The World and Everything in It: March 17, 2025

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Good morning!

Can Mexico’s government sue Americans over cartel violence in Mexico, if so what does it mean?

FRANCISCO: Indeed, if Mexico is right, then every law enforcement organization in America has missed the largest criminal conspiracy in history operating right under their nose.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Also today the Monday Moneybeat, the stock market is reeling, can President Trump right the ship?

And later the WORLD History Book: today a slave trader reckons with his own mortality.

EDWARDS: … he put a very wavering faith in God…acknowledging his life had been a complete mess.

REICHARD: It’s Monday, March 17th, St. Patrick’s Day. This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

EICHER: And I’m Nick Eicher. Good morning!

REICHARD: Time for news. Here’s Kent Covington.

KENT COVINGTON, NEWS ANCHOR: Deadly storms » Thousands of Americans are still surveying the damage this morning, after violent storms rampaged across more than a half-dozen states killing at least 36 people.

One resident of rural Wayne County, Missouri said he was able to rescue his aunt after a tornado ripped through her house.

RESIDENT: She was trapped in that bedroom, only room standing left of this house. We got her out the window. Um, then we were, we were helping other people. We found a few bodies that was out in the field. Few, few deceased people.

Dozens of tornadoes reportedly touched down over the weekend from Louisiana, Tennessee to Illinois.

And blinding dust storms were blamed for 11 deaths after car crashes in Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma.

Trump and Putin to speak this week » President Trump and Vladimir Putin are expected to talk this week, as the Trump administration works to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine. That’s according to special envoy Steve Witkoff.

WITKOFF: They have a real relationship from the president's first term. They've talked already after the first visit that I had with President Putin. And I think this is going to be a very positive and constructive call between the two men, between the two presidents.

White House National Security Advisor Michael Waltz said Trump’s direct involvement is a necessary part of the process.

WALTZ: As both President Putin and Zelenskyy said on our first call just a few weeks ago, only President Trump could drive this to an end.

Steve Witkoff said he believes talks have already narrowed the gap between Ukraine and Russia considerably in terms of what each side requires in a ceasefire, and possible end to the war.

U.S. strike against Houthi rebels » The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen are vowing to ramp up their attacks, after U.S. airstrikes against Houthi targets over the weekend.

But the Trump administration says it’s determined to crush the terror groups ability to terrorize critical waterways.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio:

RUBIO:  The problem here is that this is a very important shipping lane, and in the last year and a half, the last 18 months, the Houthis have struck or attacked 174, uh, naval vessels of the United States, attacking the U. S. Navy directly 174 times, and 145 times they've attacked commercial shipping.

Rubio says the strikes will continue until the Houthis no longer are capable of “controlling” which ships go through those shipping lanes.

Judge blocks deportations » A federal judge temporarily blocked President Trump's executive order to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up the deportations of violent illegal immigrants, such as gang members.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, an Obama appointee, issued the order.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on Sunday slammed that decision:

LEAVITT:  We have judges in our judicial branch who are acting as activists, not real arbiters of the law.

But planes carrying hundreds of those illegal migrants to Central America were already in the air on Saturday when Boasberg issued his order.

The judge verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.

The State Department said the U.S. government just sent hundreds of dangerous gang members and leaders to El Salvador.

Macedonia nightclub fire » In North Macedonia, angry relatives waited outside of a hospital on Sunday after a fire tore through an overcrowded nightclub, killing 59 and injuring more than 150.

Officials said victims suffered burns, smoke inhalation, and injuries from a panicked crowd surge during a concert.

TOSKOVSKI: [Speaking Macedonian]

North Macedonian Interior Minister, Pance Toskovski said concert pyrotechnics sparked the blaze.

Authorities have detained at least 15 people after determining that the club exceeded its capacity and lacked a proper license.

SpaceX Dragon docks at ISS » NASA astronauts stuck aboard the International Space station just welcomed their newly arrived replacement.

AUDIO [Dragon capsule docks]: Dragon contact and soft capture complete. [beep]

Crew 10 docked at the space state Sunday in a SpaceX capsule, starting the process of bringing home marooned astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

WILLIAMS: It was a wonderful day. Great to see our friends arrive.

The four new astronauts are from the U.S., Japan, and Russia including NASA’s Anne McClain.

