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Click on the links or images below to purchase John's autobiography.
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Review of The Story of my Life, Memories of a Christian
Adventurer:
The Story of my Life,
Memories of a Christian Adventurer (“The Story”) reads like a great
fictional book, but it is not fiction. It is the true story of a remarkable
individual, whose quest for adventure and travel is blended with his greater
love – his friendship with God.
Imagine combining the traits of a Crocodile Dundee with that
of an evangelist into the same person. Such a man was John Hitchcock.
In his biography John tells his story, or rather stories which combine into his one big
unique story. Each story is neatly packaged into single successive chapters.
The reading of one chapter leaves the reader with a sense of awe and a desire
to read the next. What begins as relaxed reading soon accelerates into a rush
to see what happens next.
John’s story has as a backdrop of not only the bustling city
life of the greater Johannesburg of the 1940s and 50s, but also of the wild
bush lands of outback Africa. John’s story starts as a little boy living in the
shadows of the gigantic sand heaps of Johannesburg’s mining industry.
It is here where he inherits a severe speech impediment alalia syllabaris, (stuttering) after
suffering from meningitis. John shares his difficulty trying to relate to his
childhood peers, all the time inhibited by his stammering, lisping tongue. The reader feels his pain and is
reminded of the difficulties that such and other individuals with other
handicaps experience.
Then John experiences what some may describe as a supernatural
encounter. In a blissful moment, which he describes as the baptism in the Holy Spirit, John encounters that mysterious
experience of glossolalia – ecstatic
speech – the speaking in other tongues.
John describes his personal and private spiritual rebirth – on
his knees by the radio, as he listens to the world renowned evangelist Billy
Graham and the singing of George Beverly Shea.
But before all of this there was John’s love for sports. In
spite of his stutter, or perhaps because of it, John excels in his sports
activities. He excels in almost everything he tries – rugby, boxing, wrestling
– even once engaging the Natal provincial champion.
John reminisces on his love for the wild, for nature and for
animals. Story after story captivates the reader’s attention. The reader will
smile when John’s childhood pet monkey Choppy
Adams leaps into the story and then later Bossie the mongoose. And the story about the baboon in one of
John’s big game hunting trips is hilarious. And many more… But not all is
humor. Big game hunting is dangerous.
If cats have nine lives, John has ninety-nine. While others
wisely avoid it, John seems to revel walking as close to the edge of life as
possible. Page after page is filled with some nail biting accounts of sharks
and lions, buffalo and elephants, and the reader is amazed that John could have
somehow escaped death so many times.
Some of these hair-raising encounters become blended with
John’s faith and friendship with God.
For example, John becomes infected with an incurable disease during one
of his crocodile hunting expeditions. Yet faith in God causes him to triumph and
medical technology proves that he is in fact cured. While it is inexplicable to
medical science, John gives God the credit.
While reading The Story
the reader begins to catch a glimpse of the passions hidden in the soul of the
man. John seems to be passionate about sports, hunting and travel. But these
are but natural parallels of a deeper passion – his love for his God and the
Gospel.
Though his speech remained impeded by a stutter in his
everyday life, his tongue was released to speak every time the anointing – that influence of the Holy Spirit came upon him.
What seems to be a stark contradiction becomes a fresh miracle every time he
opens his mouth to speak God’s Word. The
stutterer becomes the anointed preacher.
John recounts how he and his wife and children travel by air
and land to spread the Message they believe in the most, and the adventure
continues. When he mounts the public platform, the rugged adventurer is transformed
into a well groomed clergyman, but different. With the same passion he displays
in everyday life, the message of the old rugged cross and the power of the
Spirit that had freed him flows from his lips.
The Story of My Life – Memories of a Christian Adventurer will
not only benefit you with good entertaining reading, but perhaps spark within
you that same fire of life and of God: your story, your life, your adventure…
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