Richard Bauckham gives some great perspective on what reading the Book of Revelation did for its first readers–and what it can do for us:
“John is taken up into heaven in order to see the world from the heavenly perspective. He is given a glimpse behind the scenes of history so that he can see what is really going on in his readers’ world. He is also transported in vision into the final future, so that he can see the present from the perspective of God’s final purpose for the world. The effect is to open his readers’ world to transcendence. The symbolic world they enter imaginatively in the visions of the book is their own day-to-day world seen from God’s heavenly perspective. They are given an alternative to the world as constructed by the dominant ideological perspective of their culture, the Roman imperial view of the world. The visionary imagery has the effect of purging their imagination of ways of seeing their world derived from the dominant ideology, reshaping their perception of the world by means of alternative images, and so helping them bear witness to God’s truth in the context in which they actually live. By re-visioning the world from the heavenly perspective, they are enabled to resist the dominant vision of the world, and to live for God and his kingdom rather than for the beast and his kingdom. The clash of perspectives—heavenly and earthly, God’s and the beast’s—on reality is thematized in Revelation by constant reference to truth and deceit. The visions enable God’s people to see the truth of God, to see through the lies of the beast, and so to witness to God in the world.”