John Newton: From Disgrace to "Amazing Grace"

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It's often been said that grace like water always flows downward. The lowest place nobody embodies this principle better than John Newton, author of the best loved him of all time during his lifetime Newton story was renowned as one of the most sensational sinful, spiritual and historically important sagas of the 18th century were telling the story because on this day in 1725 John Newton was born here to tell the stories the A-Team of John Newton biographers Brian Edwards Jonathan eight Qian and Tony Baker was born in 1725 in walking about a mile downriver from the Tower of London right by the tens. Flipping was at that time that Hamlet is busy waterfront a thousand ships a day were coming in and out of London at that point John Newton as a little boy could walk down to execution talk and see mutiny as an Pirates hanging chains until three times and washed over them. His father was a sea captain. We don't know much about his father, Newton held him in both fan and respect his mother was a very godly woman in his. She took John Newton as a little boy up to the age of 97 to the dissenting Chapel of Dr. Jennings and it was quite famous. It was full and all kinds of interesting creatures came including Isaac Watts, Joe Newsom was a little boy was more educated at his mother's knee. Some of because John Newton senior Capt. John Newton was away on these very long sea voyages so he was very much an absent father.

She had taught him to read and she was beginning to teaching Latin. She told him Bible stories Bible passages and the hymns of Isaac Watts which had just recently been published.

One of the fast hymn writers. His mother sadly died of consumption or tuberculosis as we know it. Just before Newton's seventh birthday. When John Newton got the news of his mother's death. He was was very upset and he was more upset when his father came home and does expend anytime morning. His dead wife Capt. John Newton married almost a major status within weeks of the coming home again and Joel really was a typical product of a an unwanted stepson. He only had I think two years for education.

The essence of not very satisfactory boarding school at the age of 11 he was a sailor on one of his father's ships and at shortly afterwards when he when he was a teenager. He was a sailor in his own right. Melanie's father ships stockpiling the Mediterranean trade in the European trade for those one extraordinary experience that John Newton have as part of 11 or 12-year-old boy on his first voyage with his father which Michael supernatural experience and undiscovered dream which had J.R.R. Tolkien been lots of scripted.

He was just offshore from Venice and figure appeared and gave him a ring and told him to look after he was told that if he looked off to this ring or will be well with his life that he must care for it. That figure disappeared, and another one came and mocked the value of that rate, telling him that it was a waste of time.

He need not bother about it a tool, and eventually inveigled the ring away from you so that you can select intimacy and at that moment in history.

He sold the home of Venice seemed to be engulfed in flame. Then the first person appeared in his dream came back to him and showed him the ring that he had rescued from the water, Newton put out his hand to let me have that ring and the fit is it know you cannot be trusted to such a time as you need it handled it. It represents will be available for you is a little more about treatment until quite late in life when he came to realize that it was really a part of his life.

He went on with his voyaging and then came back from one of his voyages as a vegan sailor. He decided he'd go down to the family in whose home.

His mother Elizabeth died and the eldest daughter was called Mary she was 14 years old had the moment. John set eyes on Mary, he fell in his own words madly in love and he moved her love. Six. Where the time of trust and this morning around government to zoster Newton was prescribed instructional will perhaps take some! It was a little of the land of the Royal Navy could impress judgment compulsorily recruit under pressure in the able-bodied enjoyment was grabbed and impressed into service as a seaman. He now becomes a sailor on board a man-of-war HMS Harwich was 1/4 way forthright metaphor, but it had 300 men on board because his father was an AL, a well-known merchant Capt. because he himself was not exactly a landlubber he had good nautically experience. He was immediately promoted to a midshipman which was the bottom rung of the office of classic.

He progressively threw off his Christian background, his profanity was such that he saved his language, leaving Howden sailors to keep their distance, but he had been leading a book called the characteristics of men Marek Manus and so on. Now it was a book that led his mind, well away from any faith in God and he helped him on his downhill spiral morally and philosophically because it now. Gave him the reasons why he was not a Christian morality was for John Newton to make up for now and you were listening to some of the foremost experts on the wife of John Newton as we always do try to bring you the best historians on any given subject.

