CHRISTIAN LIFE >> PILGRIMAGE
SDAH 621
Gracious Father, guard Thy children
From the foe’s destructive power;
Save, O save them, Lord, from falling
In this dark and trying hour.
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For Worship Leaders
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Introductions for Sabbath School Song Service (based on specific lesson quarterlies):
This hymn poem was in the first hymnbook published by James White, Hymns for God’s Peculiar People Who Keep the Commandments of God and the Faith of Jesus, 1849. It has been brought forward into successive hymnals of the Seventh-day Adventist Church seven times, including this one. A look at the text will show that it was certainly written by an Adventist, probably one of the Millerites. (There were as yet no Seventh-day Adventists.) The Dictionary of American Hymnology first-line index reveals that this hymn of expectation of the second coming of the Lord has been used only in SDA hymnals.
The tune ELLESDIE, also used for SDAH 325, was arranged in 1873 by Hubert P. Main (1839-1926; see SDAH 36) from an original tune that also composed SDAH 36, BELOVED, and SDAH 456, sometimes called came from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (see SDAH 325). Main MY LORD AND I.
📖 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.
Text
1
Gracious Father, guard Thy children
From the foe’s destructive power;
Save, O save them, Lord, from falling
In this dark and trying hour.
Thou wilt surely prove Thy people,
All our graces must be tried;
But Thy word illumines our pathway,
And in God we still confide.
2
We are in the time of waiting;
Soon we shall behold our Lord,
Wafted far away from sorrow,
To receive our rich reward.
Keep us, Lord, till Thine appearing,
Pure, unspotted from the world;
Let Thy Holy Spirit cheer us
Till Thy banner is unfurled.
3
With what joyful exultation
Shall the saints Thy banner see,
When the Lord for whom we’ve waited
Shall proclaim the jubilee!
Freedom from this world’s pollutions;
Freedom from all sin and pain;
Freedom from the wiles of Satan,
And from death’s destructive reign.
Hymn Info
Biblical Reference
(a) Jude 24; Ps 119:105 (b) 1 Cor 1:7; Col 3:24; Jas 1:27; Ps 60:4 (c) Lev 25:10; Rom 8:2; John 8:36
Author
Anonymous
Hymn Tune
ELLESDIE
Metrical Number
8.7.8.7.D.
Composer
Hubert P. Main (1839-1926)
Arranged
from Mozart
Year Composed
1873
