Jim Elliot

Life

Elliot was born on October 8, 1927, in Portland, Oregon, to Fred and Clara Elliot. His father was an itinerant evangelist active among the Plymouth Brethren. Missionaries frequently visited the family home, and Elliot was influenced by them from an early age. In 1945 he entered Wheaton College in Illinois, where he majored in Greek, and he graduated with highest honors in 1949. During the summer of 1947, while still a student, he spent six weeks with a missionary family in Mexico and learned Spanish. He is said to have sensed a call to mission work in Latin America at this time. In college he served as president of the campus foreign missions fellowship, and it was also at Wheaton that he met Elisabeth Howard, who later became his wife.

After graduation, while undergoing linguistic training, he heard about a tribe known as the "Auca" from a missionary who had worked among the Kichwa people of Ecuador. He went to Ecuador in 1952, and in 1953 he married Elisabeth in the capital, Quito; they had a daughter, Valerie. On January 8, 1956, he was speared to death by Waorani warriors. He was twenty-eight years old, and his daughter was ten months old.

Ministry and Work

The Elliots ministered among the Kichwa in the jungles of eastern Ecuador. The nearby Waorani were called "Auca," a Kichwa word meaning "savage," and were known as a tribe hostile to outsiders. In the fall of 1955, Elliot, together with missionary pilot Nate Saint and fellow missionary Ed McCully, launched an effort to make contact with the tribe. This effort is commonly known as "Operation Auca." The men built trust by dropping gifts from Saint's light aircraft. In early January 1956, the five men—now joined by Pete Fleming and Roger Youderian—set up camp on a sandbar along the Curaray River, which they named "Palm Beach." On January 6 they had a friendly encounter with several Waorani, but two days later all five were attacked and killed.

The news was reported around the world, and the American magazine Life ran a photo feature on it. The deaths of the five men are regarded as having greatly stimulated missionary zeal and financial support within American evangelicalism. Several years later, Elisabeth Elliot and Nate Saint's sister, Rachel Saint, returned to Ecuador as missionaries affiliated with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) and lived among the Waorani.

In 1957 Elisabeth published Through Gates of Splendor, an account of the events, and in 1958 she published Shadow of the Almighty, a biography of her husband. The title Shadow of the Almighty was taken from Psalm 91:1. A line Elliot wrote during his college years is especially well known: "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." In 2006 the film End of the Spear, which depicts these events, was released.

Influence on the Korean Church

Shadow of the Almighty and Through Gates of Splendor have both been translated into Korean. The Korean edition of Shadow of the Almighty, translated by Yoon Jong-seok, was published in 2008 by Bokinneunsaram. In the Korean church, Elliot is often presented as an example of a believer devoted to missions and marked by obedience, and the line quoted above is frequently cited in church writings and sermons.

Assessment

Within evangelical circles, Elliot and his four companions are honored as leading missionary martyrs of the modern era. Their story continues to appear frequently in evangelical publications. Because "Auca" is a derogatory term meaning "savage," the tribe is today generally referred to as the "Waorani."