Is it justified to interpret Revelation symbolically?

Well, a better question would be to ask “It is justified not to take Revelation symbolically?” The very first verse of Revelation says this— ‘The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John’. And John has written that in that way in order to point us to Daniel 2:28 when Daniel says to Nebuchadnezzar— ‘there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will be in the latter days.’ And so we think back to the book of Daniel, and we think, well, in what context was Daniel saying that ‘two never could never’? Well, the context in which he was saying it to the king was after the King’s dream. The king received his dream; he had no idea what the dream meant. Daniel said, “There is a meaning to these symbols in your dream.” And John is saying the same thing to his readers. “Here I’m going to show you something comparable to a dream, and yet there is a meaning to these symbols.” And yet, that governs the way we read the text, we must see the elements of the vision as symbolic. And one such example is the thousand years.