According to historical reports, Jonathan Edwards was actually a very poor speaker, and delivered this sermon mostly in a monotone. Yet the power of his words were so great that women screamed and threw themselves to the ground, men fell to their knees and crawled to the altar.
It was the message that was important, not the messenger.
According to historical reports, Jonathan Edwards was actually a very poor speaker, and delivered this sermon mostly in a monotone. Yet the power of his words were so great that women screamed and threw themselves to the ground, men fell to their knees and crawled to the altar. It was the message that was important, not the messenger.
I always thought that this sermon was thundered from the pulpit. However, in a seminary class that I just finished I learned that Edwards had the delivery that you mentioned. That just proved to me that it is not the eloquence of the message that makes it useful to God but it is, is the Spirit of God in the message.
-ksen