For Posterity

But, if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution, which holds us together, no man can tell, how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. Should that catastrophe happen, let it have no history! Let the horrible narrative never be written!...

We may trust, that Heaven will not forsake us, nor permit us to forsake ourselves. We must strengthen ourselves, and gird up our loins with new resolution; we must counsel each other; and, determined to sustain each other in the support of the Constitution, prepare to meet manfully...whatever of difficulty, or of danger...or of sacrifice, the Providence of God may call upon us to meet.

Are we of this generation so derelict, have we so little of the blood of our revolutionary fathers coursing through our veins, that we cannot preserve, what they achieved? The world will cry out 'shame' upon us, if we show ourselves unworthy, to be the descendants of those great and illustrious men, who fought for their liberty, and secured it to their posterity, by the Constitution of the United States...

In a letter from John Adams to Abigail Adams, April 26, 1777

Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.

It amazes me at how wise the people of our Founding era and just after were! They understood human nature. They understood, for instance, that men love power and that power has a corrupting influence on us. So, they tried to remove as much power as possible from government and give power to the people. That is why, “We the people” in the Preamble is such an important beginning. Then, as the Constitution unfolds, the Framers divided power into three branches of government. These three branches reflect God’s government of the world (Isaiah 33:22), and divides power to cut down on corruption.

What we do in this world is important. We realize, as did our forefathers, that our actions affect us and those who follow us. The influence of our actions can be good or bad. The story of the Bible translator, William Tyndale (c. 1494 – October 6, 1536) illustrates this.

William Tyndale was martyred for the principle of translating Scripture. He was born near the end of the fifteenth century. He attended both Oxford and Cambridge and fell in love with the Scripture. He determined to make the scriptures available in English, but this was illegal in England. So, he fled to Germany and worked on his translation of the New Testament. After copies were smuggled back into England, Tyndale began translating the Old Testament. He was eventually betrayed, arrested, strangled, and burned at the stake. The king banned his Bible, but its influence was irreversible. It is estimated that ninety percent of his words and phrases passed into the 1611 King James Version of the Bible.