Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
by Jonathan Edwards
"Their foot shall slide in due time" - Deuteronomy 32:35
here is nothing
that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.
By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure,
his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no
manner of difficulty any more than if nothing else but God's
mere will had, in the last degree, or in any respect whatsoever,
any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment.
The truth of this observation may appear by the following
considerations:
1. There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into
hell at any moment. Men's hands cannot be strong, when God
rises up. The strongest have no power to resist him, nor can any
deliver out of his hands.
He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can
most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great
deal of difficulty in subduing a rebel, who has found means to
fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the number of
his followers. But it is not so with God. There is no fortress that
is any defense from the power of God. Though hand join in
hand, and and a vast multitude of God's enemies combine and
associate themselves, they are easily broken in pieces. They are
as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind; or large
quantities of dry stubble before devouring flames. We find it
easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the
earth; so it is easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that
anything hangs by: thus easy is it for God when he pleases, to
cast his enemies down to hell. What are we, that we should think
to stand before Him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and
before whom the rocks are thrown down?
2. They deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice
never stands in the way; it makes no objection against God's
using his power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the
contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their
sins, Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes
of Sodom, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?" --Luke
13:7. The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished
over their heads and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary
mercy, and God's mere will that holds it back.
3. They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell.
They do not only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the
sentence of the law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of
righteousness that God has fixed between him and mankind, is
gone out against them, and stands against them; so that they are
bound over already to hell. John 3:18 "He that believeth not is
condemned already." So that every unconverted man properly
belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is. John 8:23
-"Ye are from beneath;" and thither he is bound; it is the place
that justice, and God's Word, and sentence of his unchangeable
law, assign to him.
4. They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath
of God, that is expressed in the torments of hell; and the reason
why they do not go down to hell at each moment, is not because
God, in whose power they are, is not at present very angry with
them; as he is with many miserable creatures now tormented in
hell, who there feel and bear the fierceness of his wrath. Yea,
God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now
on earth, yea doubtless with some who may read this book, who,
it may be are at ease, than he is with many of those that are now
in the flames of hell.
So it is not because God is unmindful of their wickedness,
and does not resent it, that he does not let loose his hand, and
cut them off. God is not altogether such a 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. The glittering
sword is whetted, and held over them, and the pit hath opened
its mouth under them.
5. The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as
his own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to
him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his
dominion. The Scripture represents them as his goals -Luke
11:21. The devils watch them; they are ever by them, at their
right hand; they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry
lions, that see their prey, and expect to have it, but are for the
present kept back. If God should withdraw his hand, by which
they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their
poor souls. The old serpent is gaping for them; hell opens its
mouth wide to receive them; and if God should permit it, they
would be hastily swallowed up and lost.
6. There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish
principles reigning, that would presently kindle and flame out
into hellfire, if it were not for God's restraints. There is laid in
the very nature of carnal men, a foundation for the torments of
hell. There are those corrupt principles, in reigning power in
them, and in full possession of them, that are seeds of hell fire.
The principles are active and powerful, exceedingly violent in
their nature; and if it were not for the restraining hand of God
upon them, they would soon break out; they would flame out
after the same manner as the same corruption, the same enmity,
does in the hearts of damned souls, and would beget the same
torments as they do in them. The souls of the wicked are in
Scriptures compared to the troubled sea -Isaiah 57:20. For the
present, God restrains their wickedness by his mighty power, as
he does the raging waves of the troubled sea, saying "Hitherto
shalt thou come, and no further," but if God should withdraw
that restraining power, it would soon carry all before it. Sin is
the ruin and misery of the soul; it is destructive in its nature; and
if God should leave it without restraint, there would need
nothing else to make the soul perfectly miserable. The
corruption of the heart of the man is immoderate and boundless
in its fury; and while wicked men live here, it is like fire pent up
by the course of nature; and as the heart is now a sink of sin, so,
if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the soul into
a fiery oven, or furnace of fire and brimstone.
