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Examples Of Persuasion In Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

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Techniques of Persuasion in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God
What would you do if you were worried a friend was getting involved with the “wrong crowd”? Jonathan Edwards, an eighteenth-century Puritan preacher, had the same worry about the congregation of Enfield, Connecticut. He delivered his famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God in 1741, and his incredible powers of persuasion were said to have caused people to fall into states of hysteria. By using the techniques of persuasion such as appeals to authority, appeals to emotion, and repetition, he filled his sermon with the descriptions of the horrors that awaited them who did not repent. The sermon demonstrates Edwards’s skills of persuasion and the religious fervor of the Great Awakening. Edwards began the sermon by quoting the Bible, the most important and authoritative power for the puritans, and thus establishing his authority. The entire sermon is based on Deuteronomy 32:35: “Their foot shall slide in due time.” By basing his sermon on the …show more content…

Oh, my cursed foolishness!”, and “The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present…” In fact, the word “wrath” is repeated an astonishing 51 times in the sermon. Another word repeated throughout the sermon is “restraint”. For example, “By the mere pleasure of God, I mean his sovereign pleasure, his arbitrary will, restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty…” and “God restrains their wickedness by his mighty power, as he does the raging waves of the troubled sea…” By repeating the word, Edwards convinces the audience how perilous their situation is that they convert while God is still showing “restraint” so they do not experience the wrath of

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