When we come back we offer the writer amazing Grace John Newton story continues here on our American story.

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It was mainly freshwater and quiet and he saw his opportunity of presenting his ship and walking to Plymouth to reach his father and he was captured by soldiers who were on the lookout for services report into trains was brought back to the heritage and he was publicly float 39 lashes setting his ship now that was a very serious punishment of fire. A very serious charge. He could've actually been put to death, and many died under the lash the layout is barred sore from the floating furious with himself very angry with his captivity full suicide, filling his Capt. of the ship sailed. Eventually the ship arrived at dear I went by quite a remarkable occurrence.

He was able to be exchanged just for some sailors on board a merchant ship back in the 18 century the Royal Navy good alternate press guy, young men, it could exchange or swap young sailors for vessel sailors who they came across anywhere, provided they were subjects of the English crown, but he had to go so on a merchant ship for school. The Pegasus on the Pegasus walls what was sometimes called Guinean assessment ship went over to the coast of Africa and get a trade.

He managed to get himself released from his dues. Merchant seamen and to stop working as an apprentice to a white man who traded on the shores of Africa the white slave traders printed from the coast and it was the Chiefs that brought people from England and sold them to the white slave traders on the coast but that wasn't working. Fostered often so fairly soon. The white slave traders when moving in land to do their dirty work for themselves. So I think in these ways he thought he could make progress. But when the matter with whom he was working was away his wife, who was quite high up in the tribal hierarchy. She took a great dislike to John and she actually increases it as a white slave. She put them in chains to stop them for treason. He was Tells I was treated more like a dog than any kind of human being and sometimes he was so hungry at nights that he had to go to try and find some roots to eat the cost of doing much and sometimes even some political slaves aborting some of their limited supplies out of compassion. Another slave trader who some reason took a liking to the stranger who was being treated like a white slave for his release from a Moscow drunkard and then moved with his new boss treated much more's apartment to another part of their really, he decided that he was simply staying Africa and eventually he went down the coast to similar CoQ10. It was from that a fellow trader tried to signal processing vessels if you list the father and the policy vessel so the smoke rising in the take that as an invitation to come, when the trade and this offender trader soul vessel so you little file and the timing was extraordinary in his Newton Scully went on board the ship to do trade and pick up items that they need. I don't miss the first question, the ship's captain Aust was do you happen to know a man called Newton on the coast here about. Apparently, the ship's captain and met with John Newton's father before he left England and John Newton's father has said if you ever find my son on the coast of Africa.

I want you to bring him back.

This sounded like seafarers version moved looking for a needle in a haystack in the colleague of Newton someone as it happens I know exactly when a man you're looking for is Newton was tenant to go board.

He was now just about to make for the first time some money for himself. He had got a make a penny said he thought he could make some money and there were only two things that enticed him back home. One was the story that the ship's captain told him that he had information that Newton had inherited quite a small fortune and if he would come back he could enjoy it, which was a whole load of rubbish is completely untrue, but the other thing attracted him was the thought of Mary, because on his own account, not day had gone by without him thinking of Mary, so he took passage on the Greyhound and that he upsets the captain and by the same time completes the crew by making up songs about the ship and the captain without actually mentioning the captain by name, and that the captain was really fed up with him and was taking them on board. And yet he did come across in the course of the journey.

Thomas campuses imitation of Christ and at some point he started reading and he just started asking the question, supposing all this is true within came the grade school and Newton was asleep but was cooled off on their focus was a very big storm and do not okay is uncertain. The other instances. His life was quite extraordinary preserve is just as he was going up on deck.

