40 Fun Facts About Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God

In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, what creature is the sinner compared to, dangling over the flames?

A spider held over the flames is the sermon's most quoted image, and Jonathan Edwards knew the creature well: in his youth he wrote an essay on their ballooning flight.

By accounts of his preaching style, how did Jonathan Edwards deliver Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?

In a quiet voice, never shouting, Jonathan Edwards moved his hearers slowly from point to point towards one conclusion: they were lost without grace.

Which US vice president, the third to hold the office, was a grandson of preacher Jonathan Edwards?

Aaron Burr was the son of the preacher's daughter Esther, and is remembered for killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

Jonathan Edwards died weeks after becoming president of the College of New Jersey, later renamed what?

Princeton, then the College of New Jersey, installed him in February 1758 to replace his late son-in-law, and his grave lies in the town's cemetery.

Jonathan Edwards died in 1758 from what cause, which he had accepted to set an example for others?

A smallpox inoculation killed him within weeks: a strong supporter of the practice, he took it to encourage others, but his health had never been robust.

In which Connecticut town did Jonathan Edwards preach Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God on July 8, 1741?

Enfield was governed as part of Massachusetts when the sermon was preached: a surveyor's error kept it on the wrong side of the line until 1749.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is often reprinted as the classic example of which style of preaching?

Fire and brimstone became the sermon's label, yet its author also wrote and spoke at length about heaven and angels, themes that are far less remembered.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is the most famous sermon of which colonial American religious revival?

The Great Awakening swept the American colonies from the 1730s, and this sermon became the standard example used to explain its theology.

What did the shrieks and cries of the congregation force Jonathan Edwards to do during his most famous sermon?

Stop before the end: an eyewitness wrote that the moaning of people asking how to be saved grew so loud that the minister had to break off.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God takes its text, a warning that feet will slide, from which Bible book?

Deuteronomy supplies the verse, a line from the Song of Moses, the poem the Bible places just before Moses' death on Mount Nebo.

In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, which weapon of God's wrath is drawn and aimed at the sinner's heart?

A bow and arrow: justice itself strains the string, and the sermon says only an angry God's choice keeps the shaft from being made drunk with blood.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God compares God's wrath to what, rising higher until an outlet is given?

Dammed-up waters is the picture: the longer the stream is held back, the mightier it runs once the floodgate opens, so every day of delay adds to the coming force.

In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, wickedness makes a sinner as heavy as which metal?

Lead is the comparison: the sinner's own weight drags him towards hell, and his righteousness can no more hold him up than a cobweb could halt a falling rock.

In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, the sinner hangs by what, with flames ready to burn it apart?

A slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, is all that holds the sinner up, and nothing he has done can persuade God to spare him a moment.

In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, the waiting devils are compared to which animals watching their prey?

Hungry lions that see their prey but are kept back is how the sermon pictures the devils, held off only by God's restraining hand.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God tells listeners that nothing lies between them and hell but what?

Thin air is all the sermon allows: the pit lies directly below, and only God's power holds the listener up from one moment to the next.

In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, the unconverted walk over the pit of hell on what?

A rotten covering, full of weak places nobody can see, is the sermon's picture of ordinary life: good health proves nothing about the next step.

Which king's furnace, heated seven times hotter, is cited in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God?

Nebuchadnezzar stoked the furnace for Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and the sermon argues that God's wrath will outdo any earthly king's worst.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God ends by urging listeners to flee which doomed biblical city?

Sodom is the closing image: the last line echoes the angels' order to Lot's family to flee to the hills and not look back.

Jonathan Edwards's most famous sermon borrows which tool from John the Baptist, laid at the root of the trees?

An axe laid at the root of the trees, ready to fell any that bears no good fruit, is how the sermon conveys the urgency of the revival season.

In Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, all the kings of the earth are as which insects before God?

Grasshoppers is the sermon's measure of earthly kings: if subjects dread the anger of an absolute monarch, the argument runs, a far higher King's anger deserves more dread.

