“If We Never Meet Again” — in full, “If We Never Meet Again This Side of Heaven” — is a gospel song written by Albert E. Brumley, the Oklahoma songwriter who composed hundreds of sacred songs, among them “I’ll Fly Away.” He wrote this one in 1945.
The song is a farewell looking past death. Its lyric imagines parting from loved ones with the assurance that, even if friends never meet again in this life, they will be reunited in heaven when life’s journey ends. Written in the closing year of World War II, that consoling promise carried a particular resonance for a country marked by loss.
The song was recorded soon after it was written and spread widely through Southern gospel and bluegrass.
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