Sermon

"Ministers - who now often meet their people to preach to them the King eternal, immortal, and invisible, to convince them that he governs and will judge the world, and that there is a future state of rewards and punishments, and to preach to them a Christ in heaven, at the right hand of God, in an unseen world - shall then meet their people in the most immediate sensible presence of this great God, Savior, and Judge, appearing in the most plain, visible, and open manner, with great glory, with all his holy angels, before them and the whole world. They shall not meet them to hear about an absent Christ, an unseen Lord, and future Judge; but to appear before that Judge - being set together in the presence of that supreme Lord - in his immense glory and awful majesty, of whom they have heard so often in their meetings together on earth... Ministers are sent forth by Christ to their people on his business. They are his servants and messengers; and, when they have finished their service, they must return to their master to give him an account of what they had done, and of the entertainment they have had in performing their ministry... So we read, in Hebrews 13:17, of ministers or rulers in house of God, that 'they watch for souls, as those that must give account.'"
-Jonathan Edwards

JE