Alan Kurschner solicited my comments on this argument:
We've had some amicable banter via email. I'm posting my side of the exchange (thus far).
1. I think the inference involves a level-confusion. For the deeper question, or preliminary question, isn't so much how 19 and 20 are related to each other, but how the narrative was meant to map onto reality. The key issues isn't how these scenes are internally related but externally related.
If, say, someone (like myself) views Revelation as an allegory (e.g. Pilgrim's Progress, The Divine Comedy), then even if we thought the narrative was linear, that doesn't resolve the larger question of how to match the allegorical story with real-world referents.
And if there's evidence that the structure is more like a spiral than a line, then that further complicates attempts at directly correlating the narrative with real-world events.
Put another way, the question is how to synchronize 19-20 with external events. That involves more than how the scenes are interrelated within the narrative. That involves how the narrative is related to the world outside the narrative. That question operates at a different level.
I myself don't think Revelation has a single timeline, although there's an overarching direction.
At best, your argument could be one element in a cumulative case for premillennialism.
2. In a book like Revelation I think it's important to distinguish between historical causation and dramatic logic. I think the sequence you describe follows dramatic logic. There's a distinction between those who take orders and those who give orders.
The foot soldiers have both a defensive and offensive function. They attack the people of God. But they also protect the ringleaders–like bodyguards.
In dramatic logic, first defeat the foot soldiers, in part as a way of getting to the ringleaders. Capture and punish the ringleaders after eliminating their security detail. You have to go through the phalanx to reach the commanders.
Satan is saved for last because he's the ultimate ringleader. He comes in for special treatment.
Orders come from the top down. Defeating the enemy reverses the process by working up the chain of command. That's dramatic logic rather than historical causation.
By the same token we need to distinguish between chronological time and narrative time. For instance, even though the Gospels are historical accounts, narrative time is not the same thing as historical time. Gospel writers take liberties with chronology, viz. narrative compression, thematic sequencing.
4. There's the familiar problem of where Satan gets his army for round 2 (20:8-9), since his army was destroyed in round 1 (19:21). That suggests recapitulation.
This is one reason I'm hesitant about reducing the action to a single timeline. There's a certain back-and-forth in Revelation.
Of course, premils can posit that the millennium itself creates a new generation to resupply Satan's depleted ranks. There's nothing inherently wrong with that postulate. But it's not specified by the text.
5. I don't know the specifics of your overall position. So I'll take a stab at it, and you can correct me.
It's my impression that you think Revelation is basically a historical narrative written ahead of time. Not just that it refers to real future events. But that in terms of genre, it's essentially a history book, like Genesis, Chronicles, or Acts. The difference is that unlike ordinary historical narratives, which record the past or present, this is about the future–given the author's advance knowledge of things to come. So you think Revelation is fairly prosaic and chronological, like other historical narratives. What makes it different from a typical historical narrative is not the genre but the timeframe.
Likewise, given your view of Biblical supernaturalism, it's my impression that you don't think Revelation is nearly as symbolic as amils typically take it to be. That is to say, the surreal elements could well be realistic. The grotesque monsters aren't symbolic. Rather, given Biblical supernaturalism, why can't reality be like that?
I'm also assuming you think 4-22 is chronological. And I assume you think that jumps ahead to the endgames, in contrast to the 1C setting of 1-3.
Again, correct me of I'm wrong.
Assuming that's correct, I'll say a few things for now, and save the rest for later.
Regarding the grotesque monsters, there are various possibilities or interpretive options:
i) John could be using zoological analogues for advanced technology. Maybe they represent predator drones. Writing for an ancient audience, John must use imagery that's intelligible to his audience.
ii) The monsters could be real zoological organisms. But perhaps they are bioweapons. Bioengineered by the Dragon or the Antichrist, as part of their army of darkness.
iii) The monsters could be occultic entities who are able to assume grotesque physical form.
Speaking for myself:
i) My default position is to regard them as literary composites, based on OT antecedents. Their hybrid features symbolize the abilities we associate with fearsome animals.
ii) However, I'm certainly open to the possibility (perhaps more than a possibility) that these are occultic entities who are able to assume that form. Just recently I was reading about an Eskimo village on the North Slope of Alaska. Due to coastal erosion, it relocated. The new site was built on old Eskimo burial grounds–which included the graves of Eskimo "shamans" (witch doctors).
