ABSTRACT
Samuel Sherwood (1730-1783), a Congregational minister from Fairfield, Connecticut was far from being alone in envisaging the possibility that the political revolution of 1776 might inaugurate something far greater, the hope that: "the Lord shorten the days of tribulation and appear in his glory to build up Zion'. On Sherwood's reading of Revelation, it was plausible to suppose that the church had been preserved by God by being taken to America and that the prophesied overthrow of the great red dragon of tyranny and persecution which was now in train would lead to 'the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ'.
