John Adams was born during the first full year after the Great Awakening (the greatest revival America has ever seen) began. When one studies what family life was like during those years of revival, it’s no wonder Adams was such a Godly statesman.
He became a lawyer and one of the greatest statesman for liberty during America’s Founding Era. He would marry, at age twenty-nine, Abigail Smith, the daughter of a minister. Their relationship was one of the greatest examples of Biblical marriage in our history. Though separated many years because of his service to our country overseas, their letters preserve for us one of the most tender and affectionate examples of the marriage covenant between a husband and a wife, that is on record today.
John Adams was one of five men who served on the committee of the 2nd Continental Congress which wrote our Declaration of Independence. The year before, he had written for that Congress the document to be sent to the King of England, entitled, Declaration and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. This was in answer to the attack on us by the British at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775. In it he stated,
“Our cause is just…we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the…powers… which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us; the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will…employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die free men rather than to live slaves.”
The next summer Adams would speak many times at the gathering of the Congress to consider if the time was right to declare our independence from England. Just before the vote was taken, Adams would speak these immortal words:
“Before God, I believe the hour has come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it. And I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment. Independence now, and Independence for ever!”
After Independence was declared Adams was, for many years, our very effective diplomat in Europe. When he came home he was chosen to be the Vice-President of George Washington; then the second President of our country. While President he summed up well who America was, as well as what was necessary to preserve our liberty when he wrote,
“…this constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”
The Biblical example of John and Abigail Adams in rearing their children; how they stood in the face of fiercest attacks from the British; how they faithfully prayed and worked toward the birthing and maintenance of American liberty, is truly a noble example. To study their lives and to imitate their Godly example, would certainly be a worthy goal of every American family.