I Want to Know Christ – Paul, and Gerald Moore

 

Was he thinking of making his words into a song? Paul, the apostle of the Bible’s New Testament, certainly would have endorsed any system – like music – that aids memory retention of important things that one wants to implement as life strategies, like the declaration he made when he told a group of believers “I Want to Know Christ” (Philippians 3:10). This was an especially noteworthy assertion because Paul was under house arrest at the time, possibly in Rome (perhaps 61 A.D.), or maybe in either Ephesus (53-55 A.D.) or Caesarea (57-59 A.D.) (The picture, Saint Paul Arrested, was painted in the early 1900s [author Publisher of Bible Cards]). Would Paul have thought that the Greeks like Plato and Aristotle (who lived four or five centuries before himself) practiced something really useful for the Christian disciple to adopt, a memorization technique called Mnemonics? It might more certainly be said that Gerald Moore, a believer who helped popularize Paul’s words to the Philippian church, must have believed that this ancient Greek method was really valuable, since he borrowed it to create in 1991 his version of Paul’s prison-inspired words. Song-making is indeed one of His best gifts to us.

     

What would provoke a person to say something like what Paul voiced here – ‘bring it on, give it your best shot and make me suffer, just go ahead and kill me!’ Has the individual gone mad, beset by dementia, or else decided that suicide is his best option? One might say so, if Paul had not also included the part about ‘know(ing) Christ’, and more deeply ‘shar(ing)…’, and ‘conform(ing)’, and ‘ris(ing)’ in power like Him. One could look at this one-time enemy of Christ and say that he got what he had coming to himself; in fact, Jesus told Ananias, the first believer to encounter Paul (when he was still known as Saul), that this threat-breathing persecutor would be shown how much he needed to suffer for God’s name (Acts 9:16). In Paul’s many letters (Gal. 1:13-14; Eph. 3:8; 1 Tim. 1:15-16, and 1 Cor. 15:9), he comes across vividly as one who remembered his previous ways and still felt dogged with regret. He owed a lot, more than he could ever pay. And, the only way out was for him to offer the rest of himself in the service of Jesus’ cause. He saw his own life – hearkening to his Jewish roots – as a kind of drink offering that should be ‘poured out’ for his many sins (Philippians 2:17). Near the end of his life, Paul repeats this metaphor (2 Timothy 4:6), anticipating that his own demise and resurrection in the image of his Master was close at hand. Impossible, you say? Saul-Paul might have echoed this, had he not received the ‘fill(ing) with His Spirit’ through the ministering hands of Ananias (Acts 9:17). He never forgot how much damage he’d done, but he also never forgot how much he had received in his conversion, a story that he told at least two times, many years later in his life (Acts 22 and 26). Jesus’ words still rang like new in his ears. It was a life he couldn’t keep to himself, praying that others would likewise be filled in a powerful way with this same Spirit (Colossians 1:9), transforming the impossible into reality.

 

Gerald Moore enters the picture, some nineteen centuries later, with a tune that musically sums up Paul’s greatest purpose following his Damascus Road conversion. Nothing more than his name is known of Gerald. Is that intentional, so that the focus is on how to follow my ancient brother’s model, to be sculpted as a follower of the Holy Sacrifice, even as Paul was? Gerald was merely the conduit, as any believer is, of a Spirit who’s at work, doing something that takes years, even decades – as it did in Paul’s life – to be fully realized. Gerald may have been the arranger, the tune-writer, for what someone else already was singing – we just don’t know much about that part. If it was first sung around a campfire, as perhaps many folk melodies like this one were, an as yet anonymous soul must have also wanted what Paul had the insight and courage to say. Look deep inside his words…they’re more than a campfire song. Want to know Christ? Gerald helps remind us what Paul knew comes with this life goal.

 

See here for publication information about the song and its full text: Praise for the Lord (Expanded Edition) 864. I want to know Christ and the pow'r of His rising | Hymnary.org

 

See here for description of memory system called Mnemonics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic

 

Information on Paul gleaned from the NIV Study Bible, Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985.

 

See here for information on the picture showing Paul being arrested: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_arrested.jpg. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer. {{PD-US}} – US work that is in the public domain in the US for an unspecified reason, but presumably because it was published in the US before 1929.

Go Tell It On the Mountain -- John Wesley Work, Jr.

This song’s familiar refrain must have been in his ears for a number of years, before he decided to add some verses to complete the Christmas-time theme. John Wesley Work, Jr. was probably in or near his Nashville, Tennessee home, perhaps with his wife Agnes and his brother Frederick in close proximity, when he penned the words with the refrain’s title theme “Go Tell It On the Mountain” as a song that would be published by 1907. He also must have had in mind a group with whom worked at the university  where he taught when the words came to John, because they could help spread the sound of this song, an objective that seemed to fit perfectly with the song’s message. Who had invented the original words of this old spiritual ‘Go Tell It…’ is a mystery that will await us in another time.

