Missionaries Elliot Quotes

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." Jim Elliot, missionary to Auca indians in Ecuador

God's command 'Go ye, and preach the gospel to every creature' was the categorical imperative. The question of personal safety was wholly irrelevant.

Missionary work in a place where Christ has never been named is sometimes less arduous than in places where, though named, He has not been honored by lives of holy obedience.

A great missionary martyr of the twentieth century named Jim Elliot is credited with one of the most poignant summaries of commitment to Christ ever penned: “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep [this temporal life] to gain what he cannot lose [eternal life with Christ].

Jim Elliot was one of five American missionaries to Ecuador who were martyred by the Waodani Indians. He is famous for his statement “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.

Ponnammal set the example for the others by quietly doing what they did not care to do. Her spirit created a new climate in the place, and the time came when there was not one nurse who would refuse to do whatever needed to be done.

Young people sometimes say to me, "I'll just die if the Lord calls me to be a missionary," or words to that effect. "Wonderful!" I say. That's the best possible way to start. You won't be of much use on the mission field unless you 'die' first. The conditions for discipleship begin with 'dying', and if you take the first step, very likely you will find that you have indeed been 'called'.

From the Author Matthew 16:25 says, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”  This is a perfect picture of the life of Nate Saint; he gave up his life so God could reveal a greater glory in him and through him. I first heard the story of Operation Auca when I was eight years old, and ever since then I have been inspired by Nate’s commitment to the cause of Christ. He was determined to carry out God’s will for his life in spite of fears, failures, and physical challenges. For several years of my life, I lived and ministered with my parents who were missionaries on the island of Jamaica. My experiences during those years gave me a passion for sharing the stories of those who make great sacrifices to carry the gospel around the world. As I wrote this book, learning more about Nate Saint’s life—seeing his spirit and his struggles—was both enlightening and encouraging to me. It is my prayer that this book will provide a window into Nate Saint’s vision—his desires, dreams, and dedication. I pray his example will convince young people to step out of their comfort zones and wholeheartedly seek God’s will for their lives. That is Nate Saint’s legacy: changing the world for Christ, one person and one day at a time.   Nate Saint Timeline 1923 Nate Saint born. 1924 Stalin rises to power in Russia. 1930 Nate’s first flight, aged 7 with his brother, Sam. 1933 Nate’s second flight with his brother, Sam. 1936 Nate made his public profession of faith. 1937 Nate develops bone infection. 1939 World War II begins. 1940 Winston Churchill becomes British Prime Minister. 1941 Nate graduates from Wheaton College. Nate takes first flying lesson. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 1942 Nate’s induction into the Army Air Corps. 1943 Nate learns he is to be transferred to Indiana. 1945 Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan by U.S. 1946 Nate discharged from the Army. 1947 Nate accepted for Wheaton College. 1948 Nate and Marj are married and begin work in Eduador. Nate crashes his plane in Quito. 1949 Nate’s first child, Kathy, is born. Germany divided into East and West. 1950 Korean War begins. 1951 Nate’s second child, Stephen, is born. 1952 The Saint family return home to the U.S. 1953 Nate comes down with pneumonia. Nate and Henry fly to Ecuador. 1954 The first nuclear-powered submarine is launched. Nate’s third child, Phillip, is born. 1955 Nate is joined by Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming and Roger Youderian. Nate spots an Auca village for the first time. Operation Auca commences. 1956 The group sets up camp four miles from the Auca territory. Nate and the group are killed on “Palm Beach”.

The late missionary, author, and speaker Elisabeth Elliot once described suffering as “having what you don’t want or wanting what you don’t have.

It’s hard to overstate how important it is to remember who this God is whom we serve. He is holy. Though we might imagine what God will do with our everyday mothering ministry, God is the one who tests our hearts (1 Thess. 2:4). Missionary and speaker Elisabeth Elliot said in her testimony at Urbana, “Obedience is our task. The results of that obedience are God’s and God’s alone.”9 And so we make glad-hearted, faithful stewardship our aim in all our nurturing work.

The Indian himself must be the answer—he must learn the Scriptures, be taught, and in turn teach his own people. To this end Pete and Jim reopened the missionary school at Shandia that Dr. Tidmarsh had been forced to close. Here in a one-room schoolhouse the youngsters of the community were taught to read and write so that ultimately they could read the Scriptures for themselves.

They were aware that the first missionary to have entered Auca territory—Pedro Suarez, a Jesuit priest—had been murdered by spears in an isolated station near the confluence of the Napo and Curaray. That was in 1667. His murderers were Indians who might have been the ancestors of some present-day Aucas. For about two hundred years after this the Indians had been left in peace by the white man. Then the coming of rubber hunters wrote a dark page in the history of this jungle area. For some fifty years—from about 1875 to 1925—these men roamed the jungles, plundering and burning the Indian homes, raping, torturing, and enslaving the people. It was a time when the concept of “lesser breeds without the law” was almost universally accepted. For the Aucas to have no love for the white man was understandable. Could Christian love wipe out the memories of past treachery and brutality? This was a challenge to Jim and Pete as they hoped to bring the message of God’s love and salvation to these primitive people. It was a challenge and leading for which they had both been prepared since childhood.

