None More Relevant
Over two centuries after Edwards’ death, the great British preacher, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, said of him: No man is more relevant to the present condition of Christianity than Jonathan Edwards…. He was a mighty theologian and a great evangelist at the same time… he was preeminently the theologian of revival. If you want to know anything about true revival, Edwards is the man to consult."

Here's the Background
"A City on a Hill" -- a "Zion in the Wilderness" -- this was what the Puritans who came to America in the 1630's dreamed of establishing -- a Biblical society which would be an example for the nations. But within a few generations the dream faded. The great-grandchildren were not so interested in making God the center of their lives. They were prospering in America, and as the winds from the Age of Reason blew across the Atlantic, the Puritan descendants felt quite capable of handling their lives and affairs independently of the God of their fathers.

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Enter Mr. Edwards
The ministry of Jonathan Edwards in the first half of the 1700's, however, brought many of those Puritan heirs back to their Scriptural roots. Revival came to the land, and Edwards became the theologian of the revival.

Jonathan, born in 1703, was a precocious child, competent in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew before he was a teenager. Just short of thirteen he entered the Collegiate School of Connecticut (later Yale University) and graduated at the head of his class. Though he was fascinated by the philosophies of John Locke and wrote profoundly metaphysical essays in his teens, Jonathan was primarily interested in religion-- salvation as the "main business" of his life. As a child he had revolted against the sovereignty of God and thought it a horrible doctrine, but shortly before his graduation at seventeen, he said God's sovereignty, glory, and majesty became "exceedingly pleasant, bright, and sweet." Edwards wrote that one day while reading I Timothy 1:7: "Now unto the King, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory, forever and ever, Amen."

There came into my soul… a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from anything I ever experienced before. Never any words of Scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up in him in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him forever!…. From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehension and idea of Christ, and the work of redemption, and that glorious way of salvation by him. The glory and majesty of God became Edwards' compelling passion in life.

After studying Divinity for two years, Edwards preached some and was appointed a tutor at Yale. In 1727 he became a co-pastor with his grandfather Solomon Stoddard in Northampton, Massachusetts. Stoddard, sometimes called the "Pope of western Massachusetts," had been a powerful preacher and influence in Northampton and Massachusetts for over 55 years. When he died in 1729, Jonathan Edwards became pastor at Northampton.