Jonathan Edwards

1
Jonathan Edwards

• Sinners in the
• Hands of an
• Angry God

2

• For Edwards, science, reason, and observation of
  the universe confirmed for him the existence of
  God.
• A brilliant thinker and speaker, Edwards entered
  Yale at 13 and became a minister 12 years later.
• His passionate, yet frightening, sermons helped
  to bring about The Great Awakening,
• a time when many who attended church were not
  saved or could testify to an emotional
  encounter with God and His grace.
• Unregenerate Christians
• were those who attended church and accepted
  church teachings but had not been born again by
  Gods grace.

3

• He was dismissed as
• pastor in 1750 because
• his sermons were too
• extreme he called out
• those in the congregation
• who were leading lives
• relapsing into sin.
• Ironically, Edwards died
• of a smallpox vaccination,
• a modern medical procedure
• many Puritans considered
• sinful.

4

• On the one hand, Edwards believed in reason and
  learning, the value of independent intellect, and
  the power of the human will.
• VS.
• On the other hand, he believed in the lowliness
  of human beings in relation to Gods majesty and
  the ultimate futility of merely human efforts to
  achieve salvation.
• Edwards, as the last Puritan, stood between
  Puritan America and modern America. Tragically,
  he fit into neither world.

5
Figurative Language in Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God

• By Jonathan Edwards

6
The devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping
for them, the flames gather and flash about
them (79).
Imagery
7
The devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping
for them, the flames gather and flash about them,
and would fain lay hold on them and swallow them
up (79).
Personification
8
the fire pent up in their own hearts is
struggling to break out (79).
Personification
9
The bow of Gods wrath is bent, and the arrow
made ready on the string, and justice bends the
arrow of your heart, and strains the bow (109).

• Metaphor

10
The God that holds you over the pit of Hell,
much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome
insect over the fire, (81).

• Simile

11
you are ten thousand times more abominable in
his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent
is in ours (81).

• Simile

12
it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and
bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath (81).

• metaphor

13
if God should let you go, you would immediately
sink and swiftly descend and plunge into a
bottomless gulf (80).

• Imagery

14
The wrath of God is like great waters that are
damned for the present (80).

• Simile

15
if your strength were ten thousand times
greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times
greater that the strength of the stoutest,
sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to
withstand or endure it (80).

• Simile

16
That world of misery, that lake of burning
brimstone, is extended abroad under you (80).

• Imagery/ metaphor

17
Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as
lead (80).

• Simile

18
your own care and prudence, would have no more
influence to uphold you and keep you out of Hell,
than a spiders web would have to stop a fallen
rock (80).

• Simile

19
You have offended Him infinitely more than ever
a stubborn rebel did his prince (81).

• Simile

20
his wrath towards you burns like fire (81).

• Simile

21
they would avail no more to keep you from
falling than the thin air to hold a person that
is suspended in it (80).

• Simile

22
It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and
bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that
you are held over in the hand of that God (81).

• metaphor