Friedrich Nietzsche
Publisher: Portable Library (1977)

The 'kingdom of heaven' is a state of the heart - not something that is to come 'above the earth' or 'after death.' The whole concept of natural death is lacking in the evangel: death is no bridge, no transition; it is lacking because it belongs to a wholly different, merely apparent world, useful only insofar as it furnishes signs. The 'hour of death' is no Christian concept - an 'hour,' time, physical life and its crises do not even exist for the teacher of the 'glad tidings.' The 'kingdom of God' is nothing that one expects; it has no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it will not come in 'a thousand years' - it is an experience of the heart; it is everywhere, it is nowhere.