Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne
Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne
Before Jehovah’s awful throne,
Ye nations, bow with sacred joy;
Know that the Lord is God alone;
He can create, and He destroy.
We are His people, we His care,
Our souls and all our mortal frame;
What lasting honors shall we rear,
Almighty Maker, to Thy name?
We’ll crowd Thy gates with thankful songs,
High as the heavens our voices raise;
And earth with her ten thousand tongues
Shall fill Thy courts with sounding praise.
Wide as the world is Thy command,
Vast as eternity Thy love;
Firm as a rock Thy truth must stand,
When rolling years shall cease to move.
JEHOVAH’S AWFUL THRONE? Isaac Watts did not think that God’s throne was bad, as we understand the word awful today. It was full of awe, awe-inspiring, and (as a generation of modern teenagers might say) “Awesome!”
One British Christian of the 1800s told of a service in which Charles Haddon Spurgeon led a congregation of nearly ten thousand in this hymn. “It is scarcely possible,” he wrote, “to give any idea of the sublime effect produced by those ten thousand voices as they swelled the massive harmonies of that grand tune with a fullness of sound rarely heard.” As the crowd sang, “not a voice was mute, save where occasionally someone’s nerves were overpowered by the massive rolling chorus that rose on every side. Never did we before realize what congregational singing might become.” But we will all find out on that day when we surround Jehovah’s throne.
Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth! Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before him, singing with joy. . . . Enter his gates with thanksgiving; go into his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name.
Psalm 100:1-2, 4
From the book
