The Thousand Years in Jerusalem

For this is what Isaiah said about this span of a thousand years: “For there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and the former things will not be remembered, nor will they come into their heart; but they will find joy and gladness in it, in all that I create. For look, I am making Jerusalem a gladness and my people a joy, and I will be glad over Jerusalem and rejoice over my people. And the sound of weeping will never again be heard in her, nor the sound of crying; and there will never again be there an infant who dies before his days, or an old man who does not fill out his time. For the young man will be a hundred years old; but the sinner who dies at a hundred years old will be under a curse. “And they will build houses and live in them themselves, and they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit themselves. They will not build and others live there; they will not plant and others eat. For the days of my people will be like the days of the tree of life, and they will wear out the works of their toil. My chosen ones will not labor for nothing, nor bear children for a curse; for they will be a seed that is righteous and blessed by the Lord, and their offspring with them. And it will happen that before they cry out I will hear them; while they are still speaking I will say, What is it? Then wolves and lambs will graze together, and the lion will eat straw like an ox, and the serpent will eat earth like bread. They will not harm or destroy on the holy mountain, says the Lord.” [a]

Then I said, Now the words used in that passage — “For the days of my people will be like the days of the tree, and they will wear out the works of their toil” — we have understood to disclose a thousand years in a mystery. For since it was said to Adam that on the day he ate from the tree he would die on that day, we know that he did not fill out a thousand years. And we have understood that the saying “A day of the Lord is like a thousand years” belongs together with this.

And besides, there was among us a man named John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied in a revelation given to him that those who had believed in our Christ would spend a thousand years in Jerusalem, and that after that the general — in a word, the eternal — resurrection of everyone together, and the judgment, would take place. Our Lord said the same thing: “They will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be equal to angels, being children of God, of the resurrection.”

For prophetic gifts remain with us even now, and from that you yourselves ought to understand that what was once among your people has been transferred to us. And just as there were false prophets alongside the holy prophets you had, so now among us too there are many false teachers, whom our Lord told us in advance to guard against — so that we are short of nothing, since we know that he knew beforehand everything that was going to happen to us after his resurrection from the dead and his going up into heaven. For he said we were going to be killed and hated because of his name, and that many false prophets and false Christs would come in his name and lead many astray. And so it has turned out. [f]

Many have taught godless and blasphemous and unjust things, counterfeiting them in his name, and they have taught, and are teaching still, what the unclean spirit of the devil throws into their minds. We struggle to win them over, as we do you, so that they are not led astray; for we know that everyone who is able to speak the truth and does not speak it will be judged by God, as God testified through Ezekiel when he said: “I have set you as a watchman for the house of Judah. If the sinner sins and you do not warn him, he himself will perish in his sin, but I will require his blood from you; but if you do warn him, you will be innocent.”

So it is out of fear that we too take pains to talk with people according to the Scriptures — not out of love of money or love of glory or love of pleasure. No one can convict us of being any of those things. And we do not want to live like the rulers of your people, whom God reproaches when he says: “Your rulers are partners of thieves, lovers of bribes, chasing after rewards.” If you do know some among us who are like that, still do not blaspheme the Scriptures and the Christ because of such men, and do not take pains to twist what the Scriptures mean.

Your teachers have dared to explain the words “The Lord says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet” as spoken about Hezekiah — as though he had been ordered to sit on the right side of the temple, when the king of the Assyrians sent him a threat and Isaiah signaled to him not to be afraid of the man. That what Isaiah said did happen that way, we know and admit: the king of the Assyrians turned back from making war on Jerusalem in Hezekiah’s days, and an angel of the Lord killed a hundred and eighty-five thousand men out of the Assyrian camp. [j]

But it is plain that the Psalm was not spoken about him. It runs like this: “The Lord says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. He will send out a rod of power over Jerusalem, and he will rule in the midst of your enemies. In the splendor of the holy ones, before the morning star I begot you. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind: You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” So who does not admit that Hezekiah is not a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek? And who does not know that he is not the one who redeems Jerusalem? And who does not recognize that he did not send a rod of power into Jerusalem and rule in the midst of his enemies, but that it was God who turned the enemy away from him, while he wept and mourned?

