By Michael Ruse:

Revelation has a character that is outside of time. The eschatological battle has already commenced, and it continues and will continue until the end of human history.
—Metropolitan Hilarion.

There is an element of the end times that has to do with our history that deserves awareness. But there is another understanding of eschatology that is happening outside of time that is mostly unseen and escapes our attention every day.

The title of this chapter focuses our attention on Christ as “the protagonist” who is the gate-crusher destroying Death and Hades in the end, and it is He who brings the joy and peace of the New Jerusalem to His faithful. Rather than focusing, as our modern and sometimes ancient commentators have done, eerily on the Anti-Christ and his terrorizing aspects we should direct our gaze always to the Second Coming of Christ and His final victory. In short, Revelation is ultimately a more terrorizing event to the Anti-Christ and his followers than to Christ’s Church.