The impact of this sermon (see the last post) was extraordinary. Mature, intelligent adults found themselves crying out in terror. Some literally stood up and ran to pillars in the church interior and held on with all their might from fear that the ground beneath them would open and they would drop into the flames. None of this was due to emotional manipulation or great oratory. Jonathan Edwards was not a great orator, and at this point in his ministry he would read his sermons word for word from the pulpit. What happened was that the Spirit of God came down on that place with great power. He made it all very real and very vivid to them. A spiritual renewal began in that place and many, many people were born again in the next several months.
I’ve know about this sermon for a long time, but recently I learned something I didn’t know. This was very typical of preaching from American and English pulpits during past Great Awakenings. I’m not suggesting that each and every evangelistic sermon should reek of burning sulfur and be so vivid that people can hear the screams of the damned sounding in the background, but I am suggesting that some of them should.
Do you know where you find the most vivid and disturbing descriptions of hell in the Christian Bible? You find them in the gospels. They are words printed in red in some of your Bibles. They are words spoken by the Savior of the world.
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