Summary Of The Great Awakening By Jonathan Edwards

During the Great Awakening, New England colonies –experimented-- a period of spiritual renewal that involved rigorous, emotional prayer and vehement sermons. The purpose of this religious revival was to inspire people to attend to Church and to accentuate the corruption of human beings along with the urgency for immediate contrition. It is of our knowledge that Edwards grew up in an atmosphere composed of Puritan piety and teachings, therefore he was a liege believer in good and evil. According to Puritan doctrine, each individual is directly responsible to God, ergo they had to accept the consequences of their blasphemous actions. Jonathan Edwards was invited to preach a Connecticut congregation on the consequences of sin and being nonbelievers. Edwards utilizes vivid hell imagery and depicts God as presented in the Old Testament to sway and exhort people into accepting Christ as their savior as well as urging them to not commit iniquitous acts.
In the opening sentence of the sermon, Edwards states to whom the sermon is being addressed; he employs the words, “every one of you that is out of Christ” meaning everyone that is not in God´s grace.
Jonathan Edward´s preeminent method to incite fear of God is focusing on images of hell and the Old Testament teachings, where the Lord is presented as a righteous God who punishes people that commit sinful acts. The pastor accentuates that the Lord is furious at sinners, yet His righteous hand (reference to Isaiah 41:10) is what is abstaining them from falling to hell, “yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire”. ‘’’’’’’ God being enraged with His people is revealed in Deuteronomy 32, where God chastises Israel for breaking the
Alliance.
Jonathan Edwards preaches in an indirect way Revelations 3:16 that states, “So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth,” to assail Christians who “keep up a form of religion in their family and closets” and fail to comply with the Holy Scripture´s commandments. In chapter three of the book of Revelations, Jesus addresses the church of Laodicea who alleged to be self-sufficient, and rich in materials. Spiritually, the Laodicea Church was deplorable; Christ encourages people, just like Jonathan Edwards, to repent for their sins and allow Him to live through each one of them (Revelations 3:19-20). The principal reason why I consider Edwards sermon is effective is that after 275 years since it was first delivered it manages to relate with modern society.
The emotional manipulative technique Jonathan Edwards employs was a crucial component that led to the suggestive impact caused Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God on the congregation; galvanizing profound-abominable fear of ending up in hell. Edwards portrays hell with the images of “great furnace of wrath”, “wide bottomless pit” and “the fire of wrath”. Edwards insists that going to hell is dreadful and for eternity. He conveys that unconverted men “walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering”, implying their naiveté that God is the only one saving them. At the end of his work, the pastor applies a more hopeful perspective by stating that people similar to those in the church found salvation by being born again in Jesus Christ. This change of perspective atones the passionate and imperative tone that dominates his work.