APPENDIX P
Isaiah 66:22–24, Gehenna, and the Day of the Lord
Clarifying Judgment, New Creation, and the Memorial of God’s Justice
The closing verses of Isaiah present one of the most arresting images in Scripture. The Lord promises “new heavens and a new earth” that will remain before Him, declares that “all flesh shall come to worship before Me,” and then immediately speaks of worshippers going out to look upon corpses whose “worm does not die” and whose “fire is not quenched” (Isaiah 66:22–24). At first glance, this final picture appears to place a perpetual field of burning bodies alongside the new creation, and it has often been read as describing an eternal realm of torment parallel to the renewed heavens and earth. Within the Restoration structure of this book, however, these verses must be carefully interpreted in their full context and in the light of the canonical order: Torah, Prophets, the teachings of the Lord Jesus, and the Apostolic writings. When these are brought into harmony, Isaiah 66:22–24 does not depict an eternal Gehenna running beside the new creation, but a compressed prophetic vision in which the completed judgments of the Day of the Lord stand forever as a memorial to God’s holiness, even as the new creation endures as the sphere of His unfailing mercy.
Isaiah 66 and the Pattern of Separation, Birth, Judgment, and New Creation
Isaiah’s final chapter recapitulates, in prophetic form, the very pattern of separation, birth, judgment, and new creation that this book has traced across the ages. In Isaiah 66:1–6 the Lord distinguishes between the contrite and those who draw near in outward worship while their hearts remain corrupt. He declares that “Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool,” rejecting the notion that a merely humanly-constructed house can contain Him, and instead looking to “him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at My word” (Isaiah 66:1–2). At the same time He condemns those who offer sacrifices while practicing abominations, counting their offerings as murder and idolatry (Isaiah 66:3–4). Those who truly fear the Lord are “cast out” by their brethren “for My name’s sake,” yet He promises to appear “from His temple” with a voice of recompense upon His enemies (Isaiah 66:5–6). Here the separation begins inside the covenant house. The Lord distinguishes those who tremble at His word from those who cloak rebellion in sacrificial language. It is a prophetic preview of the separation between faithful and unfaithful, that will be completed at the appearing of the Lord Jesus.
In Isaiah 66:7–14 the imagery shifts to birth. Zion, personified as a mother, suddenly brings forth a child and then a whole company of children: “Before she travailed, she gave birth; before her pain came, she delivered a male child.… Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be born at once? For as soon as Zion travailed, she gave birth to her children” (Isaiah 66:7–8). The Lord Himself asks, “Shall I bring to the time of birth, and not cause delivery?” (Isaiah 66:9). Those who love Zion are urged to rejoice with her and are promised consolation, nourishment, and peace like a river (Isaiah 66:10–14). This language corresponds to the New Testament’s teaching that the resurrection of life is the full “birth” of the sons of God into the new-creation sphere of existence. In this present age believers are truly begotten from above; the seed of God’s own life has been implanted in them (1 John 3:9), and Christ is being formed in them (Galatians 4:19).
Yet, as John says, “it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him” (1 John 3:2). The begetting is real now, but the full birth awaits the resurrection of life. Isaiah’s image of a nation born in a day therefore anticipates the hour when, at the appearing of the Lord Jesus, the faithful are raised into celestial bodies conformed to His glorious body and are revealed as the sons of God (Romans 8:19), a chosen generation, a Royal Priesthood, a holy nation (1 Peter 2:9), presented holy and blameless before Him (Colossians 1:22) in the Heavenly Jerusalem. Zion’s sudden labor and immediate delivery correspond to the resurrection of life as the birth of the sons out of the womb-realm of this creation into the open realm of the new creation that the Lord has already entered in the Heavenly Jerusalem.
