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| Johnathan Edwards |
"The tall, lean minister stood behind the wooden pulpit and faced his audience. He began his sermon, reading in careful, measured tones. As he read, his words astounded his listeners.
'There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of Hell,' he declared, 'but the mere pleasure of God.' He continued,
'O sinner, consider the fearful danger you are in! It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit that you are held over in the hand if that God whose wrath is provoked and increased as much against you as against the damned in Hell. You hang by a slender thread with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it and ready every moment to single it and burn it asunder; and you have nothing to lay hold of to save yourself-nothing that you have done, nothing that you can do to induce God to spare you one moment.'
As the minister preached, some of the congregation cried out in fear, struck with overwhelming conviction. Others grew solemn as the fear of divine judgment began to grip the audience, the preacher exhorted his listeners,
'Therefore, let everyone that is out of Christ now awake and flee from the wrath to come.'"
-Johnathan Edwards
Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, 1741
