Revelation 21:1 → Isaiah 65:17

John's vision of "a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away" takes up verbatim Isaiah's oracle, "I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind" (Isa 65:17). Isaiah's promise — joy in a re-created Jerusalem where weeping is silenced (Isa 65:18-19) — finds its consummation in Revelation 21, where the former things, including the chaotic sea, are no more and every tear is wiped away (Rev 21:4). This is promise-fulfillment along the Creation and New Creation longitudinal theme: God who spoke creation into being in Genesis 1 pledges through Isaiah to make it new, and brings that word to its appointed end in Christ. The escalation moves from Isaiah's renewed cosmos still touched by death (Isa 65:20) to a creation in which death itself is abolished. As Beale stresses, the new creation is no mere repair but the eschatological climax of redemptive history, the dwelling of God with man. The telos is the unhindered, joyful presence of God in a renewed cosmos, where the redeemed behold His glory face to face — the very vision that makes Christ supremely desirable.