Thursday, September 17, 2009

Do Now: Journals: Does fear motivate you? Would you use fear to motivate someone else? (5 Lines)
Today we will finish the Bradstreet poem and read one of the most famous sermons ever delivered. it's purpose was to encourage people to make a strong personal commitment to their faith. It wasn't unusual for people to scream and faint during this sermon.

Excerpt from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathon Edwards

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 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 why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in the house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else that is to be given as a reason 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 ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.

Reading Activities:
1. Identify three images in the sermon ( mental pictures).
2. How do you think the congregation felt listening to this?
3. What is Edward's attitude toward his audience.

Homework: Post a comment on this blog.
Directions:
1. Click on the word COMMENT immediately below. A text box marked "Leave Your Comment" will pop up.
2. Please type your opinion of this class blog in this box.
3. Scroll down to "Choose Your Identity." Select NAME/URL. Type your last name into the NAME box (do NOT type anything in the URL box). Finally, click PUBLISH YOUR COMMENT.