But our Jesus, who has not yet come in glory, has sent a rod of power into Jerusalem: the word of calling and repentance, sent to all the nations, where the demons were lording it over them, as David says, “The gods of the nations are demons.” And his strong word has persuaded many to leave behind the demons they had served as slaves, and through him to believe in God the Almighty — because the gods of the nations are demons. And the words “In the splendor of the holy ones, from the womb before the morning star I begot you” were spoken to Christ, as we said earlier.

The words “Look, the virgin will conceive and will bear a son” were also spoken beforehand about him. For if the one Isaiah was speaking of was not going to be born from a virgin, about whom was the Holy Spirit crying out, “Look, the Lord himself will give us a sign: look, the virgin will conceive and will bear a son”? If this one too was going to be born from intercourse, like every other firstborn son, why did God say that he would make a sign which is not common to all firstborn sons? [n]

But what is truly a sign, and what was going to be made trustworthy to the human race, is this: that the firstborn of all created things should be made flesh through a virgin’s womb and truly become a child. That is what he took hold of beforehand through the prophetic Spirit and announced in advance, in one way after another, as I have set out for you — so that when it happened it would be recognized as having come about by the power and the will of the maker of all things, just as Eve came from one of Adam’s ribs, and just as all the other living creatures were brought into being at the beginning by the word of God.

But in these matters too you dare to strike out the interpretations your elders gave when they were with Ptolemy, king of the Egyptians. You say the Scripture does not read as they interpreted it, but “Look,” it says, “the young woman will conceive” — as though some great thing were being signified if a woman were going to bear a child from intercourse, which every young woman does except the barren; and even those God is able to make bear, if he wills it. For Samuel’s mother, who was not bearing children, bore a son by God’s will; and so did the wife of the holy patriarch Abraham, and Elizabeth who bore John the Baptist, and some others in the same way. So you must not suppose that God is unable to do everything he wills. And above all, since it had been prophesied that this would happen, do not dare to strike out the prophecies or twist their meaning. You will wrong only yourselves, and you will do God no harm.

And there is the prophecy that says, “Lift up your gates, you rulers; and be lifted up, you everlasting doors, so that the King of glory may come in.” Some of you dare to explain that as spoken about Hezekiah too, and others of you about Solomon. But it cannot be shown to have been spoken about either of them, or, in a word, about any man you call your king, but about this Christ of ours alone — who appeared with no beauty and no honor, as Isaiah said, and David, and all the Scriptures; who is the Lord of hosts by the will of the Father who gave him that; who also rose from the dead and went up into heaven, as the Psalm and the other Scriptures made plain when they announced him as Lord of hosts. And you could be persuaded of this easily enough from what is happening in front of your eyes, if you were willing. [r]

For at the name of this very Son of God — the firstborn of all creation, born through a virgin, made a man who could suffer, crucified under Pontius Pilate by your people, dead, risen from the dead and gone up into heaven — every demon that is exorcised is beaten and made to submit. But if you exorcise by the name of any of the men who lived among you, whether kings or righteous men or prophets or patriarchs, not one of the demons will submit to you. If one of you exorcises by the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, perhaps it will submit. Even then, as I have said, your exorcists use the same craft the Gentiles use when they exorcise: they work with fumigations and binding spells.

That there are angels and powers, the ones whom the word of the prophecy through David tells to lift up the gates so that this one may come in — Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead, the Lord of hosts by the Father’s will — David’s own words showed as well. I will bring them up again for the sake of those who were not with us yesterday, and it is for their sake that I am summing up much of what was said yesterday. And if I say this to you now, though I have said the same thing many times over, I know it is not out of place to say it. It would be a ridiculous state of things: that the sun and the moon and the other stars always keep the same course and bring round the turns of the seasons; that the man who reckons, when he is asked how much twice two is, does not stop saying four again just because he has said four so often; that everything else which is firmly settled goes on being said and agreed to the same way always — while the man who makes his talk out of the prophetic Scriptures leaves them alone and does not always cite the same Scriptures, because he thinks he can produce out of himself something better than Scripture. So the passage by which I showed that God makes it plain there are both angels in heaven and hosts is this: “Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the highest. Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his hosts.”

