There have been a number of life-changing events in history that have led to people asking, “Where were you when you heard the news about ________” ? For a previous generation, it was “Where were you when you heard about Pearl Harbor? Or the end of World War II? Or the assassination of President Kennedy? Or the explosion of the Challenger space craft?” More recently, “Where were you when Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot? Or when Desert Storm was launched? Or when the planes hit the twin towers on 9/11?”
Some of us will be able to remember when we heard the news about the five American missionaries were speared to death in the jungle in Ecuador, killed by members of the tribe they were trying to reach with the gospel. Their martyrdom occurred on January 8, 1956. It made national news and resulted in a huge swelling of sympathy for their wives, and also a huge swelling in the number of men and women “enlisting” to serve as missionaries to take that gospel to unreached people groups around the world.
In the months and years following their deaths, many of the very warriors who had speared them to death came to saving faith in the Lord. One of the attackers, named Mincaye, became an unintentional ambassador for Christ, telling his story through translation. It was within the last few months that he died, at the “ripe of age” of 88 – 91 (no one had exact records of their past!). He was nicknamed “Grandfather” by the family of Nate Saint, one of those martyrs. Not until the gospel came to their tribe had any of their number ever lived long enough to become a grandfather. They were always killed long before that by tribal warfare.
The tribe was known to outsiders as the Aucas, meaning savages. Their own name for the tribe is the Waorani. They were widely feared for routinely killing members of other tribes in revenge attacks, even members of other families within their own tribe, as well as any strangers who ventured into their jungle territory. They lived a basically stone-age existence as hunter-gatherers. There had been no use of a written language or any kind of cultural development. Medicine was administered by witch doctors with incantations and jungle herbs. They lived off the land in simple thatched-roof huts beside rivers where they could hunt and fish and collect edible jungle foliage and fruits, supplemented by occasional killing of animals like birds and monkeys.
God planted a passion for reaching such people in the hearts of five young men: Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, and Pete Fleming. All of them were married, and four of them had small children. After prayer and meticulous planning, they set up a home base at the edge of the jungle where they knew there had been reports of the sighting of members of this tribe. It was near the settlement of Shell Mera. Their wives and children were with them. They had received some information about the tribe from a young lady who had run away from her Waodani family and now lived with westerners. Her name was Dayuma, and she became a key in the later successful efforts to bring the gospel to the tribe, some of them members of her own family from whom she had fled after a family dispute.
Throughout the next few months the missionaries flew regular sorties in a light plane over the tribe’s jungle lands from their base camp among the friendly Quichua people, another tribal group. They finally spotted a Waorani village, and focused their low level flights there. They devised a way of letting a rope down from the plane, to which gifts were attached, things like tools, machetes, clothing and foodstuffs (including salt, which was unobtainable for the tribe). After a while the Waorani started attaching gifts in return. One was a feathered headdress, another a tame parrot in a basket wrapped in sacking, complete with a half-nibbled banana.
After a number of flights, they selected a beach beside the Curaray River within reach of the Waorani homes where they could land and establish a camp with a tree house and various supplies. They called it Palm Beach. The plan was then to use the extremely rudimentary Waorani words they had learned from Dayuma to invite “the neighbors” to visit. The date of January 3, 1956, was chosen as their D-Day. The morning dawned bright and clear. The men breakfasted and prayed together. Jim Elliot’s wife wrote later: “At the close of their prayers the five men sang one of their favorite hymns, ‘We Rest on Thee,’ to the stirring tune of FINLANDIA. Jim and Ed had sung this hymn since college days and knew the verses by heart.”
On Friday January 6, to the men’s delight, three Waorani people came out of the jungle: a young man, a girl of about 16 and a woman of about 30. The young man was particularly interested in the plane so Saint took him for a ride. Above his home he waved and yelled at his no doubt bemused fellow villagers. In the evening he and the girl disappeared while the woman sat most of the night chatting with Youderian, apparently unaware that he could not understand her. She, too, had disappeared by morning.
On Sunday January 8 Nate Saint was ecstatic to spot from the air a party of ten or so Waorani men heading for the Americans’ camp. As he touched down he shouted to the others: “This is it, guys! They’re on the way!” He radioed his wife Marj: “Pray for us. This is the day! Will contact you next at four-thirty.” No call came at four-thirty. Over the next few days searchers found four bodies in the river. All had been speared to death. The fifth was on the beach, but it was washed away before it could be retrieved. The four were buried in a communal grave under their tree house as a tropical storm raged overhead.
The tragedy and publicity about their deaths encouraged the missionary movement to press on with their efforts, and replacement air crews continued to drop gifts. Jim Elliot’s widow Elisabeth and Nate Saint’s sister Rachel stayed in Ecuador. Nearly two years later two Waorani women came to the base camp, one of them the older woman who had visited Palm Beach. Seven other Waorani came later. In October 1958 Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint went by invitation to live among the Waorani. This eventually led to the conversion of many, including some of those involved in the killings. They revealed that the attack had happened after the young man and the girl who had visited Palm Beach were encountered returning to their village unescorted. In an attempt to ward off anger from village members who suspected they had engaged in sex, they claimed the foreigners had attacked them and that they had become separated from their chaperone. The return of the older woman and her account of the friendliness of the missionaries was not enough to dissuade them from the revenge killing of all five missionaries.
