Tertullian, Against Marcion 25

You say you hope that He will Himself act as a testimony to the diversity of God's kingdom — the eternal, heavenly possession. Your Christ, meanwhile, promises the Jews their original state: a restored land, and after life ends, refreshment in Abraham's bosom among the dead. God Most Good — if He gives back what He took away in anger, now that He is placated. Oh, your God who both strikes and heals, creates evil and makes peace! (Isaiah 45:7) Oh, a God merciful even to the underworld! But we will return to Abraham's bosom at the proper time.

As for the restoration of Judea — which the Jews themselves hope for, exactly as described, led on by the names of places and regions — tracing how an allegorical interpretation applies spiritually to Christ and the Church, its character and its fruit, would take too long; it is treated in another work, titled *On the Hope of the Faithful*. Here it would be idle, because the question is not about an earthly promise but a heavenly one. We do confess a kingdom promised to us on earth — but before heaven, and in another state: after the resurrection, for a thousand years, in the city of God's work, Jerusalem, lifted up from heaven. The Apostle calls her our mother above (Galatians 4:26), and declares our citizenship — our municipality — to be in heaven, assigning it to a certain heavenly city. Ezekiel knows this city (Ezekiel 40–48), the apostle John has seen it (Revelation 21:10), and the word of the new prophecy among our faith testifies to it, even predicting the city's image as a sign before it appears.

Finally, it was recently confirmed by an eastern expedition. Pagan witnesses agree: in Judea, for forty days, at morning moments, a city hung from heaven, every appearance of the moon vanishing as the day advanced, and at other times none visible from nearby. We say this city is for receiving the resurrection of the saints, and for renewing every spiritual good in compensation for what we have despised or lost in the world, as foreseen by God. For it is just, and worthy of God, that His servants should rejoice there, where they were also afflicted in His name. This is the rationale for the earthly kingdom: after its thousand years, within which the resurrection of the saints is completed — sooner or later, according to the merits of those rising — then, with the world's destruction and the conflagration of judgment, changed in an instant into angelic substance, clothed with that garment of incorruptibility, we will be transferred into the heavenly kingdom. This kingdom is now discussed as if it had not been predicted by the Creator — and thus Christ is proved to belong to another God, from whom alone it was first and only revealed.