Five Gospel Preachers?
Saturday, April 18, 2009 at 10:29PM "I'm gonna send thee five by five; five for the gospel preachers (or writers)". This is the next line in our "Children, Go Where I Send Thee" countdown.
There seem to be many questions floating in cyberspace about why the songwriter(s) chose the number five to represent the gospel writers, who most famously are numbered four (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). Uh, maybe because four was already used for "the four who stood at the door". It's just a folk song.
In spite of all the exotic speculation I've seen online about one of the apocryphal books or Gnostic gospels being the fifth gospel, most likely the song is counting Paul with the gospel writers as he wrote most of the New Testament, including the Book of Romans, which sometimes is referred to as the fifth gospel.
The word "gospel" means "good news". Paul's Letter to the Romans certainly qualifies. Written by the man who did more to spread the gospel than anyone else, Romans is rich with explanation of God's righteousness, and Romans 8:31-39 tells us that God only wants us to become righteous through the power of Christ's sacrifice so that we can never again be separated from Him. That news is more than good.
[Next: The Four Who Stood at the Door]
Book of Romans, apocrypha, gnostic, gospel 
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Reader Comments (1)
They lyrics don't say "gospel writers," they say "gospel preachers." So I was under the impressions they meant Paul and the four others who joined him on his missionary journeys: Silas, Barnabus, Timothy, and John Mark.