I got this e-mail from Dr Verle Streifling 1 2, where he comments on my article on the use of Isaiah 66:23 by Adventists to show Sabbath observance in heaven:
I’ve read your good notes re Isa 66:23. Since the Greek word ‘sabbatwv’ is used for either the ‘sabbath’ or the ‘week’ (as Matt 28:1 meaning ‘After the Sabbath’ or ‘In the end of the week, as it was dawning into the first day of the week’ (mia twv sabbatwv is first of the week,) then too from Isa 66:23 this use may well be fitting, so that he says:
“From one week to another, and from one month to another…” NOT thinking of the Jew’s weekly feasts or monthly feasts, but simply of the continual passing of times of continual worship to YHWH.
Yet of course another insight in 66:22+23 is that this describes “ALL FLESH” not just the JEWS, and still another is that Isaiah is not really speaking of the TIME of the New Heaven and New Earth, but of the Christian church age, and in the end of this Church age, for vs 24 describes the destruction of the wicked whose flesh would be eaten by the birds (Ezekiel) or who at least are strewn all over the place, (which would not speak of the New Heaven and New Earth, but Armageddon’s destruction).
Where SDA misreads this is by applying the New Heaven and New Earth of vs 22, NOT where God applied it (to how long Israel’s seed would remain) but misapplying it to vs 23 which is a change of subject from vs 22 !
Further, this cannot apply to Heaven, neither to the Eternal State of the New Earth, for Revelation tells us that by this time, “Time will be, or continue to exist, NO MORE.” It says there will be No Sun nor Moon, needed, “for the Lord God Almighty is the Light thereof”, and “there will be NO NIGHT there”. This tells us that in this eternal state, there will be NO Measuring of time, as with days and nights, and so there will be NO Sabbaths, or Weeks, or Months, in the New Heaven and New Earth.
Another phenomenal reading error, but it fits with their Scholarship — EGW’s interpretation and so even today they hold it, while they would know that this is in error.
