The vast majority of Christians (at least those who believe in a literal New Heaven and New Earth), and even many members of the body of Christ, have made an assumption that there won’t be any death on the New Earth. I can’t agree with this assumption, however, because we’re told in Isaiah 65:17-25 that people will continue to die — or at least have the potential to die, depending on whether or not they commit certain sins — on the New Earth for a certain period of time:
For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days, nor an old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an hundred years old; but the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed. And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat: for as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.
Verse 17 of the chapter gives us the context of this passage, which is the New Earth, telling us that, yes, there will still be sin and death on the New Earth, even if a lot less of it.
That said, many people will refer us to Revelation 21:1–4 in order to try to prove the assumption they make that there won’t be any death possible on the New Earth, and the assumption that this passage in Isaiah 65 isn’t talking about what takes place on the New Earth at all, but rather that it’s actually talking about what will take place during the thousand-year kingdom of heaven on this earth — and some of them also say the same thing about the events mentioned after the reference to the New Earth a chapter later as well (although, to be fair, we know from certain quote by Jesus that the passage in Isaiah 66 does take place at least partly on this earth as well, thanks to the “Mountain Peaks” of prophecy, as I explained in chapter 3 of my free eBook, but there’s nothing to suggest that this is also the case when it comes to the passage in Isaiah 65; besides, the passage in Isaiah 66 does still refer to the New Earth as well, thanks to those “mountain peaks,” as we also learned in that chapter of my eBook).
The problem with their claim is that these are quite literally the only two references to the New Earth in the entirety of the Hebrew Scriptures (meaning the books of the Bible that are generally referred to as “The Old Testament”), so any Israelites who read Isaiah 65 and 66 between the time that book was written and the time that 2 Peter was written would be looking for details about this New Earth which Isaiah had just revealed to them for the first time, and the people who first read these prophecies in Isaiah definitely wouldn’t have thought they were saying, “There’s going to be a New Earth, but never mind that, here are some details about what’s going to happen on this earth, before the new one is even created, and we won’t ever tell you anything about that New Earth at all anywhere in the Hebrew Scriptures.” There’s just no good reason that I can think of for God to have inspired Isaiah to have even mentioned the New Earth (and New Heaven, which just refers to a whole new universe for the New Earth to exist within) twice in these prophecies in Isaiah in the first place, after never having mentioned it prior to this, if he was then going to jump back in time to only discussing the thousand-year kingdom of heaven on this earth in the rest of the prophecies (all without even giving any hint to the readers that this is what was happening) rather than continuing to discuss what’s going to happen on the New Earth that he’d just introduced to everyone for the first time in these prophecies, especially since nobody reading Isaiah back when it was first written would ever assume that these passages weren’t talking about what’s going to happen on the actual New Earth (that said, I suppose it’s possible they assumed that the thousand-year kingdom of heaven would take place on said New Earth, not being aware of the “Mountain Peaks” of prophecy themselves and hence not realizing that there’s a thousand-year gap or so between the Tribulation and the creation of the New Heavens and the New Earth, but thanks to what I demonstrated in chapters 1 and 3 of my eBook, we can know better ourselves, so please go read that book if you aren’t already familiar with the facts that prove there’s a difference between the Millennium and the final age, or eon, on the New Earth).
Regardless, it’s easy to see that the prophecy in Isaiah 65 has to be about the New Earth for another reason, which is the fact that John’s prophecy is clearly calling back to Isaiah 65:17-19 (“For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice for ever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying”) when it refers to the New Jerusalem on the New Earth in Revelation 21:1-4 itself (“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away”), and I think it should be pretty obvious from reading those two passages side by side that the Jerusalem referred to in Isaiah 65:17-19 must be the same Jerusalem spoken of in Revelation 21:1-4, which is the New Jerusalem on the New Earth (I’d also think it would have gone without saying for the original readers of Isaiah that the Jerusalem he referred to would have to be a new Jerusalem in his prophecy too, since the old Jerusalem would go with the old planet prior to the creation of the New Earth he wrote about, especially since they also would have had no good reason to believe the details of this prophecy were going to take place anywhere other than on the New Earth mentioned at the beginning of the prophecy, as I already stated), which tells us that everything listed in John’s prophecy about there being no more death, sorrow, crying, or pain has to be about what happens for those who get to reside within the Jerusalem mentioned in both prophecies rather than for those living outside it (although one could, perhaps, look at the passage in Revelation through the lens of the “Mountain Peaks” of prophecy as well, but rather than talking about both the New Earth as well as what came before it the way the prophecy in Isaiah 66 does, it would then instead first be about what happens in the New Jerusalem on the New Earth, prior to the end of the ages, with it then later applying to everyone else outside the New Jerusalem on the New Earth as well, after the ages have come to an end and everyone has been resurrected from the dead and been made immortal).
