Sinners in the Eyes of an Angry God
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” Essay In Connecticut during the mid-eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards, a zealous pastor and preacher, gave a sermon called, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The purpose of doing so was to awaken the people of the congregation to the Puritan philosophy. Edwards does not deliver this sermon lightly for he must use other factors, such as fear, to make up for the lack of evidence. Throughout Edwards’ sermon, he uses the fallacies an appeal to fear and an appeal to negative consequences by describing in full detail, images of how close God is to ending humanity, thus awakening, or manipulating, his subjects with fear. To start off, Edwards gives a perspective for his subjects to ponder. For them to even begin to realize how terrifying their predicament is based on this description, they must know where they stand at that moment and where God stands. Edwards states, “Your wickedness make you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downward with great weight and pressure toward hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf…” This quote shows just how important it is for the non-awakened people to wake up. Through this description, his subjects can see how powerful God is and just how much they rely on his mercy otherwise they will descend. To think that they are comparable to a heavy brick of lead dangling over hell by a thread of God’s mercy gives them a very clear view to where they stand in relation to God. The reason behind using such a disturbing image is to scare his subjects into awakening because Edwards has no facts to support his claim. After have giving them an aspect to start off with, Edwards proceeds to preach to his sleepers about where God’s wrath is at that moment. Edwards preaches, “The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is