I Know Whom I Have Believed

Heather Allington

Heather writes for Sunday Song Book on behalf of the The Salvation Army Oshawa. As a lifelong member of the Army, she has loved these familiar - and some less familiar - songs for many years, and enjoys researching and writing about their origins. She is a wife, mother, grandmother and retired elementary school teacher who likes trying her hand at watercolour painting and poetry writing.

Do you ever have doubts and questions about your Christian faith? Be encouraged as you read Daniel Whittle’s story, and his simple testimony in song.

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I know not why God’s wondrous grace to me He hath made known,
Nor why, unworthy of such grace, He claimed me for His own.

But I know Whom I have believed,
And am persuaded that He is able
To keep that which I’ve committed
Unto Him against that day.

I know not how this saving faith to me He did impart,
Nor how believing in His Word wrought peace within my heart.

I know not how the Spirit moves, convincing men of sin,
Revealing Jesus through the Word, creating faith in Him.

I know not what of good or ill may be reserved for me,
Of weary ways or golden days, before His face I see.

Daniel Webster Whittle’s hymn writing is part of “the lighter, more emotional age of American Gospel music”, according to Robert Morgan. Whittle was born near Boston, Massachusetts in November, 1840. He left home as a teenager and moved to Chicago, where he worked in a bank. He enlisted to fight in the American Civil War when it began in 1861, getting married the day before he left. His wife, Abbie, was distraught when she learned he had been taken captive and was seriously wounded, having lost his right arm. But God used this circumstance!

While recovering in hospital, Daniel grew bored and picked up a New Testament, just as something to read. He felt moved by what he read, but wasn’t quite ready to accept Christ as his Saviour, and he fell asleep. Soon he was awakened by a hospital orderly, who said another soldier was dying and wanted someone to pray with him. Daniel claimed that he couldn’t do so, and suggested someone else should do this. The orderly replied that he’d seen Daniel reading the Bible, and so thought he must be a Christian. So Daniel agreed to help out. He knelt by the dying boy, holding his hand, and confessed his own sins and asked the Lord for forgiveness. Whittle later said, “I then prayed and pleaded God’s promises. When I arose from my knees, he was dead. A look of peace had come over his troubled face, and I cannot but believe that God Who used him to bring me to the Saviour, used me to lead him to trust Christ’s precious blood and find pardon.”

Daniel Whittle must have grown in faith, and “I Know Whom I Have Believed” was written in 1883 as his testimony of his trust in Jesus. He used Paul’s words from his letter to Timothy – 2 Timothy 1:12, KJV, as the chorus of the song. We see that Whittle still had questions about spiritual mysteries, but it was knowing Jesus that made the difference to him, and that was the anchor to which he could cling.