7. It is no security to wicked men for one moment, that there
are no visible means of death at hand! It is no security to a
natural man, that he is now in health, and that he does not see
which way he should now immediately go out of the world by
any accident, and that there is no visible danger, in any respect,
in his circumstances. The manifold and continual experience of
the world, in all ages, shows this is no evidence that a man is not
on the very brink of eternity and that the next step will not be
into another world. The unseen, unthought of ways and means
of persons going suddenly out of the world are innumerable and
inconceiveable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a
rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this
covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these
places are not seen. The arrows of death fly unseen at noon-day;
the sharpest sight cannot discern them. God has so many
different unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the
world and sending them to hell, that there is nothing to make it
appear that God had need to be at the expense of a miracle, or to
go out of the ordinary course of His providence to destroy any
wicked man, at any moment. All the means that there are of
sinners going out of the world, are so in God's hands, and so
universally and absolutely subject to His power and
determination, that it does not depend at all the less on the mere
will of God, whether sinners shall at any moment go to hell,
than if means were never made use of, or at all concerned in the
case.
8. Natural men's prudence and care to preserve their own
lives, or the care of others to preserve them, do not secure them
a moment. To this, divine providence and universal experience
do bear testimony. There is this clear evidence that men's own
wisdom is no security to them from death; that, if it were
otherwise, we should see some difference between the wise and
politic men of the world and others, with regard to their
liableness to early and unexpected death; but how is it in fact?
"How dieth the wise man? as the fool" Ecclesiastes 2:16.
9. All wicked men's pains and contrivances which they use to
escape hell, while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain
wicked men, do not secure them from hell one moment. Almost
every natural man that hears of hell, flatters himself that he shall
escape it; he depends upon himself for his own security; he
flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or
what he intends to do; every one lays out matters in his own
mind, how he shall avoid damnation, and flatters himself that he
contrives well for himself, and that his schemes will not fail.
They hear indeed that there are but few saved, and that the
greater part of men that have died heretofore, are gone to hell;
but each one imagines that he forms plans to effect his escape
better than others have done. He does not intend to go to that
place of torment; he says within himself, that he intends to take
effectual care, and to order matters so for himself as not to fail.
But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves
in their own schemes, and in confidence in their own strength
and wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow. The greater part
of those who heretofore have lived under the same means of
grace, and are now dead, are undoubtedly gone to hell; and it
was not because they were not as wise as those who are now
alive, it was not because they did not lay out matters as well for
themselves to secure their own escape. If we could come to
speak with them, and inquire of them, one by one, whether they
expected, when alive, and when they used to hear about hell,
ever to be subjects of that misery, we, doubtless, should hear
one and another reply, "No, I never intended to come here: I had
arranged matters otherwise in my mind; I thought I should
contrive well for myself; I thought my scheme good. I intended
to take effectual care; but it came upon me unexpectedly; I did
not look for it at that time, and in that manner; it came as a thief.
Death outwitted me: God's wrath was too quick for me. O my
cursed foolishness! I was flattering myself, and pleasing myself
with vain dreams of what I would do hereafter; and when I was
saying peace and safety, then sudden destruction came upon me.
10. God has laid himself under no obligation, by any promise,
to keep any natural man out of hell one moment. God certainly
has made no promises either of eternal life, or of any deliverance
or preservation from eternal death, but what are contained in the
covenant of grace, the promises that are given in Christ, in
whom all the promises are yea and amen. But surely they have
no interest in the promise of the covenant of grace who are not
the children of the covenant, who do not believe in any of the
promises, and have no interest in the Mediator of the covenant.
So that, whatever some have imagined and pretended about
promises made to natural men's earnest seeking and knocking, it
is plain and manifest, that whatever pains a natural man takes in
religion, whatever prayers he makes, till he believes in Christ,
God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment
from eternal destruction.
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 those that are actually
suffering the execution of the fierceness of His wrath in hell;
and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that
anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold
them up for one moment. The devil is waiting for them, hell is
gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and
would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent
up in their own hearts is struggling to break out; and they have
no interest in any Mediator; there are no means within reach that
can be of any security to them. In short they have no refuge,
nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every moment is
the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged
forbearance of an incensed God.
