Comfort one another with these words . . .

St. Paul's proclamation that the dead in Christ shall rise, and we with  them, on the Last Day is immeasurably good news for us Christians. We have a glorious future to look forward to, that is unspeakably beyond our capacity for wonder, and this ought to comfort us in all our earthly sorrows. Moreover, we have an earnest of that day in the day on which Jerusalem was destroyed in A.D. 70. For although the citizens of that city were miserably destroyed on that day, none of the Christians was there, for they had heeded Jesus' warnings about its coming, and had already left for the hills. So they were all spared. And so shall we be spared the destruction of the Last Day, though we deserve the same fate as they. But Christ has redeemed us by his blood, and has been raised from the dead, and has ascended into heaven, from which he shall surely return in the same way as the apostles saw him go. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.  Sermon for the Third-Last Sunday after Trinity.