I think the captain said to back to get enough things, and the fellow who is fully on deck is as the ship broke, wallowing in the Atlantic struggled to suffer float at the whole crew including Newton thought that this must be the end and that on one occasion, Newton and his rather confident way said that Alyssa be a good thing to talk about over junk when we get back home. I'm one of the crew member said no it's too late now and that got me thinking, and lashed to the tiller or the pumps because they had to take turns at both Newton began running out in his mind. Many of the verses of Scripture and doubtless some of the hymns of Isaac Watts that he had learned from his mother as a little boy he found himself condemned by the visiting you and it was at that time that in his own words, God reached down and plucked him out the dance and he put a very wavering faith in God, acknowledging that his life had been a complete mess, and he had ruined all the credit given him and spoiled the treasure that his mother told him and he made a commitment to faith and some point he said to the captain something like if the Lord doesn't have mercy on us will loss that I think the captain purchase that progress to hear this particular profane, infidel, talking about the Lord was with quite a surprise, but eventually face just kept afloat and they went into Loxley on the West Coast development of the first things he went did was to go to church to pray and give thanks for the fact he had been saved as a result of his pro so he goes back to Marion Chatterton in Kent. But still this. She gives him a little hug but no certainty and he got no money a tool because he got nothing for his timings in Africa will from chanting in Kent. The 250 miles to Liverpool. He calls it his long lonely walk because that's where he would be up to pick up another ship. This is a slave ship SFS might and eight was on this ship that he and his and was backslid as bad as before he would allow the line foamboard share penned the life in the evenings to drag him down and it really wasn't that journey for him, but he was determined to go on with Christ. Although the line foamboard slave ship was probably the worst of all the merchant ships and and only that the rough and rarely ever ended up on board ship anyway and you're listening to the story of John Newton who of course wrote the most popular man in history when we come back more the remarkable story of the song and the man who wrote it here on our American store.

Then we continue here with our American stories in the remarkable story of John Newton of course wrote amazing Grace with the story of his life and what led up to it all. That's what's interesting let's return to this remarkable story with some of the best Newton biographers on the planet Dr. Brownlow.

He took three Janice as a slave ship captain to he was acting in charge of the ship and the date the gathering of the slaves on what was known as the triangular trade out from England with items from thought to the West Coast of Africa picking up slaves, taking them from there either to the West Indies or to North America and then picking up cotton Ron Brandy things at home market wanted and then coming back across the Atlantic State three legs of the triangular trade in the 1750s where Newton was a slave ship captain, the general view of England including Christian England was of the slave trade was a respectable economic form of active sons extorted, but it is historically true.

1750s and 60s.

Almost nobody, not even the point is at that stage had really got to grips with the issue of slavery wasn't until you get writeup into the 1770s 80s and 90s that the groundswell of recognition of what is happening part of the reason for this is you have to realize that people in the home market England would be receiving all this stuff in brandy and sugar but had no idea really how it came. That was in the media.

Nobody was going out there taking films of slaves in the way they were treated in the cruelty and beast theology of little people didn't know as they began to know so they said he married Mary in 1750 and she was quite frail and health and often had to stay with her parents and then of course eventually he met this verse is difficult for/captain Alexander Clooney who was captain of the vessel but not the slave, and they recognize one another's Christians and Clooney really instructed Newton in the basics of the faith, and that was a key turning point for but at the time. Want to start Newton and even when he writes his authentic narrative pieces.

I was increasingly potential by a course of the life that was involved with shackles and chains and leg irons and he said I felt more like a jail in a turnkey, and he didn't like what he was doing his conscience was staring the owner of his ships. Mr. Manistee was actually in the process of building him a brand-new ship to send him out again on the fourth.

Like when he suddenly took a seizure. So by mutual agreement. John Newton's career as a seafarer slave ship captain started he managed to get appointed to a drug which is called survey of the time. This was effectively what we would cool chief customs officer's job loss. He had a boat with 1/2 dozen horsemen, and every incoming ship to the docks at Liverpool. He was to be revved out in section for contraband. His experience meant he had a pretty good idea where things would be hidden on any ship, but this gave him a great amount of time to sit in his little hot as he was given with a fire and a lamp and study and read. That's what he continued to do a lot of his studying and reading the way he first began to prepare his first sentence.