Immediately after this birth imagery, Isaiah 66:15–18 depicts the Day of the Lord in terms that align precisely with the sabbath-long Seventh Day described in this book. “For behold, the LORD will come with fire and with His chariots, like a whirlwind, to render His anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by His sword the LORD will judge all flesh; and the slain of the LORD shall be many” (Isaiah 66:15–16). The same God who has comforted His children in Zion now appears with fire and chariots to judge “all flesh.” The phrase “slain of the LORD” signals visible, bodily judgment. Those who have sanctified themselves in idolatrous gardens and eaten unclean things are singled out for destruction (Isaiah 66:17). This is the prophetic face of what the Apostles later describe as the Day of the Lord: the appearing of Christ in fire, the judgment of all flesh, and the beginning of the Seventh Day in which the earth becomes Gehenna, the furnace of divine wrath, discipline, and purification.
In Isaiah 66:18–21 the horizon broadens again. The Lord promises to “set a sign among them” and to send survivors “to the nations” to declare His glory (Isaiah 66:19). These messengers bring the scattered brethren of Israel back to the Lord from all nations, and He declares, “I will also take some of them for priests and Levites” (Isaiah 66:20–21). These verses compress into one scene the long-term outcome of judgment and restoration: survivors among Israel, nations being gathered, and some being appointed to priestly service. Within the Restoration structure, this anticipates the Eighth Day arrangement in which the restored unfaithful serve as outer-court priests on the renewed earth, patterned after the Levites, under the light of the Heavenly Jerusalem.
Finally, Isaiah 66:22–23 announces the new creation: “For as the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain before Me… so shall your descendants and your name remain.… From one New Moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, all flesh shall come to worship before Me.” This is the same promise the Apostle Peter cites when he speaks of “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). In Isaiah, as in Peter, the language marks the final state in which God’s purpose is settled: a renewed creation, enduring seed, and universal worship.
The difficulty arises in Isaiah 66:24, where the prophet concludes: “And they shall go forth and look upon the corpses of the men who have transgressed against Me. For their worm does not die, and their fire is not quenched. They shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.” On a quick reading, it can appear that after the new heavens and new earth are established and all flesh worships, there continues alongside the renewed creation an eternal scene of burning corpses. But the prophetic literature often compresses events into single composite visions rather than presenting them in a linear, step-by-step timeline—for example, Isaiah’s oracles in Isaiah 61:1–2 that joins the Messiah’s first coming with the final day of vengeance (as the Lord Jesus Himself reveals in Luke 4:16–21), or Malachi’s intertwining of the Lord’s first coming in purifying fire with the eschatological Day that “burns like an oven” (Malachi 3:1–3; 4:1–6). Isaiah is not constructing the age-structure as systematically as the Apostles later do; he is bringing the end of all things into one final horizon where restoration and judgment stand side by side. To understand where Isaiah 66:24 belongs in the order of the ages, we must let the rest of Scripture supply the chronology while Isaiah supplies the imagery.
Isaiah 66:24, Gehenna, and the Seventh Day
The Lord Jesus explicitly quotes Isaiah 66:24 when He warns of Gehenna as the place “where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48). In His teaching, Gehenna is not a metaphysical underworld but the realm in which God “destroys both soul and body” (Matthew 10:28). He gathers Isaiah’s imagery of corpses, worm, and unquenchable fire and applies it to the future condition of the world under divine judgment. The prophetic scene of bodies exposed outside the place of worship becomes, in His mouth, a warning about the age in which the earth itself will function as the burning field of God’s justice.
The Apostles locate this burning field within the Day of the Lord. Peter declares that “the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise,” and that “the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10). He then adds that “the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat,” before speaking of the “new heavens and a new earth” according to the Lord’s promise (2 Peter 3:12–13). The order is clear: first the Day of the Lord in fire, in which the present heavens and earth are shaken, dissolved, and burned; then, after this furnace has completed its work, the new creation. Paul likewise connects the appearing of the Lord Jesus with the destruction of the man of sin “with the breath of His mouth” and “the brightness of His coming” (2 Thessalonians 2:8), and with “tribulation” upon those who do not obey the gospel and “rest” for the faithful (2 Thessalonians 1:6–10). The Day of the Lord is the beginning of the Seventh Day, and Gehenna is the earthly condition of that Day as divine fire confronts and consumes Adamic corruption.
