from «Instructiones adversus gentium deos pro christiana disciplina»:
[…] A city will descend from heaven in the first resurrection.
And what shall we say about this heavenly creation?
We shall all rise who were faithful to Him.
They will be incorruptible, and life will be untouched by death,
There will be no more illness or sighing.
Only those will enter the city who were victorious in the times of the Antichrist
In martyrdom they have gained life forever and ever.
They will receive good things, for they have suffered through tribulations.
They will marry, and they will bring forth offspring
In the course of a thousand years, and earthly tributes will be given to them.
For the earth will bring them forth and renew them without end.
Shower rains will not come, nor will this golden fortress be touched by cold,
And there will be no siege, as it is now, nor robbery.
The city will not want the light of lamps,
For the Creator Himself will be its light, and night will be no more.
It will be twelve thousand stadia in length, width, and hight,
Its root will abide in the earth, and its head will rise to heaven.
And before the gates of the city, the sun and the moon will shine,
The evil one will be captured in anguish for the sake of nourishing the righteous,
For a thousand years God will keep him in chains. […]
St. Victorinus of Petava (230 – 303/304)
Excerpt from «On the Creation of the World»:
4. On the fifth day, earth and water yielded their fruit [see Gen 1:20—23]. On the sixth day, all that was still lacking was made. Because of this, God made the man out of the earth [see Gen 2:7] and set him as the ruler over all things that God created on earth and under water [see Gen 1:28]. However, before [man], God created angels and archangels, thus setting the spiritual principle above the earthly one. The light was created before the heaven and earth. The sixth day is called Friday [Paraskeva], or the preparation for the Kingdom [see Rev 5:10; 20:4]. God created Adam in His image and likeness [see Gen 1:26]. He created angels, as well as man, after finishing all His works so that neither man nor angels could claim to have been His helpers in the creation of the world.
5. On the seventh day, God rested from all his works, and He blessed and sanctified them [Gen 2:2—3]. This day we honor above all other days because on the Day of the Lord we partake of the Bread with thanksgiving. And Friday becomes our fast so that it would not seem as if we were observing the Sabbath together with the Jews, for the Lord of the Sabbath, Christ [Mt 12:8], said through the prophets that His soul hates the Sabbaths [Is 1:13—14] because He had fulfilled the Sabbath in His body. However, even before that, He had commanded Moses about the circumcision that should be performed no later than on the eighth day [see Lev 12:3], which often falls on the Sabbath as we read in the Gospels [see Jn 7:22]. Moses, seeing that these people are hard-hearted, lifted his hands and crucified himself in the battle waged by an enemy on the Sabbath [see Is 17:8—13], so that they would be captured and learn through the strictness of the law the doctrine which they had been neglecting.
6. And that’s why in the sixth psalm, David pleads with the Lord about the eighth day, asking him not to rebuke him in anger, nor chasten him in hot displeasure [Ps 6:1 (Ps 6:1—2 rus)]. This is indeed the eighth day of this coming judgment, which will be taken outside of the order of events during that week. Joshua, the successor of Moses, also broke the Sabbath. For he commanded the sons of Israel to go around the walls of Jericho with the sound of trumpets and declare war on the enemy on the Sabbath day [see Josh 6:3, 15]. Mattathias, the leader in Judea, broke the Sabbath rest, putting to death the commander Antiochus, the king of Syria, on a Sabbath and pursuing his enemies on the same day [see 1 Macc 2:25, 41, 47]. In Matthew [see Mt 12:3—5], we find a similar text. Isaiah and some of his followers [see Is 1:13; Hos 2:13] broke the Sabbath to keep the true Sabbath of the seventh millennium. Therefore, by each of these seven days, the Lord individually points to the Millennium. For it says: «For a thousand years in thine eyes are but as one day» [Ps 90:4 (Ps 89:5 rus); 2 Pet 3:8]. Therefore, each millennium is «in the eyes of God», and there are seven eyes of the Lord, according to my calculations [Zech 4:10]. As I have mentioned earlier, this is the reason why the true Sabbath is the seventh millennium, in which Christ will reign with his elect [see Rev 20:6].
Excerpt from «Commentary on the Apocalypse»:
19 And a white horse, and one sitting upon him shows our Lord coming with the heavenly army to reign, at Whose coming all the nations will be gathered [Rev 19:11—16], and will fall by the sword [Rev 19:21]. And others who were nobles will serve in the service of the saints [Rev 20:4]; and of these (nobles) also he shows they will be killed in the end time, at the finish of the reign of the saints, before the judgment, after the release of the devil [Rev 20:7—8]. On these all the prophets likewise agree.
20,1 And the scarlet devil is imprisoned and all his fugitive angels in the Tartarus of Gehenna at the coming of the Lord; no one is ignorant of this [Rev 20:1—3]. And after the thousand years he is released, because of the nations which will have served Antichrist: so that they alone might perish, as they deserved [Rev 20:7—10]. Then is the general judgment. Therefore he says: And they lived, he says, the dead who were written in the book of life, and they reigned with Christ a thousand years. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he who has a part in the first resurrection: toward this one the second death has no power [Rev 20:4—6]. Of this resurrection, he says: And I saw the Lamb standing, and with him 144 thousands, that is, standing with Christ, namely those of the Jews in the last time who become believers through the preaching of Elijah, those who, the Spirit bears witness, are virgins not only in body, but also in language [Rev 14:1—5]. Therefore, as he reminds above, the 24 elder-aged said: Grace we bring to You, O Lord God who has reigned; and the nations are angry [Rev 11:16—18].
20,2 At this same first resurrection will also appear the City and the splendid things expressed through this Scripture [Rev 21:2, 10]. Of this first resurrection Paul also spoke to the Macedonian church, thus: For as we have thus said to you, he says, by the Word of God, that at the trumpet of God, the Lord Himself will descend from heaven for raising up; and the dead in Christ will stand first, then we who are living, as we will be taken up with Him in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and thus we will always be with the Lord [1 Thess 4:16—17]. We have heard the trumpet spoken of; it is observed that in another place the Apostle names another trumpet. Therefore he says to the Corinthians: At the last trumpet, the dead will rise, will become immortal, and we will be changed [1 Cor 15:51—52]. He says the dead will be be raised immortal for bearing punishments, but it is shown that we are to be changed and to be covered in glory. Therefore where we hear «the last trumpet,» we must understand also a first, for these are two resurrections. Therefore, however many were not previously to rise in the first resurrection and to reign with Christ over the world, over all nations, will rise at the last trumpet, after the thousand years,
