Five Missionary Martyrs
Ed McCully knew Ken Engle. Read Five Men on Palm Beach and Ed's 1952 letter to Ken in Lord, Give Us This Mountain, and this article as first published on plymouthbrethren.org.
Scores of remarkable missionary stories in this century have been full of drama. We wonder, while so many have laid down their lives in China, Russia, the Congo and elsewhere, how is it that the muffled footsteps by that stretch of sand on the Curaray River still reverberate around us. It happened on the eastern side of the rugged Andes in Ecuador, in the expansive rain forest beyond. There, on January 8, 1956, the most publicized missionary massacre of this century occurred.
Nate Saint, jungle pilot, called that Sunday over the plane’s radio, “We are hoping for visitors at about 2:30. I’ll call you again at 4:35.” When his punctured body was pulled from the river, his wrist watch read 3:12.
Missionaries endured staggering hardship in those rain forests. Sometimes they could not fly and, in order to reach isolated groups, had to travel over land by foot. They hazarded unpredictable rivers by canoe to reach poorly mapped territories where fear-ridden tribal peoples lived. Knowing what we know, our surprise is not that so many died, but that so many other missionaries have survived.
In 1944, five missionaries working with New Tribes Missions in Bolivia were killed trying to reach the fierce Ayores. The five were probably murdered weeks before the search party even left to look for them. Their bodies were never found, and the entire event received little notice by the world press. After all, this news item was buried beneath the happenings of World War II. Today, if someone mentions the five intrepid missionary martyrs to the jungles of South America, few recall the names of Cecil and Bob Dye, Dave Bacon, George Hosbach or Eldon Hunter.
Naturally speaking, we see several reasons why the deaths of Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian created such a sensation. There was a lull in world news at that moment. The mystique of the jungle savage excited curiosity. Careful records were available in the journals of the missionaries. The public was informed in a blow-by-blow manner as the facts of the massacre came to light. And here were five striking young men, with intelligent wives and winsome children. These young men looked like fellows we might meet in our own neighborhoods. What were they doing there?
Spiritually speaking, we also see reasons why God was pleased to speak so clearly in that event on January 8, Here is a story that inspires us more the more we know of it. The martyrs all were raised with the gospel from youth. Each was considered a role model.
Jim Elliot was from Portland, Oregon. At Wheaton College, he was president of the Student Foreign Missions Fellowship. A persuasive communicator, he wrote in college: “O God, save me from a life of barrenness, following a formal pattern of ethics, and give instead that vital contact of soul with Thy divine life that fruit may be produced, and Life-abundant living-may be known again as the final proof for Christ’s message and work.” He married Elisabeth Howard from a prominent Christian publishing family in Philadelphia. At the time of the murder, the Elliots had an infant daughter.
”’He makes His ministers a flame of fire.’ Am I ignitable?” he wrote. “God deliver me from the dread asbestos of ‘other things.’ Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be aflame. But a flame is transient, often short-lived. Canst thou bear this, my soulshort life? In me there dwells the Spirit of the Great Short-Lived, whose zeal for God’s house consumed Him.” (Splendor, p. 18; journal entry summer of ‘47). More Peter Fleming was from Seattle, Washington. At 27, he was a year younger than Jim Elliot. Pete had recently received his M.A. in literature. He was married to his childhood sweetheart, Olive.
Peter wrote: “[The Lord] has been leading my meditation to the stringent statements of Christ regarding discipleship specially those words of Christ to His disciples before He sent them out…’He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it.’ I have been directed to these and similar passages again and again. I should like to put these truths to the utmost test … Seemingly God delights in many instances to place men in situations which magnify their weaknesses for the simple delight of showing Himself strong to all observers” (Liefeld, p. 48, Aug., ‘51 to Jim Elliot.)
Ed McCully, from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was president of his senior class at Wheaton. He won the National Hearst Oratorical Contest in San Francisco in 1949 and went on to Marquette University Law School. He and his wife, Marilou, had two sons and were expecting a third. “I have one desire now-to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it,” Ed wrote in a letter to Jim Elliot immediately after leaving law school on September 22,1950 (Splendor, pp. 5051).
