In the Revelation Jesus speaks directly to John: “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter;” The Revelation is not about “the things that were” or the past, at the time it was written. If this book is primarily about the future from the time of John receiving the Revelation, then we must consider that much of the things which shall be hereafter having commenced shortly thereafter, would now, in our time, 1900 years later, have already happened over that span of time, and can be found in history.

The first three chapters of the Revelation relate to the things which are, at the time of writing by St. John. The epistles should be listened to and understood by the plain listeningof the text. Chapters four and five concern things otherworldly: a glimpse into the heavenly realm and the drama about unsealing the book of future things. Chapters six through 19 concern the future history unsealed by the Lamb or Jesus, the things which shall be Hereafter. It is explicitly stated that
it is about “things which must shortly come to pass”–future things which would begin, or commence almost immediately upon the completion of the Revelation to St. John.

Historicism is the method of interpretation that actually developed out of the Protestant Reformation, that is the reason why, to quote one critic, the “view was so widely held, that for a long time it was called the Protestant view.” That alone should pique interest to a deeper study of the view. The Council of Trent and Counter-Reformation has been most instrumental and very successful in suppressing this Protestant view for the past two centuries, so much so that it can be easily ridiculed even by so-called Protestants, who have forgotten why they are called protestant, if ever they even knew or considered the meaning of the Reformed Protest Against the Biblical and Historical Antichrist.
Historicism sprang from the Reformation Fathers identification of the Roman Catholic Church as Paul’s great apostasy, and the Papacy as the very seat of that man of sin from II Thess. 2. And yes, the Roman Empire, Western Europe headed by the Vatican at Rome as the Beast and Mystery Babylon of the Revelation.