The hymn they sang before their final flight, “We Rest on Thee,” contains their testimony of trust in the Lord, especially in the phrase in stanza four.
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 on Thee, through endless days.
Elisabeth Elliot used that phrase as the title of the book she wrote about the event in 1957, “Through Gates of Splendor.”
The words of “We Rest on Thee” were written by Edith Gilling Cherry, who was born in Plymouth, Devon (England) in 1872. At the age of sixteen months she contracted polio, or infantile paralysis as it was then known. She used crutches for the rest of her life. When she was six, her much-loved younger sister died. At 12 she suffered a stroke, which seemed to unlock a spring of creativity and she started to write poetry and hymns. Many of her best poems were written before she was 15. There were enough to fill two volumes, including a poem she wrote when she heard of the death of Charles Spurgeon.
In 1895, when she was 23, she wrote “We Rest on Thee,” based on 2 Chronicles 14:11. Godly King Asa of Judah was facing a huge army from Ethiopia. His army was vastly outnumbered. He cried out, “Help us, O Lord our God; for we rest on Thee, and in Thy name we go against this multitude.” Two years later Edith had another stroke. She told her mother: “I think I am going, Mother, and I am so glad. I’ve been hungry to go for some while.” A few hours later, speaking of the past, she said: “It all seems so small, all I have tried to do, so small to Him.” Her mother replied, “But there are your songs, dear, they will carry on your work.” Edith said: “Ah, but they were not mine at all, they were just given to me all ready, and all I had to do was to write them down.” Her last words were: “I’m all right, mama, I’m trusting in God, and He will undertake for me.” It was in 1897, when she was only 25 years old.
The hymn takes on special meaning when we think of those five missionaries and their families singing together before setting out on their final flight. But it is a wonderful hymn for us in every situation that confronts us in our lives, even those that are not so intense. We find our security in Him when we face concerns over physical illness, family conflict, international tensions, or struggles with temptation. Our strength is inadequate; our hope is in the Lord. The words of the hymn have us speaking to the Lord to renew our trust in Him, as well as speaking to one another to bolster our courage in the face of danger. It’s a pattern we often find in the Psalms.
Stanza 1 professes that while we face a powerful enemy, we are not alone. The Lord is our Shield and our Defender. He goes into the battle with us ever day. If we are “in Him,” we are safe and we are strong! If we were to venture into battle on our own, we would be utterly defeated.
We rest on Thee, our Shield and our Defender!
We go not forth alone against the foe;
strong in Thy strength, safe in Thy keeping tender,
we rest on Thee, and in Thy name we go;
strong in Thy strength, safe in Thy keeping tender,
we rest on Thee, and in Thy name we go.
Stanza 2 sets the name of Jesus before us as the key to our victory. His is the name above every name, the name before whom every knee will bow. The battle imagery continues with Jesus identified as the Captain. More than that, He is our righteousness (by imputation) and the foundation on which we and His church are built.
Yea, in Thy name, O Captain of salvation!
In Thy dear name, all other names above:
Jesus our righteousness, our sure foundation,
our Prince of glory and our King of love,
Jesus our righteousness, our sure foundation,
our Prince of glory and our King of love.
Stanza 3 describes us as we move out in battle. We are very much aware of “our own great weakness.” But that does not intimidate us to keep us from the struggle, because God’s grace will assure that we will experience triumph. And so we proceed, resting on Him, trusting in His name, and singing with joy.
We go in faith, our own great weakness feeling,
and needing more each day thy grace to know:
yet from our hearts a song of triumph pealing,
“We rest on Thee, and in Thy name we go;”
yet from our hearts a song of triumph pealing,
“We rest on Thee, and in Thy name we go.”
Stanza 4 returns to the opening phrase of the hymn, resting on (trusting in) Jesus as our protection (“our Shield and our Defender”), knowing that the battle is His, not ours. That guarantees that whatever hardships we may experience, even if it’s death in martyrdom, we will pass through “gates of pearly splendor” as victors, a victory that will last “through endless days.”
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;
when passing through the gates of pearly splendor,
victors, we rest with Thee, through endless days.
At some point, Edith Cherry’s words were paired with Jean Sibelius’s Finlandia Hymn. This was originally a section of Finlandia, itself part of a suite composed for an event called the Press Celebrations of 1899, effectively a nationalistic call for Russia to keep its hands off Finland. Sibelius later reworked the section into a stand-alone piece. This hymn, with words written in 1941 by Veikko Antero Koskenniemi, is today regarded Finland’s unofficial national anthem and is often sung during the full-length Finlandia.
Here is a recording of the singing of the hymn. It includes actual still photographs of the men who were killed and the people for whom they gave their lives.