Apocalyptic writing is highly symbolic and was written in vivid imagery to reveal God’s secret purpose (revealing/revelation). This type of writing was common throughout the Middle East and the imagery was familiar to them.
Apocalyptic writing was well known in the Middle East and is seen in the Old Testament as well as the New Testament as our previous discussion question covered – it was used to reveal something important and prophetic. God gave the message of the Revelation to Jesus to give to his servants. Jesus gave the message to an angel who passed it on to John, who gave it to the church (Rev. 1:1-3 NIV). Jesus appeared to John in a vision (Rev. 1:9-19 NIV) and commanded him to write what he had seen, was currently seeing and future events revealed to him. John used detailed and vivid imagery to explain what he was seeing in the visions. John wrote the book, but it was dictated by Christ using visions. The command for John to write appears several times throughout the book of Revelation. Due to the nature of the visions, John would have naturally used this genre to record the visions and his experience in doing so. (Anonymous).