Jonathan Edwards And Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, Jonathan Edwards, sermon provides a substantial amount of imagery that depicts the beliefs at that time. This figure of speech is important because it created the emotion of fear, it makes a image of hell develope in your head, and with his imagery he scares his audience into following his ways. Jonathan Edwards use of imagery creates a horrific image which has a major effect on his audience. With the uses of imagery he creates an image of a place full of horror to scare his audience to following his ways. In the sermon Jonathan Edwards uses “Their foot shall slide in due time” to show that within time you will go to hell for sinning. This creates the image of your foot sliding down into a hole of darkness,

Early American texts have conveyed many contrasting views on Human Nature. Jonathan Edwards, Olaudah Equiano, and Thomas Jefferson are able to present their very diverse views of mankind through the use of rhetorical devices such as figurative language, imagery, connotative diction, and parallelism.

Before the sermon begins the author writes a footnote saying, “Edwards delivered this sermon in Enfield, Connecticut, a town about thirty miles south of Northampton, on Sunday, July 8, 1741” (425). The sermon takes place towards the end of the Great Awakening. Edwards giving his sermon during this time period is crucial, because it is a time where many religious movements are persuading people to move towards Christ.

Between Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, written by Jonathan Edwards, and The Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, Edwards made the strongest argument in his literary work compared to Jefferson. Edwards had incorporated a strong use of pathos, ethos, and logos. Jefferson used the same technique as well, but his use of it did not speak out to me as a reader. In the upcoming paragraphs, you will see Edwards’ use of pathos, ethos, and logos.

One can hear a sermon any day of the week, because there are many preachers out there in the world. Many sermons are retold Bible stories from the Old and New Testaments that tell how our ancestors lived, and teach us life applications of how to glorify God while we are living our lives. Some examples from the Bible are: David and Goliath and the lesson of courage, Deuteronomy 32:4 “... a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he” (KJV), and the Roman’s Road of confession, acceptance of Christ, and salvation. For over a thousand years God’s word has been preached by many faithful men who follow Him. However, there were some of those faithful men who used God’s Word and their own improvisation to convict sinners and to put their trust in God. Those times resulted in an era called the Great Awakening of the 18th century and they also put an end to the segregation era of the 20th century. Two of the faithful men during those eras were Jonathan Edwards and Martin Luther King, Jr. . They both preached great sermons on confession and love. But they also had different points of view. When we read the two sermons our lives and actions may never be the same as they were before, because of feeling ashamed and convicted, then we begin to live our lives as Christians.

Pathos is the emotional appeal, and Edwards used this as an appeal to fear and vanity. To appeal to fear, Edwards told his congregation that at any moment they could be taken out of this world in anyway and would be cast into Hell for eternity. To appeal to vanity, Edwards told the unconverted, or those who had yet to become born again, members of his congregation that they would envy those who were converted, those who had been born again, because they would see them rejoicing while they were being cast into Hell. Ethos was the ethical appeal, Edwards applied ethos when he stated the two allusions to Psalms 90:11, a verse from the Bible, and to the Great Awakening, a time in history when everyone was becoming converted. Lastly, Edwards used logos, the logical appeal, when he used two rhetorical statements at the end of his sermon asking how his congregation could live with themselves knowing they were unconverted, and when he employed a cause and effect statement in which he said that every man is naturally sentenced to Hell, and that they had to become converted to escape. Edward’s combining all three rhetorical appeals in his sermon would have successfully persuaded the unconverted members of his congregation to trust in Christ. His sermon would have been

Jonathan Edwards delivered his sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, in Enfield Connecticut on July 8, 1741, the year following George Whitefield's preaching tour which helped inspire the "Great Awakening." Weeping and emotional conviction among Edwards’ audiences came at a time of great spiritual thirst. While very foreign to mainstream American opinion today, this extraordinary message was fashioned for a people who were very conscious of how their lifestyles affected eternal consequences. By today's popular perspective, the doctrine of predestination probably discourages conversion because of the new-age independent attitude. However, in Puritan culture, through

"Free at last, Free at last, Great God a-mighty, we are free at last" (King 6). Martin Luther King Jr. and Jonathan Edwards both use strong words and tone. Jonathan Edwards is an American preacher, philosopher, and congregationalist protestant theologian. Jonathan is born in 1703 and gives the "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" speech in 1741. Edwards has strong feelings for what he believes in about congregation. Early settlers are persuaded by Edwards sermon because of the tone and word choice Edwards uses throughout his sermon.

In the era that Jonathan Edwards wrote his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, things were much simpler. There was no Internet, cable television, or even electricity. To hear news and ideas, they had to be delivered on paper or by word of mouth. New news would be old news by the time it reached whoever wanted it, and it also meant that the story could be changed and only heard in one point of view. “Sinners In the Hands of an Angry God” was written to “awaken” colonists to their sins. Because the sermon is written with point of view of one preacher, many people heard it and took it upon themselves to make it their opinion too. Armed with his highly persuasive sermon, Jonathan Edwards shaped generations of religious lecturing traditions.

Edwards, Jonathan. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: A Sermon, Preached at Enfield, July 8th, 1741, at a Time of Great Awakenings, and Attended with Remarkable Impressions on Many of the Hearers. Schenectady: Printed by Riggs & Stevens, 1815. Print.

Preacher Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, chides the people of the church and of the world, stating that they are not worthy of God’s mercy, that they will soon face his wrath if they do not change their ways. Edwards’ intent is to show the people of the congregation that they are not living the Christian life the way that God intends it. He includes metaphors and parallel structure, along with personification in order to get his audience to see that in the eyes’ of God, their ways are evil and they need to change. The title of the Sermon itself is enough to create fear among people who believe that everyone is sinful and that their God is full of wrath.

In his most iconic speech, “I Have a Dream,” King depicts a world without segregation, where “little children… will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Biblical allusions are carried out throughout this speech to increase credibility. Because of the strong religious sentiment apparent at that time, King

Jonathan Edwards’ three-part sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” revolves around Deuteronomy 32:35: “Their foot shall slide in due time.” He utilizes this biblical reference in order to frame his argument and provide real world application to the congregation’s life. During this time period, only elite scholars were given access to read the Bible. Because of this, sermons were used to teach the word of God to the common Puritans. Preachers were trusted to correctly interpret the Bible’s teachings and accurately explain them to the people.

In the sermon “Sinners in the hands of an angry God”, Jonathan Edwards creates the emotion

Religion is not just pure love and compassion. Jonathan Edwards in his sermon ´´Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God´´ exposes that idea with many different examples. The sermon is sadistic, however, true and skillful. His main objective was to captivate more followers of religion and he clearly stated his point and reached his goal. Hell is so real we are sometimes guilty of having the thought of feeling we are going to end up there after doing something erroneous.