“I KNOW NOT THE HOUR”

“I Know Not The Hour”

Songwriter Philipp Bliss didn’t like the unusual spelling of his first name, so as an adult he began using the extra “P” as a middle initial.

PHILIP P. BLISS grew up as a poor country boy in Rome, Pennsylvania. His love of music led him to fashion homemade musical instruments out of whatever materials he could find. At the age of ten he heard piano music for the first time. Entranced, he followed the sound into a woman’s home. Startled at seeing a ragged, barefoot boy watching her, she immediately quit playing. Instead of fleeing, he cried, “O lady, play some more!”

Just as his love for music started at an early age so did his love for God. He once said that he could not remember a time when he “was not sorry for sin and did not love Christ.” When he was fourteen years old, he went forward at a revival and made a public confession of his faith. Shortly after this he became a Sunday school teacher, a commitment he continued for the rest of his life. He found bringing his music to children particularly rewarding: “Think how readily children catch the meaning of a hymn, and how lasting may be its influence. . . . Cannot you, yourself, now remember the songs that you heard in childhood? More than this, can you not recall the very voice and manner in which they were sung? While the sermons—ably written, well delivered, with their flights of oratory and tender appeal—where are they? Their very texts forgotten!”

Although he received no formal musical training, he began writing songs and giving concerts full time at the age of twenty-six. He wrote both the words and music for most of his hymns. He was known for quickly writing entire songs after hearing one inspiring phrase or casual remark, creating the text and melody simultaneously. For example, after hearing D. L. Moody tell the story of a shipwreck caused by a problem in a lighthouse, he wrote, “Let the Lower Lights Be Burning.” And while waiting for a train in Ohio he briefly slipped into a church and overheard the preacher saying, “To be almost saved is to be entirely lost.” From this he wrote his well-known hymn “Almost Persuaded.”

For a time Bliss worked for D. L. Moody in Chicago as a songwriter and singer for his evangelistic meetings. On December 14, 1876, Philip Bliss and his wife unknowingly participated in what would be their last evangelistic service together. For the conclusion of the service, Bliss and his wife sang together “I Know Not the Hour When My Lord Shall Come.”

Later that month after visiting his boyhood home in Pennsylvania for Christmas, Bliss and his wife boarded a train to return to Chicago to minister with Moody. While crossing a railroad bridge near Ashtabula, Ohio, the bridge collapsed, plunging the train sixty feet down into a ravine. Observers saw Bliss escape the burning wreckage, but then crawl back through a window into the flames to search for his wife. Thirty-eight-year-old Bliss and his wife were among the more than one hundred passengers who perished in the tragedy.

At their funeral the last hymn they sang together publicly was sung, then with new meaning:

I know not the hour when my Lord shall come,

To take me away to His own dear home,

But I know that His presence will lighten the gloom,

And that will be glory for me.

I know not the form of my mansion fair,

I know not the name that I then shall bear;

But I know that my Saviour will welcome me there,

And that will be heaven for me.

Reflection

If you were to die suddenly in an accident, would the Savior welcome you to heaven? How do you know? In many ways, life is like a probation period to determine whether or not we will give our wholehearted allegiance to the Savior, whom God sent to redeem his people.

Simon Peter replied, “Lord . . . You alone have the words that give eternal life. We believe them, and we know you are the Holy One of God.”

John 6:68-69