MCCLAIN: I cannot tell you the immense joy of our crew when we looked out the window and we saw the space station.

Williams and Wilmore will come back to earth in a few days on their own SpaceX capsule. The pair went up nine months ago in Boeing's first astronaut flight, expecting to stay just a week. But the Starliner had problems and NASA brought it back without them.

I'm Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Can Mexico’s government sue Americans over cartel violence in Mexico? That’s ahead on the Legal Docket … plus the Monday Moneybeat.

This is The World and Everything in It.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 17th day of March, 2025. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

Gun violence south of the border is staggering. In 2022 alone, Mexico recorded more than 30,000 homicides—most of them tied to cartel violence.

MONTAGE: This is the capital of Mexico’s Sinaloa state, a city turned battleground / in a cartel civil war. / While helicopters circled loudly overhead, amid a fresh surge in cartel violence / “never before have we seen so many people dead” / The Sinaloa cartel, once united, now fights itself after a sudden past struggle split the empire. / The violence follows the arrest of Sinaloa cartel co-founder Ismael Zambada along with the son of former kingpin / Joaquin Guzman, better known as El Chapo. / Now they’re in U.S. prisons and their sons are battling for control. It appears to be to the death.

EICHER: This is a gun battle that broke out near the Mexico-U.S. border. It’s also the sound of American-made weapons.

And that’s at the heart of another battle raging—a legal battle—before the highest court in the United States.

The government of Mexico is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court for help.

REICHARD: Mexico is arguing that because hundreds of thousands of firearms flood into its country every year—trafficked from the U-S—it’s entitled to that help.

But note the parties to this case:

ROBERTS: We'll hear argument this morning in Case 23-1141, Smith & Wesson Brands versus Estados Unidos Mexicanos.

The Mexican government is not suing gun smugglers. Not the cartels. Instead, it’s taking aim at major American gun makers—Smith & Wesson, Glock, Beretta, and more.

To make its case, Mexico leans on a legal concept called “proximate cause.” In simple terms, it argues that U.S. gun makers touch off a chain reaction—one that leads ultimately to cartel violence. And because their actions are so closely linked to the bloodshed, Mexico says, gunmakers should be held responsible.

EICHER: But the gunmakers say no way. Their defense? A 2005 federal law: the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. That law shields gun manufacturers from lawsuits when criminals misuse their products.

At the Supreme Court lawyer Noel Francisco spoke for Smith & Wesson and the others.

(As always, we do edit some but not all of these exchanges for time and clarity—while carefully retaining proper context.)

FRANSCISCO: Indeed, if Mexico is right, then every law enforcement organization in America has missed the largest criminal conspiracy in history operating right under their nose, and Budweiser is liable for every accident caused by underage drinkers since it knows that teenagers will buy beer, drive drunk, and crash.

REICHARD: Mexico’s attorney, Catherine Stetson, says this isn’t just about criminals misusing guns. She argues that U.S. gun makers are knowingly aiding and abetting illegal gun trafficking—helping smugglers sidestep federal firearms laws.

That led Justice Clarence Thomas to ask: Where is federal law enforcement in all this?

THOMAS: …you say in your complaint there is a violation but there’s been no finding of a violation. How do we know there is a violation?

STETSON: I think what the --what the district court would determine at summary judgment, if the evidence comes back and says, for example, these manufacturers simply had no idea what their distributors were doing…

EICHER: Stetson responded that it’s up to the lower courts to decide whether gun makers knowingly sell to bad actors.

Justice Thomas asked the gun makers’ attorney Francisco to trace the chain of custody. How exactly do these firearms move from manufacturers to criminals, in detail.

THOMAS: Would you just list the chain for our benefit?

FRANCISCO: Sure. It starts out with a licensed manufacturer, a manufacturer that the federal government says is allowed to make firearms. It then distributes its legal firearms to licensed distributors, distributors who the federal government says are allowed to distribute them. They then sell to licensed retailers, retailers that the federal government says are allowed to retail. Those retailers, some very small percentage of them, an unknown number but some small percentage of them, transfer those firearms illegally to straw purchasers. The straw purchaser then hands it over to the actual purchaser. You then have a smuggle across an international border, yet another violation of law.

…going on to explain that the smuggler then gives the guns to the cartels who are illegally possessing them in Mexico in defiance of Mexican law.

