Years ago, my family and I were watching the Disney movie, “POLYANNA” and were all caught up in the story.  We were feeling sorry for Polyanna, felt her aunt was a wicked, self-righteous tyrant, and felt the preacher was, without a doubt, not fit to be called a preacher.  In fact, when the preacher began to preach his “sermon” we were caught up in the emotional fury against him until one of the children piped up.  “Isn’t that sermon, “SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD?” 

Sure enough it was.  We had read the children the famous sermon of Jonathan Edwards as a part of our home schooling just a few days before and the kids recognized it.  Suddenly we had the oxymoron.  The great sermon of yesterday was the message of the bigot today.

One of the greatest evidences of apostasy in our world is the fact that we are so oblivious to truth that we consistently accept contradictory premises without ever understanding what is going on.  To say it a little more simply, we have become a people of the oxymoron.

Drinking and driving is considered to be one of the most serious crimes one can commit, but you can buy liquor at the gas station in many states.

If a licensed Doctor kills a fetus, it is legal but if a fetus is killed in an accident, the driver at fault can be charged with manslaughter.  Even worse, destroying an eagle’s egg is a crime but destroying a baby in the womb is a choice.

I cannot imagine a greater oxymoron than that of the “Christian Right” in this country who want to lay claim to our Christian heritage while calling the doctrines and preaching upon which the nation was founded, heresy.

If America was founded as a Christian nation, it was because God saw fit to send, what we commonly know today as, The Great Awakening.”  This was a revival that swept up and down the nation, and awakened the people to the liberty in Christ, which came only to those who had entered into a “covenant of grace.”  When they came to understand their liberty in Christ, it eventually made them hunger for civil liberty as well.  The preachers of the Great Awakening believed, with minor exceptions, and preached a God centered salvation, meaning they believed that God was the author and finisher of our salvation.

Today there are those who desire to lay claim to the blessings of this revival while loathing the doctrines. Jonathan Edwards preached his famous sermon, “SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD” on July 8, 1741 at Enfield, Connecticut.  God used it in such a mighty way that it became the defining sermon of the Great Awakening.  It is said that Edwards read his sermon in somewhat of a monotone yet the convicting power of the Holy Spirit came over the congregation assembled that morning, so powerfully that the deacons began to hold onto the pillars of the church feeling that they were actually sliding into Hell.  People crying out, “What shall we then do” interrupted Edwards several times throughout the course of the sermon.  The end result was that God swept over the place and a mighty revival came.

Today, many say that they would love to have the revival that came in Edwards day, but I doubt you would ever hear them preach the sermon.  Can you imagine a sermon in the average fundamentalist pulpit today with an outline that included the following points?

There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. 

They deserve to be cast into hell.

They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell.

They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God that is expressed in the torments of hell. 

The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as his own, at what moment God shall permit him.

There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles reigning that would presently kindle and flame out into hell fire, if it were not for God's restraints.

It is no security to wicked men for one moment, that there are no visible means of death at hand.

God has laid himself under no obligation, by any promise to keep any natural man out of hell one moment.

And if those points weren’t enough, consider the following in the application of the sermon.

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.”

Edwards forgot all about the love of God.  And whatever happened to “Something good is going to happen to you today!”  How could God ever bless preaching like that?

Here is the oxymoron.  Those who want to claim the blessings of a “Christian Nation” totally reject the theology of Edwards, and yet if this ever was a Christian nation, this is the preaching that God blessed. 

Where did such preaching go? 

When the War for Independence was over, it didn’t take long for the people of the newly independent States to forget what God had done.  The French had helped us to win the war but brought with them a new concept of God called Deism that made a mockery of the sovereignty of God and made salvation man centered.  To be sure, few people adopted Deism in its pure form, but all kinds of new religions sprang up with these premises interwoven into the fiber of each.  Such religions as Jehovah’s Witness, Mormonism, and Christian Science, each denying the deity of Christ, sprang up.  Others like the Church of Christ and the Armenian C.G. Finney preached a man centered salvation. 

In Massachusetts, the children and grandchildren of those who fought for independence from England became Existentialists.  The Existentialists became Unitarians, and the Unitarians became Abolitionists.  Their main thrust was that Jesus Christ was not God and salvation to mankind could come only if and when slavery and alcohol were done away with. 

The one thing that all of these groups had in common was their disdain for the old preachers.  Their greatest enemy was the preacher who had preached the sovereignty of God and that salvation was a gift from God.   Eventually, they were able to completely take over the northern states and when they could not do so in the south, they fomented a war.  Contrary to what is taught, even in our Christian schools and Bible colleges, the War Between the States was not fought over slavery but over the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God.  After the war preaching that God is sovereign in everything, including salvation, was replaced by an emotional, man centered message that relied on gimmicks, oratory and charisma.  All that was needed for revival was to have the right music the right three points and the right poem.

The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century were marked by large crowds and high profile preachers leading to full altars and great numbers of “converts.”  In the meantime, America went to Hell.  While people were “getting saved” in unprecedented numbers, we ceased to be a Christian nation.  We made alliances in war with the most ungodly nations and ultimately became a part of the United Nations.  We adopted the socialistic principles of the graduated income tax, social security, and welfare each of which is designed to minimize man’s dependence on God.  Christians allowed their children to be educated in schools that taught evolution, socialism and humanism.  Christian young people became, for the most part, as susceptible to illegitimacy and moral scandal as the pagan. 

Finally, at the end of the 20th century, the ungodly began to triumph over his conquest.  Those who hated the doctrine of the sovereignty of God suddenly found that they had just been the transition between a nation blessed of God and a totally secular nation.  When the secularists began to do to those who held the new doctrines that which they had done to those who held to the preaching of Edwards and the men of the Great Awakening they began to cry foul.  When the secularists began to triumph that this is no longer a Christian nation and never really was, these people began to embrace that which they had long denied.

The amazing thing is that there is still the common belief that the doctrines preached in the early days, were heretics, while believing this is a Christian nation, founded on Christian principles.

You can’t have it both ways.

Originally published in The Biblical Examiner