Judgment is a key theme ringing throughout heaven.
That’s very clear when you look through the songs of praise in the book of Revelation – especially in chapters 11, 15, 16 and 19.
Songs on judgment
In 2005 I wrote an article about the dearth of songs on the subject of judgment in our repertoires, adding that it is extremely hard to find any contemporary songwriter who is brave enough to produce material on the theme. Sadly, there’s been little progress. The trouble is that if very few are writing songs about judgment, then it follows that very few will be singing about it, although it’s also true that if no one wants to sing about judgment, then no one will write about it – an album of songs on judgment just wouldn’t be marketable.
‘Don’t even talk about it’
We’re all dangerously the poorer for this deficiency. As I write, we’re trying to help young Christian music students to realise that judgment is a central truth of the gospel. Worryingly, some have been taught never even to talk about judgment. ‘God never says anything negative, so neither should we’, they say. Apart from the fact that this isn’t true about God, if we never speak or sing about judgment then we’re in danger of stopping believing in it ourselves. We’re in danger of losing the gospel. Truths about judgment need to dwell in us as richly as truths about salvation, because without judgment there is no salvation. Also, it does-n’t make sense for heaven to be ringing with songs of judgment when on earth we are largely silent.
Rediscovering lost verses
This all came home afresh to me recently as we were taught the first half of Romans 3. I found it incredibly hard to find songs for us to sing to back up what God teaches about the wickedness of man. Even the hymns and songs that do mention judgment are quite heavily sanitised. However, it provided a good opportunity to include two verses that disappeared from hymn books over a century ago (showing this isn’t just a recent problem).
The first is from When this Passing World is Done by Robert Murray M’Cheyne:
When I hear the wicked call on the rocks and hills to fall,
when I see them start to shrink on the fiery deluge brink,
then, Lord, shall I fully know, not till then, how much I owe.
The second from Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending by John Cennick, Charles Wesley and Martin Madan:
Every island, sea and mountain, Heaven and Earth shall flee away;
all who hate him must, confounded, hear the trump proclaim the day;
Come to judgment, come to judgment, come to judgment, come to judgment, come away!
We don’t want to sing these songs lightly – I know that when we have sung them, tears have been shed, and that is a right response to a terrible truth that drives us to our knees. Yet, though terrible, the truth about judgment is also glorious, because when the Day arrives it will signify the end of God’s enemies and ours, of Satan, sin and death. We will be proclaiming the vindication of our heavenly Father as everything is brought under the feet of Jesus our Lord; and as the final enemy is defeated, only then will we know the joy and safety of an eternity without tears, death or sickness.
So please sing these wonderful truths, and please pray for songwriters to be governed more by a desire to reflect the songs of Scripture than to satisfy the itching ears of those who buy their albums.
Simpo’s song contest reloaded
As the situation hasn’t improved since I last put out this same challenge in 2005, a friend suggested that I offered a prize of a tin of Simpkins travel sweets to the writer of the best new song on judgment (very sorry that this will be down to my own fallible judgment alone!)*. It needs an appropriate tune, easily playable by the average musician/s, and it needs to have been sung at least three times by the same congregation (a good indicator that a song isn’t just loved by its composer!).
I’ll finish with the same line as I finished with in 2005: let’s recover the doctrine of judgment in our songs, just as in our preaching. We do so, not to delight in the death of the wicked, ‘rather that he should turn from his way and live’ (Ezekiel 18.23).
Richard Simpkin is Director of Music at St Helen’s Church, Bishopsgate, London.
