My favorite eschatological joke (yes, there really are such things) involves four people assembled to discuss theories about the millennium which is described in Revelation 20. Three immediately begin passionate argument, respectively favoring premillennialism, postmillennialism, and amillennialism. After an hour of unpersuasive debate, they notice that the fourth individual has remained silent throughout. "What's your view of the millennium?" they ask. "I'm a pan-millennialist," he responds. "It will all pan out in the end."
I share the latter person's unwillingness to be dogmatic about things we have never seen and events that have yet to occur. At the same time, I do believe that Revelation 20 is clear enough that we can know what probably will take place.
Strictly speaking, everyone who takes John's Revelation seriously is either a pre- or a post-millennialist, since these terms solely refer to whether the Parousia is before (pre) or after (post) the millennium. Those who read Revelation as a consecutive narrative (the most natural way) take the "pre" position, since the Parousia has undebatably occurred by chapter 19.
To assert that the Parousia follows the events in Revelation 20 requires a "flashback theory," the notion that Revelation repeats the same series of events from different perspectives throughout the book. This theory would for example equate the beast from the sea (ch. 13) with the scarlet beast (ch. 17), and would regard their divergent motifs (such as 10 diadems on the beast from the sea but none on the scarlet beast) as unimportant.
Postmillennialism believes that such a flashback occurs at the beginning of Revelation 20. The angel who binds Satan is apparently some person or group prior to the Parousia who creates utopian conditions in church or state. If valid, this permits the reading of chapters 19 and 20 in reverse order.
Amillennialism equates the angel's work with Jesus' first advent. That Jesus is nowhere else identified with an angel (and is specifically denied to be such in Hebrews 1) is ignored, along with the fact that none of Jesus' unique attributes (deity, resurrection, etc.) are posited of the angel with the large chain. Among other effects, this theory results in a limited atonement doctrine. If the binding of Satan in Revelation 20 refers to what Jesus did on the cross, the benefits of the latter must terminate when Satan is subsequently released (20:7). So much for the eternal gospel (14:6)!
This reveals that amillennialism is actually a subdivision of postmillennialism. Both teach that the Parousia follows the period indicated by Revelation 20, while disagreeing about the inception and extent of the latter.
Arguments over the millennium are dominated by the question, "Is the phrase 1000 years to be understood literally or idiomatically?" The former position is held by most pre- and postmillennialists. The latter position, which reads "1000 years" as a long but indefinite period (cf. the idiomatic English phrase "not in a million years"), is favored by amillennialists. When the idiomatic sense of "1000 years" is combined with the identification of the angel holding the chain as Jesus in his first advent, the millennium of Revelation 20 becomes synonymous with the entire history of the Christian church.
Surprisingly, the scriptural use of "1000 years" has had little impact on this discussion. In the first biblical genealogy (Gen. 5), which employs the same grammatical structure for "lived so many years" as Revelation 20:4, the ancient patriarchs lived almost, but not quite, 1000 years. Ecclesiastes 6:6 and Sirach 41:4 similarly define an ideal human lifespan as 1000 years. This would suggest that the function of "1000 years" in Revelation 20 is to describe not the length but the quality of this period for the saints. Of course, no one asserts that the millennium, however they understand it, is a negative period. If "1000 years" is simply a symbol of the sanctified life, it would seem that John went to unnecessary lengths to teach a pedestrian truth.
In two other texts, "1000 years" is equated with "one day" (Ps. 90:4; 2 Pet. 3:8). That the latter verse occurs in an eschatological context increases the likelihood that John intended his phrase to convey the same symbolism. Since "day" can indicate an indefinite period of time (e.g. Gen. 2:4), "1000 years" may have been John's way of saying "one twenty-four period" unambiguously. The purpose served by such a "day" would be to perform the one major event in Jesus' description of the Parousia not otherwise specified in this section of Revelation: the gathering of the elect from the four winds (Mark 13:37). The release of Satan at the end of "1000 years" (Rev. 20:7) would then simply be his assembly of the damned for the final judgment (Matt. 25:31) later that same day.
If anyone desires a special term for the latter view, may I suggest ephemeral premillennialism: premillennial in that the Parousia precedes it, ephemeral in that it lasts only one day. Regardless of the terminology, this view results in the only genuinely amillennial view of Revelation 20. This text describes no lengthy period, before or after the Parousia, whether of a thousand years duration or any other. The "millennium" is simply John's code for "the day of the Lord."
Despite the many promises in Scripture concerning the resurrection of the body (e.g. 1 Cor. 15:12-28), an astonishing number of Christians believe that only a disembodied afterlife awaits them. This is in large part due to the uncritical use of Greek philosophy by the major Christian traditions. The denigration of the physical creation as unreal, unspiritual, or downright evil was a central tenet of Platonism (embraced by Eastern Orthodoxy), Aristotelianism (embraced by Roman Catholicism), and Stoicism (one of whose Latin exponents, Seneca, was a major influence on John Calvin, and thus on virtually everything called "Protestant"). Even the "pleasure principle" of Epicureanism was hostile to those aspects of physicality, including sexuality, which resulted only in short term delights. The first century Greek opposition to the idea of bodily resurrection is accurately portrayed in Acts 17:18.
Traditional premillennialism appears to have developed as a compromise between the concept of "souls in heaven" and the many biblical texts which describe the next age as a physical experience (e.g. Is. 65:17-25). The latter are assigned to a temporary "millennium," as though mankind will be asked to get material aspirations out of its system prior to advancing to the "real" (that is, disembodied) afterlife. Amillennialism condemns this theory as "carnal" and "worldly" (employing these terms improperly as synonyms for "physical" and "earthly"), but in fact it is not "carnal" enough. The new universe (Rev. 21:1) will always be physical, thus there is no need to posit an interval between its advent and our current age. Even if the transition lasts longer than the twenty-four hour period described above as "ephemeral premillennialism," it will not make any significant difference to the believers. We will always have God's grace, the Word, faith, Christian fellowship, and an earthly inheritance (Matt. 5:5). It really will "all pan out in the end"!
