The book of Revelation is frequently misread, notes Raymond Brown (Introduction to the New Testament), as providing a coded history of the future. Such misreadings see the order of events in that final biblical book as – more (in some 'prophets') or less (as in Left Behind) symbolically – predicting the temporal order of events at the end times.
Brown provides a more detailed refutation of this point of view, but it is enough to note that the time line of at least one central character of the book – Jesus Christ – runs clearly against the historical order of his life. He is seen, already crucified, around the throne of God (5:6) a full seven chapters before he is born (12:5)!
This discrepancy alone should be enough to alert us to the fact that time and history, although central to John's Apocalypse, are not simply being mapped out in advance. God is breaking into history in such a way that history is radically called into question; the seer of Patmos forces on us an "awareness of the catastrophic nature of time itself, the element of discontinuity in it, of the termination and end of time" (Metz).
Every moment of history finds itself on the field of Armageddon, between two armies arrayed for battle. One must choose now: flock either to the banner of the Lamb who was slain or to the dragon who has been healed (13:3).
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