I'm contradicting some typical notions of Revelation interpreters, but I'm not contradicting myself. In my view, Revelation contains ten or more visions that reveal one aspect or another about the coming of Jesus Christ in glory to judge the world and reign. Rev. 6:12-17, for example, is a vision of this cataclysmic moment, and it indicates that the present form of the world will be dissolved in the confrontation between God, Christ, and the unrepentant, leaving no place to stand for them. Other such visions are Rev. 7:9-17; Rev. 11:15-19; Rev. 14:1-5; 14:14-20; 15:17-21; 19:11-21; 20:4-6; 21:1-7. These are all viewpoints on the same great judgment event. So 19:11-21 does not come “before” the creation of a new heavens and a new earth and the coming of the New Jerusalem. The dissolution and the recreation of the cosmos are both part of the one great moment of transition that is the coming of Christ in glory to judge and rule. There is no halfway millennial period between the current age and the new creation—the millennium is the first age of an unending sequence of ages in the new creation. The battle seen in Rev. 20:7-10 is to be understood as the resurrection and judgment of the unrepentant and the devil.
Is all of this imaginary? In a sense it could be said to be so, because it has not come into reality yet. Whatever it is that these visions symbolize, they symbolize it for the imaginations of people who have not yet experienced it. I embrace these pictures of the future, not because they tell me precisely and literally what is going to happen, but because they are fitted to my capacity to understand by the Spirit of God. My job is literally to imagine them, not to try to pin them down to realities I already comprehend. I do not know for sure how these visions will fulfill themselves, but it is my hope that when I come to take part in them, I will say, Ah, I recognize what John was pointing to in his visions.
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