This past Sunday, I continued our recent sermon series of looking at some of our most loved Hymns. This week we looked at the well known and very well loved hymn "It Is Well with My Soul".
I've included below both the video of the sermon and the manuscript of the sermon. It's a very touching and sorrow-filled story and one that has a good number of twists and turns in its history. Take a look or a listen but, I warn you it's not a happy tale though it has no shortage of messages and reassurances to begat to us.
Please have a blessed and happy week and as always...
Be a blessing to someone today!
In Christ,
Roy
"It Is Well with My Soul" - Sermon, Nov 12, 2017
Today we continue our journey through the stories and messages within some of our best-loved hymns. Our hymn of reckoning today is the well-known song that we all just heard... “It Is Well, With My Soul”. The lyrics are by Horatio Spafford and the melody by Philip Bliss. This hymn is very possibly surrounded by more tragedy and misfortune both before and after it's writing... and by both men involved in its creation... than perhaps any other hymn ever created.
First, let's look at Horatio Spafford, the man behind the lyrics to this timeless, moving, and beautiful hymn. As you hear his and his wife's story, I suspect you'll sense strong parallels to the story of 'Job', well at least in the first half of the tale...
In the 1860s, Horatio Spafford was a very successful and wealthy lawyer in Chicago, Illinois. He was heavily invested in real estate in the Chicago area and he was prosperous. He had a wife and five children, one son and four daughters. All looked well, very well, for the Spafford family and life had blessed them richly. The Spafford's were good friends and patrons of Dwight L. Moody a famous evangelist of the time, and they were very active and supportive members of the local Presbyterian Church. They were considered leaders and well-known among the congregants.
The beginning of the unraveling of their fate was the death of their young son due to illness. Next, in 1871, the great Chicago fire destroyed nearly all of Horatio's real estate investment properties, while still reeling from these massive losses the stock market turned against him and he suffered even further financial loss.
In 1873, he and his family planned a vacation to Europe, both to unwind and recover from all the stress that they had endured, and also to accompany their friends Dwight L. Moody and Ira Sankey on an evangelism tour of Europe beginning in England. At the last moment, Horatio was detained by pressing business concerns and so he and his wife Anna decided that Anna along with the four girls, Tanetta age 2, Elizabeth age 5, Margaret Lee age 9 and Annie age 11, would go on ahead while he dealt with business in Chicago. And so the women of the family departed on their fate-filled journey.
Anna and the girls boarded the French steamship the S. S. Ville du Havre in November of 1873, to cross the Atlantic Ocean. A nanny and several friends were also reportedly traveling with the women. On November 22, 1873, the S.S. Ville Du Havre was struck by the powerful and iron-hulled Scottish ship, the Loch Earn. The Ville Du Havre sunk within twelve minutes. Anna Spafford gathered her daughters on the deck and prayed over them as the ship went down...
Anna was sucked down violently into the water as the ship sank. As she went down Tanetta was torn from her arms and despite her frantic efforts, the child disappeared into the depths. She then clung to a piece of wreckage losing consciousness and coming to in the bottom of a rowboat. She had been rescued by sailors searching for survivors. Bruised and sick, her long hair was matted with salt and her nightgown shredded by debris. But the pain in her body was nothing compared to the pain in her heart and soul as she realized that her four daughters had been lost in the disaster. A young male passenger, afloat on a piece of wood, came upon the two oldest Spafford children. At his direction, each girl grasped one of his side pockets as he tried to find something still floating that was large enough to support all three of them. After about 30 or 40 minutes in the water, he found a piece of wreckage and struggled to help the two young girls grasp the board. But, as he watched, their weary arms weakened, and he saw their eyes close. Their lifeless forms floated away from his own fatigue-paralyzed arms. Sadly, all four girls would perish in the murky waters on that terrible night and Mrs. Spafford herself was one of only 81 survivors out of 307 passengers and crew.
Eventually, the survivors ended up in Cardiff, Wales. From there Anna wired her husband a message which stated, “Saved alone, what shall I do?” Later when she was back in Chicago, Anna had the telegram framed and placed in her husband's office.
As soon as Horatio received the news of his daughter's deaths, he set sail to Wales to meet his wife. One story reports that as the ship that was carrying Horatio passed over the place that the Ville Du Havre went down... that the ship's Captain summoned Horatio to let him know that they were sailing over the spot were the fate-filled ship rested below. It is said that it was then that Spafford wrote the words to “It Is Well with My Soul”. Penning these emotional and faithful lyrics while passing over the very spot of the ocean where his four daughters perished. While this telling makes for a wonderful and moving story, another report which seems to be more reliable claims that Spafford wrote it nearly two years after the event when both Moody and Sankey were visiting him at his home.
