CBNNews.com - In Enfield, Connecticut on July 8, 1741 a 38-year-old American evangelist by the name of Jonathan Edwards delivered what became one of the greatest sermons ever preached in America.

It was called 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.'

Edwards said, "You have nothing to lay hold of to save your self to induce God to spare you one moment."

"And as history records, the people there in that church came under such conviction that they gripped the pews," said Dr. Charles Dunn, Dean of Regent University's School of Government.

Some historians credit that single sermon by Jonathan Edwards for sparking one the greatest moves of God this country has ever seen. It became known as America's First Great Awakening.

"God and His mercy brought it on," said historian Peter Marshall. "It was glorious and explosive!"

It started with a series of revivals in the 1730s largely fueled by the preaching of men like Edwards and George Whitefield, an evangelist from England.

"The First Great Awakening did in America what the Reformation did in Europe. It got people back to a vital real, living, religion," said David Barton, president of Wallbuilders.

Up until this time, the colonists had taken their relationship with God for granted.

Marshall said, "The original Christian fervor of the first settlers had long since died away and sense of call to come here and put the Gospel into practice and create a society with liberty and justice for all every soul that had began to ebb."

And troubled preachers like Edwards and Whitefield believed that God had a spiritual calling on this young nation.

"So they called men and women, boys and girls to repentance," Dunn said.

And the response was overwhelming. Tens of thousands made public confessions of faith up and down the 13 colonies.

Benjamin Franklin, a skeptic of the Gospel but an admirer of Whitefield said, "It seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk through the town in an evening without hearing Psalms sung in different families of every street."

Dunn said, "This was, shall we call it, revival times! People came under conviction."

What Whitefield and others did was to call people to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And once again, the Word of God became the bedrock of society.

"You had a love for the scriptures, you had a love for going to church, it was fun to go to church, rather than the old habitual tradition of going to church by habit," Barton said.

The Gospel also affected other aspects of people's lives.

Historians say that no other event of this period did as much to unite the colonies.

It also emphasized the truths of the Gospel, like individual accountability to God and the idea of self-government under God.

The Bible also showed the colonists that all were equal in the eyes of God, and that included the king.

And while the pox of slavery set in early in the colonies in 1619 ,many early American leaders, like Franklin and Adams believed that equality was for everyone- black or white, male or female, slave or free. The Great Awakening also birthed the strong conviction that government was illegal unless it was rooted in the consent of the governed.

Marshall said, "Where does that come from? It come from the Old Testament. The ratifying of the covenant by the Israelites in the wilderness. The people had the blood of the covenant sprinkled upon them, they verbally gave consent and then the priest sprinkled the blood of the covenant upon them sealing them into this covenant with God. They gave their consent of God's government over them."

All these Biblical principles helped lay the foundation for America's political and religious future.

"Without religious faith we would not have had the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution," Dunn noted.

John Adams, looking back on the War of Independence said, "The Revolution was affected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the mind and hearts of the people: and change in their religious sentiments and obligations."

And so, colonials come out of this period with a sense that America had a spiritual destiny to take the message of democracy and freedom all across the globe.

"The idea is that we are the light of the world, a city set on a hill," Dunn said.

In the end, as this great revival spread through the new land, the colonists were reminded again that life was meaningless without a personal relationship with Jesus Christ- and that His Word had the power to change the course of history and their nation.