Nate had always regarded himself as “expendable” for the cause of Christ. In a short sermon delivered over the missionary radio station HCJB—The Voice of the Andes in Quito—he shared his belief with others: “During the last war we were taught to recognize that, in order to obtain our objective, we had to be willing to be expendable. . . . This very afternoon thousands of soldiers are known by their serial numbers as men who are expendable. . . . We know there is only one answer to our country’s demand that we share in the price of freedom. Yet, when the Lord Jesus asks us to pay the price for world evangelization, we often answer without a word. We cannot go. We say it costs too much. “God Himself laid down the law when He built the universe. He knew when He made it what the price was going to be. God didn’t hold back His only Son, but gave Him up to pay the price for our failure and sin. “Missionaries constantly face expendability. Jesus said, ‘There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my sake and the Gospel’s but shall receive a hundred fold now in this time and in the world to come eternal life.

It was becoming increasingly important for these young missionaries to know every available fact about the Aucas. They read the reports of the Shell Oil Company and talked to anyone who had ever had any contact with the Aucas.

One of the problems that the missionaries grappled with that night was that of language. The need to convince the Aucas that here were friendly white men, could best be effected by communicating with them in their own language. This was of the essence. As the men talked over this problem, Jim Elliot came up with the answer. He remembered having seen Dayuma on Señor Carlos Sevilla’s hacienda, which lay only four hours’ walk from Shandia. He offered to go and talk to her to pick up phrases that could be useful in case contact were made. A few days later, Jim trekked over. He found Dayuma cooperative, although he was very careful not to divulge to her the reason for his desire to be taught some simple Auca phrases. Among Quichuas gossip spreads as quickly as anywhere else. Fortunately, Dayuma—accustomed to the strange ways of strange people—assumed he was only casually interested in learning the language.

Thus, one of the obstacles that lay in the path of the missionaries was partly overcome. A presentation of gifts seemed the obvious next step. Perhaps a carefully-planned, regular program of gift-drops, made over a period of time, would show the Indians that the intentions of these white men were friendly, and the repetition would gradually convince them.

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.

Those men had long since given themselves without reservation to do the will of God. So far as they knew, they were to be plain ordinary missionaries—Roj to the Atshuaras; Jim, Ed, and Pete to the Quichuas; Nate to serve all the jungle stations with his airplane. But small things happen (Nate found some inhabited Waorani houses). Small decisions are made (he told Jim and Ed), which lead to bigger ones (they began to pray with new vigor for an entrance into the territory), and ultimately a man’s individual choices become momentous.

I think of how, when Rachel and I finally arrived in the Waoranis’ jungle clearing, we found that what she and Dayuma had been using as the Waorani language was not readily understood. Dayuma had forgotten a large part of it, and had unwittingly jumbled up Waorani, Quichua, a smattering of Spanish, and a little English intonation for good measure. Then gradually I saw, to my dismay, that Rachel’s approach to linguistic work, her interpretation of what the Indians did and said, and the resulting reports she sent out were often radically different from my own. I think of the Indians themselves—what bewilderment, what inconvenience, what disorientation, what uprooting, what actual disease (polio, for example) they suffered because we missionaries got to them at last! The skeptic points with glee to such woeful facts and we dodge them nimbly, fearing any assessment of the work that may cast suspicion at least on the level of our spirituality if not the validity of our faith. But we are sinners. And we are buffoons.

A missionary plods through the first year or two, thinking that things will be different when he speaks the language. He is baffled to find, frequently, that they are not.

Not long before my heart was shredded by “Ryan,” I saw the superb, painful, and infuriating documentary God Loves Uganda, a film by the astounding Roger Ross Williams. The doc examined the role of American evangelicalism in Uganda, its ties to a recently introduced bill, the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act—which then suggested the death penalty for LGBTQ+ people—as it gained serious momentum. It follows missionaries, evangelical leaders, and the LGBTQ+ people of Uganda who fight for their right to exist. These activists were standing up against vicious oppression, rhetoric, and ideas originally introduced and continuously perpetuated by the West. Concealed in “good deeds,” American missionaries created infrastructure for access to indoctrinate the populace, which fueled anti-LGBTQ+ violence and hate.

The early experience of Elisabeth Elliot, widow and biographer of a martyred missionary husband, strikingly illustrates this. Confident of God’s guidance, she went to an Ecuador tribe to reduce their language to writing so that the Bible might be translated for them. The only person who could or would help her was a Spanish-speaking Christian who lived with the tribe, but within a month he was shot dead in an argument. She struggled on with virtually no help for eight months more. Then she moved to another field, leaving her full file of linguistic material with colleagues so that they could carry on where she had left off. Within a fortnight she heard that the file had been stolen. No copy existed; all her work was wasted. That, humanly speaking, was the end of the story. She comments: I simply had to bow in the knowledge that God was his own interpreter. . . . We must allow God to do what he wants to do. And if you are thinking that you know the will of God for your life and you are anxious to do that, you are probably in for a very rude awakening because nobody knows the will of God for his entire life. (Quoted from Eternity, January 1969, p. 18) This is right. Sooner or later, God’s guidance, which brings us out of darkness into light, will also bring us out of light into darkness. It is part of the way of the cross.

Ageneration ago, Jim Elliot went from Wheaton College to become a missionary to the Aucas in Ecuador. Before he was killed, he wrote, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.