No longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his days. For the youth will die at the age of one hundred, and the one who does not reach the age of one hundred will be thought accursed. Isaiah 65:20

Once we‘re beyond this present phase of life and into the rest of eternity, the life of a child is limited. That’s what the above isolated verse seems to indicate. However, like misplaced punctuation, a not so precise translation can also render the wrong meaning to a passage.

The Hebrew word for “die” can also be translated as “cease;” a word that helps us understand a little more clearly the prophet’s visualization. The concept in the writer’s mind is that a child, on the new earth, will cease being a child. Childhood will be left behind at the age of one hundred.

As for those who will not reach a hundred because they are accursed, the prophet is speaking of the wicked who, as Daniel 12: 2 says, go forth to everlasting condemnation. They have died, but the memory of the wicked having existed will remain a hundred, thousand, million years, etc., as being accursed.

The text simply tells us that no one in heaven nor on the new earth will die. In the verse, the writer contrasts the fate of the two groups as pertaining to who will live on the new earth. The righteous children will grow into older ages, never dying. The accursed, having died the second death, will never make it to the new earth.

How can I know, how can I sound so sure that the children won’t die at one hundred years of age? Revelation 21: 4 is my surety. There, it says, among other promises applied to the new earth, “There will no longer be any death.”