The Intrepid Missionary Elisabeth Elliot

Wall Street Journal ^ | June 25, 2015 | David Howard

[iowamark]

Last week marked the passing of a woman whose missionary work and writings inspired hundreds of thousands of Christians to live lives of faith and obedience to God, and led thousands to bring the gospel to people in countries around the world. Elisabeth Elliot died June 15 at age 88, but her legacy will continue through the lives transformed by her example. I knew her simply as “Aunt Betty,” as she was my father’s sister.

Elliot first entered the news in 1956, when her husband, Jim Elliot, and four other missionaries were killed by a group of Auca Indians, today known as Waorani, in the deepest jungles of Ecuador. The five missionaries—three of them, like Elisabeth, were former students at Wheaton College in Illinois—felt called by God to bring the gospel to this fiercest of tribes...

[W]arriors burst out of the jungle and speared and hacked the men to death. The missionaries were armed, but when the attack came they only fired their weapons into the air, as they had agreed they would in such an event. Why? Because they believed that they were ready to meet their maker, while the Waorani were not. The incident made headlines around the world, including articles in Life, Time and Reader’s Digest magazines.

The story might have ended there, but it didn’t. Less than two years after her husband’s death, Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint, whose brother had been among those killed, left their homes to live with the tribe that had murdered their loved ones. Elliot also brought her daughter, Valerie, a toddler at the time. Elliot, who had previously worked in Ecuador as a missionary, saw it as obeying God’s call.

[Mark17]

I heard, but can not verify, that the guys who killed Nate Saint, and the others, became Bible believing Christians themselves. If that is true, they probably felt like Paul did, when Stephen was stoned.

[texas booster]

According to the Mission Aviation Fellowship, six of their killers became Christians, along with many in the tribe.

Stephen Saint, his son, was baptized by two of the new Wuaorani Christians who were killed his father, just two years after the murders.

[Mark17]

Yes, quite a story. I was only 8 years old when it happened, and I became a born again Christian, in 1970. I heard about this, I think around 1973 or so, because I was trying to get info on being in missionary aviation. It didn’t work out, and I stayed in the USAF, to retirement.