Eschatological Songs
By Elizabeth Prata
Music can lift the spirits, draw up emotion, or bring you down. It’s a solace after a breakup, or a lift me up during exercise. Music is great and it’s powerful on the emotions.
It is also powerful on the brain too. It can quietly instill good doctrine in us, affirm truths, or slyly draw us away with bad doctrine. Music matters.
There is a whole book of the Bible that is music: the Psalms. It’s great to sing the Psalms because they are 100% true and God-breathed. But there are many man-made songs that are also spiritual or reference doctrines from the Bible that are good to sing, as well.
speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; (Ephesians 5:19)
I enjoy singing hymns, praise songs, and spiritual songs because I like the pictures they put into my head. I like pondering the words and reviewing the metal pictures that arise. Whose heart doesn’t lift when we get to the verse in Amazing Grace,
“When we’ve been there 10,000 years…”
Just thinking about being with Jesus and singing in heaven is a mood-booster.
Eschatology is the study of Last Things. The Time of the End. The Last Days. Sadly, in these present days there is much conflict around differing interpretations of the sequence of Last Things, and often these discussions online or in real life devolve quickly into arguments.
As a result of not wanting to get into arguments, or perhaps not to be tempted to besmirch one’s witness, many people choose not to discuss it at all (or worse, not to study it). But with a wholesale eschewing of discussing the subject also comes a wholesale aversion to singing about it too.
Last things provide an assurance to the believer that this home is temporary, its woes will pass, the future with our Lord is coming, and soon. It does all that for our heart, and more.
Yet Paul expressly explained about the end time and the dead in Christ’s rising and ended with “therefore comfort one another with these words.”
The end time doctrines are supposed to comfort us. In earlier days when the subject wasn’t so contentious, many people wrote songs about the coming end.
Let’s go back to 1964 with this hit. “Sorry, I never Knew You” by Naomi Sego and the Sego Brothers was the first million-selling gospel single. Can you believe that it is based on Matthew 7:21-22, when Jesus says to the false converts and fake professors, “Depart from me you evildoer, I never knew you!”
Amazing.
Today we get happy clappy songs with endless refrains about Jesus embracing us like a boyfriend, but a song to sing the important verse about the reality of false conversion is startling. But it exists and was a hit no less. In 1964, The Sego Brothers were the first Southern Gospel Group to sell over a million records, and it was “Sorry” that vaulted them up the charts.
In this next one, Charles Johnson & The Revivers sing “I’ve Been Sealed” and the first stanza looks forward to the day Jesus raises us to be with Him.
Paul Williams and the Victory Trio sing “I’ve never been this homesick before” and really, as each day passes, I get more and more homesick for the Lord!
Alan Jackson sings “I’ll Fly Away” and truly, some glad morning I will fly upward, raised from this ole body to a glorified one to be with my Lord forever!
Someday Jesus will shout for us to rise, and here we have John Jones “At the Midnight Cry“
When the Trumpet Sounds by Triumphant Quartet reminds us of the grand place waiting for us.
I’ll See You – Charles Johnson & the Revivers sing of the joy of meeting our brethren when we are raised.
The Cloud He’s Coming Back On by The Kingsman
If The Rapture Was Yesterday, Kevin Spencer & Friends
The Jackson family, I will rise up, Bluegrass gospel
Are you in the faith? Many of these songs urge the listener to be sure. They are sobering things to think of. No matter your eschatological stance, ultimately the most important thing is to be sure you are cleansed by the blood of Christ, repented of sin, and in the faith. Life on earth will end one day. Standing on the edge of eternity, which direction will you go- up or down?
Further Resources
What are “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs”? article from G3 Ministries by Scott Aniol
In collaboration with Mark Rice and Phil Webb, Hymns of Grace and Generations of Grace present hymns featuring a brief introduction on their backgrounds and full performances. The series is called Hymnology. Here is the link to Season 1. There are 3 seasons so far.