Also while he was in and in Liverpool. He invited George Whitfield a great evangelist to come and preach in the city to the two men hit it off and he was enormously impressed because Whitfield was the most outstanding preacher of the 18th century, and I think it's a difficult of his own experience of his awareness of the hand of God in the grace of God in his own life, Newton found himself sure to Whitfield's theology, which was so robustly evangelistic but also believe God is sovereign and that we depend entirely on his grace and salvation in Christ. So Whitfield became very much a dominant influence in his life and Alyssa Newton began to think whether he might be cooled to some full-time ministry himself and he did preach his first sermon in these years in the Presbyterian Church and leads his first ever was absent this zoster during the afternoon when he was having tea with his house. They said would you like to prepare for, and even I know he was constantly done all this preparation. Thank you and he got into the pool pits and he began, and within minutes he covered his material and or anything else fled out of his mind and he came down from the pulpit in great sense of shame and he says that for some time afterwards.

He believed that everybody in the town was talking about him that was his entry into preaching as Newton started thinking more towards being a pasta teacher in the church ago we started pushing the doors of the doors didn't open because of a beautiful Newton with his gifts would be at his spiritual experience will be just wonderful gift for charging the ministry because he was tainted with Methodist which many churchy leaders in the Church of England thought was simply fanaticism. He found the door was closed and often don't have these several rejections. He was hugged preaching some by the Dartmouth you should be ordained to search on the journey.

But in trying to get all that structuring of the Turning to the William Dartmouth that have a quiet word with the Bishop of Lincoln, who was a bishop who would refuse to order John the change is not said he would ordain him number things he said about him that he was a very warm and loving pasta which is is particularly interesting when you consider that this man had been used to haranguing an unruly crew he brought with him that gift of this which is so badly used when he was at sea, taking godless unrivaled songs about the captain which entertain the crew but not against turn this into first to his people as he walked down the streets of on a heat he listens to the women at that at their place, bobbins, and in order to keep them in time with that their work. They would have little dictates that they would chomp and he felt one vacant land. So if I can teach them him they can remember the theology that I'm trying to teach them said he would sometimes spend two or three days in his week. Not just preparing the sermon by preparing the song that was going to go with the seven and then he would teach it to them before the seven that would really punch home the points that he made. He started a Sunday school long before Robert Reich started to Sunday school in the West country and kids from the Baptists were coming as well. If I think was a bit of a problem because he devised the idea of five giving little prizes for children who could remember varices and nuances to questions and unfortunately the Baptist kids were running off with prizes that caused a bit of tension because they knew that Bible says well and that he says he had to sit them down and give them a little talk on how to get on well together and you're listening to the story of John Newton from slave ship captains want to be minister to the author and writer of the greatest and most well-known him of all time, amazing Grace, and I know some of you are wondering what is this have to do with America and if you've ever read any books by Stephen Turner. The best thing amazing Grace story of America's most beloved song.

The relationship between American singers, churches and hymnals.

And while this story there intertwined. When we return this remarkable story continues John Newton story was born this day in history. 1725 dear on our American story that we return to our American stories and the story of John Newton from slave captain want to be minister and beyond, and ultimately the writer of the greatest him, of all time amazing Grace. Let's pick up when we last left off. He was in full so that to consider getting rounded terrible dress also. He would wear his old naval Sketch, oversee, believing he shouldn't throw something away while the still somewhere that say was easy and approachable. Newton was encouraged to write up as we would say today's testimony and said he produced what school the authentic narrative after the publication of authentic narrative. People came from all over to see this man was such an extraordinary story to tell, even in Adm. came to see this man who was once beaten in the grating 50 setting his ship, his Majesty ship reward. The particular coach for 50 miles hundred miles, have drawn ritual right great distances to people in the sky.

Who became very famous very influential one was the palms of William Wilberforce removals was that stage of schoolboy. The songs brought removals as a schoolboy to share John Newton reached so that was to be your most influential and important encounter uncertain whether someone else cold comfort but was a national talent William poet Adventists and cacti who suffered from very deep depression and for 18 months he lived with John and Mary. But when Cuba was brilliant. The supports and together they wrote a number of him and him singing was comparatively new. Until then burst in the Church of England. They just some Psalms so this was quite a new development, Cooper wrote some great hymns is radical God moves in mysterious ways. One, just before but Newton was probably the greater hemorrhage of the two and pops his gracious him theologically walls glorious things of thee are spoken, but his most famous him was amazing grace, not just witches will always be associated with John is that he met amazing grace is that a new year him. He based it on a passage in Chronicles mad at the king is reviewing God's goodness to him and that's what Newton wanted to do in amazing grace, how sweet the sound saves a wretch like me, and he continually comes back to that would grace, which for John Newton.