Roger Youderian came off a Montana ranch. An airborn ranger who was at the battle of the Bulge, he later went to Northwestern Schools in Minneapolis, where he met his wife, Barbara. They joined the Gospel Missionary Union and were evangelizing the headhunting Jivaros when the Elliots, Flemings, and McCullys arrived.
Nate Saint had flown missionaries in and out of the Ecuadorean jungle since 1948 for Missionary Aviation Fellowship. Builder, inventor, and skilled pilot, Nate had devised a ingeniously simple back up fuel system for single-engine planes. Nate was married to a nurse, Marj, whom he had met in the service. They had three children.
In a message broadcast over HCJB in Quito, Nate said, “During the last war we were taught to recognize that, in order to obtain our objective, we had to be willing to be expendable … Yet, when the Lord Jesus asks us to pay the price for world evangelization, we often answer … It costs too much … God didn’t hold back His only Son…” (Splendor, p. 176: Dec. 18, in Nate’s journals on Operation:Auca.)
The five couples did not come to Ecuador planning on reaching the Waorani tribe. But in Ecuador they heard about these Indians referred to as “Aucas” meaning savages. They had never been subjugated by soldiers or won over by missionaries.
The missionaries often prayed and plotted about, how this dreaded tribe could be reached. As they witnessed a series of events opening the way, the five united their hearts to reach the Waorani. To read the missionaries’ own account, we are compelled to agree with Nate Saint that “It's the Lord’s Time.”
All volunteered. They planned carefully. All were aware of the danger. As Jim Elliot said to his Betty: “If that’s the way God wants it to be, I’m ready to die for the salvation of the Aucas.”
After a series of long-distance contacts, the next step was to find a landing place close to the Waorani village. On the Curaray River they found a landing site on a sand bar. They named it “Palm Beach.” On Tuesday, January 3, a final prayer meeting was held at Arajuno, then the intrepid couples sang Edith Gilling Cherry’s hymn to the tune Finlandia:
We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender,
Thine is the battle, Thine shall be the praise;
When passing through the gates of pearly splendor,
Victors, we rest with Thee through endless days.
On Friday, they had a visit from three Waorani. On Sunday, Nate flew his plane over the area and spied a group of men walking toward the beach. He radioed Marj. “A commission of ten is coming. Pray for us. This is the day!” The next communication was scheduled for 4:30 PM. It would never come.
As newspaper headlines read, Five Missionaries Missing in Ecuador, a rescue party was moving overland. Missionary pilot Johnny Keenan flew over Palm Beach and saw a body; on a second pass, he spied a second one in the river.
By Thursday, two US Navy fliers went in with a helicopter. They found four bodies in the river, speared and hacked by machetes. Jim, Nate, Peter, and Roger were identified. It was speculated that the first body seen from the air was Ed McCully’s and that it had been carried away in the river’s current.
The January 23 Newsweek magazine ran the news. But it was Life photographer Cornell Capa who was at Palm Beach via helicopter when the last body was being lowered into the grave. His sensitive photography and the account of the drama published in Life made this the missionary story of the century. Readers Digest also published the story in 1956.
By Friday, Jan. 13, the Air Force flew the widows over the common grave. As Olive Fleming looked down to see the scar of white sand, 2 Corinthians 5:1 sounded in her mind: “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
Some church leaders responded to the massacre as did Judas when the costly perfume was poured on the Lord Jesus, saying, “Why this waste.” To such we can only say that God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9). The foolishness of God is wiser than men (1 Corinthians 1:25). In following months, mission boards were deluged with offers to “take the place” of the martyrs. Eternity magazine counted six hundred missionaries who credit the martyrdom as influencing them to go overseas.
The work with the Waoranis was only beginning. The girl, Dayuma, an escapee from Waorani territory who helped Rachel Saint learn Waorani, had entrusted herself to the Lord Jesus Christ. To her amazed relatives she returned to their village safe. They assumed she had been cannibalized by the strangers. She explained that the missionaries had come peaceably. She also had an object lesson to help them understand how the Lamb of God was led to slaughter as a sacrifice for sin. “Just as you killed the foreigners on the beach, Jesus was killed for you.”