And a man named Mnaseas, one of those who had come with them on the second day, said, We too are glad that you are undertaking to go over the same things again for our sake. And I said, Listen, friends, to the Scripture that persuades me to do this. Jesus commanded us to love even our enemies, and that had been proclaimed through Isaiah in many places — passages that also hold the mystery of our second birth, and of the second birth of everyone who waits for Christ to appear in Jerusalem and takes pains to please him by his works. These are the words spoken through Isaiah: “Hear the word of the Lord, you who tremble at his word. Say — our brothers! — to those who hate you and detest you, that the name of the Lord may be glorified. He has appeared in their joy, and those others will be put to shame. A sound of shouting from the city, a sound of the people, a sound of the Lord rendering recompense to the proud. Before the woman in labor gave birth, and before the pain of her labor came, she brought forth a male child. Who has heard such a thing, and who has seen it so? Did the earth go into labor in a single day? Was a nation born all at once? For Zion went into labor and bore her children. But I gave this expectation even to the woman who does not bear, said the Lord. Look, I have made both the one who bears and the barren one, says the Lord. Be glad, Jerusalem, and hold festival, all you who love her; rejoice, all you who mourn over her, so that you may nurse and be filled from the breast of her comfort, so that having nursed you may take delight in the entrance of his glory.”

And when I had said this, I added, Listen, then, to how this man — the one whom the Scriptures show will come again in glory after being crucified — had his symbol in the tree of life that was said to have been planted in paradise, and in the things that were going to happen to all the righteous. Moses was sent with a rod for the redemption of the people, and with it in his hands at the head of the people he split the sea. Through it he saw the water gushing up out of the rock. And when he threw a piece of wood into the water at Marah, which was bitter, he made it sweet. [z]

Jacob managed to make his uncle’s sheep conceive by putting rods into the watering troughs, so that he would get the young born from them; and the same Jacob boasts that he crossed the river with his staff. He said a ladder had been seen by him, and Scripture has made plain that God stood on it — and that this was not the Father we have shown from the Scriptures. And Jacob poured oil on a stone in that same place, and the very God who appeared to him bears witness that he anointed a pillar to the God who appeared to him.

That the stone proclaimed Christ symbolically we have likewise shown from many Scriptures; and that every anointing — whether with oil or with stacte or with any of the other spices that go into the compounding of the perfume — had to do with him, we have likewise shown, since the word says: “Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” For all kings and all anointed ones got their share from him in being called kings and anointed ones, just as he himself received from the Father the titles King and Christ and Priest and Angel, and whatever other titles of that kind he has or has had.

Aaron’s rod, which brought forth a bud, showed him to be the high priest. Isaiah prophesied that Christ would be a rod out of the root of Jesse. And David says the righteous man is like the tree planted beside the channels of water, which will give its fruit in its season and whose leaf will not fall. And the righteous man is said to blossom like a palm tree. God appeared to Abraham from a tree, as it is written, by the oak at Mamre. The people found seventy willows and twelve springs after crossing the Jordan. David says he was comforted by God with a rod and a staff.

Elisha threw a piece of wood into the river Jordan and brought up the iron of the axe that the sons of the prophets had gone out with to cut wood for building the house where they wanted to recite and study the law and the commands of God. In the same way our Christ has redeemed us, who were plunged in the heaviest sins we had committed, by being crucified on the tree and by cleansing us with water, and he has made us a house of prayer and worship. And it was a rod that pointed out Judah as the father of Tamar’s sons, born by a great mystery.