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Protestant Apologetics

Isaiah 65:20

OT Prophets
Isaiah 65:20
20No longer will a nursing infant live but a few days, or an old man fail to live out his years. For the youth will die at a hundred years, and he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.
Read in NWT ↗
JW Usage

— "no more will there be an infant from that place who lives but a few days, nor an old man who fails to live out his days" (NWT) — is a Watchtower paradise-earth proof-text. The verse is read as describing post-Armageddon conditions in the New Earth: extended lifespan, restored bodies, the fulfilment of the earthly hope for the great crowd.

Protestant Usage

is the verse the Watchtower's "no more death in paradise" teaching cannot accommodate. Read carefully: "the one who dies at a hundred years of age will be considered a mere boy, and the sinner will be cursed even though he is a hundred years of age." The verse explicitly says people will still die — at very old ages, but they will die. And it speaks of "the sinner" still being cursed within this restored age. Both features are incompatible with the Watchtower's no-death-no-sin paradise teaching. Pair with the beatitudes-unity argument: the "earthly hope" reading of Old Testament restoration prophecy fragments under the texts themselves. The faithful reading is figurative — Isaiah uses the language of an extended, blessed earthly life as a vehicle for describing the new-creation hope, which the New Testament consummates in Revelation 21 (the new heaven and new earth united, no more death).