Some people thought he was a nut. He was just a shoemaker, but he never sat at his cobbler’s bench without a book in front of him to study, and by 21-years-of-age, he had mastered Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

While reading the Last Voyage of Captain Cook, Carey heard God’s missionary call. He wrote, “If it be the duty of all men to believe the Gospel…then it be the duty of those who are entrusted with the Gospel to endeavor to make it known among all nations.” And Carey sobbed out, “Here I am, send me!”

With God’s help, William Carey went to India to serve as the first Christian missionary in the Modern Era. And because one impoverished shoemaker followed his God-given passion, large parts of the world that had little or no access to the Gospel have large populations of people today who confess Christ as Lord.

This shoemaker also inspired a generation of men and women—the likes of Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, and David Livingston—to take up the cause of missions as well.

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