Revelation and Chronology

The entire time that I was formally a Futurist one of the major pillars of how I interpreted Revelation was a desire to view it as a strict chronology, its events happen in the order the text of Revelation described them.  And I maintained that bias for much of my time writing this Blog as a Non Premillennial.

However in Inspiring Philosophy's video on how Matthew and Luke do not contradict each other in their account of when Satan Tempted Jesus by listing the Temptations in different order, he made a point out of how the Greek word usage gave away that the less Chronological one isn’t listing things in order.  And the word that most Revelation benign with is that less inherently Chronological word.  Sometimes I ignored the significance for a long time. 

The first place to look towards for considering that different parts of Revelation are describing the same events from different angles would be to compare Revelation 9 with Revelation 20:7-8.  That both these Abyss being opened events are the same and then the Sixth Trumpet is describing the Gog and Magog invasion.  And then following from that the Seventh Trumpet in Revelation 11:15-19 would equate to Revelation 20:11-15 the which as non Premillennials identify with The Parousia. 

Some Non Chronological readings of Revelation believe the timeline restarts exactly once at the start of Chapter 12. Which does line up well with what I just described.

But the Seventh Trumpet isn’t the only place in Revelation other than the End of the Millennium where I see descriptions of characteristics of the Parousia the Jesus and Paul described in the Olivet Discourses and the Thessalonians Epistles. 

However the connection of the Son of Man and Cloud imagery is not actually complete, I was always over stating it.  The agreed upon Parousia passages have the Son of Man in The Clouds while here it’s “one like the Son of Man” riding on a single Cloud.  And the truth is my confidence in a Seventh Trumpet Rapture when I was a Futurist was because of the possibility of seeing Revelation 14 still happen fairly soon after. 

So in the process of writing this post I’ve become less convinced of the plausibility of a non Chronological Revelation that I was when I started. 

The one thing I do still see as possible is the Two Witnesses narrative being Chronologically separated from the rest. Because Revelation 11:1-10 is definitely the Angel from Chapter 10 still talking, and maybe verses 11-13 are as well though the tense changing there is curious.