Within this canonical order, Isaiah 66:24 belongs to the Seventh Day, not as an eternal realm alongside the new creation, but as the prophetic portrayal of the completed judgments of that sabbath age. The “corpses of the men who have transgressed” are the bodies of those who, having risen in the resurrection of judgment, have died under the unveiled fire of God’s wrath on the earth-Gehenna. The fire is “not quenched,” and the worm that “does not die” is Isaiah’s imagery depicting God’s judgment that brings Adamic corruption to its full end, not a process aborted or restrained.
At the same time, Isaiah links this vision with the new creation and universal worship because he wants his hearers to see both outcomes together. By placing the vision of the corpses immediately after the promise of the new heavens and new earth and the worship of all flesh, he asserts that the same God who secures the permanence of restoration also secures the completeness of judgment. There is no new creation that does not arise out of the furnace in which rebellion has been brought to ruin. Isaiah compresses, in one closing scene, the certainty of the new heavens and new earth and the certainty that the transgressors will be utterly overthrown and remain a lasting warning to “all flesh.”
The Faithful, the Wicked, and the “Seeing” of Judgment
Several other passages help to clarify this relationship between worship, judgment, and remembrance. The psalmist says, “Wait on the LORD, and keep His way, and He shall exalt you to inherit the land; when the wicked are cut off, you shall see it” (Psalm 37:34). The promise is not only that the faithful will be preserved and inherit, but that they will see when the wicked are cut off. Psalm 91 makes the same point: “Only with your eyes shall you look, and see the reward of the wicked” (Psalm 91:8). Those who dwell “in the secret place of the Most High” are safe under His wings, while pestilence, destruction, and judgment fall around them (Psalm 91:1–7). Yet they are not ignorant of what is happening; they see the outcome of God’s judgments.
Isaiah 8 provides a complementary picture. There the prophet, speaking by the Spirit of Christ, declares, “Here am I and the children whom the LORD has given me! We are for signs and wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts, who dwells in Mount Zion” (Isaiah 8:18). The Epistle to the Hebrews applies this confession to the Lord Jesus and the sons the Father has given Him (Hebrews 2:13). In the same context, Isaiah describes those who remain in rebellion: “They will pass through it hard-pressed and hungry; and it shall happen, when they are hungry, that they will be enraged and curse their king and their God, and look upward. Then they will look to the earth, and see trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish; and they will be driven into darkness” (Isaiah 8:21–22). Here already we see a division between Christ and His children in Zion and the rest of humanity plunged into “trouble and darkness, gloom of anguish,” driven into darkness. When this is read alongside Isaiah 60:1–2—”For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and deep darkness the people; but the LORD will arise over you, and His glory will be seen upon you”—a consistent pattern emerges. The faithful stand in the Heavenly Zion under the blazing light of God’s glory; the unfaithful and ungodly remain on an earth shrouded in darkness, gloom, and anguish. This is the prophetic backdrop to the Lord’s language of “outer darkness” and to the depiction of the earth as Gehenna in the Seventh Day.
In the full Restoration structure, these strands converge. At the appearing of the Lord Jesus, the faithful enter the resurrection of life, receive celestial bodies, and are gathered to Him in the Heavenly Jerusalem. They stand with Him in the unveiled Heavenly Sanctuary, the true Zion above. The unfaithful believers and the ungodly rise into mortal bodies on the earth and enter the resurrection of judgment. The earth, now functioning as Gehenna, becomes the field in which their Adamic bodies die under divine fire and their souls undergo wrath, indignation, tribulation, anguish, and corrective discipline according to their works and light. Throughout the Seventh Day, the faithful sons, gathered with Christ in Zion above, see in the light of His presence the unfolding and completion of these judgments. In this sense, Isaiah 66:24, Psalm 37:34, Psalm 91:8, and Isaiah 8:21–22 all point toward a single reality: those who belong to the Lord and stand in His rest not only escape the furnace, but also understand and acknowledge the justice of what the furnace accomplishes. They “see the reward of the wicked,” not as detached spectators, but as a priestly people who agree with the God whose judgments are “true and righteous altogether” (Psalm 19:9).