In the fall of 1958 Rachel Saint and Betty Elliot and her toddler, Valerie, hung their hammocks among the Waorani. While Valerie played with the children of her father’s murderers, Rachel and Betty became acquainted with the murderers themselves: Gikita, Kimo, Nimonga, Dyuwi, Minkayi, and Tona.
Nine years later, the first copies of the Gospel of Mark in Waorani were dedicated at “God’s Speaking House.” Kimo prayed, “Father God, You are alive. This is Your day and all of us have come to worship You. They brought us copies of Your Carving, enough for everybody. We accept it, saying, ‘This is the truth.’ We want all of your carving.”
Surely the enduring attraction to this story is as much about the lives of the martyr’s survivors, as it is about the five men that gave their lives. We not only know the five men by their journals and aging photos. We know them by the lives of the missionary widows, their children, the lives of the Waorani converts and the missionaries that continue to serve them. This is more than a memory. By their fruits we know Ed, Jim, Nate, Pete, and Roger.
© John Bjorlie, Uplook Ministries Used by Permission, All Rights Reserved
What the Sheep Should Do
The expectations we have for our elders seem to far outstrip our awareness of our responsibilities to our overseers.
To know them
"We beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you" (I Thess. 5:12). How many wish that their elders would take more interest in them. But the fault does not always lie with them. It is more than difficult for elders to do their work, especially when it means admonishing a believer who holds them at arm's length.
Christ was a seeking shepherd. But His word to many was, "Come follow Me." Instead of chasing them down, He challenged them to chase after Him. Little wonder that we often read of people running to meet Him. This was His "follow-up program."
In effect, He was saying, If you are serious, then you follow Me up. Is this not true today? If we want to benefit from godly elders, we must seek them out:
observe their habits of life, visit them in their homes, discover the books they read, and the friends they keep. Know them.
To love them
"Esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake" (1 Thess.
5:13). Preachers have told us that love is not a feeling. Strictly speaking, that may be true. But if I told my wife, "Honey, I love you, but I have no feelings for you," what would she say? Certainly our feelings are a gauge of our love.
If, at the mention of a man's name, a coldness comes over me, I should ask why.
We are admonished to be "kindly affectioned one to another in brotherly love."
The elders often find themselves at the low end of the totem pole, doing the unlovely job for the unlovely soul. Certainly we should love them for it. If our thermometer registers a low temperature, there may still be hope. Paul often supplicated God for a fresh infusion of His love. We do well to join with Paul's inspired prayers, that our love "would abound yet more and more." For it is a command. Love them.
To obey them
"Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves:
for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account" (Heb. 13:7).
In almost every passage about the believers' responsibilities to their elders, obedience is plainly stated or implied. Words like "rule," "take the oversight,"
"obey," and "submit" are hard to ignore. These are the words that irritate our flesh most. How much easier to consult acquaintances, relatives, or even strangers about my problems, than to heed the counsel of someone in authority. My acquaintances may not answer for me at the Judgment Seat, but my elders will. If they are good men, why should we so fear these words, "obey," "submit," and "rule"? The godly elder does not lord it over the believers, beating the Christians like Bunyan's "Giant Despair." Obey them.
To honor them
"Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially they who labor in the word and doctrine. For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn" (1 Timothy 5:17-18).
This verse uses the word "honor" as we have it in Mark 7:10-11 and Romans 13:7.
One way honor is there shown is by material support. Every elder is not worthy of double honor, and many do not require it. But there are others who do. Local elders are sometimes the fulfilment of Christ's words, "The prophet is not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin." Paul enforces the responsibility Christians have to minister to those who feed them spiritually (1 Corinthians
9:6-15). The teacher or preacher had the right, which Paul sometimes used, to refuse financial support, but the Christians had no right to withhold it. A.
