Travelling a lonely road-a social-historical approach to Revelation

Teaching Revelation in different contexts calls up different responses to the approach I am taking. In the seminary-cum-college I teach, the students appeared ignorant of how one can approach Revelation, and absorbed quite whole-heartedly what I had to offer-- except for the occasional curious question on the issue of the millenium. In church, the audience consists of some who have studied Revelation for years. There are those engrossed with the study of the millenium, with the stages of history reflected in its images, in how Daniel can enlighten the message of Revelation, etc. Invariably every week, a rebuttal by a 'futurist' against my social-historical reading would surface. And how Daniel can enlighten Revelation is the second most common concern. But one asks which is a surer context to start with. Approaching the book from the first century context, it is almost as if I am travelling a lonely road, like Jesus in Mark as he went on the road to crucifixion, with none of his disciples appreciating the suffering he had called upon himself. It seems that by bringing Revelation more down-to-earth and more manageably concrete, I have somehow 'desecreted' the book, and the defenders of its major foretelling function would start to speak up. But I admit in the same way, a number of years ago, the process of revelation to me has shocked me, as I was fiddling with its images, to reveal a Revelation that is mainly didactic/hortatory and very down-to-earth, even in the depiction of its monstrous adversary characters. The book is not as 'apocalyptic' as one would commonly understand the term to mean. If I may, the apocalyptic images clothe concrete lessons for Christian living. There is an uncomfortable feeling at this new perspective. Or is it  that we have for long an ingrained (and mistaken) idea of what apocalyptic literature is and what it is meant to do?