So now you are being a hypocrite. Now you are all of a sudden anti-AI when it's already plainly obvious to the rest of us that you use AI as a tool yourself since your writing style didn't just magically improve over night.
Can Amils reasonably explain the following by keeping gymnastics and moving the goalpost out of it?
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So now you are being a hypocrite. Now you are all of a sudden anti-AI when it's already plainly obvious to the rest of us that you use AI as a tool yourself since your writing style didn't just magically improve over night.
The reader will notice that you are avoiding my rebuttals. They will also understand why. You have to. It forbids your thesis.
Revelation 20 is speaking about "the souls" (plural) collectively reigning for the symbolic millennial period. This does not exclude those who die “in Christ” today from joining the overall ongoing heavenly millennial reign from the first Advent. If I was to say that ‘Americans have been standing for freedom for a few hundred years’, that does not in any way negate or exclude current Americans from being part of that ongoing group. That did not require them to be alive 250 years ago when their forefathers were pioneering the way. All would consider them part of that continuous fight for freedom.
Similarly, the Christian witness has been powerfully alive in the British Isles since before the Reformation 500 years ago. However, the current believer in the United Kingdom weren’t around 500 years ago, although they would very definitely be considered part of that great general cohesive throng that have stood for the truth of God’s Word. Revelation 20 is therefore similarly talking about the collective reign of the saints during (this so far) 2,000 years intra-advent period.
TribulationSigns
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Well, I disagree with WPM on this point. The expression “a little season” does not, by itself, establish that two passages describe the same period. It simply means a short time of whatever is in view, and the context determines what happens during that time.
In Revelation 6:11, the slain saints are told to rest for a little season while awaiting the fulfillment of their brethren’s suffering. In Revelation 20:3, Satan is released for a little season. Those descriptions should not automatically be treated as identical periods merely because they use the same expression.
Let me explain the sequence as I understand it.
The church age: the testimony of the Two Witnesses
Beginning with Christ’s victory at the Cross and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, God sends His people to proclaim the Gospel. I understand the Two Witnesses to represent the whole body of faithful saints bearing that testimony throughout the New Testament age.
Their symbolic 1,260 days represent the appointed period of their Gospel witness for the purpose of salvation, during which God gathers and seals His people. You need to read Revelation 7:1–4 over and over and over. This pictures judgment being restrained until God’s servants are sealed first. Selah!
Then Revelation 11:7 specifically says that the beast makes war against the witnesses “when they shall have finished their testimony.” The completion of their appointed testimony therefore precedes the beast’s attack against them.
In my understanding, once God has completed the gathering and sealing of His elect, the witnesses’ testimony for that purpose for salvation is finished, because God no longer seal any more men into His kingdom, selah! He then loosened the beast from the bottomless pit, wages spiritual war against Two Witnesses, overcomes them, and kills them. Not physically killing them. But SILENCE their testimony for salvation. In other words, their power to preach gospel has been gone. Remember what Daniel 9:12 says about this?
“And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when he shall have accomplished to scatter the power of the holy people, all these things shall be finished.” (Daniel 12:7)
Remember that the Two Witnesses received the power at Pentecost to preach Salvation gospel? This is the power that the beast will scatter! In other words, salvation has ceased. Selah!
So, that sequence involves time. The passage does not require us to believe that the witnesses finish their testimony, the beast emerges, the war occurs, and the witnesses die—all at once in one literal day. It takes time for the army of Satan to overcome the church all over the world - Gog and Magog! Selah!
Therefore their death here means the silencing of their faithful testimony for the purpose of salvation.
Now, the souls in heaven saw this and appealed:
Revelation 6:9–11 describes the souls beneath the altar crying:
“How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood?”
They are told to rest for a little season until the appointed number of their fellow servants and brethren should be fulfilled. In other words, until all Two Witnesses are finally killed and lying dead in the streets of the great city for 3-1/2 symbolic days. Get it?
The cry of the souls after the sealing in Revelation 7. I understand these visions as related pictures of God withholding judgment of the unfaithful church until His appointed purpose, including the suffering of His witnesses, is fulfilled first.
So after the beast overcomes them, the Two Witnesses lie dead for a symbolic three and a half days. The inhabitants of the earth rejoice because the testimony of truth that tormented them has been silenced (Revelation 11:8–10).
Why did that testimony torment them? Because God’s truth exposed their sins and challenged their falsehoods who refuse to repent.