Application
The use of this awful subject may be for awakening
unconverted persons to a conviction of their danger. This that
you have heard is the case of every one out of Christ. That world
of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad
under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the
wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you
have nothing to stand upon, nor anything to take hold of, there
is nothing between you and hell but the air; it is only the power
and mere pleasure of God that holds you up.
You are probably not sensible of this; you find you are kept
out of hell, but do not see the hand of God in it, but look at other
things, as the good state of your bodily constitution, your care of
your own life, and the means you use for your own preservation.
But indeed these things are nothing; if God should withdraw His
hand, they would avail no more to keep you from falling, than
the thin air to hold up a person who is suspended in it.
Your wickedness makes you, as it were, heavy as lead, and to
rend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell,
and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink, and
swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf; and your
healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best
contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more
influence to uphold you, and keep you out of hell, than a spider's
web would have to stop a falling rock. Were it not for the
sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one
moment, for you are a burden to it; the creation groans with you;
the creature is made subject to the bondage of your corruption,
not willingly; the sun does not willingly shine upon you, to give
you light to serve sin and Satan; the earth does not willingly
yield her increase, to satisfy your lusts, nor is it willingly a stage
for your wickedness to be acted upon; the air does not willingly
serve you for breath to maintain the flame of life in your vitals,
while you spend your life in the service of God's enemies. God's
creatures are good, and were made for men to serve God with;
and do not willingly subserve any other purpose, and groan
when they are abused to purposes so directly contrary to their
nature and end. And the world would spew you out, were it not
for the sovereign hand of Him who hath subjected it in hope.
There are the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly
over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with
thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of God they
would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure
of God, for the present, stays His rough wind, otherwise it
would come with fury; and your destruction would come like a
whirlwind, and would be like the chaff of the summer
threshing-floor.
The wrath of God is like great waters that are restrained for
the present; but they increase more and more, and rise higher
and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is
stopped the more rapid and mighty is its course when once it is
let loose. It is true, that judgment against your evil works has not
been executed hitherto; the floods of God's vengeance have been
withheld; but your guilt in the meantime is constantly
increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the
waters are constantly rising and waxing more and more mighty;
and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God that holds the
waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to
go forward. If God should only withdraw His hand from the
flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods
of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with
inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent
power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than
it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the
stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand
or endure it.
The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on
the string; and justice directs the bow to your heart, and strains
at the bow: and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and
that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all,
that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with
your blood.
Thus all you that never passed under a great change of heart,
by the mighty power of the Spirit of God upon your souls; all
you that were never born again, and made new creatures, and
raised from being dead in sin, to a state of new, and before
altogether unexperienced, light and life, are in the hands of an
angry God. However you may have reformed your life in many
things and many 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.
However unconvinced you may now be of the truth of what
you hear, by and by you will be fully convinced of it. Those that
are gone from being in the like circumstances with you, see that
it was so with them; for destruction came suddenly upon most of
them; when they expected nothing of it, and while they were
saying, Peace and safety. Now they see, that those things on
which they depended for peace and safety, were nothing but thin
air and empty shadows.
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much in the same
way as one holds a spider, or some loathesome 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 more 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. There is no other
reason to be given, while you have been reading this address,
but His mercy; yea, no other reason can be given why you do
not this very moment drop down into hell.
O Sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in! It is a great
furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of
wrath that you are held over in the hand of that God whose
wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against
many of the damned in hell. 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 have done, nothing that you can do,
to induce God to spare you one moment.
And consider here more particularly.
1. Whose wrath it is., It is the wrath of the infinite God. If it
were only the wrath of man, though it were of the most potent
prince, it would be comparatively little to be regarded. The
wrath of kings is very much dreaded, especially of absolute
monarchs, who have the possessions and lives of their subjects
wholly in their power, to be disposed of at their mere will.
Proverbs 20:2 -"The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion;
whoso provoketh him to anger, sinneth against his own soul."
