What did the Puritans think about God's ancient promises to Israel, and how they fit into that?

PBS ^ | Paul Boyer

[CondoleezzaProtege]

The Puritans are a really interesting group in apocalyptic history, because they really saw the prophecies of great blessings to the ancient Israelites applying to themselves.

There [are] really two strands of apocalypticism, I think, in New England Puritan sermonizing. There's the vision of the New Jerusalem, the city on a hill. This is the chosen land for the new Zion. Increase Mather, the father of Cotton Mather, certainly expresses this theme in his sermons. There's also the darker, more apocalyptic and frightening vision of a time of destruction coming. And Michael Wigglesworth, for example, prominent New England Puritan, in his book The Day of Doom, describes the moment of Christ's return and the shock of those who are unprepared for the return. The Day of Doom was a bestseller in Puritan New England. ..

The idea of the New Jerusalem arises from ... very powerful and moving descriptions in the Book of Revelation that in the last days, literally a New Jerusalem, a new heaven and a new earth, shall be created. The old earth shall pass away and shall be no more. These are tremendously powerful images. And New England Puritans--at least some of their leaders--were convinced that this moment had come; that God was preparing the way for the creation of this New Jerusalem in New England. ...

As time went by, the vision of the "city on the hill," that sort of shiny apocalyptic hope, fades, as it often does, and we see New England life falling into a kind of more conventional mode of farming and commercial activity, with periodic surges of religious energy trying to recover it. One such surge came in the 1730s and 40s and is called the Great Awakening…

[DIRTYSECRET]

Does it really matter?

[Ge0ffrey]

Who cares what PBS thinks?

[faithhopecharity]

Let’s not forget SLC ?

[Ezekiel]

In New JerUSAlem,

1716 was a very important year. People in Boston really did go into that year and through that year with a great deal of anxiety and expectation. And when the year passed and nothing happened, you know, people began to say, "What happened here?

Apparently they missed the light:

Yom Kippur and the First Light of America's First Lighthouse

[metmom]

WHO CARES?

They’re all dead now.

Why are you posting another flame baiting, contentious thread?

What’s the point and how does that edify the church or fellow believers?

[af_vet_1981]

I wondered why someone would post an article from a dead (2012) University of Wisconsin at Madison professor with a Doctorate in American History from Harvard University with the aim to discredit a certain group of Christians who frequent Free Republic ?

[Bookshelf]

I await the Rapture, not the Tribulation.

[lastchance]

Well I for one found the article very interesting. Jonathan Edward’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” was required reading when I was in High School.

The Great Awakening influenced Americans beyond the Puritan Era. It was the precursor of the Second Great Awakening which inspired the Abolitionists.

It is a shame so many here dismiss the article because is from PBS.

[PeterPrinciple]

https://www.jonathan-edwards.org/Sinners.pdf

---

SINNERS IN THE HANDS
OF AN ANGRY GOD
“Their foot shall slide in due time” (Deut. xxxii. 35

Answers the question of “If you are saved, what are you saved from?”

I discovered it later in life. Worthy of reflection.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Yes! I am so happy PBS covered this! Now more than ever - as the USA will be celebrating 250th birthday next year - I pray we recover our spiritual roots, and understand the role theology played in inspiring our founding. (And guard against it from spurring our unravelling for that matter.)

Charlie Kirk would have wanted this too.
https://youtu.be/xoEjTjcKGMI?si=bfwGyQnsRZ1AW37G

[BatGuano]

Yes, “it really matters, especially if you are in the Mather family!
So, there.

[lastchance]

I really appreciate your perspective.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

The Puritans are a really interesting group in apocalyptic history, because they really saw the prophecies of great blessings to the ancient Israelites applying to themselves.

They were wrong. Simple as that.

[Salvavida]

The Puritans followed a Reformed tradition, for the most part. So they would have understood Romans 9 and 10 and seen there is a spiritual Israel, and there is a national/ethnic Israel. The Promised Seed is all the OT/NT saints whom have been called out/assembled (Ekkesia— the church/congregation), into spiritual Israel.

https://elder2elder.substack.com/p/in-what-sense-are-israel-and-the

[af_vet_1981]

Yes! I am so happy PBS covered this! Now more than ever - as the USA will be celebrating 250th birthday next year - I pray we recover our spiritual roots, and understand the role theology played in inspiring our founding. (And guard against it from spurring our unravelling for that matter.)



AI Overview
Puritans were deeply involved in and supportive of chattel slavery, viewing it as a biblically permissible and economically necessary institution that provided an opportunity for enslaved Africans to encounter the Gospel. They justified slavery by referencing biblical passages about servitude and the social hierarchy, even as they imposed harsh conditions on enslaved people. Prominent Puritan figures, including ministers, owned slaves and participated in the transatlantic slave trade, and their theological framework generally supported the existence of slavery rather than calling for its abolition.

[af_vet_1981]

I await the Rapture, not the Tribulation.

I await the morning to thank the King of Israel for returning my soul to life with compassion. Abundant is His faithfulness, of which I am not worthy.

Psalm 30:3-5
O LORD, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave: thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit.
Sing unto the LORD, O ye saints of his, and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.
For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.

[delchiante]

The Puritans are a really interesting group in apocalyptic history, because they really saw the prophecies of great blessings to the ancient Israelites applying to themselves.
.....

A nation that began with 13 Colonies, as Christ began with Him and His 12, and grew to 50 states as the New Covenant Church grew at 50, has a Divine Providence Hand upon it that would have had to include people like the Puritans at some point in its history.

There is no other Nation on this earth that has the New Covenant template in its founding like America, and many of us were blessed to be born here and inherit a foundation that was planted way before 1776.

And look what its grown to.

A Promised Land for the world where billions would flock here if they were allowed.

And maybe in even more biblical apocalyptic terms, as serpent led a nation as the New Covenant Church was always going to transform into when Christ left.

Hopefully for the sake of Israel.
As a sign.

A seed that was sown in this land a long time ago..

[daniel1212]

How about among Puritans there was often a tendency to make the way to the cross too narrow, perhaps in reaction against the Antinomian controversy, as described in an account (http://www.the-highway.com/early_american_bauckham.html) of Puritans during the early American period:

“They had, like most preachers of the Gospel, a certain difficulty in determining what we might call the ‘conversion level’, the level of difficulty above which the preacher may be said to be erecting barriers to the Gospel and below which he may be said to be encouraging men to enter too easily into a mere delusion of salvation. Contemporary critics, however, agree that the New England pastors set the level high. Nathaniel Ward, who was step-son to Richard Rogers and a distinguished Puritan preacher himself, is recorded as responding to Thomas Hooker’s sermons on preparation for receiving Christ in conversion with, ‘Mr. Hooker, you make as good Christians before men are in Christ as ever they are after’, and wishing, ‘Would I were but as good a Christian now as you make men while they are preparing for Christ.’

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Yes I don’t know who put salem witch trials in the keyword bar, but things like that and their aversion to all things pagan/art/classical — they took to unhealthy extremes.