“For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 8:12).

When God’s great plan of redemption of His creation has at last been consummated, with Heaven and Earth having “passed away” (Matthew 24:35) and the “new heaven” and “new earth” (Revelation 21:1) established, several familiar things will be missing.

Jesus Christ will “swallow up death in victory” (Isaiah 25:8). Although we have eaten of the cursed ground in sorrow all the days of our lives (Genesis 3:17), “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

There shall be no more curse (Revelation 22:3). The whole of creation groans under the curse pronounced by God as a result of sin in the Garden of Eden. Gone will be the thorns that appeared as Adam tilled the ground, the thorns that were plaited as a crown for Him who knew no sin but who bore our sin; gone will be the thorns of the “cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches” (Matthew 13:22) that have choked the word so that it can bear no fruit. Thorns will be a thing of the past.

“And there shall be no night there; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God giveth them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 22:5). In fact, “the Lamb is the light thereof” (Revelation 21:23).

Of greater consequence than these, however, will be the absence of the tempter: “That old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan” will be laid hold upon by Christ Himself, and He first will “cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him,” then finally “into the lake of fire . . . for ever and ever,” “that he should deceive the nations no more” (Revelation 20:2,3,10,3). CJH