Time dilation

In Scripture, visionary revelation is aa standard mode of divine revelation. This consists of dreams and waking visions. The difference between ordinary dreams and revelatory dreams is the difference between uninspired and inspired dreams. Ordinary dreams are the product of the dreamer's imagination whereas revelatory dreams are the product of divine inspiration. But the process is similar. The experience is similar. 

One familiar feature of dreams is the difference between dream time and real time. The passage of time is different in dreams. For instance, many of us have had the experience of waking up at night, glancing at the clock, where we see the time, on the illuminated digital readout. We then fall asleep, have a dream that involves a lengthy narrative, wake up again, only to see that just a few minutes have passed in real time, although hours (or more) passed in dream time. Dream time doesn't synchronize with real time. The rate at which events happen in a dream doesn't match real-world events outside the dream. Given that John was a seer, it's not surprising that Revelation reflects this time dilation. 

Although debates about Revelation often focus on how such visions relate to the world of time and space, it is important to ask how these scenes relate to each other, creating a narrative world in which the ordinary constraints of time and space do not apply.
The combination of elements can best be pictured as a forward-moving spiral, which repeatedly leads readers through scenes of threat and back to the presence of God, even as the broad storyline moves forward to the new creation. Vision cycles both overlap and progress, with individual sections tracing the movement from conflict to victory that shapes the book as a whole.  

Time has multiple dimensions in Revelation. John's visionary experience occurs on the Lord's Day, when Christians gathered for worship (1:9). Although John is presumably alone when the visions come, he locates the experience in "worship time"… 

Next is the flow of time within the visionary world. The main period begins when Satan is thrown down after the Messiah's birth and exaltation, and concludes when Christ returns and Satan is bound (12:1-17; 19:11-20:3). Revelation says that this period of conflict with evil is "short" (12:12) and lasts for three and a half years, which equals forty-two months (13:5), 1,260 days (12:6), and "a time and times and half a time" (12:14). But in the visionary world this "short" period extends from Christ's first coming until his final return. Visionary time does not correspond to chronological time in the readers' world. Revelation was written decades after the death of Jesus, yet the entire period of the church's conflict with evil fits within the three and a half years of visionary time (11:2-3). 

A major question is what "soon" means, and Revelation's history of interpretation has often focused on this question. John does not say that "the end" must soon take place. The idea is more complex. The messages in 1:9-3:22 warn that without repentance, Christ will come "soon," not to end the present age but to discipline each congregation (2:16). Later visions continue to complicate the sense of what "soon" means, since the scenes in the middle of the book do not unfold in a linear fashion but repeatedly interrupt the movement toward the end so that people can be sealed (7:1-17) and John can prophesy (10:1-11). 

The interpretive problem is that visionary time has no straightforward connection to chronological time in the readers' world. Visions show the Christian community's conflict with evil lasting for three and a half years (12:6; 13:5); yet this period begins when Christ is exalted to heaven and Satan is thrown down to the earth (12:5,7-9), and it ends when Christ returns and Satan is bound (19:11-20:3). So the time that Satan rages is "short" in the visionary world (12:12), but chronologically it encompasses the entire span between Christ's first and final comings…The book's imagery, interrupted sequences, and symbolic use of time means that readers cannot determine what "soon" means chronologically. 

In the visionary world, the three and half years encompass the entire time between the Messiah's exaltation and final return…Time in the visionary world is not equivalent to time in the readers' world. By the time Revelation was composed, many more than three and half years had elapsed since the end of Jesus' ministry. The writer does not use the traditional period of three and a half years in a simple chronological sense. Rather, it is his way of characterizing his own time as the end of the age…Time does not function in the same way in the visionary world as it does in the ordinary world. 

The approach taken here is that John's readers would have seen themselves living in the time when Satan and the beast were at work, and not in the millennial age after the beast was defeated and Satan was bound. For them, the end of evil remained a future hope. But this approach also recognizes that the visionary world does not outline a chronological sequence of events that can be correlated directly with the readers' world.

Tracing a series of events in the visionary world does not mean that the scenes correspond to a series of distinct events in the readers' world. First, there's the fluidity in Revelation's use of the OT…John does not assume that there is a one-to-one correspondence between an OT prophecy and its fulfillment in an eschatological  event. C. Koester, Revelation (Yale 2014), xiv, 115, 120-121, 222-223, 562-563, 782, 789.