FRANCISCO: Then the Mexican cartels engage in murder and mayhem against the good people of Mexico, all of which in turn causes the Mexican government to have to spend money to respond to that murder and mayhem. With respect, there's not a single case in history that comes close to that.

REICHARD: That long, drawn-out answer? Intentional. It highlights just how far removed U.S. gun makers are from the crimes Mexico blames them for.

Proximate cause means a direct, unbroken chain of events leading to harm. But are the gun makers really that close to cartel violence?

Justice Samuel Alito cut to the chase with a question the average American might ask, in this exchange with Mexico’s attorney Stetson:

ALITO: Mexico says that U.S. gun manufacturers are contributing to illegal conduct in Mexico. There are Americans who think that Mexican government officials are contributing to a lot of illegal conduct here. So suppose that one of the 50 states sued the government of Mexico for aiding and abetting illegal conduct within the state's borders that causes the state to incur law enforcement costs, public welfare costs, other costs. Would your client be willing to litigate that case in the courts of the United States?

STETSON: So I can't and certainly, you know, don't --don't feel comfortable giving away things like sovereign immunity on behalf of the government of Mexico.

ALITO: I understand that. So the argument basically is it’s a one-way street.

EICHER: Another key piece of proximate cause is “foreseeability.”

In other words, was gun trafficking a predictable result of the gun makers’ actions?

That kicked off a debate over intent.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett pointed to a Supreme Court ruling from two years ago—often called the Twitter case. The justices decided that social media companies can’t be held liable for aiding and abetting terrorism just because terrorists used their platforms to recruit and fundraise. Even if the platforms knew it was happening.

REICHARD: So how does that logic apply here? Justice Barrett references two cases in this exchange with Stetson for Mexico:

BARRETT: Let's talk about Twitter. There was a specific rogue actor, ISIS, and there was a specific attack in France. And so the attempt was to draw the line between them, and we said it wasn't enough. In Direct Sales, there was a specific manufacturer, pharmaceutical company, selling to a specific doctor, causing specific harm. And Justice Alito asked you what specific red flag dealers there are. You haven't sued any of the retailers that were the most proximate cause of the harm, and you haven't identified them that I can tell in the complaint.

EICHER: Chief Justice John Roberts took a different approach with Francisco the gun makers' attorney. Listen to this exchange:

ROBERTS: Counsel, the complaint says that 2 percent of the guns manufactured in the United States find their way into Mexico, and I know you dispute that, but is there a number where your legal analysis might have to be altered? If it's 10 percent, if it's 20 percent? At some point, the proximate cause lines that you draw really can't bear the weight of the ultimate result.

FRANCISCO: So, Your Honor…. If we're talking about proximate cause, I don't think that the percentage would actually matter when you have a multitude of intervening independent crimes.

And Stetson for Mexico agreed that the numbers really aren’t the problem:

STETSON: --so up to 600,000 of defendants' guns are likely trafficked into Mexico every year. That's your 2 percent. But I think the issue is not so much whether it’s 2 or 10 or 70. It's do these manufacturers know who the rogue dealers are and what they're doing?

If that argument holds, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wanted to know—where does it stop? How far could this liability extend?

KAVANAUGH: …lots of sellers and manufacturers of ordinary products know that they're going to be misused by some subset of people? They know that to a certainty, that it's going to be pharmaceuticals, cars, what --you can name lots of products. So that's a real concern, I think, for me about accepting your theory of aiding-and-abetting liability. Be interested in your reactions.

STETSON:  This case is --marches through in detail allegations taken as true at this stage that these manufacturers know that they are selling a dangerous product to specific rogue dealers who are --who are selling to straw purchasers for the cartels across the country.

Mexico is also seeking a massive payout—$10 billion in damages.

But Francisco fires back: the cost of law enforcement and crime prevention? That’s Mexico’s responsibility.

Gun makers warn that if Mexico wins, the floodgates fly open. Auto companies, alcohol manufacturers, even social media platforms—all could face lawsuits over how their products are misused.

On the other side, gun control advocates are backing Mexico, arguing that the relevant law here, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, goes too far and shouldn’t grant absolute immunity.

REICHARD: The conservative justices seemed to lean Smith & Wesson’s way, hesitant to stretch proximate cause that far. Surprisingly, even some liberal justices appeared to agree.

