Its Genre

No New Testament book demands more introductory background on the part of its modern reader than this one. G. B. Caird imagines “the untutored reader” coming to the end of the book “with the question ‘What on earth is this all about?’” A clue to the problem is the self-designation of the book as “Apocalypse” (1:1; 22:6). Equally important is the title “prophecy” (22:7-19 cf. 1:3; 10:11; 19:10). Old Testament passages which exhibit the features of the apocalyptic genre include Isaiah 24-27; 56-66; Zechariah 9-14; Joel 2-3; and many passages in Ezekiel (including 1:26, a vision picked up in Rev. 4) . . . Of first importance, however, as a key to the background of Revelation is the canonical Book of Daniel, especially chapters 7-12.
Revelation is both like and unlike its apocalyptic predecessors. It shares a religious attitude to history, in which the believer sees God’s purposes as leading up to a grand climax and supernatural intervention. It makes similar use of the literary categories of vision, symbolism (especially in numbers and colors), and parable. Animal forms stand for persons and natural phenomena pictorialize events, though the identifications are not always one-for-one correspondences, as though every animal or insect had a human counterpart in history. The root idea of apocalyptic is a dualism of two ages, according to which this age is one of wickedness and persecution for the saints of God and the next age is one of triumph and vindication. The turning point comes in a sudden dramatic intervention by God, who has been silently working out his purposes up to that time. Finally, the message of apocalyptists and seers is one of consolation and hope, offering a theodicy, a justification of the ways of God to men. The seer expresses the assurance that all is safe in God’s hands in spite of the present stress, and the end is certain as history unfolds along its predetermined course . . .

(Ralph P. Martin, New Testament Foundations: A Guide for Christian Students, vol. 2, Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company / Carlisle, Cumbria, UK: The Paternoster Press, 371-372)

The Book of Revelation

This volume presents the text and an exposition of the last, and the most perplexing, book of the Bible. It is published with diffidence because of the difficulties and mysterious involved, with a plea for tolerance of divergent views, and yet with a deepening confidence in the practical and imperishable values of this portion of sacred Scripture. To it alone is attached the specific promise, “Blessed is he that readeth.” Neither cold neglect nor heated controversy, neither skeptical criticism nor fanatical vagaries, have stopped its perennial springs of comfort and inspiration and hope. In vivid colors it pictures the inevitable triumph of right over wrong, the ultimate victory of truth and faith, and the final universal rule of the Prince of Peace. Yet it is not designed to encourage idle dreaming or sentimental speculation. It constitutes a call to sacrificial service, to courageous witness, and to valiant struggle, until “[The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.]”

(Charles R. Erdman, The Revelation of John: An Exposition, Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, MCMXXXVI; From Foreword)