When folks stand up and grandly pronounce there will be no 1, 000 year reign of Christ with His saints, and you humbly point out to them the bible says there will be. And they sniff and say "ah this is only figurative" and you meekly ask them "the great white throne in the previous passage and the new heaven and the new earth in the following passage, are these also only figurative?"
That's when they start spluttering stuff about your being argumentative...
Yeah, I suppose. I won't argue that. People don't like rebuttals nowadays. Everyone just wants to be declared right, and be patted on the back for their genius.
But I will say that the Revelation opens by saying that what was shown thereafter was "signified" by the angel, which is to say that it was shown in signs and symbols; i.e. it's symbolic, apocalyptic imagery. Except where specifically noted otherwise, everything in the book is suspect of being symbolic imagery. That includes the thousand years. As David Chilton had once put it, it may simply mean, "a long time." I'm also of the opinion that the new heaven and new earth are likewise symbolic imagery, just like the New Jerusalem.
The problem that you run into is that there has to be a consistent methodology. When we see a beast with the feet of a bear, the mouth of a lion, and the body of a leopard, we recognize via the bizarre amalgamation of animals that this is very likely figurative of something, and not literal. Our minds detect that it's not a natural representation. But when we come across something that appears
normal, we automatically assume that it's literal, even though it's part of the same collection of symbolic imagery. So the locusts with scorpion tails are figurative, because that's unnatural. But a mountain crashing into the sea is literal, because we can all readily envision a comet or asteroid hitting the earth. Again, there has to be consistency in methodology. The mountain is as figurative as the locusts are. You just have to discover the correct interpretation.
I'll say further that the Revelation is not beyond our reach interpretively. The fact is, it's written, as I said, in apocalyptic imagery, and this same imagery is used throughout the Old Testament prophets, and often includes the interpretation. As I once heard it said, the Revelation is the most Biblical book in the Bible. Practically the whole thing is built out of solid scripture. Every bit of it is deliberate.