But the tragedy surrounding the hymn doesn’t end here. Horatio and Anna returned to Chicago and gave birth to Horatio II who would die of scarlet fever in 1876. Two years later, the couple gave birth to Bertha, who would later write in her memoirs that her parents not only suffered the pain of losing their fortune and five children, but it was compounded by a crisis of faith. Were the children’s deaths a punishment from God? Did He no longer love them? In 1881, Anna gave birth to a sixth daughter, appropriately named “Grace.”
Shortly after Grace's birth, the family of four moved to Jerusalem, with Horatio explaining, “Jerusalem is where my Lord lived, suffered, and conquered, and I wish to learn how to live, suffer, and especially to conquer.”
We'll come back to the Spafford family's lives in Jerusalem in just a few minutes, but it was there that Horatio himself would die reportedly suffering delusions at the end due to malaria. His fevers apparently leading him to believe that he himself was the Messiah.
But the tragedies surrounding this hymn don’t only involve the Spafford family. The melody was written by Philip P. Bliss, which he entitled “Ville du Havre,” the name of the stricken ship that took the lives of Spafford’s four daughters. The hymn was first sung by Bliss himself before a large gathering of ministers hosted by D.L. Moody on November 24, 1876.
Philip Paul Bliss was an American composer, conductor, writer of hymns and a bass-baritone Gospel singer. He wrote many well-known hymns, including Almost Persuaded; Hallelujah, What a Saviour!; Let the Lower Lights Be Burning; Wonderful Words of Life; and of course the hymn that is of our concern today in this message, the melody for Horatio Spafford's “It Is Well with My Soul”.
In 1869, Bliss formed an association with Dwight L. Moody, and thus became associated with Horatio Spafford. Moody and others urged him to give up his job as a music teacher, and become a full-time missionary singer. In 1874, Bliss decided he was indeed called to the task of “winning souls”. He then became a full-time evangelist. Bliss was receiving significant amounts of money from royalties and these he gave to charity and to support his evangelical endeavors.
Just one month, after introducing and performing “It Is Well with My Soul” to the world, on December 29, 1876, Bliss and his wife, were traveling to Chicago by train. As the train passed over a trestle near Ashtabula, Ohio, the bridge collapsed and the passenger coaches plunged 75 feet into the icy river. Philip was able to escape through a window, but his wife was pinned in the wreckage. As he went back inside to free his wife, a fire broke out in the wooden car. Unable to free his wife, Bliss refused to leave her... and together arm in arm they perished in the fire, their bodies burnt beyond recognition.
So many tragic deaths surround this hymn, and yet those affected by them could say, “It is well with my soul.” It is simply stunning... it's a fact that has empowered this hymn and it's wonderful words to reassure and comfort so very, very many hurting and mournful souls. This beautiful and uplifting hymn has been a blessing to so, so many wounded hearts... And it is at this point that many, in fact, most... would end the telling of the story surrounding “It Is Well with My Soul”. But there is more to be told and to be considered. You see for some Horatio Spafford is held up as an icon of devoted acceptance and faith in God's provision and love; for others... generally those in the most conservative Christian movements, Spafford is a name not worthy to be spoken, a fallen believer, and a deceiver.
After all of these terrible losses both physical and financial, again eerily reminiscent of the Book of Job, the Spafford's... struggling to deal with these horrible losses and tragedies adopted some more and some less conventional beliefs and practices. Their own church family, to pile tragedy upon tragedy, regarded the loss of their second son as “divine punishment.” One can scarcely imagine the great spiritual, and emotional damage that this judgmental and unchristian reaction by their fellow believers had upon poor Horatio and Anna.
Horatio's new acceptance of Arminianism theology soon meant that they were no longer welcomed within the ranks of the Calvinist following Presbyterian Church. And the reaction against these new beliefs was even more brutal in those days than modern Calvinist are towards Arminianism today.
Horatio soon formed his own group, what honestly could be best called a cult. Spafford's group was called the “Spafforites” or “Overcomers.” not unlike most cults, they believed that the rest of organized religion was missing some crucial detail and they alone had the truth. And there was no shortage of strange behaviors among their following, also like most cults there was an element of control over the follower's activities and relationships. Some of their beliefs were extremely admirable, there was a very concerted effort towards furthering peace among all people, and to helping the poor and marginalized. Overall, theirs was an apocalyptic group, with many failed attempts to predict the 'End Times' and even failed attempts at resurrecting the dead.
