Revelation 20:1-6 and the Millennium: Pre-, Post-, and Amillennialism

Introduction: The Interpretive Challenge of Revelation 20:1-6

Revelation 20:1-6 describes the "thousand years" in which Satan is imprisoned and the martyrs for Christ are resurrected and placed upon thrones to judge and reign with Christ for a thousand years. The passage also makes reference to a "first resurrection," implying that there will be a second. Yet, because the scriptural verses are visionary and imagistic in nature, they have been the source of contentious interpretation over the years. Do the verses refer to a time that is yet to come (premillennial), a time that we are already in (postmillennial), or to no real time at all but rather to a figurative sense of the spiritual dimensions of the Christian way to heaven (amillennial)?

Poythress states that Revelation 20:1-6 contains several different "levels of communication" — the linguistic, the visionary, the referential, and the symbolic. Each of these levels offers a unique way of looking at Revelation and allows for a deeper penetration of the mystery of the Word of God. This paper will examine the verses of Revelation 20:1-6 and show how premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism each offer ways of understanding the verses based on the four levels of communication identified by Poythress, as well as the exegetical analyses of other scholars.

Mayhue asserts that a preterist interpretation of Revelation is one in which incidents described therein have already come to pass, and that a futurist interpretation, on the other hand, suggests the opposite — namely, that Revelation is a prophecy of things to come. The idea of the time basis of Revelation finds expression in the millennialism question: premillennialists view Revelation 20:1-6 in a literal way, believing that Christ will return to reign over His kingdom for a thousand years, whereas postmillennialists believe Christ will return after His gospel has been spread and the way for His coming prepared over a thousand years. Amillennialists view the verses as figurative and hold that the question of a thousand years is not meant to be taken literally.

To determine whether the preterist or the futurist interpretation of Revelation is the most accurate, it is essential to examine the Book of Revelation in the context of when and why it was written. Following this examination, the two interpretations may be supported or rejected according to both a literal and a figurative reading of the text. The other books of sacred Scripture also offer clues as to whether one should view Revelation 20:1-6 in terms of pre-, post-, or amillennialism.

Context and Genre of the Book of Revelation

Revelation may be placed in the following context, which Frey provides: "The book was written in Greek by St. John the Evangelist, on the island of Patmos, about the year 96 AD." It concerns primarily the conveyance of a message of "hope, but also of warning… the crown [of Christ] will not be won without a struggle." The context of Revelation is one in which is found an arrangement of "scenes in a sevenfold structure," each conveying a different aspect of the message.

Revelation 21, for example, speaks of a New Heaven and a New Earth. Chapter 17 of Revelation describes a "beast" who "was and is not." The ways in which Revelation plays with timeframes and evokes a sense of time and place that seems to exist outside of time and place suggests that one must take a unique approach to this book and perhaps understand it in spiritual rather than temporal or materialistic terms. In this sense, the amillennialist approach to Revelation 20:1-6 makes the most sense, because it views the passages as figurative and concentrates more on the spiritual meaning of the verses rather than attempting to identify or locate them within a specific temporal framework.

As Robert L. Thomas notes, "No consensus exists as to a precise definition of genre, so discussions attempting to classify… Revelation are at best vague." This observation is important: if even scholars cannot agree on the genre of Revelation, efforts to read it with rigid literalism must be undertaken with great caution.

Premillennial and Postmillennial Readings

That is not to say that pre- and post-millennialist interpretations do not make sense. The idea that Christ will reign for a thousand years is perfectly understandable given Revelation 20:6, which states that the priests of God will reign with Him for a thousand years. On the referential level, this is the correct way of interpreting these words. But on the visionary level, one might support the postmillennial interpretation, which states that the way must be prepared through the spreading of the Gospel — a condition sensed in the first part of Revelation 20:1-6, in which the verses state that Satan must be bound for a thousand years. One could argue that this has not yet happened, unless one counts the rule of Christendom from Constantine to the end of the Middle Ages as the millennium. Because it is impossible to know for certain, the symbolic level of interpretation may be the safest course, which lends itself to the amillennialist position.

If the nature of the millennium is one in which Christ's church reigns supreme, then this could possibly refer to the rule of the Church from the time of Constantine until the Protestant Reformation, when the Church's authority began to wane. Or, if one approaches it from the Protestant perspective, it may seem that the Reformation marks the beginning of the millennium. Or, if one approaches it from the perspective that peace will reign for a thousand years, then one must look to the future for the millennium.

The timing of Christ's coming in relation to the millennium is further obscured in the verses, which suggests that the amillennialists have the best interpretation. Is Christ to reign during the millennium or after it? Scripture does not definitively say, and thus one is not obliged to adopt either view. What one should adopt, however, is the spiritual idea that Christ must reign in the hearts and minds of all people, and that to accomplish this, Satan must be overthrown within each and every human being. On a linguistic level, this could imply that the words "a thousand years" are simply a way of suggesting that one must constantly overthrow Satan — not just once, but again and again for as long as one lives on earth.

Conclusion: Spiritual Meaning Over Temporal Frameworks

In summation, Revelation 20:1-6 can be interpreted on a number of levels, all of which may be understood in the amillennialist sense. But in both the pre- and post-millennial interpretations, a literal reading is given priority over every other level, to the detriment of understanding the verses in their profoundest, most spiritual sense. The premillennial view sees the thousand years as coming at some point in the future, with Satan imprisoned for a millennium while Christ and His faithful followers — including those who died for Him — rule over the world. While this interpretation is appealing for its victorious tones, it strikes more at one's imagination than at one's grounded spiritual realism.

The postmillennial view, while noteworthy for the fact that it considers us to be living in the millennium now — in the sense that those who preach and spread the Gospel are ruling with Christ — fails to fully account for the concept of a spiritual Israel rather than an ethnic Israel that does not believe in Christ. Thus, this paper recommends viewing the verses from the amillennialist perspective, even though the other two views offer historical and futurist readings that are compelling in their own right.

The amillennialist view adopts the most figurative perspective and, regarding Israel, understands this people as the "Church of Christ" rather than the nation-state. The most important thing for the Christian to do is to reflect not on hard-to-pin-down timeframes and meanings but rather on the deeper significance of the Word of God in terms of combating Satan within one's own heart. The amillennial approach views the "thousand years" as merely a way of saying "for a very long time," which is consistent with other figurative expressions found throughout the Bible — such as the forty days in the desert and the various lengths of fasting described in Scripture.

Bibliography

Frey, R. Introduction to the New Testament. New York, NY: Ave Maria, 1948.

Mayhue, Richard L. "Jesus: A Preterist or a Futurist?" The Master's Seminary Journal, vol. 14, no. 1 (Spring 2003), 9–22.

Patzia, Arthur G. The Making of the New Testament. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011.

Poythress, Vern Sheridan. "Genre and Hermeneutics in Rev 20:1-6." JETS, vol. 36, no. 1 (March 1993), 41–54.

Thomas, Robert L. "Literary Genre and Hermeneutics of the Apocalypse." In Revelation in the Wycliffe Exegetical Commentary. Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1992.