The Prophet Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 65, 17, something pretty incredible.
In the new creation, he says, the former things, the experiences of this life, it seems,
the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
And that raises a question about eternity in the new creation, are we mind-wiped?
Two listeners are asking this exact question, Pastor John, who joins us today remotely over
Zoom.
Here's David who lives in San Antonio, Texas.
Hello, Pastor John.
Praise God for you and for Tony and for your faithfulness to this podcast over the years.
I've searched the archive high and low and cannot find your take on Isaiah 65, 17, which
is exactly true that the text has never appeared on the APJ, not until today.
So does this passage effectively say that we will be memory-wiped before we enter the
new creation?
And then a listener named Rylin wants to know how Isaiah 65, 17, jibes with Revelation
512, which puts Christ sacrifice, the past tense was slain, the memorial of his crucifixion
in this world, front and center for all of eternity.
Pastor John, what do you make of Isaiah 65, 17?
And are my memories of this life deleted in the new creation?
Well, here's the quote, let's put Isaiah 65, 17 right in front of us so that we can
be specific.
Behold, I create new heavens and new earth, God is speaking, of course.
And the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.
So David is asking, does that mean a complete, quote, memory-wip, unquote, like assume the
hard drive of our former life crashes and starts over as a totally blank slate?
And my response is there are numerous reasons why it does not mean that.
And if we think about a few of them, we will get a clearer picture of what the Christian
eternal future will be like.
So first, in the immediately preceding verse, so verse 16 of Isaiah 65, God says of his
servants, he who takes an oath in the land, she'll swear by the God of truth, because
the former troubles are forgotten and are hidden from our eyes.
So verse 17 says, former things shall not be remembered and verse 16 limits those things
to former troubles.
Now, that's a contextual warning to me that we better be careful not to overstate the
forgetting of verse 17, it's probably not a memory wipe of all former things, but a
selective memory wipe in some way.
So I'm just, that's just a little flag warning me.
Be careful here, don't overdo this, don't overstate this or think of a total memory wipe
of what it would mean, think what it would mean.
If you remember nothing from your former life, you are not you any longer.
You have no identity at all.
There would be nothing in your mind that could identify you as you.
In essence, a total memory wipe means you don't exist anymore as the person you were.
And if you are to have any personhood at all, it would start all over again, like a new
creation, you'd be a new tone of person and there would be no continuity with that form
of person at all, but that contradicts several things we know from scripture.
It contradicts the parables of Jesus and the teachings of the apostles that we will be
rewarded in the age to come according to our works in this life.
So there's a correlation or a continuity between the person you are and what you did in
this world and the person you will be in the new earth.
A complete memory wipe also contradicts the fact that we will recognize each other in
the age to come.
The risen Christ is the first fruits, Paul says.
He's the first fruits of that final resurrection reality.
And he relates to his disciples after the resurrection as one that they know we will
know Jesus as the one who came into the world and worked wonders and died for us and rose
from the dead and we will know each other.
All that assumes that our memories have not been wiped out.
Perhaps the most important of all is the fact that the ultimate purpose of history, the
ultimate purpose of redemption from creation to consummation is the praise of the glory
of the grace of God.
That's a quote from Ephesians 1 6.
God has worked in history so that his wonders would be remembered and praised, especially
the wonders of his grace, someone 114.
He has caused his wonders, the wonderful works to be remembered, the Lord is gracious and
merciful.
God is not going to obliterate the memory of his thousands of works of grace as though
they didn't matter.
On the contrary, according to Isaiah 63, 7, God will quote, cause to be remembered, the steadfast
love of the Lord, the great goodness of the house of Israel that he has granted them
according to his compassion.
This is why Ryland's question about Revelation 512 is relevant.
He's right that the book of Revelation pictures the perfected saints in heaven as singing
the song of the Lamb.
That's the Lamb that was slain at a point in history, at a place called Golgotha, worthy
as the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor
and glory and blessing.
We're going to be singing that in the age to come.
God did not send his son to die and just have his sacrifice be forgotten for all eternity.
The death of Jesus was the high point of the glory of the grace of God and that's the
point of the universe, the praise of the glory of the grace of God.
We will sing it forever.
We will not forget the high point of the grace of God in this history, which means that
the death of Jesus will make sense forever and the only way the slaughter of the Son of
God makes sense is to remember sin.
We have to remember sin, our sin, Christ died for our sin.
The most poignant expression of Paul's worship of Christ seems to me as Galatians 220.
He loved me, Jesus loved me and gave himself for me.
You think Paul won't say that forever.
He loved me.
He gave himself for me.
That poignant love and thankfulness will not be memory wiped is the reason Christ died
to win for himself everlasting songs of thankfulness and worship for his bearing our guilt or
consider the others out of the coin.
In the age to come, we will know that there is a reality called hell.
The very last verse of Isaiah pictures the saints in the new age gazing on the defeated
foes of God.
But the reality of hell would make no sense if there were no memory of the outrage of sin
and no memory of the patience of God in this age.
So I conclude that Isaiah 65, 17 does not mean that we are memory wiped in the new heavens
and the new earth, which would cause David and Ryland to say, well, then what does it
mean?
Okay.
We get that.
We get what you're saying.
What does it mean when it says the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind?
There's three observations that suggest there is a kind of forgetting and there is a kind
of remembering that is different from what we now experience.
The Bible speaks of God not remembering our sins against us.
I think that's a crucial phrase.
79, 8 do not remember against us our former iniquities or 1822 none of the transgressions
that he has committed shall be remembered against him.
This is probably what the Bible regularly means when it says that God will not remember
our sins.
Like Isaiah 43, 25, I will not remember your sins that is God will not remember them against
us.
He will not call them to mind to in any way harm us or punish us, but he does not cease
to be God with perfect knowledge of all reality past, present and future.
So there is a way to remember sin that is very different from our present experience.
Second, the Bible pictures us in our eternal future as having fullness of joy in your
presence is fullness of joy at your right hand, our pleasures forevermore.
That means no memories will ruin this joy.
He may not be able to imagine how any memory of all our sins could serve our joy, but
that leads me to my third and last point about how forgetting and remembering in the age
to come will be different from how we experience forgetting and remembering now.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, 12, now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.
Now I know in part, but then I show no fully, even as I have been fully known.
In other words, there is a way we know our sins now and there's a different way we will
know our sins in the age to come.
We will know them as God knows them as we are known.
We will be granted the capacity to see them as the reason why Christ died and yet the
effect of that seeing, that remembering, will be so changed that the pain of it, the guilt
of it, the shame of it will be transformed into a pure, joyful magnifying of the grace
of God, which is why God made the world and sent Jesus to save us, that's what he was after,
the magnifying of his grace.
So I take Isaiah 65, 17, the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind to mean
in the new heavens and the new earth, whatever God grants us to remember of this world
will only serve to deepen our joy, the joy of worshiping Christ.
Everything will be forgotten in the sense that everything that would hinder that worship
will be excluded or transformed.
Fascinating. Thank you, Pastor John.
And thank you for joining us today.
If you want to ask Pastor John, email us your question.
Go to askpesterjohn.com.
While male and female roles in the local church are clearly defined in the Bible, we would say
they are clearly defined in the Bible, but are those roles equally as clear within a
parachurch ministry structure? Increasingly, parachurch organizations are saying no, those
roles do not apply to us. So do they. That question is up and next, I'm your host, Tony Ranki.
We'll see you back here on Monday. Thanks for listening.