A train is coming. You can hear its engines from far off if you have faith. You need no luggage and no ticket. Just thank the Lord and climb on.
The train is bound for Jordan. It stops for passengers from one coast to the other, and faith opens its doors. There is hope for everyone on board.
Then the song makes one exception. There is no room on this train for the hopeless sinner, the man who would hurt everyone else to save himself. The very next line asks for pity on people whose chances are growing thin, because no one can hide from the throne.
The singer stands on the platform. He can hear the train. He has not boarded yet, and he is calling everyone within earshot to get ready. The river is ahead, and so is the crossing.
The Song and the Singer
Curtis Mayfield grew up in Chicago. His grandmother was a preacher with her own storefront church, and his mother sang and played piano (Voices Across Time). He started singing in church as a small boy.
He wrote "People Get Ready" in the year after the 1963 March on Washington, and it carried the march's spirit into a gospel form (NPR). The Impressions recorded it in 1964 and released it in 1965 (Wikipedia). Mayfield's own explanation pointed farther back than the march. He said the song came out of his church upbringing, from old sermon ideas like getting on board and having nowhere to hide (Blimey).
The train is an old picture. Spirituals had long sung of crossing Jordan, and the railroad had carried millions of Black Southerners north to cities like Chicago. Mayfield put the two together. His train runs on faith, and it is headed for the river.
The Impressions sing it gently. No one shouts, so the invitation never becomes a demand. It reaches as wide as the country, and the warning in the bridge is sung just as softly as the rest.
They That Were Ready
The song's title echoes a warning Jesus gave in a story. Ten young women waited at night for a bridegroom to arrive. Five brought extra oil for their lamps, and five did not. "While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept" (Matthew 25:5). At midnight the cry went up that he was coming. The five without oil ran off to buy some. "And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut" (25:10).
The bridegroom took a long time. Everyone fell asleep. The difference came down to who was ready when he arrived. Mayfield's train works the same way. You can hear it from far off, and the time to get ready is now.
The ticket line is just as biblical. Paul wrote that the righteousness of God comes "by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:22–24).
The Bible's last invitation uses the same word. "And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Revelation 22:17).
Freely means nobody buys a seat, and no difference means the train stops on every coast. Mayfield sang the doctrine of grace in a few lines and never used the word.
Of Whom I Am Chief
That leaves the one exception. The song has no room for the hopeless sinner who would hurt everyone else to save himself. It is a fair description of a man who once dragged believers out of their homes and had them jailed. Years later he wrote about it to a young pastor.
And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry; Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. (1 Timothy 1:12–13)
Injurious is the King James word for a man who does harm. Paul did real harm, to people who had done nothing to him. Then he wrote the sentence the song's bridge needs. "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief" (1:15).
He went one step further. He said God saved him first, and saved him on purpose, as an example. "Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting" (1:16). The worst passenger was boarded first so the rest would know there was room.
Mayfield seems to have felt the pull of that himself. Right after the warning, he asks for pity on people whose chances are running out. The song leaves one man standing on the platform. Paul says he was that man, and he got on. If there was a seat for him, Mayfield's plea for pity was closer to the gospel than his warning.