The Old Testament prophets foretold the coming of the Messianic Kingdom or the Kingdom of God. All three popular eschatological views of the Second Coming, although some admit to its spiritual presence today, conclude that the Kingdom of God will be a physical Kingdom at a presumed future coming of the Lord. However, I have been repudiating that point of view for quite some time in these studies of mine, which concern the Lord’ parousia or coming (Matthew 24:3, 30), which I conclude was fulfilled in 70 AD.
In this study I want to focus on Isaiah 65 and contrast what we find there with what Paul concludes in some of his epistles. Speaking of Israel and Judah (Isaiah 65:9), the prophet says both their worship and the worship of their fathers was idolatrous (Isaiah 65:7, 11) and the Lord will measure their iniquities and repay it in full into their bosom. Paul, speaking of the Jews of his own day, referred to their filling up the measure of their iniquities and their ensuing judgment in his first epistle to the Thessalonians:
Who (Judah and Israel) both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: Forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins always: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost. (1 Thessalonians 2:15-16; parenthesis and emphasis mine)
Isaiah also claimed that the new creation, which sense is understood in the new wine (Isaiah 65:8) and the new heavens and the new earth (Isaiah 65:17), would come when a remnant would be saved (Isaiah 65:8-9), which Paul also mentions in Romans 9:27-29. Moreover, Isaiah claims that while the iniquities of the nation are being judged, he will create a new people by calling his elect out of them and giving them a new name (Isaiah 65:15), which was fulfilled in Acts 11:26.
Notice what Isaiah says after this:
For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. (Isaiah 65:17)
The word remembered is used in a covenantal sense. When the Lord creates new heavens and a new earth, he is saying he is making a new covenant. His new creation is the New Covenant. His new creation is the elect of Jacob and Judah (cf. Isaiah 65:9) being brought together as one nation with one King (the Messiah), as foretold in Ezekiel 37:15-24, through the preaching of the Gospel (viz. Matthew 10:5-7, 23). Paul also mentions this new creation or new kingdom of Israel in 2Corinthians 5:17. There he claims “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” Isaiah predicted the new creation. Jesus told the Apostles to preach it, and Paul tells us it is breaking into the old creation.
Paul, however, is not describing a physical event. That is, a new Kingdom of Israel, in a geopolitical sense, is not in view here. The two kingdoms are united into one new kingdom, the Kingdom of God, preached by the Apostles (Matthew 5-7, 23), and come not with observation (cf. Luke 17:20-21). Thus, Paul has given us a discriminating understanding of the nature of the new kingdom or the new creation that God had in mind, when he moved Isaiah to prophesy. The new heavens and the new earth are not physical, but refer to the New Covenant. The ‘old’ heavens and the ‘old’ earth refers to the Old Covenant.
Therefore, God creates a New Covenant and the Old Covenant will no longer come to mind. It won’t be remembered. This is what Isaiah prophesied (Isaiah 65:17), and this is what Paul said was occurring in his own lifetime (2Corinthains 5:17). The Lord was describing a covenant people, whom he would destroy and not remember anymore (Isaiah 65:9, 15). The remnant, however, the Lord’s elect, would be remembered. They would be called out and made a new creation, or a new kingdom and inherit the blessings promised the fathers, and, since Paul wasn’t describing a new physical creation or kingdom, he was describing a spiritual event—a spiritual Kingdom that cannot be observed or found on a map, a spiritual creation concerning the inner man. The futurists, by demanding that the consummation of the Kingdom of God be a physical Kingdom, repudiate the work of God that he has brought about in the spiritual realm.
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