How many Gods are there?

How many Gods are there? There is only one – the living and true God.

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Deut 6:4-5

William Carey went as a missionary to preach the gospel of the grace of the one true and living God to people who believed in many different gods.

William Carey • ‘I can plod’ • ‘Expect great things from God! Attempt great things for God!’

At the age of 14 William Carey left school and became a shoe repairer.

Clarke Nichols’ house where Carey was an apprentice shoe maker with John Warr http://www.thecareyexperience.co.uk

William became a Christian through the witness of another shoe repairer who worked alongside him – John Warr. This young man spoke to William of how he had been convinced that he was a sinner needing to be rescued and how he had put his trust in Jesus and found peace in him. • William followed John’s example and became a Christian himself – trusting only in Jesus for the forgiveness of his sins.

William had a remarkable gift for languages, while he was 14 he taught himself Latin and shortly afterwards learned Greek off a friend. Loremipsumdolor sit amet, consecteturadipisicingelit, sed do eiusmodtemporincididuntutlabore et dolore magna aliqua. Χθονὸς μὲν ἐς τηλουρὸν ἥκομεν πέδον,Σκύθην ἐς οἷμον, ἄβατον εἰς ἐρημίαν.Ἥφαιστε, σοὶ δὲ χρὴ μέλειν ἐπιστολὰςἅς σοι πατὴρ ἐφεῖτο, τόνδε πρὸς πέτραις Greek Latin

At the Age of 19 William married Dorothy Plackett. William and Dorothy’s first home http://www.thecareyexperience.co.uk

By the age of 20 William had taught himself Hebrew, Italian, Dutch and French! • He would often read while repairing shoes at his work bench. An ancient Hebrew manuscript

William read Captain Cook’s journals which fuelled his interest and concern for people unreached by the gospel. HMS Endeavour Cook’s map of Newfoundland Captain James Cook

A great commission • William Carey became increasingly concerned that the Christians of his own day were not taking seriously Christ’s great commission to his church: Go into all the world and make disciples of every nation baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

At the age of 31 William published a small booklet arguing for the need to attempt new Christian mission. http://www.thecareyexperience.co.uk

The ‘Deathless Sermon’ Enlarge the place of your tent,And let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings;Do not spare;Lengthen your cords,And strengthen your stakes.3 For you shall expand to the right and to the left,And your descendants will inherit the nations,And make the desolate cities inhabited. (Isaiah 54:2-3)

The ‘Deathless Sermon’ The ‘Deathless sermon’ had just two points: 1. Expect great things from God, and 2. Attempt great things for God.

To india! • Eventually this sermon resulted in the foundation of a new missionary society and William Carey being sent as a missionary to India eventually settling in Serampore in North East India.

The first convert • The Careyshad to wait until their 7th year in India for their first convert. • Krishna Pal was a carpenter and he had slipped while getting out of a swimming pool and broken his arm. He went to the missionaries because they had a doctor with them.

Krishna pal • Krishna Pal was impressed with the kindness of the missionaries – they treated his arm and told him about the Bible and the coming of Jesus. Krishna Pal began coming to see the missionaries regularly.

Krishna Pal was searching for God- the worship of many gods in the Hindu religion had not satisfied him or been a help to him. • Eventually Krishna was converted and was baptised in the River Ganges. • Joshua Marshman’s comment was: ‘He was only one but a continent was coming behind him!’

A translation of one of Krishna Pal’s hymns: O thou, my soul, forget no moreThe friend who all thy misery bore;Let every idol be forgot,But, O my soul, forget Him not. Jesus for thou a body takes,Thy guilt assumes, thy fetters breaks,Discharging all thy dreadful debt;And canst thou e’er such love forget? Renounce thy works and ways, with grief,And fly to this most sure relief;Nor Him forget, who left His throne,And for thy life gave up His own. • Infinite truth and mercy shine,In Him, and He Himself is thine:And canst thou, then, with sin beset,Such charms, such matchless charms, forget? • Ah! no—till life itself depart,His name shall cheer and warm my heart;And lisping this, from earth I’ll rise;And join the chorus of the skies. • Ah! no—when all things else expire,And perish in the general fire,This name all others shall survive,And through eternity shall live.

For us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live. (1 Cor 8:6)

How many Gods are there?