Jesus Christ instructs the apostle John to write what he will see: the past, the present, and the future.
Note that the apostle will be recording his observations - some things recognizable to him and others never seen before. He will
also be recording his observations sequentially, and unless he employs figurative devices like a simile to describe something, much
of his descriptions can be taken literally. However, what the apostle recognizes may be very foreign to us two thousand years later.