It has not spawned a thousand conspiracy theories.Ĭ. News of it did not flash round the world within minutes. This death, however, was not violent or public. Less than an hour earlier on that same day, several thousand miles away, in Oxford, England, another notable death occurred. He often asked his wife to recite to him Alan Seeger’s poem, “I Have a Rendezvous with Death.” “I have a rendezvous with Death / At some disputed barricade… / And I to my pledged word am true, / I shall not fail that rendezvous.” On that day in November 1963, he kept his pledge. Kennedy had preoccupations with mortality. The most powerful man in the world can’t outrun that curving blade of the Grim Reaper’s scythe. The motorcade turns the corner, and the president dies. If ever we should need a reminder of the inexorable nature of death, here it is. Thanks to the Zapruder footage, anyone with access to YouTube can watch the moment of assassination.

Everyone old enough to recall the date remembers where they were when they heard the news: the leader of the free world, cut down in an instant the handsome young husband and father, blown to pieces in front of his wife.Īnd even those of us too young to remember it feel almost that we were there in Dallas, witnessing the events of that fateful day. Kennedy’s violent exit from this life on November 22, 1963, is undoubtedly the most famous single death of the twentieth century. For further information or to subscribe to the C HRISTIAN R ESEARCH J OURNAL go to: The full text of this article in PDF format can be obtained by clicking here. This article first appeared in the C HRISTIAN R ESEARCH J OURNAL, volume 36, number 05 (2013).

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