Eliason migrated to the US with his mother, sister and younger brother, Paul, departing Christiana, Norway on 3 July 1908 as a passenger on the Scandinavian American Line's C.F.
[10] Soon after Eliason and his brother Paul were diagnosed with tuberculosis, which resulted in their hospitalization at the Glen Lake Sanatorium in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
[13] In 1964 Eliason recalled his healing: During the summer of 1929, after graduating from the Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School in Minneapolis, I went through some severe testings.
I had also been reading a paper about answered prayers in many places, and on my sickbed I felt led to send word to brother Ingersol to come and pray for me.
[16] While still a student at the Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School, Eliason began to write Gospel songs,[12] a practice he continued until old age at the old upright piano in his living room.
Eliason was a prolific hymn writer, but his two best-known compositions were Got Any Rivers and A Name I Highly Treasure, which have been included in several hymnals and song books.
The chorus was based on part of a poem by Berton Braley called originally "At Your Service: The Panama Gang",[20] that was published as early as 1912,[21] and later as "Ready!".
[25] In 1925 the chorus was included as "Song of the Panama Builders" in Lettie Burd Cowman's popular Christian devotional classic Streams in the Desert.
[26] During the Great Depression, a triumphalistic anthropocentric version of the song, with the example of the Panama Canal miners cited, was being sung by the delegates at the PCUSA Assembly in 1931: "We specialize on the wholly impossible/ Doing things that no one can do".
"[12] Eliason recalled: The words of the chorus of this song, although slightly different, originally was a slogan, used by the Construction Company which dug the Panama Canal.
[12] Consequently, Eliason copyrighted the version that changed the last line to: "And He can do what no other power can do" as it was the best-known,[33] and assigned it to Singspiration Music, where it soon appeared in 1942's Youth for Christ Hymnal.
[34] During World War II United States Army Air Corps pilot Lt. Richard L. "Dick" Knautz (born 8 May 1920 in Oregon; died 7 May 1943 in Glenn, California),[35] a former student of the Bob Jones College, then located in Cleveland, Tennessee,[36] accidentally broadcast himself singing the song while flying over Stockton, California, air field, leading to the conversion of five young men.
[37] After Knautz's death in an airplane accident in his Vultee BT-13 Valiant while training another pilot over Chico, California,[38] the incident was publicized at The Gideons convention in Modesto, California, in June 1944, reprinted in The Gideon magazine in September 1944,[39] resulting in its reprinting in other religious magazines, including The Pentecostal Evangel in November 1944.
[10][41] With the encouragement of his wife, Norma, Eliason wrote three verses for the song based on the story of Joshua and the crossing of the Jordan River and the conquest of Jericho, which were dedicated to the mother of Dick Knautz.
[54] American operatic soprano Leontyne Price indicates that her first solo was singing "God Specializes" as a member of the Young Adult Choir at the Beulah Baptist church in Elmwood, Illinois.