If the gunmakers win—and I think they will—it’ll slam the door on lawsuits like this in the future.

But a win for Mexico? That would reshape corporate liability in a big way—expanding it far beyond gun makers.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket!

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It:

The Monday Moneybeat.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Time now to talk business, markets, and the economy with financial analyst and adviser David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm The Bahnsen Group. He is here now. David, good morning.

DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning, Nick, good to be with you.

EICHER: David, I know you’ve observed a shift in the way investors are responding to President Trump. Specifically, his economic moves in the first months of his second term compared to his performance in his first term. Namely, markets seem less convinced now that the president is committed to pro-growth policies. Would you walk through what you think is causing investors to question that?

BAHNSEN:  Well, the argument I make is there’s two pieces going on. One is tactical—that the sequence of how they went about doing it in the first term versus now is categorically different: scoring and realizing significant gains first in certain elements of your economic agenda enables you to move to your riskier and perhaps more volatile and even controversial economic agenda item second.

That is what was done in the first term.

People cannot understate the significance of the 2017 tax cuts passing into law. We’re talking about all these Trump tax cuts that are expiring.

The business tax cuts are not expiring. The largest reduction of corporate income tax from a 35%, very non-competitive rate to 21%. That was done and then after a huge year of economic growth in 2017, the achievement of the tax reform, significant victories in both energy policy and deregulation, then moved in the second year to some of the tariff-oriented issues, all of which I basically disagreed with then, too.

But the point was the expression that he was playing with house money. There was already banked, you know, the political victory, but also economic optimism baked in the cake. This time, we are essentially doing it in the reverse order. What he’s trying to do is much more significant on the tariff front.

You know, there were really very little actual tariffs that happened before. There were tons of exceptions. You know, China was able to wait a lot of this stuff out.

And now he’s talking about things that just the market doesn’t know what he’s referring to. What exactly is our policy for Canada? What are we trying to get out of it? Is it a different trade deal? Is it more cooperation at the border? Do we really think Canada is our problem with fentanyl?

Or is there just this fundamental desire to not buy things from other countries anymore and to disincentivize that type of trade?

The market’s dealing with all that uncertainty and not doing it with a major tax package already passed, not doing it with a clear success under the belt of DOGE. So I think that the sequence is different and the substance is different.

EICHER: And you’re measuring that, specifically, by the swoon in the markets, the Nasdaq is down 7% since inauguration day, the Dow by almost that much, and the S&P 500 down 2-1/2% in just a few short weeks.

BAHNSEN: That’s right, and there’s a difference in how it gets perceived in the presidency when, let’s say, you have a 10% drop after you already had a 25% increase. In 2018, the stock market was down 5%. It had gone down more in the middle of the year, but never did it come close to going down what it had gone up the year before to start off with essentially this kind of drawdown is very different.

Now, if this drawdown in the market had happened without this tariff war, just because the market was expensive, it was due for a correction. There were other Fed issues or geopolitical issues that caused a market drop. I don’t think that would be the same category.

Right now, nobody really has anything else to blame for the market drop other than the tariff war, because that’s the only factor that has really changed things. Then the reversal of the optimism that was there after the election, President Trump saw this huge surge in optimism around tax reform, around deregulation, around energy policy. These are the categories I refer to as the supply-side, Reagan categories, that moved markets higher, moved economic optimism higher.

All of that has reversed and reversed substantially, and not just in the stock market.

That’s why there’s line about, “Oh, Wall Street and the globalists are going to have to take their licks.” Well, tell that to the NFIB (National Federation of Independent Businesses) small-business optimism, which is right now at the highest uncertainty level it’s ever been.

Those are American mom-and-pop small businesses. This is not a big business versus a small business thing. This is the whole economy, the real economy.

EICHER: In your Dividend Café writing this weekend, you sent me to the reference library to look up and understand a financial term I’m not terribly familiar with, the “put”—the “p-u-t”—and so I’ll explain it here, that it’s essentially insurance against a market downturn … that it protects investors from declines in asset prices. So you used the concept metaphorically to refer to a “Trump put”—suggesting there’s a threshold of market pain that would prompt the president to shift back to policies that are more market-friendly. How close do you think we are to discovering what that is?

