The Latter Rain For My People

The Latter Rain For My People

The Latter Rain For My People

Verse 1
There’s a Message for the End times,
A Message more important still,
Than Life, Liberty, or freedom!
My Spirit Rains to give it Might!

Chorus
Rise up my Bride and shout my praise!
Raise the Banner of Truth Higher!
Please give me a reason to send,
The Latter Rain For My People!

Verse 2
Babylon is fallen, fallen,
Sinful nest of evil spirits,
All are drunk with her lying wine!
Come out my people and sin not!

Chorus
Rise up my Bride and shout my praise!
Raise the Banner of Truth Higher!
Please give me a reason to send,
The Latter Rain For My People!

Verse 3
God remembers her lies and sins,
Come out and don’t receive her plagues!
Give her double what she’s giv’n you!
For her plagues shall come in one day!

Chorus
Rise up my Bride and shout my praise!
Raise the Banner of Truth Higher!
Please give me a reason to send,
The Latter Rain For My People!

Verse 4
She will be consumed by God’s fire,
For strong is the Lord to judge her!
The rulers of Earth will mourn her,
For in one hour she is destroyed!

Chorus
Rise up my Bride and shout my praise!
Raise the Banner of Truth Higher!
Please give me a reason to send,
The Latter Rain For My People!

Ending
Please give me a reason to send,
The Latter Rain For My People!

This song does not end where you expect it to end. Four verses go by announcing the fall of Babylon, the judgment of God, and the ruin of a great city in a single hour — and then the last thing you hear is not a shout of triumph. It is a request:

Ending
Please give me a reason to send,
The Latter Rain For My People!

God asking us for a reason. That is where the song leaves you standing, and it is the most important line in it. But a song is only as strong as the Word standing behind it, so let us walk through “The Latter Rain For My People” verse by verse and see that every line of it is resting on Scripture.

Four Angels Over One Earth

Before we take the verses one at a time, look at the shape of the whole thing. Three angels fly in Revelation 14, and a fourth comes down in Revelation 18 with the earth lit up beneath him. Those four angels are the four verses of this song.

The first three are the messages of Revelation 14. They come one after another, and each one adds to the last:

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters. (Revelation 14:6, 7 KJV)

And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. (Revelation 14:8 KJV)

And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God… (Revelation 14:9, 10 KJV)

Then, four chapters later, another angel arrives — and this one is described differently from the other three:

And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. (Revelation 18:1, 2 KJV)

Notice what the fourth angel says. He does not bring a new message. He says exactly what the second angel said — “Babylon…is fallen, is fallen” — only now with great power, with the whole earth lit by his glory, and with a great deal more detail about what Babylon has become in the meantime. Sister White makes that point exactly:

This scripture points forward to a time when the announcement of the fall of Babylon, as made by the second angel of Revelation 14 (verse 8), is to be repeated, with the additional mention of the corruptions which have been entering the various organizations that constitute Babylon, since that message was first given, in the summer of 1844. (The Great Controversy, p. 603)

So the fourth angel is not a fifth message crowding in at the end. He is the second angel’s message come back louder, joined to the third:

These announcements, uniting with the third angel’s message, constitute the final warning to be given to the inhabitants of the earth. (The Great Controversy, p. 604)

That is the shape of the song. Verse 1 is the first angel. Verse 2 is the second angel. Verses 3 and 4 are the fourth angel of Revelation 18, saying the second angel’s words with the power of heaven behind them. And the chorus, four times over, tells you what makes that power come.

Verse 1 — A Message More Important Than Freedom

Verse 1
There’s a Message for the End times,
A Message more important still,
Than Life, Liberty, or freedom!
My Spirit Rains to give it Might!

The first angel carries what the song calls “a Message for the End times,” and Revelation gives it a name: the everlasting gospel. It goes to “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people” — nobody is left off the list — and it is announced with a reason attached: “for the hour of his judgment is come.”

Now, that third line is a bold claim, and it is worth stopping on. A Message more important still, than Life, Liberty, or freedom. Those three words are precious, and rightly so. Men have died for them. But the song is measuring them against something, and the measurement is the Savior’s own:

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matthew 16:26 KJV)

Life, liberty and freedom are all things this world can give you, and all things this world can take back. The gospel offers a freedom the world cannot hand out and cannot repossess:

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. (John 8:36 KJV)

That is why the line is not patriotic bluster. It is a ranking, and the ranking is correct.

Then the fourth line turns from the message to the power behind it: My Spirit Rains to give it Might. Notice who is speaking. The message is not going to be carried by clever arguments or by hard work alone:

Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6 KJV)

And the rain in the title is not a poetic flourish either. It is the prophets’ own figure for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and they gave it two seasons:

Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. (Joel 2:23 KJV)

As the “former rain” was given, in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the opening of the gospel, to cause the upspringing of the precious seed, so the “latter rain” will be given at its close for the ripening of the harvest. (The Great Controversy, p. 611)

The former rain fell at Pentecost and the church sprang up. The latter rain falls at the harvest, and it does not plant the crop — it ripens what is already growing. Hold on to that. It will matter in a moment.

