Sinners Of An Angry God By Jonathan Edwards

The most renowned picture utilized is that of an "accursed bug." He says that God takes a gander at individuals as though they were evil creepy crawlies and truth be told despises us more than we would detest such a bug. A related picture that Edwards uses is the way to go that God is holding us by a string over the pit of hellfire, at risk at any minute to cut the string and let us drop on the grounds that we are malicious and should be rebuffed. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is another example of a Puritan work on account of its depiction of people as unimportant, God as almighty, and the association with rejoining the

Edwards begins his speech by emphasizing on how people in the audience have drifted away from God and how angry God is at most of them . He uses the personification ‘’their damnation does not slumber.., the furnace is now hot and ready to receive them” to create a feeling of fear in the audience by warning them that God will condemn them to hell. His main purpose is to instill fear

Khalid Tokhi Mrs. Lee English 3H, Period 3 28 October, 2014 Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God Writing Assessment “Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering”. The Puritans of the early 1700s were continually informed of the consequences that awaited them if they were to lead a life of sin. Time and time again, Puritans were told that wrongdoing would point them directly to Hell where they were said to face the extreme wrath of God. Jonathan Edwards, a rather charismatic preacher of his time, dedicated much of his time and effort to convert and convince his audience of a spiritual rebirth.

Imagine everyone’s life was judged every second of everyday. By a greater power, God. And that greater power would hold someone over a pit of fire, because they committed a sin, would you commit a sin? Jonathan Edwards was a powerful fire-and-brimstone preacher during the Great Awakening and author of the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. Edwards uses a variety of metaphors in his writing, all metaphors have a strong effect on what Edwards experience during the Great Awakening.

This is where Deuteronomy comes into play. When Edwards is explaining the power of God, he bases it off of Deuteronomy which is when Moses warns the people of the power of God. We will forever fail to understand salvation until we accept human limitations. In Genesis 6:5 it says, "The Lord saw that human evil was growing more and more throughout the Earth, and he was deeply grieved about that." Jonathan Edwards realizes this and artfully crafts a sermon to change this growing epidemic.

From Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God expresses the point that a parishioner should not fall away from the church unless they want to be permanently condemned to hell. Jonathan Edwards expresses his ideas through the usage of multiple persuasive techniques and different types of figurative language. This sermon puts fear into the congregation and this makes the parishioners not want to fall away from the church. Through Edwards utilization of figurative language, the picture of God's Wrath is painted clearly for the listeners of this sermon.

Those descriptions of anger are grandiloquent which are more impressive and it also places stress on the audiences. Edwards thinks Puritans are sinful that they are not as pure as they were like. He wants to use repetition of anger and exaggerated descriptions of Hell to tell people that God is angry about them and they could be put in hell at any time if they do not do the conversion. Besides using dictions,

This dramatic imagery shows the Puritans that God will no longer come to their rescue because the Puritans have chosen to serve Satan. Edwards tries to reach his audience by saying Hell is a “great furnace of wrath” where sinners belong. This description of Hell shows Edwards belief that sinners will pay for not serving God by facing God’s wrath in Hell. Each claim made by Jonathan Edwards motivates the audience to stop serving Satan in order to escape the “very misery to all eternity” that is Hell. The ideas presented in Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, are intensified by the use of rhetorical devices.

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.

Edwards wanted his audience to mentally understand his attitude towards God, and for them to not underestimate God’s Powers. He painted a mental picture of an enraged and angry God when Edwards preached that “There are black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm… and were it not for the restraining hand of God, it would immediately burst forth upon you” (Paragraph 3). The black clouds and the description of the storm demonstrated God’s anger building up inside him waiting to unleash. God’s merciful act was the only reason he did not release his true wrath. There was no say when God will become completely fed up with his “sinner.”

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 order to emphasize God’s contempt for the audience, Jonathan Edwards utilizes inflammatory diction and comparisons of God’s anger to a bow and arrow and “black clouds” to instill fear in the audience so that they will accept God as their savior, provoking a religious revival. Throughout the sermon, Edwards utilizes “fiery” phrases such as “furnace of wrath”, “wrath…burns like fire”, and “glowing flames of the wrath of God” in order to establish a connection between God’s fury and a burning fire, reaffirming the reality of going to hell, as hell is commonly associated with fire. Because fires are also very devastating and unpredictable, Edwards emphasizes the power and degree of God’s disdain and his ability to cause drastic change at unexpected times, making God’s patience seem fragile.

This interpretation of God becomes the reference point for the rest of the sermon. All of the commands and accusations in the sermon rely on Edwards' portrait of God as an angry, all-powerful being that has no obligation to have mercy upon his creations. By convincing his congregation of God's wrathful character, Edwards is then able to convince the congregation that they are in danger of damnation and severe punishment at the hand of this wrathful God. Edwards characterizes God as a being that "abhors" mortal men and "looks upon [them] as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire" (200). Edwards then uses scriptural references to support his claims about the nature of God.

“The wrath of God is like great waters that are damned from the present; they increase; more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is give; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty its course, when once it is let loose." In this quotation, Edwards uses