About the Song…

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The hymn portion of this beautiful haunting amalgamation of traditional melody and original music composed by Nicholas Mazzio is attributed to an anonymous source around the beginning of the 1800s. Some say it may have been written by American Baptist Minister John Leland. But the citation has gone unconfirmed, and it is not similar to the others attributed to him.
One thing is certain, the longing for our heavenly home is apparent in the lyric. It is a rousing and inspiring call to put this world behind us and remember where we are going, and a faithful presentation of the present spiritual warfare that we are facing.
When we can “realize”, in other words, “make it a reality in our minds”, the truth and actuality of the promises of God we will begin to live a transported life. This world press is in so darkly. We begin to think that our present state is all that we are destined for.
But God promises us otherwise. He tells us of a home that he has prepared for us on high where there is no death, where there is no sorrow, where there is no crying, and where we can live and reign with him forever.
Right now we are in the bondage of sin and death.
But it can all be as a dream, as a moment that passes as we spend more and more time meditating on his promises and on the World to come.
And the things of this world will grow strangely dim as we turn our eyes upon Him.
The believers in the early church of Thessalonica were crushed as one by one they saw their numbers fall to persecution and death. Erroneously they had embraced the prevailing sentiment that this earth is all that we have and there was no resurrection. It was a sharp disagreement among the Jews of the time and teaching vigorously put forth by the Sadducees based on their own scientific theory that once the body has decayed there is nothing left of the person therefore there cannot be any second life because the vessel is decayed.
This is one of the reasons that Jesus delayed for days in raising Lazarus. He had raised others from the dead who had been dead for less than 24 hours, sometimes for minutes.
But his special friend Lazarus was given the privilege of solidly disproving this erroneous teaching. When Jesus came to the tomb and asked them to roll away the stone, they protested saying, “ but by this time he stinks.” The inroads of decay had already begun to ravage the corpse that lay within.
When that stone was rolled away the unmistakable stench of death was apparent to all.
Yet still, at the summoning of the words of life that fell from the lips of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ Lazarus’ body responded. He did not come forth with feeble and tottering limbs bearing the mark of one who had been recently dead or even sick. He came forth in the newness of life, in the strength of his youth.
This is why they sought also to kill him along with Jesus for just proving their cherished theories.
It was more important to them to be revered as authorities than to be right or to celebrate the amazing return of life from the dead, the signature upon Jesus’ amazing life and ministry that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the son of God as he claimed. That life was in him, not borrowed, not received, but inherent as God.
This is what Paul wanted to bring to the minds of those precious new believers in the church of Thessalonica as they mourned the passing of their loved ones. This is why he said that if Christ did not rise from the dead then we preach him in vain.
He addressed them with love and encouragement in their loss.
I would not have you be ignorant my brothers, about those who have fallen asleep in death, that you sorrow not as others who do not have an understanding about the truth of the resurrection and so sorrow without hope. Because if we believe that Jesus died and then rose again, we have the foundation for our belief that they also which have fallen asleep in the blessed hope with Jesus as their Lord and Savior will be raised again to life.
And then He describes exactly how this will be accomplished at Jesus’ Second Coming.
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout (when He comes to the earth with all of His angels at the end of time to take His own home to the kingdom that He promised He has prepared for us), with the voice of the Archangel because He is the Archangel, and with the trump of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first.
And then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
And so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Time and means are explained clearly in his words. The dead in Christ rest in the grave until the last day when Jesus calls them. And those faithful who are still alive on this earth are caught up together with the newly risen Saints and together they meet the Lord in the air. This is one event. Death is not the end. Jesus calls death on this Earth asleep. And He admonishes us to comfort one another with these words.

https://hymnary.org/text/o_when_shall_i_see_jesus_and_reign_with

https://hymnary.org/text/o_when_shall_i_see_jesus_and_reign_with#Author

https://hymnary.org/person/Leland_J

1 Thessalonians 4:1-18

“Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, Amen.”
Revelation 1:7