On top of all that, the passage we began looking at in Isaiah 65 wraps up in verse 25 by telling us that “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the Lord.” Why does this also tell us that this passage is talking about the New Earth? Because Isaiah had already discussed this concept of animals residing peacefully together previously in the same book, in Isaiah 11:1-9, when he wrote, “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots: And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; And shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth: with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice’ den. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” This passage in chapter 11 is talking about Israel during the thousand-year kingdom of heaven, and to mention this detail again 54 chapters later and be referring to the exact same thing would be entirely redundant. Instead, repeating the beginning of the prophecy about peaceful animals from chapter 11 in chapter 65, right after mentioning the New Earth, confirms that animals will indeed continue to be peaceful on the New Earth just as they will be in Israel when the kingdom of heaven exists there (it also confirms that there will be animals on the New Earth during the final age, something that wouldn’t necessarily go without saying if this verse hadn’t been included in the chapter, at least not prior to the end of the ages when death is destroyed altogether).
And then, on top of everything else we just covered, we also need to keep in mind that, without sin and death on the New Earth (“death” in the form of mortality, at the very least, even if not necessarily dropping dead, although Isaiah 65 tells us that’s likely to happen too), anyone born on the New Earth would never get to experience what we “Concordant” believers refer to as the contrast principle if they too don’t get to experience sin, evil, and death (referring to mortality here, although actually dropping dead could be included, depending on the person), which would mean they also won’t get to truly understand and appreciate grace, goodness, and immortality, and there’s no reason that this principle would stop being a principle just because one is born on the New Earth rather than the current earth, nor is there any indication that mortal and semi-mortal people (the latter of which refers to people who, thanks to eating the fruit of the tree of life on a monthly basis, are not in a state of slowly dying the way mortal people are) will stop reproducing on the New Earth, and every indication they will if Isaiah is to be believed, based on what we just covered, not to mention what Paul literally meant when he wrote about “the age of the ages,” or “the eon of the eons,” in Ephesians 3:21, as we can see from the more literal translation of the Greek in the YLT (Young’s Literal Translation), which translated it as, “to Him [is] the glory in the assembly in Christ Jesus, to all the generations of the age of the ages. Amen!” — similar to how it’s also translated more literally in the CLV (the Concordant Literal Version) as, “to Him be the glory in the ecclesia and in Christ Jesus for all the generations of the eon of the eons! Amen!” — referring to the generations born during the final age/eon on the New Earth, which is what the term “age of the ages” or “eon of the eons” is literally talking about (even if this isn’t made particularly clear in the KJV, thanks to the extremely figurative way its translators rendered the verse — “world without end” was a hyperbolic figure of speech that just meant “for ever” back then, obviously being used in place of the more typical “for ever and ever” that the KJV generally uses to translate the sort of Greek phrase it’s translated from in that verse, which, based on what we’ve already learned, must just mean “for the age of the ages,” or “for the eon of the eons,” at least in this passage; and they used “all ages” as metonymy for “all generations” for some reason as well, which is why this extremely unusual translation requires looking at the original Greek, or at least a more literal translation such as the YLT or the CLV, in order to figure out what it actually means), since the final age/eon will be the greatest age/eon out of all of the ages/eons, and anyone born on the New Earth will still have a human father (and as we know from Romans 5:12, anyone with a human father will eventually give in to sin, as I discussed in my article titled Why do we sin and die?). Which is why I have to insist that, yes, there will indeed be sin, evil, and death on the New Earth, even if these things are far less prevalent or powerful there, at least until the end of the ages when death — and hence sin — is destroyed altogether.