Immediate Context
Read Isaiah 65:17. What is the new heaven and new earth to which Isaiah is referring? Is it the new earth Christians expect in the future?
In the immediate context, Isaiah says, “No more shall an infant from there live but a few days, nor an old man who has not fulfilled his days; for the child shall die one hundred years old, but the sinner being one hundred years old shall be accursed” (vs. 20, NKJV). Death on the new earth? This cannot be the new earth we expect to follow the millennium. What then is the new heaven and the new earth in verse 17?
In this passage Isaiah describes a “new creation” that would have been brought about had Israel, following the restoration from the Babylonian captivity, remained faithful to God and fulfilled the Divine commission to be a light to the world (Isa. 42:6). Unfortunately, it didn’t, and thus the prophecy, which was conditional, was not fulfilled. This “new heaven and new earth” never became a reality. Nevertheless, in a secondary sense these verses point forward to the new heaven and the new earth to be ushered in at the close of the millennium. But in that “new earth and new heaven” there will be no children born to the redeemed (Matt. 22:30), neither will there be any more sorrow or death (Rev. 21:4), so we have to be careful how far we seek to push the imagery.
In Christ’s Object Lessons, Ellen White makes the statement that “those who accept the Saviour, however sincere their conversion, should never be taught to say or to feel that they are saved.”—Page 155. Does this mean we can never be certain about our salvation? 1 John 5:12, 13.
When we study the context, we discover that she is speaking about whether a person can fall from grace after conversion. Many Christians in her days believed in the doctrine of “once saved always saved.” Ellen White was clearly against this teaching. In context she says, “Never can we safely put confidence in self or feel, this side of heaven, that we are secure against temptation.”—p. 155.
The immediate context makes it clear that she is addressing the issue of self-confidence and temptations after conversion. We are never secure against temptations, we can never say that we cannot fall, that we are saved and therefore secure from temptation, but this does not mean that in Jesus we cannot have day-by-day assurance of salvation.
| If your hope of salvation rests in what Jesus did for you, how can you then not have assurance of salvation? On the other hand, if you are looking to self, how can you ever have any assurance at all? |
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