Well, we finally got back to our hymn story research and writing! The work finished today was a borderline project, since the author was a little wilder in his music of later years than is really honoring to God. He went the way of John Peterson and others like them.
At any rate, the songs Rev. Cleavant Derricks wrote in the 1930’s when things were rough for people in America everywhere, were well received and encouraging! Cleavant worked hard to bringing out a strong proper rhythm, simple wording that is easy to remember and follow, and lively tunes with strong bass parts. He was a prolific writer of songs when he started out and then lost the enthusiasm after serving in World War II as an Army music director.
He decided to settle down and become a Baptist preacher, but his singing kept on going, but not in prestigious or notable churches. Finally in financial straights, he contacted a music producer, asking if he could sell some new songs he would work at writing. They instead did two record albums with him, supplying some much needed income, which was even more important, because it turned out he was dying of cancer.
To use the information in bulletins or other articles for church use, just eliminate the parts not wanted. I have paragraph starts in hopes I will eventually find out more information and be able to expand what was written.
The new article is: Rev. Cleavant Derricks, gospel song writer and Baptist pastor.
Well, we finally got back to our hymn story research and writing! The work finished today was a borderline project, since the author was a little wilder in his music of later years than is really honoring to God. He went the way of John Peterson and others like them.
At any rate, the songs Rev. Cleavant Derricks wrote in the 1930’s when things were rough for people in America everywhere, were well received and encouraging! Cleavant worked hard to bringing out a strong proper rhythm, simple wording that is easy to remember and follow, and lively tunes with strong bass parts. He was a prolific writer of songs when he started out and then lost the enthusiasm after serving in World War II as an Army music director.
He decided to settle down and become a Baptist preacher, but his singing kept on going, but not in prestigious or notable churches. Finally in financial straights, he contacted a music producer, asking if he could sell some new songs he would work at writing. They instead did two record albums with him, supplying some much needed income, which was even more important, because it turned out he was dying of cancer.
To use the information in bulletins or other articles for church use, just eliminate the parts not wanted. I have paragraph starts in hopes I will eventually find out more information and be able to expand what was written.
The new article is: Rev. Cleavant Derricks, gospel song writer and Baptist pastor.
Well, the Biblical new year has already started! It took us extra time to make the conversions to get the Bible reading schedule online, but it is finally working again!
It is exciting to do things God’s way! All around the globe we are hearing about the spring thaw and blessings and everyone is feeling as if the new year has arrived, in spite of the calendars they use! God says that this is actually when the calendar is supposed to begin and it used to be that most calendars started around this time. Of course politics and cultic religions always have to mess with things that work to force their own ways upon people, in hopes they will forget God (yes Roman Catholic leadership included), so calendars have rejected this wonderful time of spring for the start of the new year and even the Jewish calendar starts their new year in the fall, just the opposite of God’s command! Interesting.
So, we again persist and resist the world wide trend and go with a Bible reading schedule that follows God’s instructions for the first month and the first day of the month. It is thrilling reading the old diaries of the early Christian Americans that sought to remove all forms of idolatry from their lives and so could not use the day or month names in their diaries and businesses records. They too had to simply call things what they were: “Third month, 2nd day of first week” etc. Of course they used the spring time as the first month as do we on this Bible reading schedule.
If anyone wants to join us, we use Skype each day and could easily add you to our family readings. It would actually be fun to have others join us and expand our “family.” Just email us, and we will make the arrangements. We meet each day at 7:30 pm Pacific Time Zone. It works out great for those east of us in the later time zones, since it tends to be later for them and easier to do.
Anyway, join the reading program at the very least! Would to God that all who profess belief in the name and teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ would read the Bible with us each day! The world’s system would be on shaky ground!
Berean Bible Heritage Bible Reading link
What an amazing woman! Would God could have every woman in such a devoted state to Him! What a different world this would be. As it stands is there anyone on earth with such devotion and incredible talent that shuns this world, its fame and fortune to serve only God? It would sure be wonderful to meet or even hear of such a person!
