Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Rating:
Summary: No Filth of ANY Kind...
Review: could be worse than this piece of obscenity utterly bereft of any type of merit. To think that there are those who believe in a god who is just WAITING to cast his children into an eternal, everlasting, writhing, excruciating, pit of endless torment, is to think completely in contradiction to the message of Jesus Christ.

If Jesus Christ was God (and I believe He was) then why didn't he spend every waking moment of his life warning about this Father of His who was waiting to torture His children? NOTHING else would have been as important-not healing the sick, forgiving sin, preaching the Sermon on the Mount, or feeding the multitudes as it would be to spend every living moment talking about the wrath to come. Merciless, pitiless, cruel wrath.

In order to back up Edwards' diatribe, Jesus should have said, "My Father in heaven HATES you-every last one", "It is my Father's good pleasure to see his children twist and turn in agony in front of a grinning demon who smiles fiendishly as he lights another piece of brimstone." In other words, what would have been the point of the Gospels or the Good News? What would have been the point of love? What would have been the point of forgiveness? What would have been the point of charity? What indeed would have been the point of the Bible except to say "you're damned with an everlasting damnation?"

Scriptures such as "now abide these three things, faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love." would have been childishly naive. The greatest would have been punishment. The Bible would not have been God's "love letter" to us as some have called it, but a book that described such miseries as to make the Holocaust look tame in comparison. That is if we are to believe in Edward's strange, disjointed, and schizophrenic ideas of God.

The more I think about Edwards and his theology the more I believe that he told us very, very little about God, but a whole lot about Johnathan Edwards. He composed a sadistic, twisted piece of prose intended to scare people into believing in a petty, small, autocratic god, who, in the end, discarded people into a a huge fiery trash can full of infinite punishments for finite crimes; a god who would make Bin Laden, Hitler, Mussolini,and Stalin infinitely proud.

A god sort of like, well, Johnathan Edwards.

Rating:
Summary: A truly great sermon!
Review: I highly recomend reading this sermon about the reality of God's justice. Edwards does a great job of showing something churches don't want to touch- the righteous punishment of sin. It's all too easy to yell "grace" and leave the room without remembering that God is not only loving and gracious, but also just. Although the sermon isn't modern, its message is timeless and I highly recomend buying this book.

Rating:
Summary: Sinners in the hands of an angry God, by Jonathan Edwards.
Review: Sinners in the hands of an angry God, by Jonathan Edwards.

Who would chose this title for a best seller today? Yet this is probably one of the best-known American sermons ever preached! This sermon had three main sections: ' The state of mankind'; 'Sinner, beware'; and 'A warning to all'. Jonathan Edwards (1703-1785) was pastor at First Church of Northampton, Massachusetts. His aim in ministry was to transform his congregation from mere believers who understood the logic of Christian doctrine to converted Christians who were generally moved by the principles of their belief.

On July 8th 1741 Edwards preached his most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" to a Church in Enfield, Connecticut, USA. It was a word of light imparted to darkened souls and many came to faith experiencing true 'heart religion'. It was based on Deuteronomy 32:35 "Their foot shall slide in due time". Jonathan Edwards gave a clear picture of the predicament of every unbeliever and lukewarm Christian. Edwards used compelling words and images to describe the shaky position of those who do not follow Christ and God's urgent call to receive His love and forgiveness.

Edwards spoke graphically, for example, "As the heart is now a cesspool of sin so if sin were not restrained it would immediately turn the soul into a fiery oven, or a furnace of fire and brimstone". He warned his hearers that, "Whatever pains a natural man take in religion, whatever prayers he makes, until he believes in Christ, God is under no manner of obligation to keep him from eternal destruction for even a moment." This book gives an interesting insight into a revival sermon - used by God to help change America. Read it ... if you dare.

Rating:
Summary: what ever happened to law?
Review: The danger in understanding Edwards is that all too few know anything about him except for this sermon. He spoke about the excellency of Christ more than any other topic.

The editor was wise in noting that Edwards gave this sermon to a church that was playing around with God. Jesus' example is that He was very harsh with the religious hypocrites, and He was gentle and sweet with the "sinners."

It should be noted that without law there can be no concept of grace. When the doctrines of grace were recovered in the Reformation, respect for God's law was likewise recovered. If someone is coming to Jesus not based on because they need forgiveness and atonement with a Holy God, they are coming on false grounds. That is why this sermon is needed today. There is too much felt-needs sermons. Come to Jesus because He will make you better. No, come to Jesus and escape the wrath of God. If you come on other grounds than that, you are endanger of not being a true disciple. That last sentence may sound weird. If it does, I would read "The Gospel According to Jesus" by John MacArthur.