Reverend Stephen Williams left the best-known eyewitness account of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in what?

His diary records piercing shrieks and cries, then a prayer, a hymn and the cheerful faces of those who found comfort that night.

Eleazar Wheelock, who prayed after Jonathan Edwards's most famous sermon, later founded which Ivy League college?

Dartmouth grew out of the charity school Eleazar Wheelock ran for Native American pupils, and he named it for the English earl who headed the school's fundraising trust.

Jonathan Edwards first preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God to his own flock in which Massachusetts town?

Northampton was his pulpit for more than two decades, inherited from his grandfather, and it had already seen a revival of its own in the 1730s.

Which English evangelist toured the American colonies in 1739–40 and preached from Jonathan Edwards's own pulpit?

George Whitefield moved his host to tears on that visit: Jonathan Edwards wept through the whole service, and revivals soon began to spring up again.

Jonathan Edwards's theology was rooted in which heritage, exemplified by the Westminster and Savoy Confessions?

Puritan heritage shaped his thinking, though he was also a child of the Enlightenment who read the new science and philosophy of his day closely.

Jonathan Edwards entered which college at just under thirteen, later serving there as a tutor?

Yale took him in 1716, and he later helped run the college as one of its two tutors during a spell when it had no rector.

Jonathan Edwards spent the 1750s as a missionary to Native Americans in which Massachusetts frontier town?

Stockbridge left him time to write the treatises his reputation as a philosopher rests on, while he defended his Housatonic congregation against profiteering officials.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God names which nearby town, where people were flocking to Christ daily?

Suffield, just across the river, is the one neighbouring town the sermon names, and the preacher asks his hearers whether their souls are not as precious as those of the people there.

What heading marks the final section of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, aimed at the listeners?

Application opens by saying the subject is meant to wake the unconverted in the room, and from there the sermon shifts from 'they' to 'you'.

Jonathan Edwards began his ministry as assistant to which grandfather, a noted minister who died in 1729?

Solomon Stoddard left his grandson sole charge of one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the colony, a flock proud of its morality and reputation.

What did Jonathan Edwards's own congregation do to him after a dispute over who could take communion?

Voted to dismiss him, by more than 200 to 23, yet the same congregation kept asking the ousted pastor back to fill the pulpit for months afterwards.

Which philosophical treatise did Jonathan Edwards write in four and a half months at his frontier mission?

Freedom of the Will, published in 1754, takes the Calvinist side of the argument and answers writers such as the Anglican Daniel Whitby.

Jonathan Edwards published the life of which young missionary, who died of tuberculosis in the Edwards home?

David Brainerd was nursed in his last months by the preacher's teenage daughter Jerusha, and the published account of his life inspired missionaries for generations.

Which English philosopher's writings did the young Jonathan Edwards read with delight, by an early biographer's account?

John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding gave him more pleasure than treasure gives a miser, he reportedly said, though scholars dispute how early he read it.

Which Boston minister became a leading critic of the revivals that Jonathan Edwards defended in print?

Charles Chauncy of Boston's First Church answered in 1743 with a book urging that conduct, not bodily outcries, be the sole test of conversion.

Supporters of the colonial revivals that Jonathan Edwards championed were known by which nickname?

New Lights embraced the revivals, while their opponents, suspicious of the threat to authority, were called Old Lights.

Late in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Christ is said to have thrown what wide open?

The door of mercy turns the sermon from terror to invitation: its closing pages call the moment an extraordinary opportunity, with many flocking in daily.

Which English scientist's discoveries fascinated the young Jonathan Edwards, who wrote on optics himself?

Isaac Newton's physics even surfaces in the famous sermon, one scholar argues, in the relentless downward pull that drags sinners towards the pit.

How did Jonathan Edwards preach to his Native American congregation at his Massachusetts frontier mission in the 1750s?

Through an interpreter is how his sermons reached them, and he boldly defended their interests against whites using official posts to enrich themselves.