Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Assignment 1)

Select the 3 images of hell created by the use of personification.

• It is alive and beastly.

• It is cringing away from humanity.

• It is an uninterested observer.

• It is hungry for sinners’ souls.

• It is reaching out to grab sinners.

Based on what you know about America in the 1700s, how would colonists react to Edwards’s sermon?

• They would be frightened.

• The would be hopeful.

• They would feel both frightened and hopeful.

Why does Edwards use the word provoked instead of the word angered in this passage?

So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell.

—Jonathan Edwards

• The word provoked suggests that God’s anger is fierce and irrational.

• The word provoked suggests that sinners bear responsibility for God’s anger.

• The word provoked suggests that God’s anger is sharp and deadly.

• The word provoked suggests that sinners do not want to change their ways.

What does Edwards mean when he says that sinners “hang by a slender thread”?

You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any Mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.

—Jonathan Edwards

• Sinners must climb that thread if they hope to reach heaven.

• There is little that protects sinners from God’s fury.

• Prayer is the thread that connects the devout to God.

• God’s fury is like a sharp, pointed needle.

What is the denotation of everlasting in this passage?

However you may have reformed your life in many things, and may have had religious affections, and may keep up a form of religion in your families and closets, and in the house of God, it is nothing but his mere pleasure that keeps you from being this moment swallowed up in everlasting destruction.

—Jonathan Edwards

• brief

• eternal

• horrific

• tremendous

Select all the Imagery that portrays Gods wrath. (4)

• God is not altogether such an one as themselves, though they may imagine him to be so.

• The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber,

• the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready

• the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them,

• the flames do now rage and glow.

What image does Edwards use when preaching about God’s wrath?

• sleep

• a furnace

• men

• imagination

What effect does this image have on the reader or listener?

The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber, the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them, the flames do now rage and glow.

• It creates a calm sense of peace.

• It invokes boredom and detachment.

• It conveys fear and urgency.

• It inspires joy and excitement.

“How can you rest one moment in such a condition?”

What effect does asking rhetorical questions like this one have on an audience? Check 3 that apply.

• It forces the listener to accept there is not one expected answer.

• It forces the reader to think about ways to answer the question successfully.

• It forces the reader to generate a set of related questions to ask the speaker.

• It makes the sermon seem directed at the listener personally.

• It makes the listener think about their actions.

Edwards compares each of his listeners to "a spider or some loathsome insect held over the fire" in order to stress a human being's

• Ugliness in God's eyes
• Unimportance in God's plan
• Powerlessness in comparison to God
• Courage in the face of God's wrath