From time to time, residents reported sightings of a black, winged wraithlike entity that terrorized the community. Of course, that could just be a tall tale. However, I'm willing to entertain to the possibility or probability that this was the ghost of a witchdoctor. A damned soul haunting the village for disturbing its grave.
On a related note, M. Scott Peck was trained (at Harvard) in secular psychiatry, yet later in his career, two patients were referred to him whom he diagnosed as possessed. Indeed, according to him, when the possession manifested itself, they'd take on a reptilian appearance. Cf. Glimpses of the Devil.
iii) To take a comparison, the seraphim/cherubim in Ezekiel's visions are tetramorphs. But they aren't literary composites. Rather, that's what Ezekiel actually saw. I don't know if it was a subjective or objective vision. But in any event, that's how they manifested themselves to him.
iv) Preterists and amils typically regard the chronological gap which premils posit between 1-3 and 4-22 as ad hoc. Now, I myself don't think 4-22 has exclusive reference to the distant future.
However, I don't think positing a chronological gap is necessarily ad hoc. John didn't know the duration of the interval between the first and second advents. And the question is what would be the next big event in redemptive history. Arguably, the next big event is the cluster of events involving the return of Christ and the final judgment. So it wouldn't be out of the question to have a lengthy gap.
4. I think you're conditioned to counterattack a conventional version of amillennialism which isn't identical to my position. I think you're responding to something like this:
i) The structuring principle of Revelation is recapitulatory parallelism. This is a systematic structuring principle.
19 belongs to the 6th cycle, while 20 belongs to the 7th cycle. 20 begins a new cycle. The narrative isn't continuous from 19 through 20.
20 refers to the first advent of Christ. The "first resurrection" is the new birth. The binding of Satan is Christ's 1C defeat of Satan's kingdom, illustrated by dominical exorcisms.
ii) You object to this partly on the grounds that it's anachronistic. If 19 is about the second advent of Christ, then it does violence to the narrative flow to make 20 about the first advent of Christ.
Speaking for myself:
I) I do think Revelation exhibits a fair amount of recapitulatory parallelism. However, I doubt that's a systematic structuring principle. I think that imposes a degree of artificial symmetry on the book. So I'm dubious about making a hard break between 19 and 20 based on recapitulatory parallelism.
ii) I agree with you that the first resurrection doesn't refer to the new birth. One reason is because I think Revelation describes public events. External phenomena. Not private, inner experiences.
iii) That said, I classify Revelation, not as historical narrative, but fictional narrative. Allegory. There are different kinds of fictional narrative. There's historical fiction, which is based on real people and real events. Fiction set in the past. With accurate period detail. There's supernatural fiction. And there's time-travel fiction, where the protagonist travels back into the past to change the past, with a view to changing the future, then returns to the new future. Often he's dissatisfied with the results, so he keeps going back in time to change the past until he either gets the results he's hoping for or gives up trying.
I think Revelation has elements of all three fictional genres. Like historical fiction, it refers to real agents and real events. Sometimes in the past, or John's own time, but also in the future. Like supernatural fiction, it has supernatural characters and miraculous events–which stand for real agents and real events.
And like time-travel fiction, it's repetitious in the sense that the story restarts several times, reaches the denouement ("It's the end of the world!"), circles back and starts over again–but each time it's different.
Revelation has a series of narratives within the overarching narrative. Narrative units that have a chronological sequence (a beginning and ending), but the next unit doesn't begin where the last unit ended. Rather, the next unit begins where the last unit began. Like a row of snowglobes. A self-enclosed world within a world. Each with its own, internal timeline.
I think this periodicity is there to show us that no matter when you live, you can expect the same kinds of challenges as a Christian believer.
iv) I don't mean the whole book is cyclical. Revelation is like a passenger ship. Passengers are moving backward and forward, up and down, although the ship itself has a definite direction. In that respect, the passengers are going where the ship is going, even if they are going in all directions on deck.
v) We should also resist the inclination of imposing our sense of clock time on the text. Our modern obsession with punctuality. From my reading, ancient and/or primitive cultures don't have that rigorous sense of clock time. They don't live by the clock. They don't operate with that rigid schematization of time or causality. They operate by event time rather than clock time.
This consideration is reinforced by the fact that John received his visions in an altered state of consciousness. Precognition and retrocognition flatten the perception of temporal succession.
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