What was Jonathan Edwards trying to accomplish with his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"?

believed
that too many people were falling away from what he regarded as the true faith. This is a common
theme of religious revivals such as the Great Awakening, of which Edwards was such a leading
figure. In his famous sermon Edwards rails against what he sees as growing immorality among the
people of New England. He notes with horror the "lewd practices" in which so many are
engaged, such as socializing between the sexes and the frequenting of taverns.

Strange as it may sound in our more secular age, Edwards genuinely believed that, what
for him were such immoral actions, placed those who practiced them in serious danger of going to
hell. This accounts for the urgency of Edwards's pulpit , and his lurid warnings of what happens
to sinners when they are consigned to the flames. He wants to put the fear of God into his
audience to shake them out of their complicity, to make them change their ways before it's too
late.