Rating:
Summary: Contextually Relevant, but also timeless
Review: This particular sermon from Edwards has been trumpeted by some as the greatest sermon given on American soil, while being vehemently attacked by others as puritanical fire and brimstone of a backwards age. Oddly enough, there are elements of truth in both sentiments, more the former than the latter however. While unquestionably hitting on many timeless truths that are relevant in any period of time, the genius of the sermon really comes out when one considers the historical context in which the sermon was given.

Contrary to many negative reflex and often revisionist reactions we tend to hear today about puritanism and Edwards, Edwards was not a constant fire and brimstone preacher. The writings of Edwards reveal a man who spoke much more on the grace and mercy of God then of His wrath. But really, the two go hand in hand. There's no need for God to be merciful if there's no eternal wrath to fear. There's no need for God to show grace to human beings if there's nothing bad enough in human beings to warrant divine punishment. It is impossible to adequately discuss God's mercy and grace without also dwelling very intently on the wretchedness of man and the divine justice that must be exacted if we believe that God is perfectly holy. This is the context in which this sermon by Edwards was given. He was invited to preach at a church that was spiritually dead and dominated by a spirit of skepticism and a deeply entrenched disbelief in the need for radical personal conversion. Such is the attitude that can be found in many churches today. Yet contrary to what happens each Sunday in these kind of churches all across America, the preacher at this particular church found such comfortable skepticism not to be a virtue of an enlightened congregation, but as a cancer that ensured that many in his church would go unsaved if things didn't change. Enter Jonathan Edwards, and his sermon to this church on that day changed the people in that church and made a lasting impact on American Christianity that is felt to this day.

The main purpose of the sermon, contextually speaking, was to abruptly dislodge and disrupt the culture of apathetic skepticism that reigned in this church. Edwards attempted to do this by drawing haunting imagery of God's mercy in all things, ensuring the congregation that the only reason they are even breathing is because of God's grace. He paints a picture of man dangling over an eternal fire, and stressing that this is where man finds himself right now, and that the only reason he doesn't fall in is because God (and a very angry God at that) has a hold of him and hasn't yet let go. For Edwards, it was clear that by holding on to sinful and unrepentant man and not allowing him to fall at any moment, God was being infinitely more merciful than we deserve, but that such mercy is not indefinite or inexhaustible, but instead serves either to keep an elect person alive long enough for him to reach a point of faith and repentence, or serves to harden the sinner's heart to the point where eternal damnation is a completely just punishment for having denied and defied the authority of their Maker for so long.

Some have commented that this kind of imagery is backwards because Christians shouldn't be in the business of trying to scare people into personal faith. While such a sentiment sounds good and tends to appeal to our modern sensitivities, such a view is decidedly unfaithful to the entire earthly ministry of Jesus Christ as recorded in the gospels. Jesus talked about hell and punishment more than anyone else, and certainly far more than Edwards. If one accepts that Jesus is God and can therefore be considered a pretty reliable authority on the supernatural and the afterlife, then one must conclude that Christ's continual warnings about eternal punishment are authoritative, accurate, and should be heeded with deep seriousness. I found this sermon by Edwards to be very faithful to the uncomfortable and even scary warnings given by Jesus throughout the four Gospels of the New Testament. Edwards is not scaring people for the sake of scaring people. He is doing exactly what Christ did 2,000 years ago - out of a spirit of deep love and concern, he is warning people of the very real and terrifying consequences of deliberately walking away from Jesus Christ.

In the end, the basic question one has to ask when reading either Edwards or Scripture is whether the eternal punishment described by both is truthful or not. If it is, then how can it possibly be an act of love not to tell people about it? Better to offend with the truth and call people to faith in the one true God and personal repentance than try to make people feel comfortable believing a lie and not seeing a need for people to change anything about their beliefs, wrong and negatively consequential though they may be. If someone believes that eternal punishment is false, then that person has bigger fish to fry then Edwards, they must also patently reject the sayings of Jesus and adopt completely by blind faith a different view of the afterlife. Many have taken this latter road, just as Christ predicted would happen. But truth does not depend on whether our ears are sufficiently tickled. Those who sincerely want to know the truth will give Edwards a fair hearing here and put his views to the test.