Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God [Paperback]

Jonathan Edwards (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1992

Though first, delivered 250 years ago, Edwards's most memorable sermon is no less needed today. Far more than a depicition of the punishments of hell, it is a call to personal salvation through Christ and spiritual revival in our time.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Although this sermon was delivered to Edwards’s congregation in Northampton in June 1741, it is forever remembered for its effect on the congregation in the frontier town of Enfield, Connecticut, on Wednesday, 8 July 1741. An eyewitness described an audience so moved by the sermon that people moaned, shrieked, and cried out for salvation while the preacher was speaking. Apparently the reaction was so strong that Edwards was unable to finish the sermon, “possibly the only time such an interruption had happened to him except for the day several years earlier when the gallery of the old Northampton meetinghouse fell.” --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

From the Back Cover

Heaven or Hell?

Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and He stands crying out to all to accept His call. Jonathan Edwards presents a clear picture of the predicament of every sinner and lukewarm Christian. Through his words, you can discover much about what it means to follow God. He shows how you can...

* Know you have God's favor
* Avoid the tricks of the Devil
* Understand more about what sin really is
* Avoid the destruction that awaits sinners
* Realize the need for immediate action
* Be an intercessor
* Find your reward in heaven

With compelling words and imagery, Edwards describes the shaky position of those who do not follow Christ and God's urgent call to receive His love and forgiveness today.

"Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."––John 3:16 NIV
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 32 pages
• Publisher: P & R Publishing (January 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875522335
• ISBN-13: 978-0875522333
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,071,065 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #97 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Clergy > Sermons

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

61 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Contextually Relevant, but also timeless, January 8, 2003

By 

J. F Foster - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: Made Easier to Read (Paperback)

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.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars what ever happened to law?, August 21, 2000

By 

Geoffrey S. Robinson (Haddon Heights, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God (Paperback)

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.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most famous sermon in American history, April 22, 2004

By 

Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Edward's Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Paperback)

Along with John Cotton and George Whitfield, Jonathan Edwards was one of the most important preachers in American history. The grandson of Solomon Stoddard, the famous revivalist preacher from Northampton, Massachusetts, Edwards entered Yale in 1716 at the age of thirteen and received his first ministry in New York at the age of nineteen. In 1729, at the age of twenty-six, he succeeded his grandfather at the important Northampton Church, where he preached the need for a return to the rock-ribbed Calvinism upon which the "New World" had been founded. The Calvinist creed entailed absolute and unquestioned commitment to beliefs in the total depravity of man as a sinner, unconditional election, predestination, divine revelation and conversion, and eternal suffering for sinners. Edward's ministry had an immediate and dramatic effect, increasing the size of his church, producing over four hundred converts by 1734. The Northampton Revival foreshadowed The Great Awakening--the popular religious movement of 1740-1741 based on the idea that "opening of the spirit to the divine" was more important than a trained intellect--that rocked the very foundations of colonial society.

Edward's most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," was delivered as a guest sermon to the parish in Enfield, Connecticut, on July 8, 1741, at the very peak of The Great Awakening. Edward's text for the sermon was Deuteronomy 32:35: "Their foot shall slide in due time." Edwards, who typically spoke in an unemotional and relatively plain style, took advantage of the recent prophecy of the end of the world that no doubt weighed upon his listeners minds. Reaching to the depths of his emotional spirit, he preached a sermon designed to terrify his audience into conversion. He did this by carefully drawing upon his listener's belief in the inevitability of eternal suffering for sinners, and by vividly characterizing the vengeful God who would dangle them over the burning pits of hellfire as if they were nothing more than a spider or a "loathsome insect." The powerful spider imagery may well find its genesis in Edward's 1734 book "The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners," where he developed similar imagery when he wrote of man as "A little wretched, despicable creature: a worm, a mere nothing, and less than nothing; a vile insect that has risen up in contempt against the majesty of Heaven and earth." The effect of the sermon was astonishing, with parishioners crying out for "mercy," and several reports of suicide. Perhaps more than any other sermon delivered during the 18th Century, "Sinners" epitomizes the emotional intensity and power of the revivalist message of The Great Awakening. After reading this sermon do not be surprised if you conclude it is as powerful today as it was in 1741.