A Life Worth Living (Part 2) - Elisabeth Elliot

A Life Worth Living (Part 1) - Elisabeth Elliot
A Life Worth Living (Part 2) - Elisabeth Elliot

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  

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A Life Worth Living

Day 2 of 2

 

Guest:            Elisabeth Elliott

 

From the series:       Jim Elliott – "He is No Fool"

       

 

Bob:                This week on FamilyLife Today we are commemorating events that took place 50 years ago; events that shook a nation.  Here is Elisabeth Elliott.

 

Elisabeth:      One day in October of 1955, Nate Saint flew into our station to tell us that he had discovered the Auca houses.  Within a very short time, Ed McCully, that politician from Wisconsin; Jim Elliott from Oregon; and Nate Saint instituted a program of dropping gifts to those Indians with the hope that they would be able to break down their hostility and prepare the way for an attempt to reach them.  You can imagine our excitement, our trembling, the prayers that went up.

 

                        And on the evening in January of 1956, just before these men left to go into the edge of Auca territory – by this time they had been joined by Roger Youderian and Pete Fleming – they sang together that hymn – "We Rest on Thee, Our Shield and our Defender."  A week later they were all speared to death.

 

Bob:                And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition – Wednesday, January 4th.  Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey.  I'm Bob Lepine.  This Sunday, January 8, commemorates the 50th anniversary of the martyrdom of those missionaries in rural Ecuador, and, I don't know, do you remember where you were the first time you heard the story of those five missionaries?

 

Dennis:          Bob, I was almost eight years old in Southwest Missouri, and I do not recall hearing about it as a little boy.

 

Bob:                It did make the news.

 

Dennis:          It did?

 

Bob:                It was in "Life" magazine and other periodicals.  But you didn't hear about it until later in life?

 

Dennis:          I heard about it finally in college, and it was through reading Elisabeth Elliott's book, "Through the Gates of Splendor," and, for me, as a college student, to get that book and have it be such a page-turner – I had just given my life to Christ, and I think what made it compelling reading for me, as a collegian, was that I was 20 years old, I was looking at life with eyes that were alive to the spiritual work of God in human beings' lives, and I had freshly given my life to Christ, and His Lordship of all the areas of my life, and so here is a couple, Jim and Elisabeth Elliott, who had given their lives to Christ and his Lordship, and Jim Elliott gave his life, literally, was martyred for his faith, and then Elisabeth, his wife, went into that tribe after he had been murdered by them to love them, speak with them, learn their language and customs and ultimately share her faith in the Gospel and his forgiveness with them.

 

Bob:                That book that you mentioned, "Through Gates of Splendor," is a book that God has used over the years in remarkable ways to not only tell the story but to talk about what it really means to live with Christ as Lord, and I think it's probably stirred the hearts of a number of people who have ended up involved in world missions in some foreign field, carrying on the legacy of Jim Elliott and Nate Saint and the others who were killed on the beach on January 8, 1956.

 

Dennis:          And I'm glad, Bob, there's now been a full-length feature movie that has been made called "The End of the Spear," that's going to be released here in a couple of weeks.  It's a great movie.  You and I have seen it together and, personally, I think what's going to happen as this film comes out is the very thing we've been talking about here – I think there's going to be a generation of young people who see this story and who, all of a sudden, start evaluating their faith.  

 

                        Now, I think adults are going to do the same, but I think there's going to be a generation of young people in youth groups, in junior high, high school, and college, and they're going to evaluate what they're living for and who they're living for.  And as a result, I think we're going to see a fresh crop of missionaries head to the world.  At least that's my prayer as this film comes out.

 

Bob:                You were in the audience in Kansas City in 1983 when Elisabeth Elliott addressed a crowd of students who had assembled there for an event that Campus Crusade was sponsoring called "KC '83," and she talked about those five young men, who were all in their 20s.  They were at the beginning of their adult life, and they had headed off to the field.  She described their lives, and I think what she did was she painted a picture so that everyone in the audience could go, "That could be me."  

 

                        We wanted our listeners to hear how she described the lives of those five men who were martyred that day 50 years ago this week.

 

Elisabeth:      Once upon a time, before you were born, there were in Ecuador, a tribe so-called "savages."  Not very much was known about these people.  They were naked, they used stone tools, and they killed strangers.  Nobody had ever gone into their territory and come out alive.  Missionaries had been praying that God would enable them someday to take the Gospel to these Aucas, but it had never happened, and it wasn't until 1956 that the first Operation Auca was attempted.

 

                        Five young American men banded together to do this.  I want to tell you a little about who they were and how they got there.  First, there was Nate Saint from Philadelphia, one of the founders of the Missionary Aviation Fellowship.  He inaugurated the program of jungle flying in the Eastern jungle of Ecuador.  Pilots who have watched film footage of some of Nate's landings on those canyons of green trees in the jungle have said that it's impossible.  Nate was a genius; he was a rather slightly built blond guy with a terrific sense of humor; a creative imagination; and an almost fanatical discipline and caution as a flyer.

 

                        Then there was Ro...