| February
2010 - Vol. 37
.
Witnesses
in the Jungle
Jim
Elliot, Nate Saint, & Fellow Missionaries
by
Jeanne Kun
In January 1956 the world was shocked to hear that a primitive tribe
in the rain forest of Ecuador had killed five American missionaries. Jim
Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, and Roger Youderian had been
working at various jungle mission stations among the Quichua and Jivaro
Indians for several years. The men, Protestant missionaries in their twenties
and thirties, had been accompanied by their wives. Each couple was eager
to share the message of the gospel with those who had never heard it. But,
above all, they were dedicated to the Lord himself and sought to be obedient
to him in all things.
Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, and
Jim Elliot
Jim Elliot and his friends had hoped and prayed to be able to make contact
with an isolated and hostile people known by other tribes as the Aucas
(“savages” in Quichua) because of their fierce infighting and hatred for
outsiders. With his skill as a pilot for the Missionary Aviation Fellowship,
Nate Saint had made it possible for the men to fly over the Auca settlements
deep into the jungle and drop such gifts as cloth, axes, and cooking pots
to assure them that their intentions were friendly and to win their trust.
The Aucas reciprocated, tying native gifts –
a
parrot, a headband of woven feathers, manioc, and bananas –
onto
the plane’s drop-line.
Nate Saint next to his plane
with camping gear
When the mission team landed on the banks of the Curaray River a few
miles from the Auca village and set up camp, their hopes were rewarded:
Three Aucas came out of the jungle and spent the day at the camp trying
to communicate with the men, delightedly taking a ride in the plane, and
curiously inspecting the missionaries’ equipment.
Two days later, on January 8, 1956, as Nate flew over the camp, he saw
a group of Aucas headed toward it through the jungle. He landed near the
campsite on the river bank, shouted the news “They’re on their way!” to
Jim, Roger, Pete, and Ed, and by radio notified Marj Saint at the mission
base of the hoped-for meeting. The next designated radio contact with their
wives was never made.
widows listen to the report
of their husbands fate
The following morning, one of Nate’s co-workers from the Missionary
Aviation Fellowship flew over the site in search of the men and located
the plane. All of its fabric had been stripped. Later a body was sighted,
floating face down in the river, and then another. An armed expedition
made up of the missionaries’ colleagues, military personnel, and Quichuas
set off on foot, hoping to find the other men still alive somewhere in
the rain forest. A few days later, the other bodies, speared and sprawled
in the sand and muddy river water, were discovered by helicopter. The ground
party recovered four of the bodies and buried them on the banks of the
Curaray. The body of the fifth missionary had been identified earlier by
an advance party of Quichuas, but was washed away in a storm.
In the preface of Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament
of Jim Elliot, first published in 1958, Elisabeth Elliot wrote:
| “Jim’s aim was to know God. His course, obedience –
the only course that could lead to the fulfillment of his aim. His
end was what some would call an extraordinary death, although in facing
death he had quietly pointed out that many have died because of obedience
to God. He and the other men with whom he died were hailed as heroes, ‘martyrs.’
I do no approve. Nor would they have approved.
“Is the distinction between living for Christ and dying for him, after
all, so great? Is not the second the logical conclusion of the first? Furthermore,
to live for God is to die, ‘daily,’ as the apostle Paul put it. It is to
lose everything that we may gain Christ. It is in thus laying down our
lives that we find them.
“Those who want to know him [Christ] must walk the same path with him.
These are the ‘martyrs’ in the scriptural sense of the word, which means
simply ‘witnesses.’ In life, as well as in death, we are called to be ‘witnesses’
–
to
‘bear the stamp of Christ.’
“I believe that Jim Elliot was one of these. His letters and journals
are the tangible ground for my belief. They are not mine to withhold. They
are a part of the human story, the story of a man in his relations to the
Almighty. They are facts.” |
Less than three years after the five men’s deaths, Elisabeth Elliot and
Rachel Saint, Nate’s sister, made contact with the Aucas –
who
in their own language called themselves Huaorani or “the people”
–
through
the help of an Huaorani woman who had earlier fled from her tribe. The
Huaorani accepted the two women and Elisabeth’s daughter to live among
them because they wondered why the missionaries had let themselves be killed
rather than shoot any of their attackers. Then they heard the full story
of how the men had come to tell them of Jesus, who “freely allowed his
own death to benefit all people.
Steve Saint continues to visit
the tribe regularly
Rachel spent more than thirty years working among the Huaorani. Steve,
Nate Saint’s son, often visited his Aunt Rachel and grew up knowing the
men who learned to “walk on God’s trail” after they had killed his father.
In an unbelievable expression of reconciliation, Steve Saint, Nate’s
son, was baptized by two of the men who murdered his father, in the very
river where his father died. Steve Saint has worked as a missionary in
West Africa, Central America and South America.
At the request of the Waodani elders, he returned to the Amazon in 1995
along with his wife and children to live among the tribe for several months.
While working with the Huaorani to build an airstrip in the jungle, Steve
Saint spoke with Gikita, the leader of the attack. Then eighty years old,
Gikita was eager to “go to heaven and live peacefully with the five men
who came to tell him about Wangongi, creator God.”
Jeanne Kun is a noted author
and a senior womens' leader in the Word
of Life Community, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
This article is excerpted
from the book, Even
Unto Death: Wisdom from Modern Martyrs, edited by Jeanne Kun, The
Word Among Us Press, © 2002. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
The book can be ordered from WAU
Press.