I connect this period of the silence for three and half days with "approximately half an hour" in Revelation 8:1. That connection is my interpretation; neither passage explicitly equates the two periods. I understand both as portraying the silencing of faithful Gospel testimony within the congregation—a spiritual famine comparable to the lack of hearing God’s Word described in Amos 8:11.
In this reading, “heaven” represents God’s kingdom of heaven as manifested in the congregation, and the great city represents that congregation in its unfaithfulness. Revelation 11:8 itself identifies the city spiritually as Sodom and Egypt.
God revives His witnesses and brings judgment
Of course the silence does not continue indefinitely. After the three and a half days, the Spirit of life from God enters the witnesses, and they stand upon their feet (Revelation 11:11).
I understand this as God awakening and restoring His people to prophesy again so that they start to "see" or "recognize" the abomination of desolation in the congregation and heed His command to depart. This corresponds, in my reading, to the warning:
“Come out of her, my people” (Revelation 18:4).
The pattern resembles Lot’s removal from Sodom before its destruction (Luke 17:28–30). God delivers His people, and judgment upon the city follows.
The connection with the ten virgins
I also see a parallel with Matthew 25:1–13. All ten virgins sleep, but the midnight cry awakens them. The wise have oil and are ready; the foolish discover their lack too late.
The parable identify their sleep with the death of the Two Witnesses. I am drawing a spiritual parallel: The foolish virgins are the professed Christian in the covenant congregation does not have inward readiness. The decisive difference is whether a person truly belongs to Christ.
Likewise, I understand the revived witnesses as God’s faithful people being awakened to recognize the need to depart from the unfaithful congregation.
My conclusion
The three and a half days are symbolic, and I do not treat the half hour as thirty literal minutes. They describe, in my understanding, a brief period of spiritual silence before God intervenes.
My position is that the congregation’s final desolation coincides with the completed departure of God’s faithful people. Its appointed role in gathering them has ended, and judgment falls upon the city that rejected their testimony.
That is the sequence I am arguing: the witnesses finish their testimony; the beast wages war and silences them; God revives them; His people depart; and judgment falls upon the unfaithful congregation. The faithful Saints who are "alive and remain" on Earth will witness the judgment of the whore and KNOW that Christ's coming is right at the door. Once the "hour" of judgment of the whore is finished, the last Trump (seventh trump) sounds, and the Lord appears in the sky where we will meet in the air.
Selah!
TribulationSigns
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Huh? LOL!!!!
You have confused two different uses of AI and then accused me of hypocrisy on that basis.
Yes, I use AI to improve grammar, spelling, and clarity. I have no objection to using it as an editing tool. My objection is to treating its theological answers as authoritative—as though “AI agrees with me” settles the meaning of Scripture.
Improving how an argument is written does not establish whether that argument is biblically sound. That applies to my posts just as much as yours. Every interpretation must be tested against God’s Word.
If you believe my interpretation is wrong, demonstrate that from Scripture. Pointing out that my writing has improved does nothing to refute my argument. Address the distinction I actually made before accusing me of hypocrisy.
Selah!
If you try to argue that it was only their bodies lying in the street while their souls immediately went to heaven during those 3.5 days, you just walked right back into my original trap. You can't escape it.
Think about the timeline you just set up. If the 1,260 days of their preaching represents the Millennium (the Church Age), then by the time they are killed, that era is over. The 3.5 days they lie dead aparently represents satan's little season, in that case, which happens after the millennium.
So, if their souls leave their bodies and go up to heaven during those 3.5 days (thus during satan's little season), what era do they enter when they get there?
Do they get to sit on thrones and reign for the thousand years? How? The 1,260 days (I'm assuming the millennium per your view) is already finished and over with on earth.
If heaven is synced with earth, then heaven is also synced with the 3.5 day little season era.
You cannot have their souls enter heaven during the little season and somehow retroactively reign in a millennium that your own timeline says ended before they were even killed.
You are stuck between a rock and a hard place here, it seems.
If you say their souls stayed with their bodies on earth for 3.5 days, you are teaching soul sleep, which destroys your own theology.
If you say their souls went to heaven during those 3.5 days, you are admitting that souls enter heaven after the millennium has expired, completely demolishing the Amil claim that these souls go to heaven to finish out a thousand year reign.
No matter which way you slice it, dragging Revelation 11 into this thread didn't help your case at all. It just gave us another passage where the Amil timeline completely collapses under basic sequential logic
What are you scared of? LOL.
