HIMknowledgey Ministry - Revive Us Again

Chronological History

Revive Us Again reveals that God had the right people in the right place at the right time in the writing of our favorite hymns. The chronological outline covers a period of 777 years (1150-1927) and shows the sequence of events, important to the founding and development of America. God used poems, people, and music to bring Honor and Glory to Himself in the process!

The Nineteenth-Century evangelist, Dwight Lyman Moody (1837-1899) remarked that the most important book next to the Bible, was the hymnbook. Before Moody founded the first Bible Institute in Chicago, he had already recognized the importance of evangelistic singing and song leading. In Revive Us Again, Moody was involved in eleven of the hymn stories, even though he never wrote words or music for a hymn and could barely sing more than one note himself.

It was Moody that God used to get P. P. Bliss and Major D. W. Whittle into full time faith-evangelism in 1873. In 1874, Bliss compiled the first hymn-book entitled, Gospel Songs. The gospel-songs before then were not called "gospel-songs". In 1875, Bliss and Ira D. Sankey (Moody's evangelistic singer and song-leader) compiled the first hymnbook with the title Gospel Hymns. The gospel hymns before then were not called "gospel hymns". During the twenty year period from 1874-1894, the Gospel Hymn series of hymnbooks went from the first to sixth editions and finally, were combined into Gospel Hymns Nos. 1 to 6 Complete. The year 1887 was the high point of the American Gospel Hymn period.

I did not begin to compile a chronological hymnbook. After I started to uncover our local hymn heritage, I discovered that none of the hundreds of hymn stories told the whole true story that God is the author of Revive Us Again!

Douglas and Eileen Snow