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Author: Sweet Sweet Spirit “Her music was a special gift, and she gave God all the glory for it. It wasn’t her, it was God that put that gift into her possession.” Rev. Willa Grant Battle, Founding Pastor of Grace Temple Deliverance Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota Born in Brookfield, Missouri, on May 21, 1923, Doris Mae “Dot/Doe” Akers Read more...
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Author: I Will Sing the Wondrous Story What do slaughterhouses in Massachusetts have to do with the hymn “I Will Sing the Wondrous Story?” One man. A Baptist pastor. Francis Harold Rowley. Born in 1854, Francis was the son of a medical doctor. He accomplished his preliminary education at the Wilson Preparatory School in Rochester, New York, before graduating Read more...
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Author: Just a Little Talk with Jesus The negro spiritual was a musical art form created by the African slaves of yesteryear to give voice to their misery and to communicate with one another. “The term ‘American Negro Spirituals’ speaks to the history, the suffering, the hope and the resolve of a people who were able to sing through Read more...
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Author: I Am Resolved Palmer Hartsough was born in Redford, Michigan, on May 7, 1844, to Wells and Thankfull Barnes Palmer Hartsough. Named in honor of his mother’s maiden name, Palmer was raised in a Christian home – his father was very active in the fledgling Michigan Baptist Convention (established in 1836). Palmer attended both the Michigan State Normal Read more...
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Author: Trust and Obey If you turn into the main entrance of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, and make your way east on Westminster Road, you’ll pass the grave of Red Skelton and Elizabeth Taylor. Just after the final resting place of these two famous people is “Section L” – the portion of the cemetery that houses Read more...
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Publisher: Go Tell It on the Mountain The fact that we sing “Go Tell It on the Mountain” every Christmas is really a credit to the tenacity of John Wesley Work Jr., a former professor of Latin, Greek, and History at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. In fact, C. Michael Hawn says bluntly: “’Go, tell it on the mountain’ Read more...
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Author: The Love of God Were all the skies parchment, And all the reeds pens, and all the oceans ink, And all who dwell on earth scribes, God’s grandeur could not be told. Rabbi Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai Frederick Martin Lehman was born in Schwerin, Germany – a town east of Hamburg about 70 miles and just south Read more...
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Author: The Solid Rock/My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less “My Sabbaths were spent in the streets at play. So ignorant was I that I did not know there was a God.” If there ever was a person that could hide behind their upbringing and excuse their godlessness, it was Edward Mote. Born to tavern owners on January 21, Read more...
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Author: Jesus Loves Me “You have rendered a real and patriotic service, and on behalf of all our people I desire to express our obligation and our appreciation.” (President Theodore Roosevelt in a letter to Anna Bartlett Warner) Anna Bartlett Warner was born on August 31, 1827, to Henry and Anna Warner on Long Island, New York. Anna and Read more...
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“I have finished my work, I am waiting at the River, looking across for further orders.” So ended the life of one of America’s most notable African-American preachers. In fact, one biographer called John Jasper “the most famous of all the slave preachers.” (Dance, “Jasper, John.”, The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore, 2006), while another entitled his biography Read more...