The Chorus — Rise Up, My Bride

Chorus
Rise up my Bride and shout my praise!
Raise the Banner of Truth Higher!
Please give me a reason to send,
The Latter Rain For My People!

Rise up my Bride is Christ addressing His church by the name He uses for her at the very end:

Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. (Revelation 19:7 KJV)

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee. (Isaiah 60:1 KJV)

“Arise” and “rise up” are the same command, and in Isaiah it comes with the same reason the fourth angel comes with — glory risen upon her, the earth lightened with it.

Raise the Banner of Truth Higher has a psalm behind it, and the psalm says who handed the banner out:

Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth. Selah. (Psalm 60:4 KJV)

We did not make the banner. We were given it, and it was given for one purpose — that it may be displayed. A banner rolled up and stored somewhere safe has failed at the only job it has.

And now the line the whole song turns on.

“Please Give Me A Reason To Send”

Read that line carelessly and it sounds wrong. Does God have to be talked into blessing His own people? Is the Holy Spirit something we earn by good behavior, so that God stands there with His arms folded waiting for us to produce a reason good enough?

No. And the answer is not a matter of opinion, because God Himself gave the command to ask:

Ask ye of the LORD rain in the time of the latter rain; so the LORD shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field. (Zechariah 10:1 KJV)

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him? (Luke 11:13 KJV)

A Father who commands you to ask is not a Father who needs persuading. So the holdup is not on His side, and Sister White says so as plainly as it can be said:

It is not because of any restriction on the part of God that the riches of his grace do not flow earthward to men. (Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 419)

The Spirit awaits our demand and reception. (Christ’s Object Lessons, p. 121)

Then what is the reason the song is asking for? It is not payment. It is a people the power can safely be trusted to:

The great outpouring of the Spirit of God, which lightens the whole earth with his glory, will not come until we have an enlightened people, that know by experience what it means to be laborers together with God. When we have entire, wholehearted consecration to the service of Christ, God will recognize the fact by an outpouring of his Spirit without measure. (The Review and Herald, July 21, 1896)

Now look at the order of the chorus again, because the order is the whole argument. Rise up. Raise the banner. Then the rain. Not the other way around. The song never asks for the latter rain so that we can finally get up off the ground; it asks for the latter rain because the Bride is already standing and the banner is already up.

That order is deliberate, and getting it backwards is an old and serious mistake. Sister White saw people making it in her own day:

I saw that many were neglecting the preparation so needful and were looking to the time of “refreshing” and the “latter rain” to fit them to stand in the day of the Lord and to live in his sight. (Early Writings, p. 71)

Remember what the latter rain is for. It ripens the harvest; it does not plant it. A field with nothing growing in it gets nothing out of a harvest rain. That is why God asks for a reason — not because He is reluctant, but because there has to be a crop in the ground for the rain to finish.

Which means the request in the chorus is not God bargaining with us. It is God pleading with us. He wants to send it. He is asking us to give Him the opening.

Verse 2 — Babylon Is Fallen, Fallen

Verse 2
Babylon is fallen, fallen,
Sinful nest of evil spirits,
All are drunk with her lying wine!
Come out my people and sin not!

The doubled word is not the songwriter’s emphasis. It is in both angels’ mouths, in Revelation 14:8 and again in Revelation 18:2 — “is fallen, is fallen.” Scripture says it twice, so the song says it twice.

Sinful nest of evil spirits is a fair rendering of a verse most people read too fast:

Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. (Revelation 18:2 KJV)

A habitation, a hold, a cage — three words for the same idea, which is that the unclean things are not merely visiting. They are living there. “Nest” catches it in one syllable.

All are drunk with her lying wine is the charge laid against her twice over:

With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. (Revelation 17:2 KJV)

And the reason a fall like this can be announced about a religious body at all is that she did not start out this way:

The message of Revelation 14, announcing the fall of Babylon must apply to religious bodies that were once pure and have become corrupt. (The Great Controversy, pp. 382, 383)

Come out my people and sin not! is Revelation 18:4, and it contains the tenderest two words in the whole chapter:

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. (Revelation 18:4 KJV)

My people. He calls them His while they are still inside. The call does not go out to strangers; it goes out to sons and daughters who are in the wrong house, and it is a call to individuals, one at a time, not to institutions.

But God still has a people in Babylon; and before the visitation of his judgments these faithful ones must be called out, that they partake not of her sins and “receive not of her plagues.” (The Great Controversy, p. 604)

Verse 3 — God Remembers

Verse 3
God remembers her lies and sins,
Come out and don’t receive her plagues!
Give her double what she’s giv’n you!
For her plagues shall come in one day!

