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by John Spencer Yantiss
[Gospel]
I'm Comin'
I'm comin', I'm comin', I'm comin' to that holy city that was built for me.
One day closer, one more battle over, a little less ground to win before I'm free.
I'm comin', I'm comin, I'm comin' in the very last year of jubilee;
I will be ascending, for this earthly journey is ending;
There's a heavenly body, and a mansion waiting for me.
I'm comin', I'm comin', I'm comin' to that glorious reunion of the family.
Many've come before me, and I can hear them singin', "Glory, laud, and honour to our King."
I'm comin', I'm comin', I'm comin' in the very last year of jubilee;
I will be ascending, for this earthly journey is ending;
There's a heavenly body, and a mansion waiting for me.
I'm comin', I'm comin', I'm comin' for that heavenly happiness promised to me.
The angels are rejoicing, for the hour is approaching, when Jesus returns to reign forever as King.
I'm comin', I'm comin', I'm comin' in the very last year of jubilee;
I will be ascending, for this earthly journey is ending;
There's a heavenly body, and a mansion waiting for me.
There's a heavenly body, and a mansion waiting for me.
In addition to our Lord's own, I had double inspiration for this from earthly sources. When I was still but a young boy, in junior high school (middle school to those of you born in the 80s and after), my great-grandmother, in her middle 90s, died of, basically, old age. No one particular illness hit her; her tired old body simply wore out. Into the first five or six months of her last year, she was still sewing all of her own clothes—even underwear!—reading her Bible daily, and generally living an actdive life for one of that age. Without going into too much detail, she failed quite swiftly, but was allowed to remain in bed at our home, where she had lived since I was born (she spent half a year with us, and half with other relatives in south Georgia). The last week and a half or so, she was in a coma. One day I had a premonition that something was going to happen, and asked my mother if I could stay home from school, to be with Gramma, the name my brother and I used for her, even though she was our great-grandmother. Sometime around mid-morning she raised up just a little from her pillow, and opened her eyes. I went to her, and saw that she was not staring blankly at nothing, but focussing on something. She spoke, uttering these words: "O, Budder, it's so beautiful, it's so beautiful, I'm comin'." When she was a very small child she could not pronounce the word brother, and so Budder became her name for her eldest brother. He had died some twenty years before, being about ten years older than her. I knew instantly what she was saying, and to whom she said it. She was looking at her brother, and where he was—in heaven! Some thirty-plus years later, that event inspired the song above. Also, I had in the back of my mind an old, what used to be called, "Negro Spiritual." There is a beautiful old Spiritual, Old Black Joe, with the chorus lines going like this: "I'm comin', I'm comin', for my head is hangin' low. I hear the gentle voices callin', 'Old Black Joe.'"