Hi Trekson. I don't have a lot of time at the moment to really get into a good, indepth debate (sadly!), but I'll try to find some time to squeeze in some comments!
About this first paragraph....I have never said that the Millennium is not a "real" thing. I just think it's a current thing. Amillennialists believe the Millennium is a symbolic period of time where Christ is ruling in his Kingdom ("My Kingdom is not of this world - John 18:36", "he is seated far above all rule and authority and power and dominion - Eph 1:20). Yes, we believe that Satan is bound (Rev 20), very specifically against deceiving the nations for war against the saints, and that towards the very end of this Age that restriction will be lifted. How many millions more Christians have to die before you see this is untrue.
But, we do see it as a very real thing. Is Christ not ruling right now? Did he not defeat sin, death and Satan on the cross and establish his Kingdom? By faith, yes but in reality, NO. People still die, people still sin and Satan is still at work in the world. The deception isn't about going to war with the saints. The devil's deceptions are everything in the world that points people away from Christ. This won't become a reality until after the millennium, after the GWTJ and after the new heavens and new earth. Death won't be defeated until folks stop dying.
This Kingdom may not be as exactly as you thought it would be, but I remind you, you would not be the first to be mistaken in that...the entire Jewish nation was mistaken in what they thought Messiah would establish in his first coming, and he had to tell them "my kingdom is NOT of this world". Where does that mean his Kingdom is? Where he is now seated perhaps? Where the bible tells us he is ruling above all powers? It may not fit into your slot of what this "Kingdom" should look like, but it's an entriely rational outcome from what Christ and scripture tells us.
When Jesus is speaking "My kingdom is not of this world", He is not speaking of its location. He is saying that it is not of human origin but from God. It is dependent on God and our relationship to him, So Christ's kingdom is wherever His servants are that put their trust and faith in God (within us) and this will continue into and through the millennial era.
Well, as I've pointed out before to Enoch111, this hermeneutic fails. Dispensationalists say that's their rule that they follow...that they only look at something in Revelation as symbolic if that 'symbol' is then 'explained', but then they can't follow through. Is there a literal woman in the stars giving birth? No explination found in the text to give you a 'symbolic' out there, so there should be an actual woman, by Dispensational rule.
That is untrue, it is explained within the context by the obvious clues concerning her identity. Knowledge of scripture tells you that this is relating to Joseph's dream. The context tells you: She is with child, (Mary or symbolic for Israel but because of the 12 stars which in the dream, the 11 stars counted for Joseph's brothers add Joseph and you get 12. The 12 sons are where the tribes of Israel comes from so logic dictates the woman must be Israel), she delivers a child who the devil wants to destroy. We know this child is Jesus, so again, it is either Mary or symbolic of Israel. The child will rule the nations with a rod of Iron. (Undeniably Christ). The woman flees into the desert for 3 1/2 yrs. Was this Mary going into Egypt? No. Verse 14 of Rev. 12 makes the implication that this is not a single person and is at a time when there are airplanes.
Is there a sword coming out of Christ's mouth when he comes? No symbolic explination there, so by literal hermeneutic, there should be a sword. Dispensationalists automatically realise that so many of the symbols are actually symbols and interpret thusly. I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying that one: it's against their own hermeneutic, and two: they ought to stop criticizing others for doing just that.
The other thing I need to mention is this: Those of us who interpret Revelation 'symbolically' don't just pluck the symbols out of thin air so we can make them say whatever we want. While the explination of all the symbols may not be found in Revelation, most of them are, in fact, found throughout the bible, mostly in the OT. So, you'll find that we actually get our interpretation from there. So, while Dispensationalists wobble because of a broken hermeneutic causing them to snap back and forwards at odd times between literal and symbolic with no apparent rhyme or reason, those they critize are actually plumbing scripture for the meaning of the book.
No wobbling with very much a rhyme and reason for accepting Rev. as literal.
That's because we DON'T consider all of Revelation to be "one day of judgement". We consider Revelation to be a description of the time period between Christ's two advents. The book is recapitulative, it gives us several different view points of the same "play". Each time they get just a little more violent, just like birth pangs do, finally working up to the grand event itself.
Just consider this, for a second, about all the judgements: when we look at the 4 horsemen, as we love to call them...thos things have been 'riding' throughout the world forever. War, conquest and unrest, famine, disease, death. It's the same list Christ gave in the Olivet Discourse of what would be the 'beginning of birth pangs'.
But then after that, the judgements of the trumpets and bowls that fall upon the earth: in essence they are the same, bringing judgement down upon the earth in an 'anti-creation' type way, effecting land and the growing things upon it, seas, rivers and living things in them, then the sun and moon. Andthen at the end of each set of 7, we see Christ returning with 'earthquake, the sky darkening, hail' etc. Again, we see the description of this return in the Olivet Discourse.
Christ doesn't return at the end of each event as shown in another thread. Are the events similar? Yes, but they differ from source, scope and intensity. While we have had all those things since the beginning of time, there will come a time when they shall literally become the beginning of the end.
Anyway, that's just a incredibly brief summary of how we see it, and why we don't see all of it fitting into a single day!