Again and again in Revelation, the final end or consummation is delayed. The answer I propose will not be acceptable for those who read Revelation and usurp God's control over history by proposing the end will be at this time or that and will be preceded by this event or that. John gives us his vision of the end veiled only by time itself. Only the sacrificial Lamb seated on the throne is worthy to break the seals containing the fixed purposes of God. And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Life provides the chronology for moral choice.
Just as the saints retreat from their early cry for vindication into fervent prayer for those left to endure, so should the non-purely vindictive retreat from glorying in an end temporally experienced as darkness and not light. The only delight taken should not be in the discomfiture of the enemy but rejoicing only in the judgments of God. That judgment begins with one's own household. Remarkable in Revelation 18 is the description of Babylon, suggesting Babylon symbolically represents a place where sin has reached its utmost limit, leaving no room for repentance. No extensive knowledge of Rome is needed to realize that slaves under the empire fared better than did the poor of rural areas.