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Examples Of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

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“If God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of Hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a fallen rock…” This passage, on page 88 of the American Literature textbook, volume one, is taken from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards. In this sermon, Edwards underlines the terror of damnation and how inescapable it is unless one repents toward God and renews themselves as a Christian. Constitution refers to the physical make-up of a person, a sermon is a speech to persuade or inform, orthodoxy …show more content…

He achieves this by expressing the wrath of God. One way is by comparing their plight and God’s rage to many unstoppable and destructive works of nature, such as floods and storms. He also compares his contempt to holding an insect over a fire, as well as the image of a taught bow and arrow. These images clearly convey the hopelessness of their situation, the ineffectiveness of pleading, the anger of God, and the terror accompanied by suffering of hell. He also shows how terrible this wrath and suffering is with much expressive language, as well as comparing the joy of Heaven to the misery of Hell with the gloating and watching of those in Heaven. With these ideas and images, he means to perturb his audience, stirring them up emotionally and causing them to be afraid and discontent, desperate for a way out and a way to redeem themselves in the sight of their angry God. Much of this technique is shown throughout the sermon, clearly designed to evoke terror in the …show more content…

This he does by stressing that the time of mercy is short, but there is time still left. He demonstrates how indifferent God is to the pleas of those he casts into Hell, because it is too late for them, so they fall into the pit of Hell. However, Edwards also notes that “God stands ready to pity you; this is a day of mercy…” (page 89, last paragraph) He stresses that once you are dead, and your judgment day has come, however, that it is too late to repent and no mercy shall be shown. With this, he is able to instill a desperate urgency in his listeners so that they might try to redeem themselves through Christ and behave and become better

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Rhetorical Analysis Of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

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This interpretation of God becomes the reference point for the rest of the sermon. All of the commands and accusations in the sermon rely on Edwards' portrait of God as an angry, all-powerful being that has no obligation to have mercy upon his creations. By convincing his congregation of God's wrathful character, Edwards is then able to convince the congregation that they are in danger of damnation and severe punishment at the hand of this wrathful God. Edwards characterizes God as a being that "abhors" mortal men and "looks upon [them] as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire" (200). Edwards then uses scriptural references to support his claims about the nature of God.

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Rhetorical Devices In Sinners

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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, is a Puritan sermon from the eighteenth century during the Great Awakening. During this time, Puritans had strayed from the church due to the church’s strict guidelines and regulations and begun to embrace more secular thought. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, was written to motivate people to join the newly refined church that embraced these secular thoughts. Jonathan Edwards uses rhetorical devices throughout his sermon to show God’s wrath on sinners and to instill the fear of God in Puritans. Jonathan Edward’s was a well respected clergyman of eighteenth century New England.

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Jonathan Edwards God Rhetorical Analysis

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In order to emphasize God’s contempt for the audience, Jonathan Edwards utilizes inflammatory diction and comparisons of God’s anger to a bow and arrow and “black clouds” to instill fear in the audience so that they will accept God as their savior, provoking a religious revival. Throughout the sermon, Edwards utilizes “fiery” phrases such as “furnace of wrath”, “wrath…burns like fire”, and “glowing flames of the wrath of God” in order to establish a connection between God’s fury and a burning fire, reaffirming the reality of going to hell, as hell is commonly associated with fire. Because fires are also very devastating and unpredictable, Edwards emphasizes the power and degree of God’s disdain and his ability to cause drastic change at unexpected times, making God’s patience seem fragile.

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Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Language Analysis

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Often in Sermons ministers/pastors persuade their audience to behave in a spiritual or moral fashion. Such is the case in “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” by Johnathan Edwards where he says “sinners should repent for their sins or burn in the eternal pit of hell. If sinners repent, they will receive eternal life.” God destroys sinners, but is merciful to the repentant. Edwards wanted to impact his audience by appealing to the fears pity and vanity.

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Analysis Of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

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Sinners in the hands of an Angry God is written by Jonathan Edwards who was "one of the last great Puritan Minister". He is the speaker of the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and an American revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist Protestant theologian. The occasion he is saying this to the people is after a fellow pastor invited him to preach to the men and women of this church. The audiences that he addressed are the men and women of the church he was preaching at. The purpose of this is to teach the listeners about the horrors of hell, the dangers of sin and the terror of not joining God.

