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Ten Billion Angels
250 HEAVENLY VISION
There are songs that make me weep for joy.
Angels Gate Park, California
One of the is Jacob French's anthem HEAVENLY VISION (250 in The Sacred Harp). French (1754-1817) was a singing master and composer; he was a student of William Billings, having attended Billings’ singing school in Stoughton, French’s home town. French has two songs in The Sacred Harp; the other is FAREWELL ANTHEM (260). You can see the influence of Billings on French, he is of that generation of "Yankee tunesmiths" that created a new American choral sound. French published three tune-books; unfortunately, I think, he music is under-appreciated today.
HEAVENLY VISION is an anthem; that is, it takes an unmetered text and sets it to music. This is the text:
I beheld, and lo a great multitude, which no man could number.
Thousands of thousands, and ten times thousands stood before the Lamb, and they had palms in their hands, and they cease not day nor night, saying,
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.”
And I heard a mighty angel flying through the midst of heaven, crying with a loud voice: “Woe, woe, woe be unto the earth by reason of the trumpet which is yet to sound. And when the last trumpet sounded, the great men and nobles, rich men and poor, bond and free, gathered themselves together, and cried to the rocks and mountains to fall upon them and hide them from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne: For the great day of the Lord is come, and who shall be able to stand?”
This text seems very biblical, and (not surprisingly), it is! The text comes from the last book in the New Testament, The Revelation. Revelation is full of visions and prophecies, and French makes a pastiche out of passages from this book—there is no one paragraph that has this exact text. The editors of the 1991 Denson edition of The Sacred Harp did the legwork to find the texts. Most songs in the 1991 edition have a quote from Scripture. On page 250, what appears under the title is, “Based on Revelation 7;9; 5.11; 4.8; 8.13; 6.15-17.”
Let’s do that one better and match things up more directly:
250 HEAVENLY VISION | Revelation 7.9; 5.11; 7.9; 4.8; 8.13; 6.15-17 |
|---|---|
I beheld, and lo a great multitude, which no man could number, | 7.9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; |
Thousands of thousands, and ten times thousands | 5.11 And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; |
Stood before the Lamb, and they had palms in their hands, | 7.9 After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; |
And I heard a mighty angel flying through the midst of heav’n, crying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe Be unto the earth by reason of the trumpet which is yet to sound. | 8.13 And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound! |
And when the last trumpet sounded, the great men and nobles, rich men and poor, bond and free, gathered themselves together, and cried to the rocks and mountains to fall upon them and hide them from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne: For the great day of the Lord is come, and who shall be able to stand? | 6.15-17 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? |
French combines the uncountable multitude of martyrs of 7:9 with the ten billion or so angels of 5:11. All of these sing a threefold ”Holy, holy, holy.“ And then French brings forth the mighty angel announcing a threefold ”Woe, woe, woe“ to everyone on earth, without respect to class or status. When God’s wrath comes, who will be able to stand?
It is a glorious, woeful, and violent image. French doesn’t leave us in a very happy place, but I think that French knew that listeners would hear this warning in the context of good news, as well. I heard Billy Graham in the seventies say something like, “I've read the last page of the Bible, it's all going to turn out all right.” French's listeners would have read that same last page.