The Story Behind the Song
Lewis Edgar Jones (1865-1936) attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and graduated in the same class as Billy Sunday, one of the most renowned and popular evangelists of the early twentieth century. (Sunday was mentioned in “Chicago (That Toddlin’ Town),” written by Fred Fisher in 1922 and popularized by Frank Sinatra in 1957!)
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Lewis Jones and Billy Sunday also worked for the YMCA after their time at Moody, but while Sunday went on to a successful itinerant revival ministry, Jones made a career of YMCA work. Lewis Jones held positions with the ministry in Davenport, Iowa; Ft. Worth, Texas; and Santa Barbara, California.//As an avocation, Jones wrote hymns, eventually over 200 of them, but only one is still well-known—“There Is Power in the Blood.” He composed both the words and music in 1899 while at a camp meeting at Mountain Lake Park, Maryland.
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The song has been recorded dozens of times by such disparate artists as J. L. McGhee and Frank Welling (1928), the Sons of the Pioneers (1937), Burl Ives (1965), Wayne Newton (1968), Mahalia Jackson (1968), Dolly Parton (1999), The Charlie Daniels Band (2002), Selah (2004) and Keith and Kristyn Getty (2018).
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“There Is Power in the Blood” is a call-and-response song. There are a series of “calls” (usually questions but also a few statements) that are answered by the same “response”—“There’s power in the blood of the Lamb.” Would you be free from the burden of sin? “Jesus Christ….loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood…” (Revelation 1:5).//Would you o’er evil a victory win? “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:57).
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Would you be free from your passion and pride? “Whoever says he abides in him [Jesus] ought to walk in the same way in which he walked… All that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:6, 16).
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Would you be whiter, much whiter than snow? “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Isaiah 1:18). ”They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14).
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Would you do service for Jesus your King? “…be a good servant of Christ Jesus, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed” (1 Timothy 4:6).//Would you live daily His praises to sing? “I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being” (Psalm 146:2).
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The questions contained in the hymn are not requests for information, but rather are challenges to make decisions. Even as believers, we must choose each day how well we will follow Jesus. “And he [Jesus] said to all, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me’” (Luke 9:23). But the really good news is that we don’t have to gin up the ability to do so from our own limited resources—there is power in the blood!
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Anastasia Music 