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.

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!

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

Well, this was a big surprise! In searching newspapers, we came across two articles by the same writer that expressed the proof that Sam was the actual composer for “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.” It turns out that Anthony Showalter was the music teacher and Sam the student, so credit was never given properly.

To see the articles involved, use these links:

• Leaning on the Everlasting Arms
• Samuel Duncan

What makes this story even more interesting is that the same thing happened to my grandfather. He wrote the music to “Carry the Glad News,” but it was published by his music teacher, and credit never given to his students.

This is common practice to this day. Teachers regularly use their student’s work and never credit their students for the work they did. Yet, if the teacher were ever plagiarized, there is all kinds of stiff penalties! This is an area where inconsistencies will be held against the teachers in God’s day of judgment.

Showalter is credited for having written thousands of hymns, but the question is, how many did he actually write? Now it is true that the work of a student is the product of the teacher, because it has to meet the instructions and rules of harmony. However, it is still the work of the student, and the teacher was paid for the work. In essence the student should be able to retain title to his work and receive the credit due.

Having done a lot of living on college campuses, and knowing a lot of professors, I am not at all pleased with the pompous pride they carry around. Frankly, if they had to get real jobs, they would starve to death. It is a rare day to find a professor that actually knows what he is talking about and doing what he teaches. Most teach because they are incapable of doing the work. It used to be that students would go to the skilled experts of a craft, and learn from them, working with them and for them. They thus learned real skills. Nowadays, students go to a temple (institution) of “learning” to sit at the feet of the most incompetent among mankind. It is no wonder the students graduate and are completely incapable of doing anything more than toe kissing and paper pushing. True skills are not learned in a classroom, only theory and useless philosophies of useless people.

So another great hymn composer goes down in history as unknown and uncredited. What if Showalter is not in heaven at all? Did he later repent? His end of life looks pretty sad. Was this problem just the tip of the iceberg of sin in his life? How much did Sam grow not being credited? Did it cause him to really apply the message and lean on the arms of the Savior? Just think, if you love the Lord and seek to live a holy and separated live, you will get to ask such questions in heaven!

We are adding the news items to the directory pages, so website users can see the latest articles and changes. We hope this will make the website more useful for return users and let visitors see the site is in continual development. It will also save people from having to dig up the news system and go through it to find what they want. With our system is the automatic updates that a person can have emailed to them. Hopefully there will be more on that later.

So to start with we added the news setup on the main page. We are still wondering how much to include, so will be trying various things.

What we really want is to show the new history stories and hymn stories on their directory pages. So that will be straightforward.

Ok, we also worked on our Jerusalem date and time, changing our provider for that. We will also see how it does. So far either time service is slow and slows down the page quite a bit.

The links are as follows:

1. Berean Bible Heritage Church main directory
2. Hymn Stories
3. History On This Day

Well, we just rewrote another set of articles and got them uploaded. We had some delays, since our website hosting company moved our server to another facility at the same time! But it looks like the big move is over, and our pages are now displaying again, just a lot faster than before!

Elisha Hoffman was quite a guy, and we hope we added a bit more detail than most have found. We also redid the graphic so that it is a bit more friendly to the eyes than before.

Along with him, was a couple hymns and their story. To see the new pages, use the following links:

• Elisha Hoffman
• I Must Tell Jesus
• Leaning on the Everlasting Arms