| |
 Edwards entered Yale College just before his 13th birthday. In 1727, Edwards followed his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, as pastor of the Congregational Church at Northampton, Massachusetts. Stoddard was the first great revivalist in New England. In his sixty years as a minister, he reaped five “harvests,” as he called them.
But when Edwards took over as pastor, he found the people very insensible to the things of religion. However, in 1733 he began to see a change. The next year he preached a series of sermons on justification by faith, and towards the end of December, the Spirit of God began to work among the people. The revival grew and “souls did come by flocks to Jesus Christ.” The effect was felt in the surrounding area and even in neighboring Connecticut. Although the excitement in Northampton subsided within a couple of years, Edwards was convinced that a work of the Spirit had begun which would have widespread repercussions. Edwards’s preaching power contributed to the revival that swept through the entire Connecticut River valley. His famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” is an impressive example of his pulpit power. He also made a powerful defense of the emotionalism that often accompanied revivals, saying it was evidence of the sovereign God at work.
Edwards’s account of the revival, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, prepared New England for revival (it went through twenty printings by 1738).
“As the number of true saints multiplied, it soon made a glorious alteration in the town; so that it seemed to be full of the presence of God; it was never so full of love, nor of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then. More than 300 souls were savingly brought home to Christ, in this town, in half a year and by far the greater number of people above sixteen years of age, are such as have the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.” (Jonathan Edwards, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, p. 5)
|
|
