Evangelist Roy Allan Anderson, for many year years secretary of the Ministerial Department, General Conference of SDA, introduced this beautiful chorus in a Week of Prayer at La Sierra College about 1939. He arranged it, changing the melody somewhat, and included it in Gospel Melodies, 1944, with a copyright by the Review and Herald. This is a case where a piece of music found its way into wide use without proper recognition of its source. William J. Reynolds, in Companion to the Baptist Hymnal, 1976, gives us the full story. In 1926, Daniel Iverson, a Presbyterian minister from Lumberton, North Carolina, attended a citywide revival conducted by the George T. Stephens evangelistic party in by a message on the Holy Spirit given by Dr. Barron, a physician from a tabernacle in Orlando, Florida. While there, he was greatly impressed Columbia, South Carolina. That same day he went to the local Presbyterian church, found a piano, and wrote the words and music of this and E. Powell Lee, the song leader, taught it to the crowd that night and continued to use it through the meetings. It was printed on single song sheets and found its way to revivals and church services everywhere. In 1929 Robert H. Coleman printed it (without Iverson’s name) in his Revival Songs with the line “Arr. by E. L. Wolslagel.” The original melody was changed, repeating measures 1 and 2 in measures 5 and 6. In 1937 it appeared again in Songs of Victory, marked “Arr. by B. B. McKinney” and with the title, “Fall Fresh on Me.” The melody here is the same as Wolslagel’s, but the harmony is different, and Iverson was not given credit. The error was compounded when this version was included in the 1940 Broadman Hymnal and in the first printings of Baptist Hymnal, 1956. In the early 1960s, the song leader who first taught it to a crowd, E. Powell Lee, brought the matter to Reynold’s attention, and in subsequent printings of Baptist Hymnal Iverson was given credit.

The SDAH committee chose to go back to the stronger melody of Iverson’s original, with harmony arrangement by Melvin West (1930- ; see Biographies).

Daniel Iverson was born September 26, 1890, in Brunswick, Georgia, and educated at University of Georgia, Moody Bible Institute, Columbia Theological Seminary, and the University of South Carolina. Ordained in 1914, he served Presbyterian churches in Georgia and North and South Carolina. In 1927 he organized the Shenandoah Presbyterian Church in Miami, Florida, and was its pastor for 24 years until retirement in 1951. During this period he was recognized as a powerful preacher and evangelist. In 1962 he moved to Asheville, North Carolina, and continues to preach in pulpits where needed.

📖 Reference: Companion to the Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal by Wayne Hooper and Edward E. White. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1988.