Songfacts®:

• Dallas Holm recalled in CCM Magazine presents 100 Greatest Songs In Christian Music that he wrote this song about Christ's resurrection during a time when he was struggling for ideas. Said Holm: "Normally I can sit down and come up with some kind of idea either musically or lyrically. But this time I was totally out of ideas. Finally out of frustration I began to pray, 'Well, Lord, if you were transported to this time and this place, what would You say?' And as hokey as it may sound, I got this mental age of Jesus with the beard and the rope and the whole thing just standing onstage with a guitar. I didn't hear any voices from heaven, no thunderclaps or lightning flashes, but I began to write, and it was literally like taking dictation. In 10 minutes tops, the music and words came out and it was done."
• This was recorded live (the clue is in the album title). Holm and his band were fresh to the music scene and somewhat green as he admits to CCM Magazine presents 100 Greatest Songs In Christian Music: "We didn't know anything; we did everything wrong you could possibly do. First of all, we decided to record it live, and nobody was buying live albums! We spent a whopping $4,500 producing the whole thing, using semi-professional equipment with these cheesy eight-track channel boards set up in a camping trailer. We recorded it at Lindale High School in a 300-seat auditorium. It was truly live with no fixes. We just blew through it and sang our songs, the whole thing took 45 minutes."
• Holm's record company optimistically shipped out 100,000 copies to Christian retail outlets only to find few were interested and there were an alarming amount of returns. However once Christian radio discovered this track and began spinning it nationwide, suddenly the retailers were demanding that the records be returned to them.
• This won the 1977 Dove Award for Song of the Year.
• Among the many artists to cover this is Bob Dylan during the period that he was singing overtly Christian material. He even called his 1980 tour, the "Rise Again Tour." Dylan made no official recording but it can be found on various bootlegs.