The Composition
Andrae Crouch composed 'Soon and Very Soon' around 1976, and it appeared on his album Live at Carnegie Hall (1979), which became one of the most successful gospel albums of the decade. The song's irresistible joy - its bouncing rhythm, its simple repeating structure, its escalating ecstasy - made it immediately popular in both Black church and interracial charismatic worship settings. The title phrase draws on the language of Revelation 22:20 ('He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming soon"') and on the African American preaching tradition's use of repetition as a rhetorical intensification device: 'soon and very soon' says the same thing twice in order to say it more urgently.
The song's structure is deliberately simple: three stanzas, each built around a single affirmation ('Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King'), followed by a repeated 'Hallelujah' section that functions as a collective response to the affirmation. This call-and-response structure draws on African American church traditions rooted in African communal music-making, where the leader and congregation sustain a musical conversation in which each participant's contribution strengthens the whole.
Biblical Text
The primary scriptural foundation is Revelation 22:20: 'He who testifies to these things says, "Yes, I am coming soon." Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.' This is the penultimate verse of the Bible, the final promised return of Christ before the Benediction. The maranatha tradition - 'Come, Lord Jesus,' maranatha in Aramaic (1 Corinthians 16:22, Revelation 22:20) - was one of the earliest liturgical prayers of the Christian community, and Crouch's song renews it for the contemporary gospel context.
1 Corinthians 15:51-52 - 'Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed - in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed' - provides the eschatological content of the song's 'going to see the King.' The change that Paul describes is simultaneous physical transformation and cosmic enthronement.
John 14:2-3 - 'My Father's house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me' - provides the relational promise: the return of Christ is not merely a cosmic event but a personal reunion.
Eschatological Tradition
The song inhabits a distinctive tradition within African American Christian music: the tradition of joyful eschatology, in which the hope of Christ's return and heavenly reunion is a source of present joy rather than merely future consolation. This tradition, rooted in the spirituals of the slavery era ('Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,' 'I'll Fly Away'), used eschatological hope as a counter-narrative to present suffering: the King is coming, the suffering is temporary, and the joy of reunion with God is more real than the pain of present oppression.
Crouch's song inherits this tradition but extends it across racial lines: by the late 1970s, the song was being sung equally in white charismatic, mainline Protestant, and Catholic contexts. Its ecumenical reception testifies to the universality of eschatological hope: the desire for Christ's return, for the end of suffering, for the fullness of the Kingdom, is not a culturally specific aspiration but a universal Christian longing.
Legacy
'Soon and Very Soon' became one of the most widely translated gospel songs of the late twentieth century. Its use in mainline denominational hymnals - the United Methodist Hymnal, the Presbyterian Hymnal, Catholic collections - alongside its currency in charismatic and Pentecostal worship demonstrates a cross-denominational reach unusual for a song from the Black gospel tradition. Crouch described it as his most personally significant song: the eschatological hope it expresses was, for him, the foundation of all other Christian joy. The song's simple message - that the King is coming soon - continues to sustain Christian communities worldwide as one of the most joyful expressions of New Testament eschatology in the contemporary worship repertoire.
The song's use at memorial services and funerals within the African American church tradition carries particular significance. The tradition of joyful mourning - of celebrating the death of a believer as entry into the presence of the King who is coming - is one of the distinctive gifts of African American Christianity to the broader church. In a tradition that had to find resources for joy in the face of centuries of forced suffering and early death, the eschatological hope of "Soon and Very Soon" provided not denial of grief but a counter-narrative larger than grief: the King is coming, the reunion is certain, and the mourning is temporary.
Crouch's song inhabits the same theological territory as the ancient maranatha - the Aramaic prayer "Come, Lord!" preserved in 1 Corinthians 16:22 and Revelation 22:20 - that was among the earliest Christian liturgical expressions. The prayer is both a cry of longing and a confession of faith: the community that prays "Come, Lord Jesus" believes that the Lord Jesus will come, and that his coming will be the final resolution of all present incompleteness. "Soon and Very Soon" makes this ancient prayer singable by an entire congregation in a contemporary idiom, renewing one of the most ancient Christian practices for every generation that learns the song.