With regard to the end times and rapture, etc... I'm perfectly content in living in Christ and waiting for the appointed time as God determines. In my lifetime or well after, Amen!
All else is hubris insisting they know the mind of God when God said no one knows the day or time of anything that was revealed as future in John's revelations.
There's no thing to argue about. Or even debate. God knows. That's the end of it. Pun intended.
I am also content with concluding that the truth behind the revelation of John is hidden at least in part. What I do find intolerable is the conclusion that some interpretations such as amillenialism are "false" and those that would accuse others of holding a false believe - not by scripture but only on the basis of their unjustified assumptions that have been derived outside of what scripture says.
I think it is fair enough at the very least to argue for the validity of what is possibly true or what is necessarily untrue within the scope of these interpretations. But I see too many arguments trying to blur the line between what they deem to be a compelling interpretation and what scripture actually says.
Was the 1000 years a literal human span of 1000 years? Or was it a figurative expression of a length of time greater than a mortal human's lifespan? There is no way to know for sure what was meant, but we still see some individuals declare that 1000 years must be literal and all other interpretations false for no other reason than politics, hubris, or a poorly honed sense of logical thinking.
The literal 1000 year model is a necessary component in the dispensationalism recipe which is a hybrid religion of Christianity and modern nonChristian Judaism. The 1000 year model in that scenario is not being advocated for in some sort of scholarly light, it is being argued for on the basis of modern geographical politics in favour of a particular religious group's claim to physical land.
In the Latter Day Saint's book of Mormon, I'm sure there are specific writings which necessitate specific interpretations of OT and NT scripture in order to avoid contradiction. This appears to also be the case with Dispensationalism, where by adopting modern nonChristian scripture it then necessitates specific interpretations within OT and NT scripture in order to minimize the contradictions. In the modern nonChristian Jewish faiths, if I recall correctly, the Messiah comes to earth as the beginning of an everlasting Sabbath, all nonJews become slaves to Jewish masters that rule the world with the Messiah. That is why it is so important for a Dispensationalist to claim that the 1000 year kingdom is literal: they are lining up the Jewish masters theology with John's Revelation. They are giving authority in their interpretations to a nonChristian text. It's fine if they can establish a scripturally consistent view using this approach (which I have yet to see but I'll give it a fair chance for someone to make the case) but it is completely out of line to declare that interpretation to be necessarily true on the
basis of the purported authority of that nonChristian text.
