22nd August 2025

As we read through the book of Revelation, we are reminded that even Christian believers are not immune from the pain of suffering and persecution, even persecution to death. After all, we understand how: ‘…it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment…’ (Hebrews 9:27 KJV). Nevertheless, many in this world, including some believers, are troubled by the question, ‘What happens after death? ‘  Yet not many stop to consider what happens after the judgement. Revelation 21:1-7 (NIV) addresses this very question as it introduces us to the subject of the future eternal state. The present order of things will one day end abruptly (v.1), as the victorious ones (v.7), those who constitute the true Zion of God (v.2), who will inherit and eternally inhabit the new heavens and the new earth (v.7), are revealed as the Holy City, the bride of the Lamb.

The apocalyptic style with which the Revelation was written presents before us a series of symbolic visions that often overlap and extend their widening vistas to reveal the progressive, end-time march of humanity towards the inevitable and final day of judgement. When we come to the 21st chapter, however, we find ourselves, in prescient vision, on the other side of that certain expectation of judgement, and the dwelling place of God’s people has become the dwelling place of God himself. It is from heaven’s safe harbour that the beautifully adorned bride of the Lamb, the true Zion of God, descends (v.2) to a renewed earth where all the promises of God are realised in all their gracious fullness. Lest our present failure to comprehend the veracious glory of the new creation and the actuality of our future eternal state causes us to doubt, we have the blessed assurance given that “…these words are trustworthy and true.” (v.5). 

So difficult must it have been for the apostle to describe, in the limited scope of human speech, the blinding reality of the coming new order of things that he feels it more conveniently meaningful to portray precisely what it is not. Tears will no longer fall from sorrowful, grieving eyes as pain and death, those cruel stains of the old order, will have forever ceased (v.4). The one who upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3) has in his hands, also, the end of all things that characterise the perilous here and now, and our present transient state. The exiled apostle reveals how this turbulent, war-torn, blood-stained, sin-soaked evil world will not continue, because the Lamb, who is Lord of history, has so decreed it: ‘He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.” ’ (v.6).

Local congregation:
Grace Communion Peterborough
Farcet Village Hall                                                    
Main Street
Farcet
Peterborough
PE7 3AN

Meeting time:
Sunday 11.00 am

Local congregational contact:
Richard Dempsey
Email:  richard.dempsey@btinternet.com
Local church website: GRACE COMMUNION CHURCH PETERBOROUGH – Landing Page

Word of Life contact:
wordoflife@gracecom.church