The Legacy of Two Dead Guys

March 1, 2001
Michael Evans

Every Christian man needs help. I mean it!  Every last one of us needs to be challenged and strengthened and stretched and pushed and prodded…regularly.

Even then there are no guarantees that we will mature in our relationship with Christ or become better husbands or fathers. 

Someone once said encouragement is the lifeblood of a secure, happy child.  We all need encouragement and we ought to be thankful to God for the varieties and forms in which it comes!

Aside from the Bible and my wife Karla, the most consistent form of encouragement and prodding I receive comes from Christian biographies. 

I have a couple shelves of biographies in my library and it’s not enough.  A good one to begin with is Jonathan Edwards A New Biography, by Iain Murray, published by Banner of Truth.

It may change your life and just may be the best twelve bucks you spend this year!

This month we’re going to look at two family legacies.  The first is Jonathan Edwards and the second, Joe Kennedy.  I’m just guessing we can learn a thing or two!

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards is considered by many to be the greatest theologian America ever produced. 

Unlike many of the caricatures of Edwards would lead you to believe, he was a warm, witty and brilliant man.

He possessed a good sense of humor, was a warm and sensitive husband to his wife Sarah, and possessed an ability to communicate profound truths with unmatched clarity.

The Lord raised up Edwards as the human instrument of the [God initiated] Great Awakening in New England in the 1740’s.

On January 4, 1758 Edwards became the second president of Princeton College.  For his inaugural message he preached on the text from Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today, and forever. 

When he concluded it is said that his hearers were surprised to discover that two hours had passed so quickly (Murray, Edwards New Biography p.440).

Seventy-seven days later on February 23 Edwards was dead of complications from a small pox inoculation.

So just what is the legacy of Edwards?  Jonathan Edwards was the son of godly parents.  His father was a preacher and before him, his mother’s father.

How about we put to rest the myth that the children of pastors must be rebellious rapscallions?

Take a peek at the history of this godly man: More than 400 of his ancestors and descendants have been traced, and they include 14 college presidents, and theological teachers. 

More than 100 of them were lawyers and judges. Sixty have been doctors, and nearly as many important authors or editors of journals.

There is scarcely a single area of American industry that has not been dramatically impacted by the offspring of the Edward’s stock since the remote ancestor was married in the closing half of the seventeenth century. (source unknown).

Joe Kennedy

In Steve Farrar’s excellent must read book Anchor Man(Nelson Publishers, 1998)    he traces the infamous line of Kennedys beginning with the patriarch Joseph (p.69).

Farrar cites two different Kennedy biographers.  One is written by Ralph Martin and appropriately titled Seeds of Destruction.

Joseph Kennedy had a dream for his four sons. His dream was that all four of his sons would become president of the United States.

The first son, Joe Jr. was killed in World War II.  The second son, John, became the thirty-fifth president of the United States and was assassinated in 1963. 

The third son, Bobby, was gunned down in a hotel in an L.A. hotel lobby while running for president.  The fourth son, Ted, is known as one of the most socially and fiscally liberal members of the U.S. senate with not a few skeletons in the closet.

So just who was the father of these four sons?  Joe Kennedy was his name and fortune and fame was his game.

In 1963 Joe Kennedy was one of the most powerful men in America.  He had everything.  He was worth millions. 

His biographers speak of the fact that while others were wiped out in the Depression Kennedy made a fortune bootlegging whiskey.

He owned a major film studio and served as the U.S. ambassador to England for a time.  But, he was a man without morals. 

One of his biographers, Ralph Martin, said that a Supreme Court justice referred to him as the most evil man that he had ever known.

Joe Kennedy was a man of vision.  He knew what he wanted and he worked to see it accomplished through his four sons.

For a while it worked, but in the end all the wealth and influence in the world cannot fend off the elementary biblical truth of verses like Numbers 32:23, “Be sure your sin will find you out,” and Hosea 8:7, “They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.”

No matter how big the mansions may be or influence may stretch or treasure chests may be, in the end our work will be shown for what it is.  If we have built our lives on sand our house will crash.  If we have built on rock it won’t.

The profound godly legacy of Jonathan Edwards continues on.  The legacy of Joseph Kennedy also continues on.

How I want to be counted among those whose legacies are known by the godly men and women it produced!  Surely you do as well!

I close with the words of Sarah Edwards upon hearing of the sudden death of Jonathan.  (Sarah had remained in Stockbridge, herself suffering so profoundly from rheumatism in her that neck that she could “scarcely hold a pen” (Murray, p.442)).

This is what she wrote: “What shall I say?  A holy and good God has covered us with a dark cloud.  O that we may kiss the rod, and lay our hands on our mouths!”

“The Lord has done it.  He has made me adore his goodness, that we had him so long.  But my God lives; and he has my heart.  O what a legacy my husband, and your father, has left us!  We are all given to God; and there I am, and love to be” (Murray p.442).

I ran out of space to finish my thoughts for this month, but next month we will be exploring the Bible’s teaching on generational sins from Exodus 34:7, Number 14:18 and Deuteronomy 5:9-10.  How far does it extend into the past and future and when is the chain decisively broken?

Until then, keep on building for eternity and be encouraged by the legacy of one godly dead man and jolted by the other.