According to Jonathan Edwards in "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," what is the only reason one of these unsaved men is not currently burning...

According to Jonathan Edwards in “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” the only reason that unsaved men (or anyone else) have not been cast down into hell to burn eternally is God’s mercy. These people are only saved from damnation by God’s will.

In this sermon, Edwards is trying to emphasize to his listeners that they deserve to be damned. He tells them over and over that their sins are offensive to God. He reminds them that God is very disappointed in them and that he has every right to be. He says that all people “have deserved the fiery pit.” In one of the most famous passages from this sermon, Edwards tells the people that

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 so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

This is what Edwards thinks of humanity. He thinks that they (we) all deserve to be cast into hell because we have sinned against God. So why are we not in hell? The only reason for this is that God has, for some reason, chosen not to let us fall. It is not because of anything we have done. We cannot really deserve God’s mercy. God has been good enough to give us that mercy so far, though. As Edwards says,

‘tis nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment; 'tis to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep: and there is no other reason to be given why you have not dropped into hell since you arose in the morning, but that God's hand has held you up.

From this, we can see that the only reason that unsaved men and women are not in hell is because God has spared them. God did not have to spare them. People do not deserve to be spared. Instead, it is simply God’s own mercy, freely given, that has prevented unsaved people from being dropped into hell.

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

nouns - what do you call the person who passes the trophies to the prize giver/presenter?

The person who gives out the trophies to the winners are called award presenters. So what do u call the person who passes the trophies to the presenter? Thanks!

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.

Notes

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