Advertise on podcast: Wretched John

Escaping the horrendous North Atlantic storm that nearly took his life, John emerged with a newfound faith in Christ. But the days ahead were far from smooth sailing. As with many new believers, those early first steps of following Christ are filled with faltering stumbles of spiritual immaturity and well laid snares by an unseen enemy. But them all, God is able to recover John again and again and by astounding providences bring him to a place of obtaining the love of his life. 

Emerging from captivity, John soon ventured upon a life in Africa of growing wealth and boundless exploration of his depraved desires. That is until he was lured by prospects of inheritance onto a ship bound for England. A ship whose near floundering changed John's life forever.

Pressganged in to the Royal Navy, John's haughty personality and infatuation turn what might have been a prestigious opportunity for John in to a disgraceful ruin. And the chance encounter with a slave ship which he thought to be his rescue, proved to be a nightmare.

Over 250 years ago, wooden boats powered by canvas sails tried the seas with no assurances that they would ever set foot on solid ground again. On the high seas, sailors at the mercy of rolling waves and raging storms, do what have done since the days of Jonah, they cry out to God. Such was the case with a blasphemous deckhand named John. At first, he hesitated, considering how he had forsaken God so long ago for a life abandoned to wickedness. But cry John did. And the Lord heard that cry, reaching down with a tender hand of love and grace and not only saved John from the storm, but rescued his life from the depths of sin. An act of God that would eventually impact much of the known world for centuries to come.

If there was ever an individual who fit the description of being a wretch, it was John. From the age of eleven he sailed the high seas, picking up every depraved behavior that an 18th century deckhand was willing to share. He was an insubordinate and disrespected member of the English Navy, twice charged with desertion. His active participation in the African slave trade and his horrific treatment of them was abhorrent. On top of all this, his complete and utter disregard for the God of the Bible, a love for which his mother desperately tried to instill in his childish mind before her untimely death, justly deserved a thunderous bolt of lightning hurled from the heights of heaven to devour his puny frame and dispatch him into the charred walls of the damned.