BAHNSEN: Well, my point is that I don’t think you want to wait till you get to that place that the administration is going to be very wise to reverse course before you get there. You don’t know what their level is until you arrive there.

There is absolutely a level at which it’ll be too late that you could reverse policy and therefore maybe help market prices, but the economic damage will be baked in and very likely recessionary.

It’s highly unlikely that we get to a bear market in the stock market and avoid a recession. So, you could argue that just to use that 20% threshold of a drop in the stock market, which is what we traditionally call a bear market, but that is generally the level at which a presidency can be pretty cooked.

It simply doesn’t happen much other than a wartime FDR-type situation in the midst of the Great Depression that you have a bear market and a presidency gets resolved. Richard Nixon in the 1970s, and obviously we know about Bush Junior in the 2000s. You have certain situations where you could argue a bear market was not a given president’s fault, but that’s a tough case to make, and by the way, the same is true for a recession.

I don’t know of a case where a politician has said, “well, we had to go—” what was the word Secretary Bessent used last week? “Detox?” Jimmy Carter referred to “malaise.” We still talk about it now—50 years later.

Maybe sometimes there’s merit in it, but it doesn’t matter. The American people just simply don’t like short term pain and they’re never going to. The economy is way too big, way too complex.

It is so easy to say, if I wanted more economic malaise and detox and pain, we could have just stuck with the other president who was giving it to us. At least the stock market was up.

I’m not saying that’s fair. I’m not saying it’s the way people should think. I am most definitely saying people will think that way.

You see right now a significant reversal in the approval ratings of President Trump—specific to the economy. You do not see a reversal in approval ratings, about immigration, about the border. Most people rightly believe he’s doing good things there and the things he promised he would do.

But I don’t believe you’re going to make the case that, “well, yes, we’re having some tough times in the stock market, but it’s because we’re bringing a bunch of jobs back to America.” Jobs are going to go down, not up, with a trade war. The economy is going to go down, not up, with a trade war. That’s just a fact.

This is a difficult time politically, but really my major point is not political. If I were the president, I would not care for political advice from me. He’s gotten himself elected twice and I certainly haven’t.

So the political side here is not my concern, Nick. It’s the economic side.

I am positive that at both a small business and big business level, we are currently enduring significant uncertainty that is going to create problems.

EICHER: David Bahnsen, founder, managing partner, and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group. David writes at dividendcafe.com and regularly for WORLD Opinions. David, thanks! Have a great week!

BAHNSEN: Thanks so much, Nick.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Monday, March 17th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Up next, the WORLD History Book, where we travel back to this week in the year 17-48.

A violent storm rages in the Atlantic Ocean, and John Newton, just 23 years old, believes he’s about to die.

EICHER: Before this moment, Newton was no saint.

He’d made up songs to entertain his crewmates, but not the kind you’d find in the hymnal.

Newton’s known as a profane man, contemptuous of authority.

REICHARD: And Newton has no idea that someday people all around the world will sing his songs about the grace of God. Here’s WORLD correspondent Caleb Welde.

SOUND: [CREAKING/SEA STORM]

CALEB WELDE: John Newton’s cabin is filling with water. It’s March 21st, 1748. Newton is aboard the British merchant vessel Greyhound. He and another man rush up to the deck when the Captain calls to Newton to bring a knife with him. Newton turns around while the other man continues up to the deck. The man is immediately swept overboard.

At three a.m. Newton is assigned to a pump. Each time the ship descends into the sea, he believes it won’t come back up. The ship’s captain tells Newton about once an hour that he believes Newton is the sole cause of the storm. And that if they threw him overboard, maybe the rest of them would be saved.

Newton pumps nine hours to exhaustion. He’s allowed to return to his bed for an hour. Then he’s assigned to work the helm of the ship.

Tied to the helm Newton reflects on his life.

The night before the storm hit, he’d found a book. Thomas à Kempis “Imitation of Christ.” He wonders:, “What if those things are true?” but pushes the thought aside thinking there’s no way God could forgive him.

His mother had been very godly but died when Newton was seven. She’d read him Bible stories and she loved the hymns of Issac Watts. His father remarried within weeks. He’s a stern and well-known merchant ship captain.

