It was believed to be written around A.D. 95 on the Island of Patmos (Nelson 1982). This book contains portions that follow the epistolary form (chapters 1-3) but much of it is written in the form of apocalyptic literature. In this book, there are three major movements of apocalypses which appear in 1:19. They are "the thing which thou have seen" (chapter 1), "the things which are" (chapter 2-3) and "the things which shall be hereafter" (chapter 4-22). This book is rich in symbolism so there are several interpretative approaches to it in the Christian community.
As already mentioned, the books of Daniel and Revelation are two of the prophetic books of the Bible. Even if they were written about 600 years apart, both talked about the future of the world, judgment and God's victory over evil. Let us explore how the book of Daniel relates to the book of Revelation. .
These two books go hand to hand and they should be studied and interpreted together in order to fully understand the whole picture of God's unveiling secrets. The main author of the books of Daniel and Revelation was Jehovah who revealed His secrets unto the prophets (Amos 3:7), Daniel and John. If Jehovah was the author of both books, it is no surprise that some of their portions are similar because He revealed the same secret in both books that involve "things that shall come to pass hereafter" (Daniel 2:45, Revelation 1:9) "until the end of the age" (Daniel 2:44, Revelation 1:7). Let us survey some of the reasons for the necessity of interpreting these two books together and how they are related to each other.
First, one book provides clues to the other book. Let us compare Daniel 7 and Revelation 13. Both chapters portray the rising up of beasts from the sea. So what does the "sea" or water prophetically represent? Revelation 17:15 shows that waters represent "peoples, multitudes, nations and tongues." With this clue, we know that these beasts in both Daniel and Revelation came up from the densely populated area.
