WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE “SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD?” Written in 1741, as part of what lead to America’s First Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards gave this sermon about how unrepentant sinners are only still breathing—not in hell already—because of God’s mercy and long suffering to give them more time to choose God, over an eternity in hell without Him: "There is nothing that keeps wicked men, at any one moment, out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God. God may cast wicked men into hell at any given moment. The wicked deserve to be cast into hell. Divine justice does not prevent God from destroying the wicked at any moment. The wicked, at this moment, suffer under God's condemnation to hell. The wicked must not think, simply because they're not physically in hell, that God is not—at this very moment—as angry with them as He is with those miserable creatures He is now tormenting in hell, and who—at this very moment—do feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath. At any moment God shall permit him, Satan stands ready to fall upon the wicked and seize them as his own. Simply because there are not visible means of death before them at any given moment, the wicked should not feel secure. All that wicked men may do to save themselves from hell's pains, shall afford them nothing if they continue to reject Christ." It is said that, as Edwards preached, he kept being interrupted by people running down the aisle and dropping to their knees, asking what they must do to be saved. That began to spread throughout our continent during the time before the American Revolution of 1776.