“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”
-Jim Elliot, quoted in “The Shadow of the Almighty” by Elisabeth Elliot
Elisabeth and Valerie. Reprinted for nonprofit purposes from “Through Gates of Splendor” from Elisabeth Elliot. Tyndale, 1996.
Sometimes the entire story of a life is remembered by one chapter, or even just one page. Some people get a whole lifetime of publicly scrutinized events compiled into overall goods or evils. But time just as often chews away hopes and families and flaws and successes and leaves just snapshots behind. He gave that bad advice to the king. She survived a concentration camp. He signed the Declaration of Independence. She stabbed the general while he was sleeping. They couldn’t have known when their lives began that this cataclysm or opportunity would come to them; did they know at the end that is how they would be remembered? For so many, the thing which made them famous is almost certainly not what they would have chosen.
This is the chapter of Elisabeth’s life that I have been dreading since I began her story. This is also the chapter that makes us listen to the rest of the story.
In September, 1955, not long before Jim and Elisabeth’s second anniversary, when their little daughter Valerie was six months old, news hit the Elliot house like a lightning bolt: Ed McCully and missionary pilot Nate Saint had spotted Auca Indian houses during a flight over the jungle.
Auca. Jim had first heard the name while he was still a student at Wheaton, and it lit a fire in his mind. The Aucas were a tribe living deep in the jungle who, for time out of memory, had never had peaceful contact with any outsiders. They deeply distrusted all outsiders. They attacked by surprise and with wooden spears had defied civilization and gained a reputation among other tribes, Ecuadorian authorities, and oil and rubber prospectors as dangerous killers. To Jim and Elisabeth and their friends, the Auca represented the Final Frontier of missionary work: a people who had never heard the Gospel.
Jim, Ed, and Nate began to set in motion an elaborate plan to initiate peaceful contact with the Aucas. They recruited Pete Fleming, another Wheaton friend of Jim’s who had just brought his new bride Olive to the jungle that autumn, and Roger Youderian, a friend of Nate’s and missionary to the nearby Jivaro tribe. Each of the men were married and, with the exception of Pete, had small children. But all of them and their wives were committed to doing whatever was necessary to bring Christ to the Aucas.
Left to right: Ed McCully, Pete Fleming, and Jim Elliot. Reprinted for nonprofit purposes from “Through Gates of Splendor” by Elisabeth Elliot. Tyndale, 1996.
The men began a series of “gift drops.” They would fly low over an Auca homestead and lower a gift–a machete or teapot or food–in a bucket on a line to the ground below. While the plane circled overhead, curious people would creep cautiously from their houses or the jungle and retrieve the gift. One of the men in the plane would shout out friendly phrases in a language they hoped was Auca. For months, they regularly made these drops, and it seemed like their work was paying off when the Indians began placing gifts in the bucket in return, including, once, a live parrot.
By early January, 1956, they believed the time had come for them to meet their “neighbors,” as they called the Aucas in their coded communication. The five men flew onto a small beach they found on Curaray River. The set up a base camp and built themselves a sheet metal tree house where they could sleep in relative safety.
Nate Saint meets an Auca. Republished for nonprofit purposes from “Through Gates of Splendor” by Elisabeth Elliot. Tyndale, 1996.
On Friday, January 6, after the men had been waiting on the small beach for several days, three naked Auca Indians appeared in the jungle on the opposite side of the river. Jim took them by the hands and led them to the camp. The Indians spent the day with the missionaries, and Nate Saint even took one of them for a ride in the airplane. In the evening, the Indians walked off into the jungle as unexpectedly as they had arrived.
The next day, the missionaries waited in agitation on the beach all day, and nothing happened.
On Sunday morning, Nate Saint radioed his wife that he had spotted from the plane a group of about ten men heading through the jungle toward the beach. He expected them to make contact soon and told his wife he would radio her again at 4:30 that afternoon with news. Four-thirty came and went, but Nate didn’t radio. At 7:00 Monday morning, Nate’s wife, Marj, radioed Elisabeth that they had not heard from the “fellows” and that another missionary was flying over to the beach to check on them. At 9:30 Marj radioed the other wives that they had seen Nate Saint’s plane on the beach, and all the fabric had been torn off of it.
By Tuesday, all of the wives were gathered together at one site, waiting for news. A search party compiled of American military from Panama, missionaries from nearby sites in the jungle, Ecuadorian military, Quichua Indians, and a reporter from Life magazine named Cornell Capa set off in groups by helicopter, canoe, and foot.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Air Force reported to the wives that they had flown over the river and seen four bodies. The wives felt certain that two of them were Pete and Roger from descriptions of their clothing, but the other two were impossible to identify. A group of Quichua Indians who had known the McCullys bravely pressed on into Auca territory on their own by canoe and reported back to the ground party still en route that they had seen Ed’s body. They had his watch. They had left the body, though, so if was uncertain if his was one of the ones seen by helicopter. With only four bodies accounted for, it was still possible that one of the men might have escaped.
On Thursday, the ground party travelling through the jungle finally arrived at the beach. They found the four bodies the Air Force had seen and positively identified them as Roger, Pete, Nate, and Jim. They never found the fifth body, but they knew from the Indians that it was Ed. They buried the others there on the beach and began the long trek back through the jungle.
An Air Force officer asked the wives if they would like to see their husbands’ graves, and then he flew them by helicopter over the beach on the Curaray River. Marj Saint said it was “the most beautiful little cemetery in the world” (Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot. Tyndale, 1996).
The widows listening to the report of the report from the search party. Elisabeth is on the far right. Republished for nonprofit purposes from “Through Gates of Splendor” by Elisabeth Elliot. Tyndale, 1996.
What resolution is there at the end of this story? There is good and evil, victory and failure, hope and heartbreak all muddled up together in it. If Jim had done things differently, perhaps they could have been spared, and Elisabeth could have reached the Aucas and kept her husband. I do not have answers, and I’m afraid of sounding glib. Because Jim Elliot and the others were killed, thousands, maybe millions, of people came to believe in Christ or were encouraged or challenged to trust God in new ways. I am one of those people. Can the value of all those changed lives balance the cost of murder? I think not, but I feel like I am wading in over my head here. I do believe that God is good. And I believe that God redeems, uses broken things, and miraculously brings good even from evil, like green shoots growing out of a stump. After all, He did that with the murder of His own son.
Here are Elisabeth’s words about it, written many years after the murder: “as long as we are in these (Paul calls them ‘vile’) bodies, our attempts to offer salvation and life will be mixed with corruption and death. Because of the earnestness and obedience of five men the Auca Indians were finally reached. But the men died. The world noted their death with awe, with cynicism, with indifference. Some Christians were aroused to missionary responsibility. Nine children were left fatherless….There is only one ultimate guarantee. It is the love of Christ. The love of Christ. Nothing in heaven or earth or hell can separate us from that, and because God is love and loves us He will not allow us to rest anywhere but in that Love” (The Savage My Kinsman by Elisabeth Elliot. Regal, 1989).
A Starry Cluster 
Posted on November 24, 2013
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