Revelation 20 is speaking about "the souls" (plural) collectively reigning for the symbolic millennial period. This does not exclude those who die “in Christ” today from joining the overall ongoing heavenly millennial reign from the first Advent. If I was to say that ‘Americans have been standing for freedom for a few hundred years’, that does not in any way negate or exclude current Americans from being part of that ongoing group. That did not require them to be alive 250 years ago when their forefathers were pioneering the way. All would consider them part of that continuous fight for freedom.
Similarly, the Christian witness has been powerfully alive in the British Isles since before the Reformation 500 years ago. However, the current believer in the United Kingdom weren’t around 500 years ago, although they would very definitely be considered part of that great general cohesive throng that have stood for the truth of God’s Word. Revelation 20 is therefore similarly talking about the collective reign of the saints during (this so far) 2,000 years intra-advent period.
TribulationSigns
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Facepalm. Your “inescapable trap” depends entirely on an argument I never made. Quite an accomplishment.
The bodies lying in the street symbolize the silenced testimony of the saints. I am not describing an actual literal corpses in a literal city and asking where their souls went during those three and a half days. You are inserting that premise into my interpretation, then congratulating yourself for defeating it.
Before announcing that I “can’t escape,” try understanding what I actually said. You have trapped your own assumption, not my argument.
Some Amils are trying to have it both ways. They willingly admit the thousand years expire on earth because the text in verse 7 forces them to. But they refuse to admit it expires in heaven because doing so would completely sink their theology.
If they admit the thousand years expire in heaven at the exact same time it expires on earth, then their entire view of the intermediate state collapses. It would mean that any saint who dies during the little season goes to heaven and enters a completely different era where nobody is reigning for a thousand years anymore.
To keep their system alive, they are forced to decouple heaven from earth. They end up inventing a fractured timeline where the thousand years is legally finished and over on earth, but somehow still running, open for business, and active in heaven.
But as I already proved with the 5th Seal martyrs, you cannot separate the two clocks. The souls under the altar are looking down at earth and asking how long until their blood is avenged, and God tells them to wait for a little season. If heaven is tracking earth’s timeline so closely that the martyrs know exactly what season it is, you cannot logically argue that heaven is running on a completely different calendar.
Even if Amil has no saint dying during satan's little season. It still doesn't help them. They can't have the thousand years reigning with Christ be ongoing in heaven if it already expired on earth. Surely then, the only logical solution is that Premil is the correct position, not Amil. These conflicts go entirely away, in that case. Premil is not plagued with this issue no matter how you look at it.
So even if we grant them their best case scenario where absolutely zero saints are martyred during satan’s little season---the Amil position still logically fails.
Think about what that actually looks like under an Amil lens. If the thousand years is a single, synchronized era representing Christ’s current reign with the deceased saints in heaven, then the moment that era expires on earth, it must expire in heaven too.
So what happens in the heavenly realm the exact second the clock strikes the end of the millennium? Do all the millions of departed saints who have been reigning on thrones suddenly get off their seats, pack up, and start doing something else because that specific era of reigning is officially over?
Does Christ's intermediate reign just pause or change format for a little season before the second coming?
The text never hints at any such bizarre cosmic shift in heaven where saints stop reigning on thrones to wait out a little season on earth.
This is exactly why the Premil position is the only one that completely avoids this entire mess. Premil isn’t plagued with these synchronization issues because the timeline is straightforward, literal, and entirely sequential.
Saints who die during tribulation or final conflicts go to heaven to wait for the resurrection. They aren't trying to squeeze into a past era because the 1,000 year reign on earth hasn't even started yet per Premil.
Per Premil the literal thousand years begins after Christ returns, destroys the enemy, and sets up His kingdom.
In the Premil view, heaven and earth stay in perfect chronological harmony. You don't have to invent a dual clock reality where an era is expired on earth but magically still operating in heaven. You don't have to imagine saints playing musical chairs with heavenly thrones when a symbolic timeline runs out.
The fact that Amil forces its defenders to play these bizarre scheduling games, drop laugh emojis, and call basic logic gibberish is the ample proof that their system itself is structurally broken.
If they admit the thousand years expire in heaven at the exact same time it expires on earth, then their entire view of the intermediate state collapses. It would mean that any saint who dies during the little season goes to heaven and enters a completely different era where nobody is reigning for a thousand years anymore.
To keep their system alive, they are forced to decouple heaven from earth. They end up inventing a fractured timeline where the thousand years is legally finished and over on earth, but somehow still running, open for business, and active in heaven.
