Vale Elizabeth Elliot

#1089 for broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 21 June 2015.

Some listeners will recall the book Through Gates of Splendor, published in 1957, which told the story of Jim Elliot’s attempt to share the Christian gospel with an unreached tribe of Auca Indians in the Ecuadorian jungle.

Two days after first contact, Jim was speared to death along with four colleagues. Undeterred, his young widow Elizabeth continued to work among the tribes. Jim Elliot’s martyrdom was not futile – his killers and other members of the tribe later converted to Christianity.

Elizabeth Elliot wrote the memoir, Through Gates of Splendor and the sequel, Shadow of the Almighty, which together “became the definitive inspirational mission stories for the second half of the 20th century.”

She returned to the U.S. in 1963 and enjoyed significant influence as a Christian leader and broadcaster, writing more than 20 books on courtship, suffering, loneliness, singleness, and trusting and obeying God.

Elizabeth Elliott died on Monday aged 88.

I’m Rod Benson for the NSW Council of Churches.