Well, it is no secret that Jonathan Edwards has shaped you profoundly, Pastor John.

And as we heard earlier in the week back in episode number 554, you explained a little

bit about how and why that has happened.

And Andy writes in to ask of this, Pastor John, if you can ask Jonathan Edwards one question,

what would you ask him?

Well, I'm assuming that these answers to APJ should be longer than 30 seconds, so I'm going to

fudge on the question and instead of answering what one question would you ask Edwards, I'm going

to answer what one kind of question would you ask Edwards and then give a bunch of examples

and fill up the time we're supposed to take, I would not ask Edwards anything about theology.

Not because it isn't important. It has been the most important source of inspiration and insight

from me outside the Bible more than anybody. Edwards is at the top of that list.

The reason I wouldn't ask him about his theology is that I think he has been so full and so clear

on what he thinks theologically that if he hasn't written about it, then it's probably not

important to him and he doesn't want to talk about it. And if it's not plain there, I doubt that

he can improve on it. And so I'm not going to go there with him because I think he's done us the

great service of putting it in books and he should expect that I would read them. So that's not

the direction my questions are going to go. I'm going to go where 18th century Puritan type

preachers were not willing to go namely about their private life. You will read two volumes

or 25 Yale volumes of Edwards works and find almost zero references to his family or his personal

life or his struggles or anything. So I'm going to put him on the spot big time if I get a chance to

meet him and he probably will not answer a bunch of these just because the way 18th century people

are wired. But I'm going to ask him anyway. Mr. Edwards, you had 11 children. Was that intentional?

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