The Sins of Our World

The sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," has several themes. Something to keep in mind is that the author, Jonathan Edwards, was a Puritan which means that he was not very open to religious diversity. He more than likely believed that whatever was written in the bible should be followed to a tee.

I imagined that Edwards would look just like any other preacher of today that is trying to put the fear of God into their congregation. Speaking of preachers of today, I can picture it  now. My very own preacher, reading something along the lines of "For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son," in an attempt to make the people of the congregation feel guilty for all the sins that they had knowingly commited. The only difference between then and now is that people of the church actually cared back then where as today people will listen to the sermon and as soon as they step out of the church they'll be right back to their old ways (sinning with no remorse). 

Anyways, back to the business at hand, the theme of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." I think that the theme would revolve around the Puritan way of life; more specifically what they believed in.

One of the major themes that I noticed in the text involved how Edwards continuely suggested that all of humanity was evil. In his sermon he stated that "O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: 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, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment." In reading this excerpt, I realized that Edwards strongly believed that humanity was no more than a nuisance God. He believed that no matter what any human did or said that it would never compensate for all of their wrongs. He was under that impression that everyone was evil and that it was inevitable for them to end up in Hell. Another prevelant theme, as the title staes. was the anger of God. For example, Edwars states "the wrath of God is like great waters that are damned for the present; they increase more and more and rise higher and higher...it is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment." In this excerpt, Edwards compares the wrath of God to the rushing water of a river, He does this in order to show that God's anger is very fierce and is on the verge of overflowing. This gave the congregation a better understanding of just how mad their actions were making God. 

Rachel W.