Of course, meant God's is a messy info giving him through the merits of Jesus Christ and because of nothing he himself done and then he rounded off and what is his final vests the earth will soon dissolve like snow. The sun will cease to shine.

But God, who loved me he had been will be forever mine. Unfortunately, that this somehow in the 19th century got lost in the new verse that everybody knows when we've been there 10,000 years got put in but that has nothing to do correctly it was because we know real quick.

An afternoon but he didn't write to the famous, amazing Grace music came much later instructed and amazing grace.

It never really took off in England made people so what popular hymns.

What are great films which hymns were reprinted amazing grace was never one of inning, but what changed the game for amazing grace was the United States but Newton's him walls reprinted in America took off in the South of America and that's where the tomb comes from some old plantation to so the music the words of amazing grace were married together but then it became gradually account of America's spiritual national anthem. It is a song by Olson Olson for recording artists and by the saloon 1960s. This could become the most performed and most recorded song below him in the history of music and its extraordinary weight script people. It seems a lot of people sing it without actually realizing what the singing, you sing it because it's good to see even though you don't necessarily understand all pups agree with the words obviously has his influence was spreading quite widely and he was invited to consider the pulpit had cemented one month in London, which was in the City of London right in the banking quota but he filled the church very quickly just to see it filled the parish church of again.

It was so crowded that some of the regulars started to complain that Jews were being occupied. Always newcomers them. I was having to build a gallery again in the very world of articles is very much more influential, congregation people from the city of politics.

Many of his congregation would be bankers how they earning their living. Many of them through the revenue of the slave trade, so it is to his credit. By the 1780s and 90s. He is preaching against the slave trade, calling it blood money and telling his congregation that they can have nothing to do with it. In 1788, he wrote his famous document thoughts on the African slave trade very very important document because he gave his reasons why the slave trade was so iniquitous in every way very carefully that he wisely that imprudently written document and this was distributed widely printed widely and distributed and had a great influence was hugely influential, politically, particularly because he was William Wilberforce's mental and William Wilberforce came to see him one evening under conditions of strict secrecy.

It was so unfashionable if not risky wrong for unimportant young member of Parliament to be seen consorting with a gospel preacher. They were sort of gospel preachers was soulful to be a bit dangerous while the upper classes looked on. But Wilberforce was a boy met Newton heading preach on someone. Wilberforce was having a spiritual encounter with God. He wants to try to contact Newton service around the loop which reads a bit, was absolute James Bond sending a letter to M segment must keep the squat will complete the private lives keep confidential Wilberforce came to his house and Wilberforce them is a will price run script make sure the coast is clear of negatively watching so nose was it when he came in to see Newton.

He told me about his Christian confession is zeal and Wilberforce had in mind to become a clergyman to join the church. Newton gave Wilberforce very wise advice. He said, in effect, join the church stay where you are concerned of God through Paul Dr. FS meeting two years later, William Wilberforce wrote in his diary, a very famous expression. It was on a Sunday in 18 1787 and he read God Almighty has laid before me to great objects. The abolition of the slave trade and the Reformation of Manis management Mara Morrow's morality reformation of morality that will force gave his life to those two great causes and Newton supported him all the way through and as a result of that, he was asked to give evidence to the privy Council. He was in fact the only slave ship captain who advocate evidence to the privy Council feels that spoke to parliamentary committee that became quite Lobi in England meant driven very largely by letter the women who would not allow their families to each other because it came from the spoils of the slave trade. Newton finally died in the year when the slave trade was abolished.

As Wilberforce himself finally died in the other slavery. British Tetris was abolished, and Newton's lost words, perhaps the greatest testament to the test when it is when Newton was dying visitor came to see you all sorry, was if he remembered the slap never and Newton who was very old, blind knew he was near death set in a full three voice so I remember only two things I have a great summer.

Christ is the great Satan and you been listening to the story of John Newton in the end the story of the greatest him ever written, and great work is always to Greg hang with John Newton story born on this day in 1725 year on our American story