The Turning Point

Born the son of a New England pastor, Adoniram Judson was a brilliant student who rejected his parents' faith during college, embracing the skepticism and deism of his day. However, God broke through his pride in a dramatic way.

While staying at a country inn, Judson spent the night listening to the terrible, agonizing groans of a dying man in the next room. The next morning, he asked the innkeeper who the man was. To his absolute shock, it was his closest college friend—the very young man who had led him into skepticism. Facing the terrifying reality of eternity without God, Judson fell to his knees, repented, and consecrated his life entirely to the service of Jesus Christ.

The Sacrifice for the Scriptures

In 1812, Judson and his wife, Ann, sailed for the East as America's very first foreign missionaries. They eventually landed in Burma, a land deeply hostile to the Gospel.

For the first six years, they labored without a single convert. Judson understood that if the Burmese people were to ever know God, they needed the authority of the Scriptures in their own tongue. Day after day, he poured over the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts, meticulously translating them into the complex Burmese language.

Imprisonment and the Iron Cage

When war broke out in 1824, Judson was falsely accused of being a spy. He was arrested, bound in heavy fetters, and thrown into the infamous death prison of Ava. For 17 agonizing months, he suffered in an iron cage, enduring starvation, brutal heat, and horrific disease.

Through it all, his greatest concern was not his life, but his translation of the Bible. To keep the precious, incomplete manuscript safe from prison guards and the elements, his faithful wife stitched the papers inside a hard, dirty cotton pillow, which Judson slept on every night in his cell.

A Living Legacy

Though Judson survived the war, the physical toll claimed the lives of his beloved wife and children. Left alone in the jungles of Burma, he did not abandon his post or doubt his Lord. He completed the Burmese translation of the entire Bible in 1834, followed by a definitive Burmese dictionary.

When Judson died at sea in 1850, he left behind over 7,000 Burmese believers and a completely faithful, accurate translation of the written Word of God. His life stands as an enduring monument to what God can achieve through a soul completely submitted to the truth of Scripture.