Jonathan Edwards - Sinners in the hand of an angry God

I have a good friend who started a ministry with his college students a few years ago called, "DTS" or "Dead Theologian Society." The motto was "If they’re not dead, they don’t get read." meaning that they only read books from theologians and writers who were dead. Well, we are going to attempt something similar this week... Well, it doesn't have the same ring to it, but truly this week "they don't get heard unless they've transferred" (or how about: They don't get heard unless their death has occurred.) Either way, you get the picture... We are bringing back the classics and we are kicking it off with one of the most famous sermons ever preached. Now, not all of these sermons are from the original preacher, though some are. This one is read by Bruce Sonner.

Regarding Jonathan Edwards, he was born on October 5, 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut, into a Puritan evangelical household. His childhood education as well as his undergraduate years (1716-1720) and graduate studies (1721-1722) at Yale College immersed him not only in the most current thought coming out of Europe, such as British empiricism and continental rationalism, but also in the debates between the orthodox Calvinism of his Puritan forebears and the more "liberal" movements that challenged it, such as Deism, Socinianism, Arianism, and especially Anglican Arminianism.

Piper writes about Edwards, "Does any of us know what an incredible thing it is that this man, who was a small-town pastor for 23 years in a church of 600 people, a missionary to Indians for 7 years, who reared 11 faithful children, who worked without the help of electric light, or word-processors or quick correspondence, or even sufficient paper to write on, who lived only until he was 54, and who died with a library of 300 books – that this man led one of the greatest awakenings of modern times, wrote theological books that have ministered for 200 years and did more for the modern missionary movement than anyone of his generation?"

If you want to hear John Piper's sermon on Jonathan Edwards, click here!

If you want to hear the sermon "Sinners in the hand of an angry God" read, click here!