Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Summary

Well known reverend and writer, Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon, Sinners in the hands of an Angry God, describes the dramatic fate of those who haven 't accepted Jesus Christ. Edwards purpose is to persuade members of his congregation to be “born again”. To be born again means to accept Jesus Christ. He creates a frightening tone in order to frighten unconverted men to believe in Jesus. Throughout his sermon he continuously reminds the reader of hell.

It is 1741. The Enlightenment is spreading worldwide. The puritan people are leaving God. Johnathan Edwards gives a sermon on July 8th , 1741, trying to convince his fellow Puritan people to come back to God. He is going to try and accomplish this by giving his famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God '.

Jonathan Edwards uses several types of writing skills to persuade his audience of God’s intentions. His use of figurative language, analogies, imagery, and repetition all emphasize Edwards’s views. He uses fear, anger, and apathy to appeal to the audience in attempt to warn his audience of God’s intentions. Jonathan Edwards uses fear in this sermon to terrorize his audience into thinking of God as someone to be feared, not someone to be loved. Throughout the sermon, Edwards uses figurative language along with imagery to frighten the audience.

The sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was written with many purposes. The main concept that Jonathan Edwards, the minister who wrote the sermon, wanted to get across is that God does not give any pity to those who do not believe in him and his gospel. He casts all of the sinners into the pits of hell and lets those who have been good live for eternity. This sermon was written after many reports of witchcraft came about in the New England colonies. These reports caused the Salem Witch Trials to occur and many people to become non-believers.

It is explained that God is the only one who is able to save people from going to Hell. Edwards wants people to imagine how evil and distressed life would be without Gods love and mercy. He explains that to not burn in Hell people need to ask for forgiveness from God, experience Gods mercy, and continuously practice the Lords word. Edwards really lets the message of “Gods wrath” sink into our minds to show how mighty, powerful, and capable the Lord is. The Lord gives us many opportunities to rely on Him and when we need his love and mercy the most.

An intense religious movement called, The Great Awakening, occurred in the 1730’s and 1740’s. This movement started in Colonial America, which originally came from a town named Northampton located in Massachusetts. Two preachers whose name’s are, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield both called Northampton home. Between these two men and their belief that the only thing that could save us humans, from the eternal fires of hell, was The Lord’s mercy. This had a massive affect on the colonists of America, due to there spiritual beliefs coming to end for the past century.

Rhetorical Analysis of Jonathan edwards’s Sinners in the hand of an angry god: jeremiad Jonathan edwards, is known as one of the most important religious figures of the great awakening, edwards became known for his zealous sermon “sinners at the hand of an angry god”. During his sermon he implies that if his congregation does not repent to christ they are in “danger of great wrath and infinite misery”. Throughout this sermon edwards uses literary devices such as strong diction, powerful syntax and juxtaposition to save his congregation from eternal damnation. Throughout Edwards’s sermon the use of turgid diction is exceedingly prevalent.

One of his well-known sermon is “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” preached at the meeting house in the village of Enfield, Connecticut, on Sunday, July 8, 1741, at the height of the great awakening. In this sermon, Edwards focused on the consequences of leading a sinful life, the power of God and repenting of ones sins, in order to be saved from hell. The purpose behind this piece of writing was not to terrorize or dismay the hearers, but to make them repent and believe in God again. This piece was aimed at those who lacked belief in God as well as churches.

The majority of this sermon is dedicated to the audience whom Edwards views with repulsion. He uses imagery to describe the awful Hell that he believes the people in the congregation will end up in and calls it a “great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath” (Paragraph 8). He illustrates the never ending state of Hell in order to frighten everyone in the audience. He sees each and every person as damned and honestly believes they deserve be sent to Hell to burn for all eternity. He feels no sympathy for them because they are completely free to do what they want and he knows that what they do with their free will is commit sin.

Jonathan Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and Anne Bradstreet’s “Upon the Burning of Our House” seem at first glance quite similar to one another regarding context, however, after taking a closer look, it becomes apparent that there are some substantial differences. These differences cannot be understood without the knowledge of cultural context concerning the Puritan belief system and their lifestyle. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was written with the sole purpose of scaring and intimidating the people that purtinans believed to be sinners. Edwards’s work contributed to a movement called “The Great Awakening”. It’s objective was to make the so-called ‘sinners’ aware of their wrongdoings and compel them to repent.

In 1741, Jonathan Edwards delivered a sermon called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” to a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut. This sermon was so influential and poignant that today it has transformed into a piece of literature that many study in classes. This bit of literature is so utterly jam-packed with the use of rhetorical appeals, often referred to as ethos, pathos, and logos. These three appeals are derived from ancient Greece, or more precisely, the Greek philosopher Aristotle. Ethos appeals to the audience’s sense of trust, pathos, to their sense of emotion, and logos, to their sense of logic.

In crafting his highly effective sermon, Edwards utilizes his authority as a man of God and as an interpreter of the scriptures, a logical and direct organization of arguments, and violent imagery to convince his audience of the vengeance of God against man. Jonathan Edwards begins his sermon by quoting

Jonathan Edwards, a preacher, wrote the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". In the sermon, Edwards argues that everyone was out of God's favor and they needed to return to a righteous path. The tone of the sermon is indignant and authoritative. Jonathan Edwards uses imagery, logos, and pathos to encourage the unconverted audience to turn to God in order to escape his wrath. Elemental imagery is used in the sermon to inspire fear in the audience.

Another metaphor in the sermon is, “The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given, and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose… the waters are continually rising and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God that holds the waters back that are unwilling to be stopped…” (Bedford 352). The whole point of what he is saying in this quote is just to stress the importance that only God’s grace can keep people from a loss from hate. The losses can include things like floods and burning flames. This quote talks about how the waves of water keep getting

Edwards wants us to know that when we don’t listen to God and turned away from and when we follow the Satan’s ways, we will go to Hell. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Johnathan Edwards, wants us to imagine Hell and what the consequences are. Edwards wants us to know that men who are sinners are more likely to go to Hell, and to consider the danger that we are