Revelations 20
20 And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyssand holding in his hand a great chain. 2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. 3 He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.
4 I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge.And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They[
a] had not worshiped the beastor its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years. 5 (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection.6 Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second deathhas no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.
My simple question is: Is the above all metaphorical?
Thanks
NO!
Prophecy, in order to be correctly understood, must be interpreted in a “literal” fashion unless a passage specifically indicates otherwise. The unstated assumption is that literal interpretation is more reliable than non-literal.
When the "non-literal" method is used, it opens the door to the speculation of the reader to believe as his mind tells him to believe.
An example in which symbolic interpretation is considered proper by proponents of strict literalism is found in
Revelation 11:8. It informs the reader that the city in which the dead bodies of the two witnesses lay is “
spiritually called Sodom and Egypt.” In this case, non-literal interpretation is allowed because of the description, “
spiritually called.” Presumably, this means that neither “
Sodom” nor “
Egypt” refers to the actual geographic location.
Allow me to speak to the Scriptures you asked about........
Rev. 20:1, an "Angel" is an Angel! Good angels come "down out of heaven. So then we can say that a literal angel comes down from heaven.
That angel then has the key to the Abyss and that key is on a gold chain...........
The abyss or deep, is the same place out of which the beast ascended in Revelation 11:7. That means it is his "Home" or abiding place.
And the key of this becomes no hand so well as his who has the keys of hell and death, Revelation 1:18 who has all power in heaven and in earth, and has the power of hell, of opening and shutting it at his pleasure, which is signified by this phase.......The Lord Jesus Christ!
So far so good.
Then we see......"
And a great chain in his hand; the key in one hand, and the chain in another;
IMO. by which last is meant, not any material chain, with which spirits cannot be bound, nor indeed sometimes bodies possessed by evil spirits, Mark 5:3 but the almighty power of Christ, which he will now display in binding Satan faster and closer than ever. This is a picture of the SPIRITUAL conflict that will take place with the incarceration of Satan. Is it a Literal event. YES it is but it is in the SPIRITUAL realm of which we can not see.
.In Revelation 20 verses 2-7, six times we are told that Satan will be bound and that Christ will reign for
a thousand years.
Literal or symbolic???
Since
year (and
years) has only a literal and absolute meaning when preceded by a cardinal number, our next undertaking is to try to correctly understand “thousand.” Is there something in the word which would lead us to conclude that
thousand could mean something other than its literal and plain meaning?
Thousand (
chilia χίλια) occurs in the New Testament eleven times, six of those being in the twentieth chapter of Revelation. Twice it occurs in 2 Peter 3:8, “…that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” The other three occurrences are in the book of Revelation as well. The number of verses with which we can compare the word
thousand in the New Testament in order to correctly determine the meaning is somewhat limited since six of the eleven examples occur in Revelation 20. Thus, we need to turn to the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament translated from the Hebrew in approximately 270 B.C.
The word
thousand appears 504 times in the Septuagint where it is translated from the
Hebrew word אלף elef, which simply means thousand. It never refers to any kind of imaginary number, nor does it signify an indefinite quantity. The Septuagint merely translates that word literally and carries the same meaning. There are cases where a text will say
thousands in the plural and of course, that by definition is indefinite. But whenever a text refers to
one thousand it is speaking in a literal sense.
So then.....1000 years means 1000 years!