Tertullian, Against Marcion 25

"Indeed," you ask, "I hope from Him that He Himself also acts as a testimony to the diversity of the kingdom of God, of eternal and heavenly possession." Moreover, your Christ promises the Jews a former state through the restitution of the earth, and after the course of life, refreshment in the underworld in the bosom of Abraham (Luke 16:22-23). Good God! If He returns what He took away in anger, now that He is placated. Oh, your God who both kills and heals, who founds evils and makes peace! Oh God, merciful even to the underworld! But we will discuss the bosom of Abraham at its proper time. Regarding the restitution of Judea, which the Jews themselves also hope for exactly as it is described, they are induced by the names of places and regions to pursue an allegorical interpretation of how it spiritually applies to Christ and the Church, its habit and fruit; that is a long pursuit, and it is digested in another work which we title *On the Hope of the Faithful*, and it is idle even for the present, because the question concerns not an earthly but a heavenly promise. For we also confess that a kingdom is promised to us on earth, but before heaven, and in another state—namely, after the resurrection, for a thousand years in the city of the divine work, Jerusalem, lifted up to heaven. The Apostle designates this city as our mother above (Galatians 4:26), and pronounces our community, that is, our municipality, to be in the heavens (Philippians 3:20), assigning it to a certain heavenly city. Ezekiel also knows this city (Ezekiel 40-48), and the Apostle John saw it (Revelation 21:1-22:5), and the word of the new prophecy which is with our faith testifies to it, even predicting the image of the city before its representation as a sign to come. Finally, this was recently confirmed by an eastern expedition. For it is established, even by pagan witnesses, that in Judea for forty days at morning moments a city hung from heaven, every cloud-like appearance vanishing at the progress of the day, and at other times none at all. We say this city is for receiving the resurrection of the saints, and for renewing the full abundance of all spiritual goods in compensation for those things which in the world we either despised or lost, foreseen by God. Since it is also just and worthy of God that His servants should rejoice there, where they are afflicted in His name. This is the rationale of the earthly kingdom: after its thousand years, within which age the resurrection of the saints is concluded, according to the merits, sooner or later, of those rising, then also with the destruction of the world and the conflagration of judgment committed, we shall be changed in an atom into an angelic substance, certainly through that superindumentum of incorruptibility, and transferred into the heavenly kingdom. This kingdom is now so retracted as if it had not been predicted by the Creator, and through this, proving Christ to be of another God, from whom alone it was first and only revealed.