John Newton: The Angry Sailor

John Newton hated being a sailor. The ship’s officers treated him terribly. John wondered how God could have let this happen to him. Every day he got angrier and angrier. He fought with everyone and stole whenever he got the chance. By the time he was seventeen, he had about the worst reputation in the whole navy! John prayed that God would get him off the horrible warship. But in His Amazing Grace, God had other plans for a young man shunned as “the worst of the worst,” changed into a man of God who helped turn the heart of England against the slave trade. This biography by proflic writer Kary Marshall Strom, is a middle grade biography about John Newton, the man who wrote the hymn, “Amazing Grace.”