But as it stands, we can only pray for and hope one day soon, a present day Frances Havergal could stand up and challenge the state of things as we know it.
We have had this article for some time, and now we revisited it and added and edited things quite a bit. We also came across a really good drawing of her that will probably be ripped from our webpage and unscrupulously used all over the world! But the internet is a big club where too many have no integrity!
At any rate, have a look at this woman’s testimony. For the churches who use our information, printing the whole story is too much for most readers. I usually just take a focal point of a longer story like hers to print in our publications. If anyone wants more they can always get a copy of the full story easily. The emphasis tomorrow at our service will be her consecration story, and the rest gets pared off to fit the small space we can give it.
To see this new drawing and her story see our article: Frances Havergal.
We have been doing smaller fixes and things and forgetting to announce them! We are back and hoping to again systematically build, update and continue transferring old website information to this website!
This week we upgraded the story on J. Lincoln Hall, a noted music publisher, composer and writer, as well as organist, choir master and song leader. His abilities and work was in high demand across the country.
He was a Methodist, so we do not hear much about him today, and little of his extensive work has carried on in use. With the purchase of his publishing company, his many works seem to have fallen out of use.
To learn more about this remarkable man, see our article: J. Lincoln Hall.
There were just a couple changes to the page. Leon Estes wrote commenting that our listing of 2000 hymns is somewhat conservative compared to the numbers knocked around by other websites. His statement does bring up a point I sought to prove. The figures given range from 2000 to 10000, and most today use the higher numbers. Outside the catalogue made while she was alive of probably more than 2000 hymns (taking in consideration her ongoing efforts), no one seems to have tried to count the hymns to come up with a verifiable count. They seem to be very rough estimates based on supposition. If you know where an actual list of her hymns can prove more, I would like to change the number to something higher! But till I find something better, I’ll have to keep the low-ball figure.
We did work up a new photo of Fanny from Sankey’s book and made some formatting changes to help the appearance of the page. I really appreciate Leon’s kind note which called attention to this page! It was nice to revisit what we have on her.
To see her page, use the following link:
Fanny Crosby
Wow! We are so thankful to God and Arthur Luther’s daughter for the opportunity to share these unusual items.
First off, we have gotten the article he wrote called “Cave Men Stuff” so that it is available with a redrawn graphic. You can see this at the following link:
Cave Men and stuff by Arthur Luther
Second, we have just finished processing and setting up eight of the songs he sang with his wife while playing his organ. To be able to hear this blessing of hearing a hymn writer sing hymns, click the following link:
Arthur and Irene Luther sing hymns
A media player has been added to the Jesus Never Fails page that has Arthur Luther singing the hymn with his organ. Use the following link to see this page and hear the music!
Jesus Never Fails by Arthur Luther
There are still several more items to add to this hymn writer from his daughter, so we hope we can get them processed soon!
Arthur Luther contacted us and sent us a packet of stuff on her father! What a blessing! In it there was a tract that her father wrote about the famous hymn. Instead of using it as a source, we simply reproduced it, and deleted the duplications mentioned from our write up.
We have much more to add later!
To see the new information, use the following link:
Jesus Never Fails
Chris Jones of with www.brynseionwelshchurch.org in Beavercreek, Oregon, contacted me to let me know about their Gymanfa where they sing the Welsh hymns! I sure would love to go to such an event! Can’t wait to get to heaven to do it there!
He also asked if I could add an RSS link to the hymn story update blog. We took some time this evening and got that added and did some more tweeking of the appearance of the feature. Thanks Chris for the request! Hopefully this will help several others too!
We finally finished Anthony Showalter’s story, or at least what we could find on him. He had a pretty dedicated life, but something went wrong towards the end. He remarried while his elderly wife was still alive, and she had to move in with a daughter in Texas. Who the other woman was, is not mentioned, but it does not look good. How could a guy that was pushing sacred hymns all his life end on such a sour note, or is there more to the story? It will be interesting to see if more information comes out in the future.
To see the article and the reworked photo of him, use the following link:
Anthony Showalter
