How long is sinners in the hands of an angry god

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here. Friday, November 12, About us Advertise with us. Toggle navigation Main menu. Log in Subscribe. Posted Saturday, July 9, pm. Other items that may interest you. Powered by Creative Circle Media Solutions. What contrasting images does Edwards use to describe God's wrath? What have Edwards listeners done to provoke God? What have Edwards's listeners done to provoke or anger God? They have refused to acknowledge God's total power over their lives.

They have sinned too much. They have been cruel to their fellow human beings. How does Edwards use repetition? Repetition: Purposefully repeated words or phrases to create a rhythm, reinforce a message, and to enhance a mood or emotional effect. Audience: To whom is Edwards' sermon directed? What metaphors are used in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?

One of the most famous metaphors in American literary history is found in this work. The Wrath of God. At times Edwards can seem a little inexact and imprecise in his metaphorical imagery. The Restraint of God. The Invisible Enemy. What does the wrath of God is like great waters mean? This particular quotation contains a simile, and it compares God's wrath to flood waters that are, for the moment, safely held back by a dam; those waters rise higher and higher, threatening to crest the top of the dam, or even break it, and flood the land around it.

What is the Maori lunar calendar? Rationalists, whom Edwards classed as "Arminians," proposed a theology derived from reason and nature. They also argued that individuals were fundamentally moral beings with the ability to choose their faith, a belief that cut against the traditional Calvinist doctrine of human depravity.

By , when celebrity English evangelist George Whitefield conducted his first preaching tour in the American colonies, those local revivals had grown into the mass religious movement that would later become known as the First Great Awakening. Whitefield, Edwards, and other preachers like Gilbert Tennent criticized American churches for their cold theological rationalism while proclaiming a revivified Calvinist gospel. It was in this environment that Edwards preached "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" while filling the pulpit in Enfield, Connecticut on July 8, Edwards wanted to convince the parishioners that their religious faith was dead, that they were sinners, and thus they faced the righteous judgment of God should they not repent and turn from their false religious security.

The sermon's text came from Deuteronomy chapter 32, a passage in which God warned the nation of Israel that judgment was coming. The Israelites had grown "heavy and sleek" v. If they did not repent and turn, verse 35 warned, "To me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

They too deserved God's condemnation and if they died in their sins they would go to hell. In one of the most famous portions of the sermon, Edwards compared them to a spider or "some loathsome insect" being dangled over a fire, their very existence "provoking his [God's] pure eyes" by their "sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship.

Consider the fearful danger you are in," the audience broke into such loud shrieks and wails that he could not finish. For Edwards, the metaphor of a spider dangling above a fire was not meant merely to impress his listeners with how dire their position but also to drive them to thankfulness that God had preserved them from the fire thus far.

God's hand was not ominous, but an undeserved act of preservation. It was proof, to him, of God's loving sovereignty that any should be saved from hell when all deserved precisely that. If Edwards had been able to finish his sermon, he would have told his audience of "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.

Edwards's sermon was quickly printed in tract form and spread throughout the colonies. Critics of the First Great Awakening just as quickly seized on the sermon, accusing Edwards of preaching an "antinomian," or lawless, gospel that so over-emphasized human depravity that Christians would no longer feel compelled to do good works.

Edwards countered that charge with a series of books, culminating with a biography of a Calvinist missionary to the Indians named David Brainerd meant to showcase the good works and piety that resulted from a Calvinist theology. The controversy even reached into the pews of Edwards's own church in Northampton, which dismissed him in In the late 19th century, the sermon had a bit of a revival as theological liberals used it to exemplify the outdated, depressing nature of conservative theology.

Protestant liberalism, or later sometimes called modernism, sought to replace Edwards's emphasis on the angry God of the Old Testament with a focus on the loving, socially-oriented Jesus of the New Testament. In a sense, modern liberals found it easier to sympathize with Edwards as a youthful, anti-Calvinist rebel than as the revivalist preacher he became as an adult. In the late 20th century, conservative theologians rediscovered Edwards's work along with that of many other American and English Puritan theologians.