Lucy Brierley explores Revelation’s vision of the world to come

We were recently on a car journey when Toby, our six-year-old, quite out of the blue, remarked: ‘I really hope God makes the new earth tomorrow.’ My husband and I looked at each other, slightly puzzled, but realised he must have picked up his moment of inspired eschatological reflection from a recent Sunday morning service.

At Woking URC we have been on a ‘Journey Through the Bible’ over the last six months. We have a big wooden timeline, inspired by the Bible Society’s Bible Course, and week by week we have placed books of the Bible onto it as we’ve recounted the stories of our faith and sought to understand more deeply how they fit together in God’s salvation plan.

As the last book, Revelation, was placed on the timeline, we thought about how we are living in the gap between the end of Acts and the new heaven and new earth envisaged by John on the island of Patmos…

Lucy Brierley is Minister of Woking United Reformed Church

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This is an extract from an article published in the April 2022 edition of Reform

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