prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures (meaning the books of the Bible that are generally referred to as “the Old Testament”), the church called the body of Christ and the current dispensation of the grace of God were entirely unknown to the prophets recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures — from their perspective, all they could see was one unbroken ministry of a Messiah coming to save and lead Israel during one unbroken period of time on earth, because they couldn’t see the “valley of the church” hidden between the “mountain peaks” of Jesus’ first and second time on earth, with those “mountain peaks” even seeming like one “mountain” to them from their “vantage point” — and this can even happen within a single sentence in a prophecy, as demonstrated in Luke 4:14–21 where Jesus stopped reading Isaiah 61:1–2 before the end of the sentence in verse 2, because the part of that prophecy about “the day of vengeance of our God” hadn’t begun at that time yet, since it won’t happen until around the time of His Second Coming.
Of course, most people will now also claim that this passage isn’t talking about what takes place on the New Earth at all (and some also say the same thing about the events mentioned after the reference to the New Earth a chapter later as well), but rather that it’s actually talking about what will take place during the thousand-year kingdom of heaven in Israel on this earth (the time during the fourth age known as the Millennium, in other words). The problem is, these are quite literally the only two references to the New Earth in the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures, so any Israelites who read Isaiah 65 and 66 between the time that book was written and the time that 2 Peter was written would be looking for details about this New Earth which Isaiah had just revealed to them for the first time, and I see no reason to believe they’d read it as saying, “There’s going to be a New Earth, but never mind that, here are some details about what’s going to happen before it’s even created, and we won’t tell you anything at all about that New Earth again anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.” There’s just no reason for God to have inspired Isaiah to have mentioned the New Earth twice in the final two chapters of this book in the first place, after never having mentioned it prior to this, if he was then going to jump back in time to discussing the Millennium (without giving any hint to the readers that this is what was happening) rather than continuing to discuss what’s going to happen on the New Earth that he’d just introduced to everyone for the first time, especially since nobody reading it would ever assume that’s what it meant prior to John writing the book of Revelation.
Regardless, it’s also easy to see that this is about the New Earth, because John basically refers back to Isaiah 65:19 in Revelation 21:4 itself:
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. — Isaiah 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: for the former things are passed away. — Revelation 21:4
I think it should be pretty obvious from reading those two verses side by side that the Jerusalem of Isaiah 65:19 is clearly the same Jerusalem that is the context of Revelation 21:4, confirming once again that everything listed in the latter verse has to be about what happens for those in that Jerusalem rather than those outside it.
On top of all that, the passage we began looking at in Isaiah 65 ends by telling us:
The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord. — Isaiah 65:25
Why does this tell us that this passage is talking about the New Earth? Because Isaiah had already discussed this concept of animals residing peacefully together previously in the same book, in Isaiah 11:1-9:
And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth: with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.
This passage is talking about Israel during the Millennium, and to mention this detail again 54 chapters later and be referring to the exact same thing would be entirely redundant. Instead, by repeating the beginning of the prophecy about peaceful animals from chapter 11 in chapter 65, right after mentioning the New Earth, confirms that animals will indeed continue to be peaceful on the New Earth just as they will be in Israel during the Millennium (it also confirms that there will be animals on the New Earth, something that wouldn’t necessarily go without saying if this verse hadn’t been included in the chapter, at least not prior to the end of the ages when death is destroyed altogether).
But on top of all that, as we “Concordant” believers should all realize, without sin and death on the New Earth, those new generations born on the New Earth will never get to experience what we call the contrast principle (which refers to the principle that one can’t truly appreciate life without mortality and death, goodness without evil, nor grace without sin) if they too don’t get to experience sin, evil, and death, and there’s no reason that this principle would stop being a principle just because one is born on the New Earth rather than the current earth. Besides, anyone born on the New Earth will still have a human father, and as we know from Romans 5:12, anyone with a human father will eventually give in to sin, as I discussed in this article: Why do we sin and die?
So for these reasons I have to insist that, yes, there will indeed be sin, evil, and death on the New Earth, even if these things are far less prevalent there, at least until the end of the ages when death (and hence sin) is abolished altogether.