The subject who very much enrages an arbitrary prince, is liable
to suffer the most extreme torments that human art can invent, or
human power can inflict. But the greatest earthly potentates, in
their greatest majesty and strength, and when clothed in their
greatest terrors are but feeble, despicable worms of the dust, in
comparison with the great and almighty Creator and King of
heaven and earth. It is but little that they can do, when most
enraged, and when they have exerted the utmost of their fury.
All the kings of the earth, before God, are as grasshoppers; they
are nothing, and less than nothing: both their love and their
hatred are to be despised. The wrath of the great King of kings,
is as much more terrible than theirs, as his majesty is greater.
"And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill
the body, and after that, have no more that they can do. But I
will forewarn you whom ye shall fear; Fear him, which after he
hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you.
Fear him" -Luke 12:4,5.
2. It is the fierceness of his wrath that you are exposed to. We
often read of the fury of God; as in Isaiah 59:18 "According to
their deeds, accordingly he will repay, fury to his adversaries."
So Isaiah 66:15 --''For, behold, the Lord will come with fire, and
with his chariots like a whirlwind to render his anger with fury,
and his rebuke with flames of fire." And so also in many other
places. Thus we read of "the wine-press of the fierceness and
wrath of Almighty God" -- Revelation 19:15. The words are
exceedingly terrible. If it had only been said, "the wrath of
God," the words would have implied that which is unspeakably
dreadful; but it is said, "the fierceness and wrath of God;" the
fury of God! the fierceness of Jehovah! Oh how dreadful must
that be! Who can utter or conceive what such expressions carry
in them? But it is also, "the fierceness and wrath of Almighty
God." As though there would be a very great manifestation of
His almighty power in what the fierceness of His wrath should
inflict; as though Omnipotence should be, as it were, enraged,
and exerted, as men are wont to exert their strength in the
fierceness of their wrath. 0! then, what will be the consequence?
what will become of the poor worm that shall suffer it? whose
hands can be strong; and whose heart can endure? To what a
dreadful inexpressible, inconceivable depth of misery must the
poor creature be sunk, who shall be the subject of this!
Consider this, you that yet remain in an unregenerate state.
That God will execute the fierceness of His anger, implies, that
he will inflict wrath without any pity. When God beholds the
ineffable extremity of your case, and sees your torment to be so
vastly disproportioned to your strength, and sees how your poor
soul is crushed, and sinks down, as it were, into an infinite
gloom; he will have no compassion upon you, he will not
forbear the execution of his wrath, or in the least lighten his
hand: there shall be no moderation or mercy, nor will God then
at all stay his rough wind: he will have no regard to your
welfare, nor be at all careful lest you should suffer too much in
any other sense, than only that you shall not suffer beyond what
strict justice requires: nothing shall be withheld, because it is so
hard for you to bear. "Therefore will I also deal in fury; mine
eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; and though they cry
in mine ears with a loud voice, yet will I not hear them" --
Ezekiel 8:18. Now, God stands ready to pity you; this is the day
of mercy; you may cry now with some encouragement of
obtaining mercy. But when once the day of mercy is passed,
your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in
vain; you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God, as to any
regard to your welfare. God will have no other use to put you to,
but to suffer misery; you may be continued in being to no other
end! for you will be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction; and
there will be no other use of this vessel, but only to be filled full
of wrath. God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to
him, that it is said he will only "laugh and mock." "Because I
have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and
no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and
would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity; I
will mock when your fear cometh; when your fear cometh as
desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when
distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon
me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall
not find me; for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose
the fear of the Lord: they would none of my counsel; they
despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of
their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the
turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of
fools shall destroy them" -Proverbs 1:24-32.
How awful are those words of the great God. "I will tread
them in mine anger, and will trample them in my fury; and their
blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all
my raiment" -Isaiah 63:3. It is, perhaps, impossible to conceive
of words that carry in them greater manifestations of these three
things namely, contempt, hatred, and fierceness of indignation.
