Discovering the New Covenant by Greg Taylor - exAdventist Outreach

DISCOVERING THE NEW COVENANT
they be required in the next life? Should they be kept
today? Are they still binding? Then I noticed that the next
couple of verses speak about the inhabitants walking
around and encountering the dead bodies of those who have
rebelled against the Lord. That didn’t sound like the new
earth as described in Revelation. In reading the larger
context of the same vision, I found “for the child will die
one hundred years old.” (Isaiah 65:20) What a strange
picture of heaven--dead bodies of the enemies of God
encountered as one walks around the city, and people dying
after 100 years or so! The reason it sounds so strange is
because the “new heavens and new earth” that Isaiah is
talking about is not the new earth of Revelation where
“there will be no more death or sorrow or crying.” Instead,
it is describing Isaiah’s picture of what the earth would
have been like if Israel had accepted the Messiah and
become the center attraction of the world. People would
have come to Israel to see what their God had done. They
would have joined Israel in worship and God’s blessings
would have made this earthly “New Jerusalem” the center
of the world. This prediction was one of those prophecies
that was conditional on the acceptance of the Messiah.
Since Israel rejected the Messiah, it was not fulfilled.
Another sticking question for Adventists is Jesus’
statement telling his disciples to pray that their "flight may
not be in the winter or on the Sabbath" (Mt 24:20). Doesn't
this indicate that the Sabbath is still to be binding in the
Christian era? The answer to that question came to light for
me in reading Nehemiah 13, where Nehemiah was
instituting some regulations concerning the business
activities people were conducting on the Sabbath. Some of
the surrounding Gentiles were bringing in their wares to
sell to the Israelites on the Sabbath. This had been a snare
for Israel before, had caused them to turn away from God,
and eventually be taken into captivity. So Nehemiah made
this regulation and it was still in effect in Jesus’ day:
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