Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards delivered the "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" sermon as a visiting minister to a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut in 1741 during the religious revival movement known as The Great Awakening. Puritans had traditionally been taught that people were predestined for heaven or hell, thus it was a religion that produced uncertainty and anxiety in its followers as they searched themselves for signs of being among God's "elect." Notably,...
Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards delivered the "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" sermon as a visiting minister to a congregation in Enfield, Connecticut in 1741 during the religious revival movement known as The Great Awakening. Puritans had traditionally been taught that people were predestined for heaven or hell, thus it was a religion that produced uncertainty and anxiety in its followers as they searched themselves for signs of being among God's "elect." Notably, Edwards's sermon rejects the idea of predestination and offers the hope of salvation that can be earned.
Edwards lectures at length on the horror that unredeemed sinners will face: "The Wrath of God burns against them, their Damnation don’t slumber, the Pit is prepared, the Fire is made ready, the Furnace is now hot, ready to receive them, the Flames do now rage and glow".
But because the purpose of the Great Awakening and Edwards's sermon was to bring lapsed Christians back to their faith and convert the rest, his tone changes toward the conclusion of the sermon: "And now you have an extraordinary Opportunity, a Day wherein Christ has flung the Door of Mercy wide open, and stands in the Door calling and crying with a loud Voice to poor Sinners".
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1053&context=etas
No comments:
Post a Comment