B. Simpson once said that when a congregation fails to materially support the one who is treading out the corn, "It is good for the preacher, but bad for the congregation." The sad irony is, congregations treat their elders like lackeys and one day wake up to find themselves elderless. In the emergency, they run out and find a hireling who gladly takes the leadership and the money too! Is it possible that we take for granted those who minister to us most? If we do not support those who deserve it, will we end up meeting the payroll of those who don't? Spare yourself. Honor them.
Reformers and Their Stepchildren
Some books will not go away.
They may not be bestsellers, but once a print run is exhausted, the book is soon being requested. They have a lasting appeal, they say something no one else is saying, or they say what everyone else is saying, only better.
Leonard Verduin's 1964 book,
The Reformers and their Stepchildren, is like that. Verduin wrote his book to trace the conflict between the church-state alliance and those who believe that a personal, voluntary commitment to Christ is the door to membership into Christ's body. By the time the book was ready for publication in 1964, Verduin had uncovered a startling episode in history, and given clear insights into the church's true mission.
This book's personal voyage is like its theme. It tells the story of the underground church of the Middle Ages, and those unapproved, unrecognized, unannounced Christian fellowships who prefer to be known as believers, brothers and sisters, or saints. It moves among those posing a threat to the establishment in Christendom. Verduin himself broke rank with his upbringing in the Christian Reformed denomination. He was once insulted by a Christian Reformed clergyman when they met at a social function.
The clergyman arched his eyebrow at Verduin and loudly announced, "Art thou he that troubleth Israel?" Instantly Leonard responded, "Remember who it was who first spoke those words, and to whom he said it."
Eerdman ran several editions before the Christian Hymnary Publishers received permission to reprint the volume in August of 1991. They cater to the "plain people," such as Old Order Mennonites.
Since Verduin's book gives favorable press on the Anabaptist movement (which Mennonites, Amish and Hutterites all claim as their ancestors), the plain people are part of Verduin's cult following. "Anabaptist theology and conduct throughout the centuries--by a non-Anabaptist scholar!"
The Christian Hymnary catalog printed this rather partisan blurb: "In his brilliant volume, The Reformers and Their Stepchildren, the Reformed historian, Leonard Verduin, has impartially recorded the origin, beliefs, and continuity of the 'stepchildren' Anabaptists--the ancestors and forerunners of the Amish, and some Mennonites. (The Anabaptists are the only known historical bridge to the original apostolic N.T. church.)"
Verduin's outstanding volume continues where Mennonite historians left off--establishing that those known as Anabaptists were continuing what began in the first century and not in the
1520's.
Meeting the martyrs will endear this book to all likeminded readers. But beware, all state-church lovers, reconstructionists, and ecumenists. This is a hard pill to swallow, but a sure cure.
This book should be in our homes, alongside The Anabaptist Story, by William Estep, the old classic, The Martyr's Mirror, and of course, E. H. Broadbent's The Pilgrim Church. Broadbent follows the same theme with this difference: Broadbent believed in the principles of the New Testament church before he began his book; Verduin stumbled on them. Verduin did not even know there was such a person as E. H. Broadbent, until he saw a recent edition of The Pilgrim Church, with F. F. Bruce's foreword saying that Broadbent's theme had since been taken up by other writers, citing Verduin's book.
The Stepchildren is presently available in two editions: Eerdman's recent hardcover edition, and the less expensive paperback from the Christian Hymnary Publishers. They.
The Cross, the Blood and the Death of Jesus Christ
In my message given on Sunday, April 5, 2020 I mentioned the themes in Scripture about the Cross, the Death, and the Blood of Christ. Years ago I was given a study by G. V. Wigram entitled “The Cross, the Blood, and the Death of Jesus Christ: Their Uses and Applications by the Spirit in Scripture.” The book simply highlighted the obvious. Paul’s letter to the Galatians emphasizes the Cross as that instrument of execution that the world gave to our Lord. By that Cross the world expressed it’s enmity. Paul said “The world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Galatians 6:14).
In Romans the judicial penalty for our sins is paid in Christ’s Death. “When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). In Hebrews the priestly sacrificial offering to God of the Blood is emphasized. Here we see God vindicated. Sin is an insult, a slander against God. The enemy has used our sins as an accusation against God. “Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Hebrews 9:12-14.