But as I already proved with the 5th Seal martyrs, you cannot separate the two clocks. The souls under the altar are looking down at earth and asking how long until their blood is avenged, and God tells them to wait for a little season. If heaven is tracking earth’s timeline so closely that the martyrs know exactly what season it is, you cannot logically argue that heaven is running on a completely different calendar.
Even if Amil has no saint dying during satan's little season. It still doesn't help them. They can't have the thousand years reigning with Christ be ongoing in heaven if it already expired on earth. Surely then, the only logical solution is that Premil is the correct position, not Amil. These conflicts go entirely away, in that case. Premil is not plagued with this issue no matter how you look at it.
So even if we grant them their best case scenario where absolutely zero saints are martyred during satan’s little season---the Amil position still logically fails.
Think about what that actually looks like under an Amil lens. If the thousand years is a single, synchronized era representing Christ’s current reign with the deceased saints in heaven, then the moment that era expires on earth, it must expire in heaven too.
So what happens in the heavenly realm the exact second the clock strikes the end of the millennium? Do all the millions of departed saints who have been reigning on thrones suddenly get off their seats, pack up, and start doing something else because that specific era of reigning is officially over?
Does Christ's intermediate reign just pause or change format for a little season before the second coming?
The text never hints at any such bizarre cosmic shift in heaven where saints stop reigning on thrones to wait out a little season on earth.
This is exactly why the Premil position is the only one that completely avoids this entire mess. Premil isn’t plagued with these synchronization issues because the timeline is straightforward, literal, and entirely sequential.
Saints who die during tribulation or final conflicts go to heaven to wait for the resurrection. They aren't trying to squeeze into a past era because the 1,000 year reign on earth hasn't even started yet per Premil.
Per Premil the literal thousand years begins after Christ returns, destroys the enemy, and sets up His kingdom.
In the Premil view, heaven and earth stay in perfect chronological harmony. You don't have to invent a dual clock reality where an era is expired on earth but magically still operating in heaven. You don't have to imagine saints playing musical chairs with heavenly thrones when a symbolic timeline runs out.
The fact that Amil forces its defenders to play these bizarre scheduling games, drop laugh emojis, and call basic logic gibberish is the ample proof that their system itself is structurally broken.
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I have explained this to you so many times, you really don't want an answer you just want to keep on ranting.
You are stuck on a "the thousand years "when there isn't a "the thousand years" theres a thousand year binding and a thousand year reigning. Why don't you address this?
I even proved it by pointing out the fact that Jesus doesn't stop reigning because satan is released, that alone proves it.
Have you ever been deceived by satan about something and then through the message of the gospel realized that you were deceived and you're not deceived anymore? Like the fact of your salvation.
That's satan bound by the power of the gospel
TribulationSigns
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Dude, you need some sleep. You’re getting so tangled up in your own reasoning that you’re starting to mistake your assumptions for proof.
Once again, the OP is not meaning every timeline that Amils hold since not all Amils might hold the same timeline. And since I mainly converse with Amils, such as @WPM @Spiritual Israelite , that is the timeline being challenged in the OP. Therefore, no one is saying your timeline is trapped if I don't even know what your timeline is. Maybe it's trapped as well, maybe it isn't. I just don't know at this point. Yet I'm assuming if I were to examine your timeline critically, once I grasp what your timeline is, I'm guessing it too will be proven to be trapped as well.
David, I'm Amillennial and I believe that Satan's little season and the little season the martyred souls must wait are at opposite ends of this period of time written a/the thousand years. The little season of resting for the souls under the altar beginning with ministry of Christ that began around 30 AD, lasting about 3-3 1/2 years, ending with His death and resurrection. The little season for Satan will not begin until this time written a/the thousand years ends and the seventh/last trumpet begins to sound there shall no longer be any delay for time which Christ gave mankind to be saved shall be no longer.
A/the thousand years equates to TIME given this earth. That's why John writes of those who were beheaded saying, "they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years". IOW they lived and reigned with Christ on earth within this time before they were martyred (past tense). In death living and reigning with Christ does not change or end, only the location changes from the earth to the Kingdom of God in heaven. Because they have eternal life through Christ, when they died, as spiritual body they went to heaven as living soul, where they continue to live and reign with Christ there until the Kingdom of God in heaven is complete. Then after Satan has his little season, and the fire of God comes down from heaven to destroy him, and the faithful saints with immortal and incorruptible body will live and reign with Christ forevermore on the new earth.
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