FINISHING WELL
In his book, "The Mantle of a Mentor", Dr. Robert Clinton tells us that the Bible mentions over 1,000 leaders. In a 13 year study, he developed case studies on over 900 of these. Later, he reduced that number to 100 and called these "prominent leaders." Digging further, he realized that only in 49 of these could we determine how they finished.
From his studies, he offers us four different kinds of finishes for leaders. They are: 1) Cut off early (I.E. assassination, prophetically denounced, overthrown), 2) Finished poorly (they were going downhill in the latter part of their life), 3) Finished so-so (did not do what they could & should have done, didn’t complete God’s purpose for them--by the way, these could be pretty good guys), and 4) Finished strong (walking with God, strong in their faith, and close to the Lord). In finishing strong they had to withstand ambushes, distractions, and personal preference.
(Source: Robert Clinton, The Mantle of the Mentor, (1993). From a sermon by Jerry Watts, "How Do You Stay the Course?" 7/14/08, SermonCentral.com)