Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Summary

The main idea of the sermon given by Johnathon Edwards “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is that of all of people will be let go by god into destruction. He gives an example about how the Israelites did not know of god. It is because of this their people had to endure the pain and tribulations that they did. The main idea revolving on the idea of the wrath of god, and that everyone is going to hell. The focus never strays from this theme. He consistently pounds away the idea that god can whenever he wants strike men down wherever they stand.

Author Support

He gives a persuasive sermon. Now a sermon isn’t a regular speech it is an attempt to inspire, persuade, or alter opinion. The speaker here tries to capture the attention of

the audience. Johnathon Edwards delivers the most famous American sermon in 1741 to a congregation in Connecticut. Surprisingly he delivers the speech in a calm quiet manner. According to one account he read for six hours without stopping. The people didn’t move, get up, or walk around. This is something remarkable that he can capture an audience’s attention for six whole hours. He stares over the heads of his audience at the bell rope. He looked at the rope like he could cut it in two. He had no interest in looking at the listeners. Despite his calm manner his audience screams in terror, and intermittently he must tell the people to calm down. This raises the question of what kind of people he is talking too? He wants to persuade these people, and proves his presence as a great speaker without using emotion. Most great speakers that we can think of today know how to use their voice and inflection to create emotion, Edwards does none of that.
Impact of Sermon
One of the questions of this sermon would be why would this sermon be so scary to people?

Why do people today who read this sermon still get freaked out today? Or do we not get freaked out? This is an observation that America is changing. This speech was so great that it was given repeatedly. If we examine the title “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. This tells us this is a religious speech. We can assume that sinners are directed to people of the church. If we look at Edwards individually, he spoke many languages and was a very bright student. He was a born preacher. He learned these languages by age twelve. At thirteen he attends Yale University. He graduates as valedictorian four years later at the age seventeen. He sparks “The Great Enlightenment” during a period that religion is part of the daily lives of the common American. John Edwards sparked up a religious revelation during a time when religion was starting to wane. In American history religion is important for a time and then not, this trend has continued since the inception of this country. Edwards was convinced that people were losing their religion, thinking that they were no longer true believers. Thus, he writes down a six-hour speech that becomes extremely popular. He gives this sermon during a time when almost everyone is a believer. He also doesn’t allude to a loving god, he describes him as angry. He also describes god as having hands, personifying him. He gives human attributes

to inanimate object, and continues to describe god as a very human like entity. He is a puritan, and a Calvinist. Both in which they are very conservative believing every word in the bible as an exact truth. People not believing in the bible are going to hell. If you’re a sinner you go to hell this is the John Calvin view. The whole speech is based upon fear. Persuade your audience with fear, which implies that the people listening in 1741 all believe in hell.
Personal Opinion
I do not agree with Johnathon Edward’s views not even in the slightest, which I believe it is evident that not everyone back in the day bought in as well.

In today’s day in age it is easy for someone to not agree with such archaic ideas. And while I don’t believe everyone back in the 1800’s bought into this theory of religion, I do believe that it had a very strong impact on the people that bought into what he was saying. Part of the reason something like this could be so believable is how passionate the speaker was at presenting the information. Especially with very impressionable crowds with no form of outside media or information. It seems that Edwards was perhaps the source of media for many followers. It is hard to believe of a church being a form of media but in this time period it really was the only source of outside information that people had. Reverting back to a piece earlier in this essay, “America has changed”. It is evident that if we look at our history we can see that we have changed. We can see evidence of how our future will be shaped and has already been shaped by the likes of very important figures in our countries history. The like of great speakers and leaders such as Martin Luther King JR and Johnathon Edwards are a clear sign of what can happen to our history when the Alpha steps up and takes control of an audience. Evidence of this can even be seen in Germany when Adolf Hitler takes control of a country and has millions of followers follow

his path unto evil. There is no doubt that these speakers will always leave a lasting impact on history as a whole, and will continue to do so for as long as humanity exists.