Work may also have been near or at Fisk University in Nashville when he contemplated penning the words to ‘Go Tell It…’ in the late 1800s or early 1900s. Fisk was where he spent a great deal of time, after all, as a student of Latin and history and subsequently as a professor of  the same subjects (other sources alternately indicate he taught Greek). He also directed the Fisk Jubilee Singers and toured with them annually, a forum that gave his musical creations voice. In a similar vein, John also apparently directed a church chorus. John and Frederick and Agnes, as well as others the Works encountered, made it their mission to collect and keep alive the negro spiritual music that they’d heard for decades in the Appalachian region, such that the Work brothers eventually published two collections in 1901 and 1907, the second of which included ‘Go Tell It…’. The verses that John added to the well-known chorus expanded on the thoughts that the anonymous originator had crafted, relating the Christmas story’s scenes from the perspective of the shepherds. These shepherds saw, heard, and then visited the God-inspired events in the fields and at His birthplace, Work reminds us. John and Agnes may have had at least some of their six children by the time, perhaps during one of their family’s Christmas celebrations, that John decided to complement the negro spiritual he’d heard for so long with his three verses. Were his wife and children some of the first to hear this Christmas poetry? It’s likely that the church chorus, which included some of the Fisk singers, also had ears for John’s invention. The song quite plausibly made its way into the hills and valleys of the region as the group conducted one of its annual singing trips before it was actually in print.  

‘Go Tell It On the Mountain’ was something that John must have heard or said himself thousands of times, perhaps on occasion pondering its creator and his or her story. John and his family were at least one generation removed from the one who actually first sang the original words, someone who might have been enslaved, yet found a reason to shout joyfully. Like many of the spirituals of the period, which emerged from people whom logic might say should be complaining, ‘Go Tell It…’ refocuses one’s life upon the miraculous instead. Is life unfair, even miserable? That’s what a slave might have more logically vocalized. Perhaps John had re-discovered that logic has nothing to do with Him and His appearance.    

   

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; and Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990.

See brief biography on the composer here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley_Work_Jr.

And here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/w/o/r/work_jwj.htm

Also see this link, showing all three original verses: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/g/o/t/gotitotm.htm

A brief history of the song is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Tell_It_on_the_Mountain_(song)

What a Mighty God We Serve – Anonymous

It’s called ‘traditional’, or ‘folk music’, or even ‘African folk music’ in some hymnals. There’s not much more that could be said about “What a Mighty God We Serve” and its author, whoever that might be. It might have traveled over the Atlantic Ocean if indeed it came from the African continent to land in the American Christian vocabulary. Who is this ‘mighty God’? He’s the One called out no less than four times with this two-word phrase in scripture across many centuries (Isaiah 9:6; 10:21; Jeremiah 32:18; and Luke 22:69 – all in the New International Version translation of the bible). If another synonym for this being is ‘Almighty’, then we meet him many more times throughout the bible’s pages – 333 times (in NIV translation). Could the exercise of encountering Him so frequently have spurred this song’s anonymous author to compose? Sheer speculation, and something we’ll have to wait to confirm in another time. But, that doesn’t mean we cannot dream a little, until then.

Without more details of the development of “What a Mighty God…”, there’s many possibilities for how the author/s devised its words. The words of its refrain regarding ‘angels (that) bow before Him’, and ‘heaven and earth (that) adore Him’ offer clues that suggest the invention happened as people read of Him in episodes in which He was acknowledged by these actors. Where do read that angels adore the Almighty? Try out Isaiah 6:3 or Revelation 4:8, and think if maybe that might connect us to the author of the song, seeing Him declared as the Omnipotent One by beings who were created to serve Him. What about heaven and earth adoring Him? Psalm 65:8 and that Isaiah 6:3 verse again may likewise connect us to the author’s motivation for writing the poetry of “What a Mighty God…”.  Was there also a community of believing people where the author lived, since he wrote about a ‘we’ serving Him? We’ll know the answers someday.  

He’s known by so many names, but the ones that count for us as mortal people especially are the ones that tell of His power. I count on Him having the ability to raise me, the way He did Lazarus, despite the skeptics who were nearby at that moment (John 11). He creates, and He restores the decayed so that it’s like brand new. He proved this in His own life and resurrection, so that I’m fixed on Him and what He can and will do for me. That’s Easter, in a nutshell. Happy Resurrection Day 2019!   

See this link for a discussion of folk music in its many forms and origins: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_music