If you cry to God to pity you, he will be so far from pitying you
in your doleful case, or showing you the least reward or favor,
that instead of that, he will only tread you under foot: and
though he will know that you cannot bear the weight of
Omnipotence treading upon you, yet he will not regard that, but
he will crush you under his feet without mercy; he will crush out
your blood, and make it fly, and it shall be sprinkled on his
garments, so as to stain all his raiment. He will not only hate
you, but he will have you in the utmost contempt; no place shall
be thought fit for you, but under his feet, to be trodden down as
the mire of the streets.
3. The misery you are exposed to is that which God will
inflict, to the end that he might show what the wrath of Jehovah
is. God hath had it on his heart to show to angels and men, both
how excellent his love is, and also how terrible his wrath is.
Sometimes earthly kings have a mind to show how terrible their
wrath is, by the extreme punishments they would execute on
those that provoked them. Nebuchadnezzar, that mighty and
haughty monarch of the Chaldean empire, was willing to show
his wrath, when enraged with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego;
and accordingly gave order that the burning, fiery furnace
should be heated seven times hotter than it was before;
doubtless, it was raised to the utmost degree of fierceness that
human art could raise it. But the great God is also willing to
show his wrath, and magnify his awful majesty and mighty
power in the extreme sufferings of his enemies. "What if God,
willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known,
endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to
destruction?" -Romans 9:22. And seeing this is his design, and
what he has determined, even to show how terrible the unmixed,
unrestrained wrath, the fury and fierceness of Jehovah is, he will
do it to effect. There will be something accomplished and
brought to pass that will be dreadful with a witness. When the
great and angry God hath risen up and executed his awful
vengeance on the poor sinner, and the wretch is actually
suffering the infinite weight and power of his indignation, then
will God call upon the whole universe to behold the awful
majesty and mighty power that is to be seen in it. "And the
people shall be as the burning of lime, as thorns cut up shall
they be burned in the fire. Hear, ye that are a far off, what I have
done; and ye that are near, acknowledge my might. The sinners
in Zion are afraid; fearfulness hath surprised the hypocrites,
Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among
us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?" -Isaiah 33:12-14.
Thus it will be with you that are in an unconverted state, if
you continue in it; the infinite might, and majesty, and
terribleness, of the omnipotent God, shall be magnified upon
you in the ineffable strength of your torments. You shall be
tormented in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence
of the Lamb; and when you shall be in this state of suffering, the
glorious inhabitants of heaven shall go forth and look on the
awful spectacle, that they may see what the wrath and fierceness
of the Almighty is; and when they have seen it, they will fall
down and adore that great power and majesty. "And it shall
come to Pass that from one new moon to another, and from one
Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me,
saith the Lord. And they shall go forth and look upon the
carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me; for their
worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they
shall be an abhorring unto all flesh" -Isaiah 66:23,24.
4. It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this
fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you
must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this
exquisite horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see
a long forever, a boundless duration, before you, which will
swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your souls; and you will
absolutely despair of ever having any deliverances, and end, any
mitigation, any rest at all; you will know certainly that you must
wear out long ages millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and
conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance; and then
when you have so done, when many ages have actually been
spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point
to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be
infinite. 0, what can express what the state of a soul in such
circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it, gives but
a very feeble, faint representation of it; it is inexpressible and
inconceivable: for, "Who knoweth the power of God's anger?"
How dreadful is the state of those who are daily and hourly in
danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the
dismal case of every soul that has not been born again, however
moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be. Oh
that you would consider it, whether you be young or old! There
is reason to fear that there are many who will read this book, or
who have heard the gospel, who will actually be the subjects of
this very misery to all eternity. We know not who they are, or
what thoughts they now have. It may be they are now at ease,
and hear all these things without much disturbance, and are now
flattering themselves that they are not the persons, promising
themselves that they shall escape. If we knew that there was one
person, and but one, of those that we know, that was to be the
subject of this misery, what an awful thing would it be to think
of! If we knew who it was, what an awful sight would it be to
see such a person! How might every Christian lift up a
lamentable and bitter cry over him! But alas! instead of one,
how many is it likely will remember these solemn reflections in
hell! And some may be in hell in a very short time, before this
year is out. And it would be no wonder if some readers, who are
now in health, and quiet and secure, may be there before
tomorrow morning. Those of you who finally continue in a
natural condition who may keep out of hell longest, will be there
in a little time! your damnation does not slumber; it will come
swiftly, and, in all probability, very suddenly, upon many of
you. You have reason to wonder that you are not already in hell.
