Quest For The Aucas
Today at Pastor Joseph's house, we watched this Christian DVD on the late missionaries in Ecuador, titled Quest For The Aucas. (Click here for info.)
The Aucas were feared because of their savagery of killing - outside and even within their family. They were also people who believed in taking revenge. Spearing others for vengence, according to the DVD, was common.
The missionaries who went there went with the resolution to give their lives for this mission. And when they were killed - martyred - they truly lived up to their resolution. What's truly magnificent about their death is how they, though armed, did not retaliate, because they promised God that while they brought rifles to scare away the villagers, they would never shoot one of them. And so they died, speared by the Aucas who were afraid of their rifles.
One part of the show is Rachel Saint, sister of one of the martyr, recalling what she said to one of the spearers after they killed her brother. When he told her that they speared them because they thought the missionaries were going to use the rifle to kill them, she said that, no, they promised God not to kill anyone. The idea of love that sacrificial was so foreign to the Aucas, that when that Auca heard that, he trembled and shook really hard...
And then, the most powerful of all, is how the sister and the wife (or wives) of these martyred then stayed in that village and continued their work - living among their loved ones' killers, loving them, teaching them the word of God. The best proof of love among those foreign to the idea of sacrifice.
So now, the people who once speared these missionaries are saved, they are pastors in the Aucas church. They baptised the son of one of the missionaries who died in their hands and became his spiritual elder.
The hand of God is so real, so powerful. There is not human who can love their enemies to that extent unless they first have the love of the Lord Jesus Christ in them. There is no greater love than that of Christ which is able to let them forgive their enemies, and convert the savage heart to a loving heart.
In January 1956, five young men ventured into the forbidden territory of the
Waodani (Aucas), one of the world’s most feared people groups. Jim Elliot, Nate
Saint, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, and Pete Fleming, five young men in the
prime of their lives, sought to bring the love and light of Jesus Christ to a
stone-age people who had never heard the good news. But their mission ended
tragically, a saga made famous by the books Through Gates Of Splendor and Jungle
Pilot.
The Aucas were feared because of their savagery of killing - outside and even within their family. They were also people who believed in taking revenge. Spearing others for vengence, according to the DVD, was common.
The missionaries who went there went with the resolution to give their lives for this mission. And when they were killed - martyred - they truly lived up to their resolution. What's truly magnificent about their death is how they, though armed, did not retaliate, because they promised God that while they brought rifles to scare away the villagers, they would never shoot one of them. And so they died, speared by the Aucas who were afraid of their rifles.
One part of the show is Rachel Saint, sister of one of the martyr, recalling what she said to one of the spearers after they killed her brother. When he told her that they speared them because they thought the missionaries were going to use the rifle to kill them, she said that, no, they promised God not to kill anyone. The idea of love that sacrificial was so foreign to the Aucas, that when that Auca heard that, he trembled and shook really hard...
And then, the most powerful of all, is how the sister and the wife (or wives) of these martyred then stayed in that village and continued their work - living among their loved ones' killers, loving them, teaching them the word of God. The best proof of love among those foreign to the idea of sacrifice.
So now, the people who once speared these missionaries are saved, they are pastors in the Aucas church. They baptised the son of one of the missionaries who died in their hands and became his spiritual elder.
The hand of God is so real, so powerful. There is not human who can love their enemies to that extent unless they first have the love of the Lord Jesus Christ in them. There is no greater love than that of Christ which is able to let them forgive their enemies, and convert the savage heart to a loving heart.