Harmonization by multiplication

Premils consider the binding and loosing of Satan in Rev 20 to be inconsistent with an amillennial timeframe. I’ve responded to that objection. For now I’d like to consider the premil interpretation. Is the premil interpretation more straightforward? Or does it have its own difficulties harmonizing the sequence of events?

It [Rev 20:1] cannot be a recapitulation of the earlier account of Satan’s being cast from heaven to earth where he proceeds to deceive and persecute (12:9; 13:14; 18:23c). The account of 20:1-3 tells of a removal from the earth that keeps him from pursuing these activities any longer. The only way one could view Satan as bound before a time in the future would be to construe his binding as a restriction of his activity, not a cessation of it. Confinement to the abyss, however, requires a complete termination of his activity in the sphere of the earth. To date this has never happened. The uniform testimony of the NT is that Satan is not bound during the period between Christ’s two advents. A further problem for a view that this paragraph recapitulates the present era is its inability to explain Satan’s release at the end of the Millennium. What restrictions currently placed on him will be removed at the end of this age? No credible answer to this question has ever been advanced.

A suggestion has been that this particular effort [20:8] at deception in recruiting a huge army is the same as the one in 16:13-14 (Lee), but this cannot be because that earlier gathering is in preparation for the battle of 19:17-21 and this one prepares for the battle of 20:9. They are two different battles (Beckwith).

“The nations” are not the same ones deceived into joining “the battle of the great day of God Almighty” (16:14). These are quite distinct form the earlier ones as the explanation of ta ethne in 20:3 has shown.

…the allusion here is to Ezk 38:2…But the present passage differs from Ezk 38-39 in a number of ways that are sufficient to show this is not the specific occasion foreseen by Ezekiel (Smith)…It has been obvious throughout Revelation that John does not always cite the OT with a strictly literal interpretation of proper names and events.

To some degree, history repeats itself. “To gather them for the battle” repeats verbatim an expression in 16:14 regarding preparations for Armageddon that occurred before the Millennium. R. Thomas, Revelation 8-22 (Moody 1995), 404,423-424.

i) Both amils and premils can cite NT passages outside of Revelation to support their respective views on the binding of Satan, so that tactic cancels out each side’s opposing prooftexts. Moreover, it’s secondary to the text of Revelation. We need, if possible, to interpret Revelation on its own terms. What the sequence of events means within the author’s narrative strategy.

ii) Is Thomas’s reading the simplest reading? To the contrary, his reading has its own complications. He resorts to the technique of harmonization by multiplication. Instead of allowing for variant descriptions of the same battle, he treats these as three or four different battles. But that’s very cumbersome. The recapitulatory interpretation provides a unifying principle. A more streamlined approach.

iii) Moreover, Thomas separates these battles in spite of the actual wording of the texts suggesting that these are overlapping depictions of the same battle. He does this both with intertextual accounts in Revelation as well as literary allusions to Ezekiel. He begins with a rigid preconception of how these events must go together, and that forces him to segregate the events in spite of parallel descriptors.

iv) He seems to think recapitulation amounts to replication, so that if two or more accounts contain significant differences, then they can’t refer to the same event. But that misconstrues the nature of recapitulation, which allows for a variety of imagery to portray the same event. Especially when figurative imagery is employed, it needn’t be literally harmonious.

Moreover, recapitulation also makes allowance for progression. A later description will advance the plot. Add something not contained in the earlier description. 

v) He fails to make allowance for the hyperbolic nature of apocalyptic language. Even when Revelation speaks of total destruction, that may sometimes be rhetorical overstatement for emphasis.