As a young girl Phoebe Palmer Knapp (b. New York, NY, 1839; d. Poland Springs, ME, 1908) displayed great musical talent; she composed and sang children’s song at an early age. The daughter of the Methodist evangelist Walter C. Palmer, she was married to John Fairfield Knapp at the age of sixteen. She was a founder of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and after her husband’s death shared her considerable inherited wealth with various charitable organizations. She composed over five hundred gospel songs, of which the tunes for “Blessed Assurance” and “Open the Gates of the Temple” are still popular today.

Ira Sankey, good friend of hymn author Fanny Crosby, once related this story about the comfort “Blessed Assurance” provides:
“’During the recent war in the Transvaal,’ said a gentleman at my meeting in Exeter Hall, London, in 1900, ‘when the soldiers going to the front were passing another company whom they recognized, their greetings used to be, “Four-nine-four, boys; four-nine-four;” and the salute would invariably be answered with “Six further on, boys; six further on.” The significance of this was that, in ‘Sacred Songs and Solos,’ a number of copies of the small edition of which had been sent to the front, number 494 was ‘God be with you till we meet again’; and six further on than 494, or number 500, was ‘Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine.’”
From the very day she wrote them, Crosby’s words have provided comfort for millions of Christians in the face of fear, persecution, sorrow, and doubt. In spite of all the trials that may come, we know that we serve a Savior who came to bring the Kingdom of God on earth, and as we serve him, we participate in, and belong to, that Kingdom. We each play our own part in that “glorious foretaste” of what is still to come. We belong to Christ and his Kingdom – what an assurance this is!