preachers

Sin. Sin, Sin. You're all sinners. You're all doomed to perdition.
You're all goin' to the painful, stinkin', scaldin', everlastin'
tortures of a fiery hell, created by God for sinners, unless,
unless, unless you repent.
Elmer Gantry (1927)

I wonder if anybody still preaches like that---worse to think about, does anybody still really believe like that?----sinclair lewis wrote elmer gantry in the 1920s, but jonathan edwards could have delivered the same sermon in the early 18th century---did, in fact, with "sinners in the hands of an angry god," on 8 july 1741 at Enfield, Connecticutt---

God has laid himself under no obligation, by any promise to keep
any natural man out of hell one moment. God certainly has made
no promises either of eternal life, or of any deliverance or
preservation from eternal death, but what are contained in the
covenant of grace, the promises that are given in Christ, in whom
all the promises are yea and amen. But surely they have no
interest in the promises of the covenant of grace who are not the
children of the covenant, who do not believe in any of the promises,
and have no interest in the Mediator of the covenant.....Therefore,
let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath
to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging
over a great part of this congregation: Let every one fly out of
Sodom: "Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you,
escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed."
jonathon edwards

according to wikipedia:

after [the sermon's] initial presentation, the audience
was so frightened that many attendees were found
openly weeping. There were also a number of reports
of swooning, outcries and convulsions from audience
members. It was also reported that, unlike the stereotype
of fire and brimstone preaching, Edwards read the sermon
in a monotone voice, and actually asked the audience to
quiet down so he might finish his sermon.

people still believed then

my parents generation remembered and romanticized "hell fire and brimstone" preachers, but by the time i came along, it was all kinda billy grahamized, heading toward tbn---thank you, jesus