1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Sinners

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Sinners

22×28” Acrylic paints and pen and ink on canvas. Another painting expressing my displeasure with our current administration.

Text is by Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) from a sermon entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Alternate title was too long:

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.
He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”

I’ll let you guess who the cat and mouse are.

Text Reads as follows:
Their foot shall slide in due time.—
Deuteronomy 32:35

In this verse is threatened the vengeance of God on the wicked…”There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God.” There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men’s hands cannot be strong when God rises up. The strongest have no power to resist him, nor can any deliver out of his hands. —He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can most easily do it…We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth… thus easy is it for God, when he pleases, to cast his enemies down to hell. What are we, that we should think to stand before him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles…The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God’s mere will, that holds it back…every unconverted man properly belongs to hell; that is his place; from thence he is…Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth: yea, doubtless, with many that are now in this congregation, who it may be are at ease, than he is with many of those who are now in the flames of hell…The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared, the fire is made ready, the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow… The devils watch them; they are ever by them at their right hand… If God should withdraw his hand, by which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their poor souls…There is laid in the very nature of carnal men, a foundation for the torments of hell…Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul; it is destructive in its nature; and if God should leave it without restraint, there would need nothing else to make the soul perfectly miserable…Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak that they will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen…men’s own wisdom is no security to them from death; that if it were otherwise we should see some difference between the wise and politic men of the world, and others, with regard to their liableness to early and unexpected death…All wicked men’s pains and contrivance which they use to escape hell, while they continue to reject Christ, and so remain wicked men, do not secure them from hell one moment…But the foolish children of men miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in confidence in their own strength and wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow…Death outwitted me: God’s wrath was too quick for me. Oh, my cursed foolishness! I was flattering myself, and pleasing myself with vain dreams of what I would do hereafter; and when I was saying, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction came upon me.” God certainly has made no promises either of eternal life, or of any deliverance or preservation from eternal death…till he believes in Christ, God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction…So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God.

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Sinners belongs to the following groups:

Acrylic Painting, All Things Poetic, Artistic, Philosophical, ART ACTION UNION - CREATIVE ACTIVISM, Art Influenced by Literature, Back In Black, DaDa Land, End Times, Mixed Media, Realist Traditional Art and Underground USA