It is doubtless the case of some whom you have seen and
known, that never deserved hell more than you, and that
heretofore appeared as likely to have been now alive as you.
Their case is past all hope. They are crying in extreme misery
and perfect despair; but here you are in the land of the living,
blessed with Bibles and Sabbaths, and ministers, and have an
opportunity to obtain salvation. What would not those poor
damned, hopeless souls give for one day's opportunity such as
you now enjoy?
And now you have an extraordinary opportunity, a day
wherein Christ has thrown the door of mercy wide open, and
stands calling, and crying with a loud voice to poor sinners, a
day wherein many are flocking to him, and pressing into the
kingdom of God; many are daily coming from the east, west,
north, and south; many that were very lately in the same
miserable condition that you are in are now in a happy state with
their hearts filled with love to Him who has loved them, and
washed them from their sins in his own blood, and rejoicing in
hope of the glory of God. How awful is it to be left behind at
such a day to see so many others feasting, while you are pining
and perishing! To see so many rejoicing and singing for joy of
heart, while you have cause to mourn for sorrow of heart, and to
howl for vexation of spirit! How can you rest one moment in
such a condition? Are not your souls as precious as the souls of
those who are flocking from day to day to Christ?
Are there not many who have lived long in the world, who are
not to this day born again, and so are aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel, and have done nothing ever since they
have lived, but treasure up wrath against the day of wrath? O
sirs! your case, in an especial manner, is extremely dangerous.
Your guilt and hardness of heart are extremely great. Do not you
see how generally persons of your years are passed over and left,
in the dispensations of God's mercy? You had need to consider
yourselves, and wake thoroughly out of sleep: you cannot bear
the fierceness and wrath of the infinite God.
And you, young man, and young woman, will you neglect this
precious season which you now enjoy, when so many others of
your age are renouncing all youthful vanities, and flocking to
Christ? You especially have now an opportunity, but if you
neglect it, it will soon be with you as it is with those persons
who spent all the precious days of youth in sin, and are now
come to such a dreadful pass in blindness and hardness.
And you children, who are unconverted, do not you know that
you are going down to hell, to bear the dreadful wrath of that
God, who is now angry with you every day and every night?
Will you be content to be the children of the devil, when so
many of the children of the land are converted, and are
becoming the holy and happy children of the King of kings?
And let every one that is yet out of Christ, and hanging over
the pit of hell, whether they be old men and women, or middle
aged, or young people, or little children, now hearken to the
loud calls of God's word and providence. This acceptable year of
the Lord, a day of great mercy to some will doubtless be a day of
as remarkable vengeance to others. Men's hearts harden, and
their guilt increases apace at such a day as this, if they neglect
their souls. Never was there a period when so many means were
employed for the salvation of souls, and if you entirely neglect
them, you will eternally curse the day of your birth. Now,
undoubtedly it is, as it was in the days of John the Baptist, the
axe is laid at the root of the trees, and every tree which brings
not forth good fruit, may be hewn down, and cast into the fire.
Therefore, let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and
flee from the wrath to come, The wrath of Almighty God is now
undoubtedly hanging over every unregenerate sinner. Let every
one flee out of Sodom: "Escape for your lives, look not behind
you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed."
JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703–1758) lived in Stockbridge, Massachusetts where he served
as a missionary to the Indians. He preached this sermon,
"SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD," on July 8, 1741 in Enfield,
Connecticut. Hundreds were converted when they heard this sermon.
It is understood that men hid under the pews to shield themselves from
God's wrath while they heard it. Many went forward to ask for help
being rid of their sin while the sermon was not yet finished, and
absent any invitation to do so.
It was this kind of preaching that produced the "Great Awakening,"
that revival of the eighteenth century that, under God, spared
the American Colonies the horrible holocaust and blood-bath that
France suffered during the French Revolution.
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