All hail the Lamb

Not for the first or last time, hymns on the grand scale are here followed by two brief modern songs. The image of the lamb as applied to Christ can be traced through Exodus 12, Isaiah 53, John 1 and Revelation 5, among other texts. Its context, however, is not explored in this song, which came through the Spring Harvest constituency to the MP series from 1990. For alphabetical reasons it has been no.1 in some SH books. Dave Bilborough wrote the words in 1987, and his music ALL HAIL THE LAMB is arranged for the present book by Margaret Ellis.

b London 1955. He grew up in Romford, Essex, where he still lives. At the age of 14 he accepted an invitation to attend church. He valued the questions posed by some of Paul Simon’s songs, and even more the evangelistic challenge at the church’s youth group, becoming a Christian a year later. He learnt to play guitar, and encouraged by Nick Butterworth began to write new songs, especially since the 1970s, which could break the traditional mould. An early composition was Abba, Father (1975) which enjoyed great popularity. His wife Pat is a percussionist. He became a major contributor to the words and music of the annual Spring Harvest collections, especially in the 1990s (11 items in the 1999 selection), played a leading role in ‘Revival Now’ conferences and has appeared several times on ‘Songs of Praise’ and other TV programmes. He began recording in 1991, the year he became a music leader with Chris Bowater and Noel Richards; he has travelled internationally, conducted seminars, written 3 books and some 200 songs of which Let’s Praise (1988) has 6, MP (1997 edn) 10 and CH (2004) one. Among several albums his CD ‘The Songs of Dave Bilbrough’ is now available. He belongs to a ‘New Church’ in the Pioneer Network of congregations. No.283.