Saturday, November 10, 2012

Ten Thousand Angels -- Ray Overholt



Talk about one’s own words convicting you…that must’ve been what Ray Overholt was thinking in 1959. His song “Ten Thousand Angels’ seems rather unique, with a message about devotion and the order in which events transpire in a composer-believer’s life that are opposite of what one might imagine. It must have been like hearing someone else speaking to him, yet hearing words that he’d become so used to acknowledging as his own, when he listened like he’d not done before as a 35-year old. What would that be like, and to whom would you give credit for the song if you had been in Ray Overholt’s shoes?

One might say that Ray Overholt must have had an epiphany that transformed his life in the late 1950s, except that this special time probably started weeks in advance of ‘the moment’, and then went on for the rest of his days here on earth. This singing cowboy had been entertaining in nightclubs and on local television for several years, yet had people in his life who were drawing him toward God. He knew something was missing, and something – or was it someone -- made him decide to write a song about Jesus. To get familiar with his subject, Ray read a bible account of Jesus in the garden confrontation with the Jewish authorities who sought His life. The twelve legions of angels that the Messiah-man mentioned to Peter (Matthew 26:53) caught his attention especially, and a modified version of this phrase became the familiar refrain in his ode to Jesus. (Maybe Ray also thought of a scene in which an angel did come to Jesus’ aid…see this picture of such an episode in Gethsemane.) It was something that Overholt said he’d not heard before, this capability that Jesus chose to relinquish. It’s also interesting that he wrote about this while still frequenting the nightclub scene in Battle Creek, Michigan, plying his vocation as the singing cowboy, engaging in casual “hillbilly” gospel, and yet standing outside of a commitment to the one about whom he was singing. Until, at least, one day at a church performance, where he listened to a message after singing, and then something clicked for Ray. Was it the speaker’s message, or maybe was it that his own song’s words had begun to dawn on him too?  From that moment on, Overholt’s life purpose changed, and for the next nearly 50 years, he spread to others through his music the message that he’d accepted. 

So, who gets the credit for converting Ray Overholt? The speaker at that church in 1959, and probably his own family members who’d been praying for Ray no doubt were influential. In a strange twist, perhaps some of the wayward characters who occupied the nightclubs where he used to sing also pushed this fellow toward something more meaningful. What about the song’s development? Was the Spirit working through Ray Overholt to speak to him, with what he might have assumed were words he wrote? Those legions of angels…think maybe some of them might have been pulling or pushing Ray into that church that day in 1959? Hey, maybe some of them are still at work!    

    
Information on the song was obtained from “The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs”, by William J. and Ardythe Petersen, 2006, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.   


http://blog.beliefnet.com/gospelsoundcheck/2008/09/country-gospel-music-artist-an.html

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