do not even really think that Revelation is a book about the end of time, so much as a manifesto written in figurative code by a Jewish Christian who believed in keeping the Law of Moses but who also believed that Jesus was the Messiah. It is for the most part, as far as I can tell, an extravagantly allegorical “prophecy” not about the end of history as such, but about the inauguration of a new historical epoch in which Rome will have fallen, Jerusalem will have been restored, and the Messiah will have been given power “to rule the gentiles with a rod of iron.”
