Examples Of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

During the 1964 United States presidential election, a political advertisement named "Daisy" was aired for Lyndon B. Johnson's presidential campaign. Although it only aired on television once - and only on one channel, NBC - it was enough for him to win with a landslide victory over Barry Goldwater. In his campaign, Johnson says, "These are the stakes: to make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other. Or we must die." Johnson used Goldwater's speech to imply that he would, without a doubt, wage a nuclear war, killing "300 million people before sundown," to scare voters, since this election took place two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Fear tactics had been used before, however,

Edwards starts of the middle of the sermon by saying," The God that holds you over the pit of Hell, much as one holds a spider, or some other loathsome insect over the fire; abhors you, and it dreadfully provoked." The imagine of the members of congregation being a bug makes them feel disgusted with themselves by the way God is disgusted with them to something they can relate to. Edwards then writes," 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." When Edwards says "O sinner!", it makes the members of the congregation feel like they are being singled out. The image of you being held over a bottomless pit by God made the congregation feel fearful, because they know the salvation is only temporary, and that they will inevitably fall into the pit "full of the fire of wrath." He then follows this up by saying," you have... 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." This give the congregation a feeling of hopelessness because they will have nothing to save them, and there is nothing they can do to convince God otherwise, This also uses the repetition of "nothing" and "you" to make them feel like they are worthless because those are the two words that are repeated the most, so if they can't remember anything else from this part, it will be those words. Further into the sermon, Edwards says,” however moral and strict, somber and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh that you would consider it, whether you be young or old!... Your damnation does not slumber; it will come swiftly, and, in all probability, very