Recommended reading:
Shadow
of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot, by Elisabeth
Elliot, 1958
End
of the Spear, by Steve Saint, Tyndale House Publishers (15 May 2006)
Recommended viewing:
Testimony
by Steve Saint, End of the Spear, YouTube video
Beyond
the Gates of Splendor, story of Jim Elliot and missionary companions,
YouTube video |
team on
the banks of the Curaray River
From Jim
Elliot’s journal:
He
is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. (1949)
God,
I pray Thee, light these sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume
my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one,
like you, Lord Jesus. (1948)
Father,
take my life, yea, my blood if Thou wilt, and consume it with Thine enveloping
fire. I would not save it, for it is not mine to save. Have it Lord, have
it all. Pour out my life as an oblation for the world. Blood is only of
value as it flows before Thine altar. (1948)
Gave
myself for Auca work more definitely than ever, asking for spiritual valor,
plain and miraculous guidance. . . .” (May 1952)
Jim Elliot
in the Curaray River surveys the jungle
A
hymn written by Jim Elliot in Quichua, describing what happens when a man
dies, using a simile from Ecclesiastes 11:3 which was simple and understandable
to the Indians:
“If
a man dies, he falls like a tree.
Wherever
he falls, there he lies.
If
he is not a believer, he goes to the fire-lake.
“But
on the other hand, a believer,
If
death overtakes him,
Will
not fall, rather will rise
That
very moment, to God’s house.”
Nate
Saint’s description of his work serving pioneering missionaries through
aviation:
Their
call of God is to the region beyond the ends of civilization’s roads—where
there is no other form of transportation. They have probed the frontiers
to the limit of physical capacity and prayed for a means of reaching regions
beyond—a land of witch doctors and evil spirits—a land where the woman
has no soul; she’s just a beast of burden—a land where there’s no word
for love in their vocabulary—no word to express the love of a father for
his son. In order to reach these people for whom Christ died, pioneer missionaries
slug it out on the jungle trails day after day, sometimes for weeks, often
in mud up to their knees, while up above them the towering tropical trees
push upward in a never-ending struggle for light.
It
is our task to lift these missionaries up off those rigorous, life-consuming,
and morale-breaking jungle trails—lift them up to where five minutes in
a plane equals twenty-four hours on foot. The reason for all this is not
a matter of bringing comfort to the missionaries. They don’t go to the
steaming, tropical jungles looking for comfort in the first place. It’s
a matter of gaining precious time, of redeeming days and weeks, months
and even years that can be spent in giving the Word of Life to primitive
people.
May
the time never come when mankind no longer hears the soft footsteps of
the herald angel, or his cheering words that penetrate the soul. Should
such a time come all will be lost. Then indeed we shall be living in bankruptcy
and hope will die in our hearts.
Nate
Saint’s description of the first gift drop made to the Aucas:
We
continued circling until the gift was drifting in a small lazy circle below
us, ribbons fluttering nicely. Finally the gift appeared to be pretty close
to the trees below. Once I believe the ribbons dragged across a tree and
hung up momentarily. We held our breath while the kettle lowered toward
the earth. It hit about two or three feet from the water directly in line
with the path to the house. Finally the line was free and there was our
messenger of good will, love and faith two thousand feet below on the sandbar.
In a sense we had delivered the first gospel message by sign language to
a people who are a quarter of a mile away vertically . . . fifty miles
away horizontally . . . and continents and wide seas away psychologically.
From
Jim Elliot’s last letter to his parents, written on December 28, 1955:
By
the time this reaches you, Ed [McCully] and Pete [Fleming] and I and another
fellow [Roger Youderian] will have attempted with Nate a contact with the
Aucas. We have prayed for this and prepared for several months, keeping
the whole thing secret (not even our nearby missionary friends know of
it yet). Some time ago on survey flights Nate located two groups of their
houses, and ever since that time we have made weekly friendship flights,
dropping gifts and shouting phrases from a loud speaker in their language,
which we got from a woman in Ila. Nate has used his drop-cord system to
land things right at their doorstep and we have received several gifts
back from them, pets and food and things they make tied onto this cord.
Our plan is to go downriver and land on a beach we have surveyed not far
from their place, build a tree house which I have prefabricated with our
power-saw here, then invite them over by calling to them from the plane.
The contact is planned for Friday or Saturday, January 6 or 7. We may have
to wait longer. I don’t have to remind you that these are completely naked
savages (I saw the first sign of clothes last week—a G-string), who have
never had any contact with white men other than killing. They do not have
fire except what they make from rubbing sticks together on moss. They use
bark cloth for carrying their babies, sleep in hammocks, steal machetes
and axes when they kill our Indians. They have no word for God in their
language, only for devils and spirits. I know you will pray. Our orders
are “the gospel to every creature.”
—Your
loving son and brother, Jim
From
a letter written by Elisabeth Elliot to her parents on January 11, 1956,
while the five wives were waiting for news of the fate of their husbands:
I want
you to know that your prayers are being answered moment by moment as regards
me—I am ever so conscious of the everlasting arms. As yet we know only
that two bodies have been sighted from the air but not identified.
Jim
was confident, as was I, of God’s leading. There are no regrets.
Nothing
was more burning in his heart than that Christ should be named among the
Aucas. By life or death, oh, may God get glory to himself.
Pray
that whatever the outcome I may learn the lessons needful. I want to serve
the Lord in the future, so pray for his continued grace and guidance. I
have no idea what I will do if Jim is dead, but the Lord knows and I am
at rest.
We
hope for final word tomorrow and trust our loving Father who never wastes
anything. All my love,
Betty
Selection
of quotes from
Shadow
of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot, by Elizabeth
Elliot. Copyright 1985 by Elizabeth Elliot (HarperCollins Publishers Inc.)
Jungle
Pilot: The Life and Witness of Nate Saint, by Russel T. Hitt. Copyright
1959 by The Fields, Inc. (HarperCollins Publishers Inc)
|
