Jonathan Edward's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was the son and grandson of colonial ministers. He started at Yale when he was 12, and at 19 was an interim pastor in New York. At 23 he joined his grandfather Solomon Stoddard at the Northampton church and married Sarah Pierpont. At 25 his grandfather died, leaving him as senior pastor.

At age 30 a revival swept thru Northampton. At 36 he helped plan evangelist George Whitfield’s New England Tour.

On July 8, 1741, he was the guest preacher in the neighboring state of Connecticut. He had preached this message in his home church in the same ‘dispassionate’ style according to Christianity Today.

His message addressed the gravity of sin and the righteousness of God:

 …The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you were suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God’s hand has held you up….

From Wikipedia:

1) God may cast wicked men into hell at any given moment.
2) The wicked deserve to be cast into hell. Divine justice does not prevent God from destroying the Wicked at any moment.
3) The wicked, at this moment, suffer under God’s condemnation to Hell.
4) The wicked, on earth—at this very moment—suffer a sample of the torments of Hell. The wicked must not think, simply because they are not physically in Hell, that God (in Whose hand the wicked now reside) is not—at this very moment—as angry with them as He is with those miserable creatures He is now tormenting in hell, and who—at this very moment—do feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath.
5) At any moment God shall permit him, Satan stands ready to fall upon the wicked and seize them as his own.
6) If it were not for God’s restraints, there are, in the souls of wicked men, hellish principles reigning which, presently, would kindle and flame out into hellfire.
7) Simply because there are not visible means of death before them at any given moment, the wicked should not feel secure.
8) Simply because it is natural to care for oneself or to think that others may care for them, men should not think themselves safe from God’s wrath.
9) All that wicked men may do to save themselves from Hell’s pains shall afford them nothing if they continue to reject Christ.
10) God has never promised to save us from Hell, except for those contained in Christ through the covenant of Grace.

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