With God on Our Side was the third track on singer-songwriter Bob Dylan's third album, The Times They Are a Changin' in 1964.

The antiwar song showed up at just as thousands of young people were trying to make sense of the Vietnam War and grappling with the possibility of their own deployment.

It was a wake-up call, a rethink anthem. How much sense does any war make? That was the underlining argument. Don't we ultimately move from one battlefield to the next convinced that God's on our side?

Never their side. Always ours.

Dylan performed the song for the first time during his debut appearance at The Town Hall in New York City on April 12, 1963. It was his first important solo concert. The show didn't sell out but it was an undeniable success.

Some say it was the venue where Dylan shifted from being a newbie folksinger to a seasoned professional. The evening ended with Dylan reading a tribute to his hero Woody Guthrie. He was asked to write 25 words about what Guthrie meant to him. He wrote five pages and read them on stage.

Everything crystallized for Bob Dylan that night.

The Newport Folk Festival was the next big gig on July 26-28. As Peter, Paul and Mary took the stage to begin singing Blowin' in the Wind, Peter Yarrow announced, "This song was written by the most important folk artist in America today."

He was talking about Dylan.

Dylan performed after the trio finished and was welcomed on stage with a thunderous reception. Then the other concert performers joined Dylan for a touching rendition of We Shall Overcome. On Sunday evening of the Newport Festival Dylan and Joan Baez teamed up and sang a duet of With God on Our Side.

"That was a big, big breakout festival for Bob," said singer Tom Paxton. "The buzz just kept growing exponentially and it was like a coronation of Bob and Joan. They were king and queen of the festival."

Dylan's music was leap of faith for the 1960s youth culture. Whether Dylan intended it or not, his lyrics were an invitation to take a deeper cut on life beyond the spoon-fed values young people inherited. An invitation to recreate oneself.

Hour after hour, song after song, Dylan's albums blasted on stereos in college dorms and inner city walkups all over the country. It was a hefty dose of truth, a deep breath.

"He not busy being born is busy dying," Dylan offered up in one song.

Leather cap. Curly hair. Soiled blue jeans. Scruffy desert boots. He looked like any stranger in the bus station.

As a social commentator it was impossible to pigeonhole Bob Dylan and also impossible to ignore him.

On June 23, Christie's, New York featured a selection of Bob Dylan memorabilia in its Pop Culture auction. Handwritten, partial working lyrics for the song With God on Our Side from the Times They Are A-Changin' album sold for $25,000.

The manuscript features half the seventh, the complete eighth and ninth verses to the song, along with numerous corrections, words scratched out, and Dylan's signature.

Here are current values for other Dylan lots sold in the auction:

• Concert handbill for the Bob Dylan and Joan Baez 1965 February-March U.S. tour, $1,250.
• Harmonica, Hohner Marine Band (B), concert-used and signed in black marker, $4,000.
• Yearbook, 1958 Hibbing High School Hematite yearbook signed and inscribed copy by Dylan in blue ballpoint pen, using his birth name Bob Zimmerman, $7,500.
• Lyrics; handwritten to Hank Snow song Little Buddy by the teenager Bob Dylan as a camper in Northwestern Wisconsin during the mid-1950s for publication in camp newspaper; two-pages; signed Bobby Zimmerman, $12,500.

Rosemary McKittrick has provided information and analysis on thousands of antiques and collectibles sold at auction since her LiveAuctionTalk column started 18 years ago. She received her training in the trenches, as a professional appraiser. Visit her Web site at www.liveauctiontalk.com.