Timothy Dudley-Smith (1926- ; see   Biographies) is bishop of Thetford, in the Anglican diocese of Norwich, England. He is considered to be one of several writers who brought about the “hymn-writing explosion” in England of the 1960s and 1970s. he shares the circumstance of its writing. ‘This text began as something I sang to myself on a car journey in 1967. Paul’s phrase in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 is ‘Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the lord in the air. . .,’ and I take this as justification for a text written from the viewpoint of those who will be alive when the Lord returns at His second advent. I admit that the ‘alleluias’ are an inference of mine own; but Paul says that we are to ‘encourage one another’ with what he here tells us; and ‘alleluia’ seems to me a fitting accompaniment to this encouragement!”

The hymn was set to music by J. D. Thornton and published in Youth Praise 2, 1969, and in several later collections. DAVID is named after the composer’s third child, who is a physician is California. Wayne Hooper (1920- ; see Biographies) shares this about how the music was written: I was looking through A Collection of Hymns, 1961-1981 by Timothy Dudley-Smith, and was struck by this text, which carefully follows the Scriptures so well known in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I thought, this is not the modernist view of the Second Coming, but a celebration of that soon-to-happen literal event when we will ‘here the trumpets sound, and all rise up to meet Him when He comes!’ The repetition of several phrase placed it in the style of the spirituals and gospel songs that have had a prominent place in my career of public and radio evangelism. So the music melody to a chorus song written by Professor Harold Miller [see SDAH 492], titled ‘Let It Shine,’ which we used a lot back in the 1950s when the King’s Herald Quarter Conduct Weeks of Prayer on several academies and colleges.”

-from Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White