He … Changed the World
An uneducated shoe maker, William Carey, changed the world.
From the time of Jesus until the year 1800, two-thirds of the world had not heard of Jesus Christ. Around 1800 that began to change. Today two-thirds of the world has heard of the Lord Jesus1 (of course, a third still has not heard, so there is a lot of work left to do).
What happened around 1800?
A small pamphlet was published entitled, An Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. This pamphlet was published in 1792 by a self-educated English shoe cobbler, William Carey. Carey became the “Father of Modern Missions” by going to India as a missionary, pioneering almost every ministry done on the mission field today.
Carey became the following in India: a Bible translator, translating or publishing the Bible in 40 different Indian languages; a botanist, frequently lecturing on science; an engineer, bringing the steam engine and paper production to India; a businessman, introducing the idea of Savings Banks to India; a medical student campaigning for the treatment of leprosy; a printer, becoming the father of print technology in India; a journalist, establishing the first newspaper ever printed in any oriental language; an agronomist, founding the Agri-Horticultural Society in the 1820’s; a literature expert, being the first to translate and publish Indian classics, transforming the Bengali language from a language of the uneducated into a language of the educated; a musician, writing gospel ballads in the Bengali language; a scholar, authoring the first Sanskrit dictionary; a professor of Bengali, Sanskrit, and Marathi (Indian languages) at the Fort William College in Calcutta; an educator, starting dozens of schools for Indian children and the first college in Asia, at Serampore; a librarian, pioneering the idea of lending libraries in India; a forest ranger, becoming the first man in India to