With all of this going on, the Spafford's, as I mentioned earlier... in 1881 immigrated to Jerusalem, but what I didn't mention is that their followers the Overcomers went along with them and together they established an American Colony in Jerusalem. There in the Holy Land, they would await the Second Coming of the Savior. While dutifully waiting they built a hospital and a school and thus they rallied in supporting the lost and the poor, they provided food, health care, and an education to any who came their way whether they be Jewish, Muslim or Christian.
During World War I, Anna, the two daughters and the rest of the Spaffordites provided much needed medical care to those affected. The women worked on without Horatio, who as I mentioned passed away in 1888 long before the 1st World War. Anna continued to lead their followers in his absence, sadly, their cult-like behavior also continued and even grew more pronounced under Anna's sole guidance.
As misguided as Anna might have been, her ultimate goal was admirable, she believed in no uncertain terms in Jesus' directive to care for the poor, and this was a mainstay of the Overcomers. One witness summed up Anna's life as such: “Anna Spafford dreamed there would be peace between peoples, frequently declaring to her fellowship that 'Love could conquer disunity', and in many ways this is the American dream, rich with the conviction that there should be no distinctions between races, gender, ethnicities, or classes, with freedom and democracy available to all.” In some ways, it seems... Anna was ahead of her time.
It would seem that both Horatio and Anna lost their way by more than just a bit after the death of five of their seven children, the loss of their personal fortune, and for Anna the witnessing of the deaths of her children. This coupled with the knowledge of the horrifying and fiery death of Horatio's friend and collaborator Philip Bliss and Philip's wife... and, all of this then being compounded with their being turned upon by their own Church family... of being accused of somehow being responsible for the death of their children due to some sin or sins of their own making. It would be hard for us here today to understand the depth of this pain, and more pain, piled upon the pain of the loss of their children. Rather than showering the Spafford's with love and understanding... rejection and judgment were all that seems to have been mustered. It is no small wonder that they began to question and to even lose touch with reality. But, even through all of this, they maintained their unwavering belief in their all-loving God.
I suspect that some of the charges leveled against the Spafford's and the Overcomers in those days by their Presbyterian church-fellows, and today by the conservative Reformers and other fundamentalist groups, are either elaborations of true events and that even some are complete fabrications. No doubt, however, some of the accusations are true..... though I suspect the most damning in the eyes of both those in the past and those judging today, was Horatio's abandonment of Calvinism and his embracing of Arminianism.
There are in fact those today who protest the use of this hymn, “It Is Well with My Soul” due to the nature of Horatio's falling out with the Presbyterian Church. The accusations of cultist behavior and heresy they say preclude this hymn from being utilized in genuine Christian worship. So, what are we left to do with poor old Horatio's hymn? This hymn that quite honestly, has touched millions and millions of souls and begat comfort to so, so very many.
Perhaps we should ask ourselves “Can God use those that are less than perfect to feed and nurture His flock?” It would seem that God has a long history of using fallen souls, sinners, those who are far less than perfect, and even false believers to do His work.
Throughout scripture we see God using imperfect people for the sake of His mission. God doesn't generally call the popular, rich or successful to further his ministry, but rather, the poor, the broken, the sinners, and in the case of the Disciples often the foolish, and weak. No wonder the religious leaders of the time wondered and doubted about this new movement... Jesus certainly wasn't drafting the “A” team.
God almost seems to have a passion to call the most flawed, a quick look through Scripture and we see; Abraham who was a liar, Elijah who was suicidal, Moses and King David were murderers, Gideon was afraid, Noah was a drunk, Jacob was a pathological cheat, Samson was a womanizer, Rahab was a prostitute, a Canaanite, a liar and... an ancestor of Jesus by the way, the Samaritan Woman was well a Samaritan Woman and she'd been married five times as well, Jonah ran away and refused to do God's bidding until a little persuasion was applied, both Zacchaeus and Matthew were tax collectors, Paul persecuted the early followers and watched while Stephen was stoned, Peter... Peter might be the worst of all... he denied Christ not once, not twice, but three times.
Romans 8:28
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
If you ever feel like you aren’t worthy enough, remember that Jesus has used an endless number of flawed people to share Hope to a flawed world. In HIM we find renewal and mending. No matter what you’ve been through in life, remember that the same power that conquered the grave lives within you. If God can move the heart and use the words of a man like Horatio Spafford to feed, comfort, and nurture His children... well, he sure as shooting can use you and he can use me. Praise God!
Thank you. Shared on Facebook. Gloria Huffman [M4-8-2019-0253E]
ReplyDelete