If you had heard the sermons “Marks of a True Conversion” and “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, would you have assumed that you were the target? Marks of a True Conversion was a sermon spoken and written be George Whitefield. According to Wikipedia, “George Whitefield, also known as George Whitfield, was an Anglican cleric and evangelist who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement. Born in Gloucester, he matriculated at Pembroke College at the University of Oxford in 1732.” He was alive from 1714-1770. He might be best known for being a central figure in the Great Awakening. According to Bartleby.com, “It (the sermon) is representative of the Great Awakening. It was a revival sermon, the goal was to gain conversions to Christ, the sermon used detailed imagery as rhetoric, it was Calvinistic. But, it didn’t focus on the role of the local church. It assumed the conventional preaching had not produced conversions.“

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God  was a sermon by Jonathan Edwards. According to Wikipedia, “”Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is a sermon written by the American theologian Jonathan Edwards, preached to his own congregation in Northampton, Massachusetts, to profound effect, and again on July 8, 1741 in Enfield, Connecticut. The preaching of this sermon was the catalyst for the First Great Awakening.” Who was Jonathan Edwards? According to Wikipedia, “Jonathan Edwards was an American revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist theologian. A leading figure of the American Enlightenment, Edwards is widely regarded as one of America’s most important and original philosophical theologians.”

If you had heard the sermons “Marks of a True Conversion” and “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”, would you have assumed that you were the target? According to Bartleby.com, “His (Edwards’) sermons were intended as a wake-up call for those who underplayed the majesty of a holy God and overemphasized their own worthiness as a decent, hard-working, successful citizens. Edwards believed strongly that only a genuine conversion experience should qualify a person for church membership.” Both of their sermons were a wake-up call for Christians. So would I feel as if I was the target of the sermons? Yes. The sermons were for Christians, not for converting people to Christianity. So yes I would feel like a target of these sermons.