Are the 1000 years of Revelation literal?
Thursday, 26 July 2007 11:51
The 1000 years of Revelation 20 –are they literal? The literary genre of the passage is crucial. There is no reason to exempt the numbers of any passage from the literary genre of the passage. No! If the genre of the passage is figurative, then the assumption must be that the numbers are figurative. So…
Here we have the imprisonment of the devil for a thousand years. The idea of a prison is crucial to verses 1-3 and verses 7-10.
Questions:
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Is the inmate of the prison a literal dragon or serpent? No, here the passage actualy identifies the symbol as referring to the devil.
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Is the key of prison literal? No, of course not. Satan is a spiritual being. What good would a literal key do?
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Is the chain of the prison a literal chain like that used on Paul in Acts 16 –a literal passage? No, of course not! What good would a physical or literal chain do on a spiritual being. He’d fade right thrugh it like Voldemort in Harry Potter. Oops, sorry, that’s another issue!
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Is the prison, called the “abyss”, literal or physical? Well, I would agree that it is some place, but beyond that I do not think we should conclude there is a literal hole in the ground. It also is not literal.
So let me get this straight! The inmate, the key, the chain, and even the prison itself are symbolic representations of different aspects of God’s binding of Satan, but the prison sentence–the thousand years–must be taken literally? This sounds very inconsistent to me–not to say arbitrary!
In Revelation 20 Premillennialists argue that there is affirmed a future, interim binding of Satan. Can you cite even one parallel passage for such a doctrine? Amillennialists can cite many parallel passages for the idea that as a result of the work of Christ Satan has been restrained in the present age (Matt. 12:24-29 ; Luke 10:17-19 ; John 12:31,32 ; Col. 2:15 ; Heb. 2:14 ; 1 John 3:8 ; Revelation -12:5-10.) Only the interpretation that sees Satan bound in Christ’s first advent is supported by the analogy of faith. A future, provisional binding of Satan is unknown elsewhere in Scripture and is, therefore, purely speculative and conjectural. Its sole exegetical basis is the premillennial interpretation of Rev. 20: 1f.
The choice here is between interpreting symbols symbolically and biblically or interpreting them in a woodenly literal way that refuses to take into account and refusing to take the literary genre of the passage.