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Comparing Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God And Upon The Burning Of Our House

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Jonathan Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and Anne Bradstreet’s “Upon the Burning of Our House” seem at first glance quite similar to one another regarding context, however, after taking a closer look, it becomes apparent that there are some substantial differences. These differences cannot be understood without the knowledge of cultural context concerning the Puritan belief system and their lifestyle. “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was written with the sole purpose of scaring and intimidating the people that purtinans believed to be sinners. Edwards’s work contributed to a movement called “The Great Awakening”. It’s objective was to make the so-called ‘sinners’ aware of their wrongdoings and compel them to repent.

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Sinners In The Ahands Of An Angry God Analysis

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In Jonathan Edward's sermon, "Sinners in the ahands of an Angry God," he strategically utilizes similies, imagery, and analogy to convice his followers into obedience. Jonathan Edward's use of imagery to demonstrate the fury that. god has upon the peoplebecause of their sinful actions. Edward states, "the God that holds you over the pit hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over a fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked," indicating how God views humans as an abominable creation who deserve to rot in hell. This use of imagery allows the reader to vividly imaging how disappointing God was due to the immoral actions of humans.

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Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Literary Devices

1763 Words | 8 Pages

In “sinners in the hands of an angry God”, Jonathan Edwards uses different types of literary techniques, such as, imagery, metaphor, similes, repetition, and rhetorical questions to emphasize his point. His point is to scare the people and make them want to repent, which is the theme of the sermon. In the sermon “Sinners in the hands of an angry god,” Edwards uses different types of

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Figurative Language In Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

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The majority of this sermon is dedicated to the audience whom Edwards views with repulsion. He uses imagery to describe the awful Hell that he believes the people in the congregation will end up in and calls it a “great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath” (Paragraph 8). He illustrates the never ending state of Hell in order to frighten everyone in the audience. He sees each and every person as damned and honestly believes they deserve be sent to Hell to burn for all eternity. He feels no sympathy for them because they are completely free to do what they want and he knows that what they do with their free will is commit sin.

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Jonathan Edwards Rhetoric

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He also describes the plights of those who didn't listen to their fear of God, but lived otherwise unobjectionable lives. The audience is meant to feel sympathy for them. "What would not these poor damned hopeless souls give for one day's opportunity such as you know enjoy!" The audience is meant to want to convert for themselves, but also their lost loved ones who did not get the same chance. Jonathan Edwards's "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" argues that everyone was out of God's favor and they needed to return to a righteous path.

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Examples Of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

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Sin in the Eyes of God In order to successfully portray ideas regarding God’s wrath and power, Jonathan Edwards utilizes images such as a spider web paired with a rock and a storm, in the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”. The analogy describing a spider web and rock not only shows how the rock can be equated to the amount a person sins and the magnitude of sins, but also how the web can be seen as a person’s righteousness and the rarity it is in having righteousness. “…if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of Hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a fallen rock.” The rock is seen as a person’s sin because of

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Examples Of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

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In his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Jonathan Edwards attempted to convince his congregation that they must repent of their sins and return to religion. Around the time this sermon was made was the period of the “Great Awakening” where people in Western Europe, England, and America were going back to their religious ways. The people were getting too caught up in worldly matters like working on their farms and they needed a reminder to get back on the path of worshipping God. This is where itinerant preachers, like Jonathan Edwards, came in and traveled around to try and persuade people to focus more on god than on their own personal interests. A few of the persuasive techniques that Edwards used were hyperboles, repetition, similes, and emotional appeal.

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Examples Of Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

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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."

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Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Essay

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In “Sinners in The Hands of an Angry God”, Johnathan Edwards uses fear to create images that help his audience experience the consequences of sinful behavior. He uses imagery and figurative language to persuade his readers. He wants us to get a mental picture of Hell in your head and he wants us to fear the wrath of God. One such image was when Edward wrote, “When men are on god’s hands and they could fall to Hell, natural men are held in the hands of God, over the pit of Hell.” God could let us fall into the eternity of burning flames anytime He wants to.

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'Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God'

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The story that has its main character as Goodman Brown, a rather pious and young naïve man, entwines both religion and the fear of evil. Edward considers a direct approach the best method of achieving an adequate portrayal of God’s anger with proliferating sin as opposed to the rather gentle protestation about sinful behavior that Hawthorne applies. Edward is of the notion that his sermon as a clergy would change the behavior of his congregation by reminding them that their unforeseen ultimate fate of falling into Hell for their unbelief is in the hands of God. He insists that wicked men can do nothing to prevent God from casting them to Hell as is in the statement, “Men’s hands cannot be strong when God rises. The strongest have no power to resist him, nor can any deliver out of his

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