The Importance of Symbolism in Revelation

The symbols are rooted in things that were either present, as you've just said, and certainly prior. These people were saturated in Old Testament imagery already so that when these symbols came forth in the book of Revelation, they got the meaning of them from the Old Testament scriptures and from their current circumstances. All three genres kind of inform us how we should read that. Thinking of Revelation as prophecy from a prophet, we ought to hear Babylon in its Old Testament sense. Rome has long been identified as Babylon that wasn't code. It was to like in Rome as Babylon just as Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, Rome just destroyed Jerusalem.