God remembers her lies and sins is verse 5, and the verb matters. Heaven has not lost the record:

For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. (Revelation 18:5 KJV)

Give her double what she’s giv’n you is verse 6, almost word for word:

Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double. (Revelation 18:6 KJV)

This is the one line in the song where a reader could go wrong, so let us be careful with it. The words are Scripture exactly — but ask who is being told to do the rewarding. It is not the people who have just walked out the door in verse 4. The saints are never handed the job of settling accounts:

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. (Romans 12:19 KJV)

The chapter answers the question itself two verses later, when it gives the reason the sentence can be carried out at all: “for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.” The reckoning is God’s, executed by His agents. And when it is finished, the ones told to rejoice over it are in heaven, not on earth:

Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her. (Revelation 18:20 KJV)

So sing the line as what it is — the sentence of a court, read out by the God who alone has the right to read it. Our part in verse 3 is the second line, not the third: come out.

For her plagues shall come in one day is verse 8, and it sets up the last verse.

Verse 4 — One Day, And One Hour

Verse 4
She will be consumed by God’s fire,
For strong is the Lord to judge her!
The rulers of Earth will mourn her,
For in one hour she is destroyed!

The first two lines are one verse of Scripture, carried over nearly intact:

Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. (Revelation 18:8 KJV)

Now notice something the song gets right that a looser writer would have smoothed over. Verse 3 of the song says one day. Verse 4 says one hour. That is not a slip and it is not repetition — those are the two measures Revelation itself uses. The plagues come in one day (18:8); the judgment falls in one hour, and the chapter says it three separate times:

Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. (Revelation 18:10 KJV)

For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. (Revelation 18:17 KJV)

Alas, alas, that great city… for in one hour is she made desolate. (Revelation 18:19 KJV)

The rulers of Earth will mourn her is verse 9 — and here is the saddest detail in the chapter. They mourn. Every one of them mourns. But read the whole passage and count how many of them repent.

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning. (Revelation 18:9 KJV)

And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more. (Revelation 18:11 KJV)

Not one. The kings weep because their partner is gone; the merchants weep because the market is gone; the shipmasters weep because the trade is gone. They are standing in the light of the burning of Babylon and grieving over their losses. Mourning is not repentance. It is possible to cry your eyes out over the judgment of God and never once turn from what brought it.

That is the difference between the kings in verse 4 and the people called out in verse 2. Both of them see Babylon fall. Only one of them left in time.

Where The Third Angel Stands

Someone paying close attention will ask a fair question. Verse 1 gives us the first angel and verse 2 gives us the second, but the third angel’s message — the warning about the beast, his image and his mark — is never spelled out in the song. Where did he go?

He is underneath all four verses, and the reason is the one we found at the start. Revelation 18 is not a separate errand. It is the third angel’s message at full volume:

As foretold in the eighteenth of Revelation, the third angel’s message is to be proclaimed with great power by those who give the final warning against the beast and his image: “I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.” (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 8, p. 118)

In the Revelation John says of the heavenly messenger who unites with the third angel: “I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.” (Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6, p. 60)

Unites with. Not replaces, not follows on from — unites with. So every time the song says “Come out my people and sin not,” it is preaching the third angel’s message, because coming out of Babylon and refusing her mark are not two decisions. They are one. And Revelation tells you what the people who make that decision look like when the smoke clears:

Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. (Revelation 14:12 KJV)

That verse is the last word of the three angels’ messages, and it is a portrait, not a warning. When everything else in Revelation 14 has been announced, this is what is left standing on the earth: a people keeping God’s commandments and holding the faith of Jesus. That is the crop the latter rain comes to ripen.

The Ending — What God Is Waiting For

The song refuses to close on the chorus. It drops the first two lines and leaves you alone with the last two:

Ending
Please give me a reason to send,
The Latter Rain For My People!

Every verse has just described something enormous — a message to every nation, a fallen city, plagues in one day, a kingdom destroyed in an hour, kings weeping in the firelight. And after all of that, the last thing God says is not about Babylon at all. It is about us.

What He is waiting for is not a date on a calendar. It is a people:

Before the final visitation of God’s judgments upon the earth there will be among the people of the Lord such a revival of primitive godliness as has not been witnessed since apostolic times. (The Great Controversy, p. 464)

The great work of the gospel is not to close with less manifestation of the power of God than marked its opening. (The Great Controversy, p. 611)

Less than Pentecost is not on the table. The gospel did not open quietly and it is not going to close quietly, and when it closes it will look like this:

Servants of God, with their faces lighted up and shining with holy consecration, will hasten from place to place to proclaim the message from heaven. By thousands of voices, all over the earth, the warning will be given. (The Great Controversy, p. 612)

So do not sing the last line as though you were begging a reluctant God. He is not reluctant. He has the rain, He has commanded us to ask for it, and He has told us plainly that nothing on His side is holding it back.

He is asking for a reason. Not a payment — a reason. A Bride on her feet. A banner in the air. A field with something growing in it.

Ask ye of the LORD rain in the time of the latter rain. (Zechariah 10:1 KJV)

Sing it, and then give Him one.