When the Eighth Day arrives—the resurrection “of the end,” the new heavens and new earth, the Restoration of All Things—the furnace of Gehenna has completed its work. The Adamic body and soul have been brought to an end in all who entered the resurrection of judgment; their spirits have returned to God (Ecclesiastes 12:7); and in the renewal of all things they receive terrestrial incorruptible bodies and the formation of new souls suited to the renewed earth. They have passed through wrath, chastening, and fire; they now stand among the nations who worships God from His footstool. Yet the memory of what the Day of the Lord accomplished does not vanish. Isaiah’s vision of the corpses and the unquenched fire remains as a prophetic way of saying that the new creation order, and the people who inhabit it, will never forget the severity of the judgments by which God purged Adamic corruption from His world. The “abhorrence to all flesh” is not the sight of an eternally ongoing Gehenna, but the settled understanding of what rebellion merited and what the holy love of God did to remove it.
Guarding Against Misreadings
Two opposite errors must be avoided when interpreting Isaiah 66:22–24 within the restoration structure. The first is to treat verse 24 as describing an eternal, parallel realm of torment alongside the new creation, as though after the Eighth Day a second, independent “hell” continues forever at the edge of God’s renewed world. This reading isolates verse 24 from the rest of Isaiah’s pattern, neglects the canonical ordering provided by the Apostles in 2 Peter 3 and 1 Corinthians 15, and contradicts the Restoration of All Things in which death, the last enemy, is abolished and God becomes “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:24–28).
Paul’s ordering of the end in 1 Corinthians 15 confirms that Isaiah 66:24 cannot be describing an eternal Gehenna realm standing alongside the new creation. He teaches that “then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:24–26). If Gehenna were an everlasting second world of ongoing death and rebellion beside the new heavens and new earth, then death would never truly be destroyed and there would remain a realm where enemies are not under His feet. Christ’s reign would coexist forever with an undefeated kingdom of death. Paul allows no such outcome. All hostile rule and power are brought to nothing; death itself is abolished; and God becomes “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). Isaiah 66:24 must therefore be read, not as the image of an eternal, parallel kingdom of Gehenna, but as the prophetic memorial of the completed judgments of the Day of the Lord through which death and rebellion have finally been overthrown.
The second error is to minimize or sentimentalize the severity of the Day of the Lord, turning Isaiah’s corpses, worm, and fire into vague symbols and denying the real suffering of both soul and body that unfaithful believers and the ungodly will endure in Gehenna. This reading dulls the moral seriousness of the Lord’s warnings and undermines the urgency of the call to holiness in this age.
The Restoration structure avoids both errors by holding together the full weight of Isaiah’s language and the full promise of universal restoration. Gehenna is real, bodily, and terrible. It is the age-long furnace of the Seventh Day in which God destroys the Adamic body and soul of the unfaithful and the ungodly, and in which they undergo wrath, chastening, and anguish according to their works. Yet Gehenna is not eternal; it is bounded by the Seventh Day and ends when its work is complete. The new heavens and new earth arise after the burning of the present creation; the resurrection “of the end” clothes all purified spirits of all humanity with incorruptible bodies suited for the renewed earth; and the nations walk in the light of the Lord Jesus and the glorified sons and daughters. Isaiah’s final vision shows that the new creation and the completed judgment are inseparable in the memory of God’s people. Those who worship in the renewed earth will forever know that they once stood under wrath, that they passed through the valley of the shadow of death, and that the same God whose fire devoured the corpses of the transgressors is the God whose mercy brought them home.
In this way Isaiah 66:22–24, properly understood, does not undermine the Restoration of All Things, but secures its moral foundation. The new creation is not granted at the expense of justice; it emerges out of the Day in which justice has been fully done. The unending worship of all flesh in the renewed earth does not erase the memory of Gehenna; it sings the praises of the God who, through fire and worm and unquenchable judgment, has finally removed Adam and established Christ as the Head of a reconciled creation.
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