At eleven, Newton’s father put him to work on one of his ships. But then he was forcefully conscripted or “press-ganged” onto a Royal Navy vessel. Here, he found a book that fit well with his crewmates. “The Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times.” The book gave him permission to choose his own moral code.

EDWARDS: Now it was a book that led his mind well away from any faith in God.

Brian Edwards is a Newton Biographer.

EDWARDS: And it helped him on his downhill spiral, morally and philosophically, because it now gave him the reasons why he was not a Christian.

Newton tries to desert his warship but is caught almost immediately. He’s returned to the ship and flogged.

AITKEN: He thought of suicide. He thought of killing his captain, and the ship sailed.

Jonathan Aitken is author of “From Disgrace to Amazing Grace.”

Newton’s captain was fed up by this point, so he traded Newton onto a merchant ship. From here, Newton was taken to the coast of Africa where a human slave trade thrived. Here, Newton himself was put in chains and treated like a slave for a while.

But then a different white slaver bought him and he treated Newton much better. Things were looking up and Newton had no plans to return to England. It was shocking when he got word the captain of a passing ship was asking about him!?

Newton’s father had paid a captain to search for Newton and he’d actually found him.

EDWARDS: There were only two things that enticed him back home. One was the story that Newton had inherited quite a small fortune, and if he were to come back, he could enjoy it. But the other thing attracted him was the thought of Mary.

Newton had met Mary when he was fourteen and, in his own words, immediately fell in love. He was excited about the fortune because it’d give him enough money to marry Mary. He says he thought about her every day. Newton boarded the Greyhound…where he now finds himself tied to the helm of his rescue ship.

EDWARDS: He found himself condemned by the verses he knew. And it was at that time that, in his own words, God reached down and plucked him out of the depths and he put a very wavering faith in God, acknowledging that his life had been a complete mess and he had ruined all that God had given him and spoiled the treasure that his mother had taught him.

In Newton’s words, “I began to think of Jesus, whom I had so often derided. I recollected the particulars of his life and of his death—a death for sins not His own, but, as I remembered, for the sake of those who in their distress should put their trust in Him.”

Two weeks later and almost out of food, the ship is able to limp into a port off the Irish coast. Newton goes to the nearest church to thank God for saving him. Then, he looks up Mary. She gives him a little hope but no certainty.

And as far as the small fortune he’d been told about…totally fabricated. He spends the next six years working his way up to captain moving slaves and “other cargo” across the Atlantic.

AITKEN: The general view of England, including Christian England, was that the slave trade was a respectable economic form of activity.

He visits Mary in between voyages and the two do get married in 1750.

EDWARDS: There wasn't the media. Nobody was going out there taking films of slaves and the way they were treated and the cruelty and bestiality of it all. And so people didn't know.

But Newton… does know. He’s reading Christian books aboard these slave ships, and the Bible.

EDWARDS: He didn't like what he was doing. His conscience was stirring.

Then, God says, “Enough.” Newton has a seizure preparing for his next voyage.

AITKEN: And that was gave John Newton a great fright, and also gave the owner of the ship a great fright, because you couldn't have a captain who was liable to suddenly collapse through a seizure.

Newton and the owner of the ship agreed, his career is over. Newton is twenty-nine.

He lives another five decades. Newton becomes a pastor for four of those five decades. He writes almost three-hundred hymns. He’s friends with William Wilberforce and plays an instrumental part in ending the slave trade revealing its horrors. Newton’s letters reveal a particular compassion for people. He never got over God’s grace to him.

AMAZING GRACE: ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear. And grace, my fears relieved.

EDWARDS: He continually comes back to the word grace, which for John Newton, meant God's undeserved mercy in forgiving him through the merits of Jesus Christ and because of nothing he himself had done.

Audio of the John Newton biographers comes from the Vision Video documentary John Newton. For WORLD, I’m Caleb Welde.

AMAZING GRACE: Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…

NICK EICHER, HOST: Tomorrow: A stunning admission—a federal agency acknowledges that American medicine took a wrong turn in treating minors for gender identity problems. But is course correction even possible? And—one more rodeo. That and more tomorrow. 

I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

The World and Everything in It comes to you from WORLD Radio. WORLD’s mission is Biblically objective journalism that informs, educates, and inspires.

The Psalmist writes: “May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, ‘God is great!’” —Psalm 70:4

Go now in grace and peace.

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