With the exaltation of the slain Lamb, the heavenly temple has been opened and the promise of salvation has been fulfilled (11:19); a new age of salvation’s history has begun. According to the eschatology of the earliest church, Christ’s death and exaltation constitute the penultimate moment of salvation’s history and look ahead to the ultimate moment, the parousia of the Lord Jesus Christ, when the salvation of God’s people and the restoration of God’s creation will be completed in full. The church’s history is worked out between those two climactic moments of salvation’s history and constitutes the current moment of God’s salvation.

This period of time should not be understood in a linear, chronological sense (Boring, Revelation, p. 150). Rather, the word of exhortation or judgment whic…