Thomas Olivers (1725-1799), a Welsh orphan, billed himself as “the worst boy known in Tregynon for thirty years.” Thrown out of town at age 18, he arrived in Bristol, England, where he heard George Whitefield preaching on the words of Zechariah 3:2, “Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” As Olivers recounts, “When the sermon began, I was one of the most abandoned and profligate young men living; before it ended, I was a new creature. The world had changed for Tom Olivers.” He gave his life to spreading the gospel wherever he went. One Sabbath evening in 1770, he heard an opera singer, Meyer Lyon, present Yigdal, a Hebrew Doxology. Deeply impressed, he took the words and added to them the light of New Testament truth. We now sing his hymn titled “The God of Abraham Praise.” Included are the lines: “We shall behold His face; We shall His power adore, And sing the wonders of His grace, Forevermore.”

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