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Jonathan Edwards Figurative Language

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It was during the Great Awakening, when powerful preachers like Jonathan Edwards decided to intensify their ways of broadcasting their religious seriousness. The idea of secularism and religious neglect had been the cause for this religious movement. In his sermon, from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Edwards used strategies to guilt, persuade, and redirect the “sinners” into conversion, and to give a wakeup call to those who overemphasize their own worthiness as holy citizens. Throughout his sermon, Edwards used a variety of figurative language like imagery, metaphors, personification, and allusions to reveal his attitude towards “sinners” as unworthy and insignificant in the eyes of God, and his attitude towards God as being enraged …show more content…

Edwards wanted his audience to mentally understand his attitude towards God, and for them to not underestimate God’s Powers. He painted a mental picture of an enraged and angry God when Edwards preached that “There are black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm… and were it not for the restraining hand of God, it would immediately burst forth upon you” (Paragraph 3). The black clouds and the description of the storm demonstrated God’s anger building up inside him waiting to unleash. God’s merciful act was the only reason he did not release his true wrath. There was no say when God will become completely fed up with his “sinner.” In Edward’s eyes, God’s patience will eventually run out, and there would be no more room for mercy and forgiveness. In order for Jonathan Edwards to demonstrate his attitude of God being powerful, he compared the powers of God to the strength of water using a simile. “The wrath of God is like great waters… they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose” (Paragraph 3). The longer he holds his anger in, the stronger God gets. God’s anger will keep building up until he could no longer tolerate it. Edwards saw God’s power as something the world would not be capable of handling. Edwards used God’s power as a threat of destruction. Jonathan Edwards concluded his sermon by revealing his attitude of a merciful God through an allusion. “The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation; let everyone fly out of Sodom. Haste and escape for your lives...escape to the

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