Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God Rhetorical Analysis

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Jonathan Edwards, an effective preacher always made people pay close attention to his cogent and fearful sermons. His sermons would “result in a great number of conversions.” Edwards’s sermons took part in the Great Awakening (a religious revival that occur in New England from 1734 to 1750). “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, is a well-known and most famous sermon out of his nearly 1,200 sermons. That particularly sermon includes the art of persuasion. The art of persuasion consists of focusing and identifying the audience. Jonathan Edwards uses guilt and fear appeal, accusing and desperate tone, snarl words, imagery, similes and metaphors. In the preaching, Edward made sure he said and described things exactly how he wanted the audience …show more content…

Edwards uses a condemnatory, accusing tone in most of the sermon. For instance, he mentions how many will end up in eternal wrath, “How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in the danger of this great wrath and infinite misery!”(129). In other words he’s mentioning how everyone is at risk. He would condemn making a point that its “… [God’s] hand that holds [the congregation] from falling into the fire every moment.”(127). He repeatedly kept on stressing about hell due to desperation. Edward also uses snarl words, which he used to appeal the congregation’s emotions and get them on his side, in his belief. He used them in most of the sermon yet at the very end there’s a turning point. He used purr words to make the people understand that if they get save or they are re-born, there’s hope. Imagery is a literary device that is seen in all the selection, due to the way Jonathan Edwards preached and described. Imagery is when the author uses words to create a visual picture in the reader’s mind. Since Edwards mostly talked about the eternal wrath, fire, flames, everything having to do with hell, imagery took a great part on the reader’s mind while reading. Some examples are “…it is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath…”