The kingdom of God comes not with observation, Bible2. Instead you dispensationalists and premillenialists are making the same errors of the Pharisees.
"Instead you dispensationalists and premillenialists are making the same errors of the Pharisees."
The above statement is pure hobgoblin
Revelation
1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:
Revelation
19:11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.
Revelation
20:4 And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.
20:5 But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.
20:6 Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.
You post lots of Scriptures but not much else..............
An article for your viewing pleasure.........
Reigning With Christ:
Revelation 20:1-6 In Its Salvation-Historical Setting
Even if we regard the above categories in terms of "salvation in three tenses" (we have been saved, we are being saved, we will be saved), the basic binary structure of soteriology is not disrupted, because the "present tense" of redemption is but the extension of the "past tense" and the harbinger of the "future tense" of consummated glory. Thus, the present has meaning only as it relates to the past and the future, to what God has done in Christ at his first coming and what he will do in Christ at his second appearance. For the NT authors, then, human history now assumes the complexion of a time of tension between the two advents of the Son of God, i.e., between the "Already" and the "Not Yet" or between "this age" and "the age to come." To borrow Cullmann's famous illustration, the "D Day" of inaugurated salvation has come, but still outstanding is the "V E Day" of consummation.
33
Therefore, as we shall argue from
Revelation 20, the thousand year reign of Christ and his people is an integral part of eschatological salvation; it is located within that span of time between the inauguration and the consummation of redemption, during which Christ is drawing all men to himself by the preaching of the cross. He has bound the strong man (Satan) and has plundered his house (
Matt 12:29), thus bringing release to the captives and enabling Paul to announce later on the Areopagus that the "times of ignorance" (for the nations) are at an end; God now
34 commands all men everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness (
Acts 17:30-31). It is within this interim between the announcement of salvation and its final actualization that the dead hear the voice of the Son of Man and live, anticipating that time when "all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth" (
John 5:25-29). Our argument is precisely that the "millennial reign" of
Rev 20:1-6 is resurrection to life in Christ.
The purpose of elaborating (and reiterating) all this is to say that the historical unfolding of salvation operates along the lines of two epochs of fulfillment, or, phrased differently, two phases of the same epoch, not three. In a sense, it is a negative point - but a necessary negative. Once the overarching pattern of salvation history has been determined, it follows that there is no place for another time-period which effectively amounts to a third epoch or phase in the outworking of God's purposes. Therefore, we must take exception to those chiliastic schemes which confuse this pattern by placing more emphasis on the (supposed) penultimate rather than ultimate stage of the work of Christ. In our view, they represent an intrusion into and, therefore, interruption of the conceptual framework established by the NT. Not only are such constructions unnecessary,
35 they actually obscure the architecture of biblical history.
(2) The relation of Israel and the church lies at the heart of any consideration of eschatological matters. It is, of course, an extremely complex matter; and because of the limitations imposed on this study, I must to a degree proceed presuppositionally................
III. Revelation 20:1-6: The Reign of Christ and His People
Hoekema rightly begins his discussion of
Revelation 20 by setting the chapter within the progressive parallelism of the book.
42 These sections, he observes, exhibit a "eschatological progress" which climaxes with chapter 21's depiction of the blessedness of the new life on earth.
43 Chapter 20, as he notes, forms part of the seventh parallel, chapters 20-22, which narrates the overthrow of the dragon, the ancient serpent.
44 "This last section describes the judgment which falls on Satan, and his final doom. Since Satan is the supreme opponent of Christ, it stands to reason that his doom should be narrated last."
45 This means that chapter 20 is not to be understood as following chronologically the return of Christ, related by the preceding chapter. Thus,
Rev 20:1 takes us back once again to the beginning of the NT era, and the thousand year reign occurs not after the parousia but before it.
46 Assuming this as the book's overall literary structure,
47 we offer the following observations on the text of
Revelation 20.
(1) Within the resumé of salvation history provided by the seventh parallelism, 20:1-3 informs us of the binding of Satan.
48 In attempting an explanation of the phenomenon, we must be sensitive to Mounce's caveat that the text of Revelation itself ought to be the foremost indicator of John's intentions.
49 Nevertheless, the undergirding assumption here is that as a salvation history, particularly one written from the vantage point of the interim between Jesus' first advent and his parousia, Revelation finds points of contact with other NT documents which address similar, if not identical, concerns to those of John.
50 These contacts, consequently, will enable us to construct a biblical theology of the reign of Christ.
In
Matt 12:29, Jesus asks: "Or how can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? Then indeed he may plunder his house." This announcement of the binding of the strong man (Satan) is placed in immediate connection with Jesus' exorcism of demons, which are proof-positive that the kingdom of God has arrived. It is hardly accidental, then, that John, who probably was an eyewitness to the Beelzebub controversy related by Matthew, should draw upon the imagery of the binding of Satan. That this particular binding should be performed by an angel is not a problem, because in Apocalyptic angels regularly stand as representatives of God and his doings.
51 It makes sense, then, to think that
Rev 20:3 marks the inception of the kingdom of God with the binding of Satan.
Luke 10:17-18 is also relevant: "The Seventy returned with joy, saying 'Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!' And he said to them, 'I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven'." Here, again in a figure of speech, Jesus indicates that Satan and his kingdom have been dealt a crushing blow. It is this figure which is taken up by
Rev 12:10: "the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night."
52 Note as well that in
Luke 10 this fall is brought into direct connection with the missionary preaching of the disciples.
53
A third significant text is
John 12:31-32: "Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." Standing in the shadow of Calvary, Jesus announces that the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified (12:23), i.e., to die. In the process, he will "cast out" the ruler of this world. Note that the verb ekballô bears a striking resemblance to ballô in
Rev 20:3. More important, however, is the contextual factor that in v. 20 some Greeks arrive at the feast seeking Jesus; they, within the symbolism of the Fourth Gospel, are the vanguard of the new humanity in Christ.
54 Hence, the casting out of Satan is inextricably bound up with the acceptance of the nations, the eschatological harvest of
John 4:35-38. This corresponds in principle to the mission of the seventy in
Luke 10.
