During this special 70th anniversary month, we are remembering the death of the five American missionaries, including Jim Elliot, speared to death by the Waoroni tribe in Ecuador on January 8, 1956. This week we are featuring the redemptive aftermath from Elisabeth’s book, “Through Gates of Splendor”.
In the kitchen we sat quietly as the reports were finished, fingering the watches and wedding rings that had been brought back, trying for the hundredth time to picture the scene. Which of the men watched the others fall? Which of them had time to think of his wife and children? Had one been covering the others in the tree house, and come down in an attempt to save them? Had they suffered long?
The answers to these questions remained a mystery. This much we knew: “Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospel’s, the same shall save it.” There was no question as to the present state of our loved ones. They were “with Christ”. . .
To the world at large this was a sad waste of five young lives. But God had His plan and purpose in all things. There were those whose lives were changed by what happened on Palm Beach. In Brazil, a group of Indians at a mission station deep in the Mato Grosso, upon hearing the news, dropped to their knees and cried out to God for forgiveness for their own lack of concern for fellow Indians who did not know of Jesus Christ. From Rome, an American official wrote to one of the widows: “I knew your husband. He was to me the ideal of what a Christian should be.” An Air Force Major stationed in England, with many hours of jet flying, immediately began making plans, to join the Missionary Aviation Fellowship. A missionary in Africa wrote: “Our work will never be the same. We knew two of the men. Their lives have left their mark on ours.” . . .
In Des Moines, Iowa, an eighteen-year-old boy prayed for a week in his room, then announced to his parents: ‘I’m turning my life over completely to the Lord. I want to try to take the place of one of those five.” . . .
Only eternity will measure the number of prayers which ascended for the widows, their children, and the work in which the five men had been engaged. The prayers of the widows themselves are for the Aucas. We look forward to the day when these savages will join us in Christian praise. . .
For the wives and relatives of the five men, the mute longing of their hearts was echoed by words found in Jim Elliot’s diary: “l walked out to the hill just now. It is exalting, delicious, to stand embraced by the shadows of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coattail and the heavens hailing your heart, to gaze and glory and give oneself again to God-what more could a man ask? Oh, the fullness, pleasure, sheer excitement of knowing God on earth! I care not if I never raise my voice again for Him, if only I may love Him, please Him. Mayhap in mercy He shall give me a host of children that I may lead them through the vast star fields to explore His delicacies whose finger ends set them to burning. But if not, if only I may see Him, touch His garments, and smile into His eyes—ah then, not stars nor children shall matter, only Himself.
“O Jesus, Master and Center and End of all, how long before that Glory is thine which has so long waited Thee? Now there is no thought of Thee among men; then there shall be thought for nothing else. Now other men are praised; then none shall care for any other’s merits. Hasten, hasten, Glory of Heaven, take Thy crown, subdue Thy Kingdom, enthrall Thy creatures.”
**Excerpt originally published in Through Gates of Splendor p. 247-251