Lessons from Elisabeth Elliotنموونە

DAY 5: Death in the Afternoon 

If there was one empowering, paradoxical element within Elisabeth Elliot that defined her core, it was a healthy willingness to die. Again and again, if God so willed, always believing in His promise that real, robust, exhilarating life comes out of every death. — from Becoming Elisabeth Elliot 

When Jim Elliot and his fellow missionaries took their last breaths on that January day in 1956, no one knew they were gone except for the men and women who’d killed them. Elisabeth Elliot and the other wives continued their usual duties, teaching classes, manning the radio, taking care of small children. They prayed earnestly for their men on mission, not knowing that they had already passed beyond the realm of needing prayers. 

It wasn’t until five days after the attack that the wives knew for sure that all their husbands were dead. The rest of the world learned right along with them. Even in that time long before the Internet, headlines and radio reports about the missing Americans had already flashed around the globe, with thousands praying for the men to be found safe. 

Back then missionaries weren’t just an anachronistic oddity tolerated on the fringes of culture. Life magazine, one of the premier mainstream media vehicles of the day, rushed its best photojournalist to Ecuador to cover the story. He joined the recovery party along with the U.S. and Ecuadorian army troops, missionaries, and Quichua Indians who trekked into the jungle, guns cocked, to search for the missing men. The searchers—and the wives waiting back at the mission station—hoped against hope that some of the men had survived. But then, one by one, the missionaries’ bodies were found in the river, the spears that killed them still embedded in what was left of their flesh. They were identifiable only by their wedding rings, watches, and tattered clothing. 

“Go ye into all the world,” Life magazine reported, quoting from the King James version of the Bible. “Five do, and die.” 

Some months later, mainstream New York publisher Harper and Row commissioned recently widowed Elisabeth Elliot to write an account of the men’s story. She did so, improbably, in about six weeks in a Manhattan hotel room. With anxious editors breathing down her neck, she skillfully wove together the missionaries’ journals and other writings against the backdrop of their growing conviction that God wanted them to make contact with a tribe known for its history of killing all outsiders. The story of the men’s plans, their families, and the quickening pace of the journey toward the result readers already knew—the speared bodies floating in the river—made for a dramatic, unforgettable read. Filled with powerful black-and-white photographs, Through Gates of Splendor shot to the top of the bestseller lists, and is still known as one of the seminal Christian books of the 20th century. 

Elisabeth Elliot may have been a missionary, a linguist, a wife, and a mother, but Through Gates of Splendor revealed that she was something else as well: a powerful writer. Her prose was skillful, unsentimental, muscular. Her observations rang true. And her clear-eyed portrayal of a set of individuals absolutely sold out to obey God, no matter what, captured the imagination of a generation. 

Elisabeth would go on to write dozens of books over the course of her life. She spoke at conferences, retreats, and seminars all over the world—300 days a year—all while hosting a long-running radio show. The New York Times called her a “tenacious missionary in the face of tragedy.” She challenged, infuriated, awakened, and emboldened readers and listeners for decades.