- RSS FeedSubscribe
- « Previous PostThe Many Ways of Destroying the Church
- Next Post »A La Carte (12/21)
Face to Face
- 12/20/09
- 12
Here is a hymn we’ve only begun to sing recently at our church. It’s an old one and, I assume, one that may not have had a great melody (since Josh, our lead worshiper, has composed his own melody for it—I wish I had a recording so you could hear it). We sang it today after meeting with Christ in Hebrews 1. It was the perfect ending to our service.
Face to face with Christ my Savior,
Face to face, what will it be,
When with rapture I behold Him,
Jesus Christ, who died for me?
Refrain
Face to face I shall behold Him,
Far beyond the starry sky;
Face to face in all His glory
I shall see Him by and by!
Only faintly now I see Him,
With the darkening veil between,
But a blessed day is coming,
When His glory shall be seen.
What rejoicing in His presence,
When are banished grief and pain;
When the crooked ways are straightened,
And the dark things shall be plain!
Face to face! oh, blissful moment!
Face to face to see and know;
Face to face with my Redeemer,
Jesus Christ, who loves me so.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ, a husband to Aileen and a father to three young children. I worship and serve as a pastor at 
Releasing on April 1, The Next
Published in 2008, this book
This is a guide that calls men,
This review of the bestselling
New to the site? You can get
This is a guide written
Comments (12)
Indelible Grace has a version of it on their latest cd that features Matthew Perryman Jones on vocals. It’s a fantastic version!
This song is in our hymn book (The Baptist Hymnal). The tune is fine. It was a favorite of my father, a long time pastor/missionary, and we sang it at his funeral.
Have been singing it since I was a child. Remember our church singing it together at the request of a dear old brother one Sunday morning. Little did we realise that within a week he would be beholding Him “Face to face in all His glory.”
This is a very familiar hymn in traditional, evangelical circles. I learned it from my great-grandmother & her sister, and I’ve played it, as an organist, as background music at numerous funeral visitations over the past 30+ years. The original melody is not bad at all (I like it), but it is dated and probably wouldn’t appeal to some contemporary worshippers.
Here’s the tune, though like most at CyberHymnal, it’s played a bit faster than it should be!
http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/f/a/faceface.htm
To each his own, but the tune is just like that of most hymns of the time period.
We sang this song from the Baptist Hymnal quite often when I was growing up. I agree with Mike that the tune is fine. It’s singable and recognizable, but like most Gospel song tunes from the late nineteenth century, it was written in the popular style of the day. I’m anxious to hear the updated tune.
Love this hymn, and like other folks, find the usual tune quite pleasant. An easy tune to harmonise. Just listened to the Indelible Grace version - love it too! Now listening to ‘The Sands of time are Sinking’, on the ‘Pilgrim Days’ album (again from Indelible Grace Music). Rutherford, from whose writings this poem / song was written, pastored at Anwoth, 60 miles south of where we are, in South West Scotland
I love this hymn! I really like the melody Josh has composed and the lyrics are such a great reminder of Jesus’ second coming which really should be the focus of Christmas. Thank you for posting that Tim!
Ditto on the above comments. Sang this song growing up, and still singing it. I like the tune as well, but I’m older than you (almost 50).
It’s always interesting when some find certain hymns “old” and others find them quite new. I think it depends a great deal upon the tradition one was raised in - or, if they were raised in a church at all. This is a hymn that has long been familiar to me. We sang it often in the Evangelical Free Church in which I grew up. We’ve sung it a few times at Cornerstone EFC, where I currently pastor. I believe we even sang it at the funeral of a dear saint. How poignant is that? I’d like to hear the new melody that your church used with this. Bob Kauflin and Sovereign Grace Music do a wonderful job of bringing new melodies to old hymns and our younger people love it.
One of my best memories of singing this song is from the Sunday after Josh’s grandmother passed away. Josh had scheduled the song on Tuesday for the coming Sunday, not knowing that Grandma Robinson would pass away on Friday night / Saturday morning. In that moment, it wasn’t a “some day” kind of song, it was a reminder that at that very moment this dear woman was free of her suffering and face to face with the Saviour she had longed to see.
Grew up singing this in the Independent Fundamental Baptist tradition. Still love it - what a beautiful hymn by Fanny Crosby. But, since I’m used to the original melody I’m afraid I’d never enjoy it as much with any other!