Two Great Missionaries who Paid the Price - The learner’s quarterly tells us of two great missionaries and the cost they paid to serve God: Bill Wallace of China and Jim Elliott. This brief story of Bill Wallace is taken from The Christian History Institute.
“When I was trying to decide what I would do with my life, I became convinced God wanted me to be a medical missionary. That decision took me to China." Bill Wallace made that decision in 1925 when he was seventeen years old. When he sailed as a Southern Baptist Missionary, he was a direct answer to prayer; Christians in Wuchouw had been praying earnestly for a missionary doctor.“He spent his life fulfilling his youthful decision and in the end died for it. His commitment was so sincere that he turned down a high-paying job in the United State. Bill's total commitment kept him in China through various uprisings, the Japanese invasion and World War II.
“He performed surgery with bombs bursting around him. At one point, he moved the hospital up river on a boat to escape the Chinese. Urged to flee from China, he replied, "I will stay as long as I am able to serve." His commitment took him back to Wuchouw, China after the Communist takeover.
“When America entered the Korean War, anti-American feeling ran strong in China. Mission boards urged their people to leave China. Bill refused. Although he was known as one of the best surgeons in China and many Communists had profited from his skill, the Communists did not spare him.
“Before dawn on December 19, 1950, they raided his home. Bill Wallace, a man utterly dedicated to Christ and to healing others, went to prison. Claiming they found a gun under his pillow, the Communists accused him of being a foreign agent. Brutal interrogation followed. Disoriented by lack of sleep and beatings, Bill signed a phony confession. The peaceable man became depressed, but posted scripture verses on his cell walls to focus his faith. He witnessed about Christ to everyone who passed his cell.
“Two months after his arrest, Bill was found hanging in his cell. The Communists claimed he killed himself, but his body told a story of terrible abuse. Armed guards tried to hide their handiwork by burying him in an unmarked grave.
“Faithful Chinese Christians did not allow that. Risking their own lives, they laid him to rest with a proper ceremony. Above his grave they placed this sign: "For Me to Live Is Christ." "He was a martyr not because he died but because he so identified with the Chinese that they considered him one of them," said a missionary nurse who worked with him.
Likewise, Jim Elliot knew what it was to pay the ultimate price for serving Christ, his life. The following is excepted from “The Seeking Life” a product of Dr. Stanley’s In Touch Ministries.The life and death of Jim Elliot was a testimony of a man committed to the will of God. He sought God's will, pleaded for it, waited for it, and—most importantly—obeyed it. He martyrdom at age twenty-eight and subsequent books on his life by his former wife, Elisabeth Elliot, have been the catalyst for sending thousands into the mission fields and stoking the fires of a heart for God. He was an intense Christian, bent on pleasing God alone and not man.
"[He makes] His ministers a flame of fire," Elliot wrote while a student at Wheaton College. "Am I ignitable? God deliver me from the dread asbestos of 'other things.' Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be aflame. But flame is transient, often short-lived. Canst thou bear this my soul—short life? In me there dwells the spirit of the Great Short-Lived, whose zeal for God's house consumed Him." “Elliot was a gifted writer, speaker, and teacher. He had a commanding presence while a student at Wheaton, even starring on the wrestling mat where he became a champion. “Many of his friends were convinced Elliot's spiritual giftedness should be concentrated on building up the church in America. “Elliot, however, wanted God's will, not man's. After many protracted and solitary prayer sessions, Elliot sensed God's call to a foreign field, specifically South America. "Why should some hear twice," he said, "when others have not heard [the gospel] once?" “Correspondence with a former missionary to Ecuador and hearing of a tribe—the Aucas—that was never reached with the news of Christ's redemption set his course. “In the winter of 1952, Elliot and a friend who shared his vision set sail on a freighter, the Santa Juana, for the jungles of South America.
“Elliot's focus on obedience to God's will led to a disciplined and slightly unorthodox courtship of Betty Howard, whom he met at Wheaton. They longed to be husband and wife, but Elliot would not agree to the marriage yoke until he was certain of God's plan. “Elisabeth and Jim both were called to Ecuador as missionaries. Almost one year after arriving, they were finally engaged. On October 8, 1953, they were married in a civil ceremony in Quito, Ecuador. After their wedding, Elliot continued his work among the Indians and formulated plans to reach the Aucas. “In the autumn of 1955, missionary pilot Nate Saint spotted an Auca village. During the ensuing months, Elliot and several fellow missionaries dropped gifts from a plane, attempting to befriend the hostile tribe. “In January of 1956, Elliot and four companions landed on a beach of the Curaray River in eastern Ecuador. They had several friendly contacts with the fierce tribe that had previously killed several Shell Oil company employees. “Two days later, on January 8, 1956, all five men were speared and hacked to death by warriors from the Auca tribe. Life magazine featured a ten-page article on their mission and death. "They learned about the Aucas as they and their wives were ministering to the Quichua-speaking and Jivaro Indians. The Aucas had killed all strangers for centuries. "Other Indians fear them but the missionaries were determined to reach them. Said Elliot: 'Our orders are: the Gospel to every creature.'"
“Elliot wanted God's will. It ended in his death, but it was a death whose seed still brings forth fruit for the gospel's sake. Many Aucas eventually came to accept Christ as Savior when Elisabeth Elliot bravely returned to share Christ with those who killed her husband. Her books, Shadow of the Almighty and Through Gates of Splendor, speak passionately of the power, majesty, and sovereignty of God while chronicling the life of her husband.
The story of Jim Elliot is now a feature movie, The End of the Spear, which is highly recommended to Christians.
Well, like Wallace and Elliott, Jeremiah accepted a tough assignment knowing it come at a high price. The History of Ancient Israel by Michael Grant says of Jeremiah:
He felt a degree of social isolation rare and terrible for a man of his people and region. His refusal to get married did not help; for that was equally rare. But his fears were more than just a baseless persecution mania, because the sorts of assertions he made could not fail to arouse the bitterest hostility. Yet behind the abrasive manner was a lonely, self-desperate person, whose up-hill, unpopular task left him desperate. “Why is my pain unending, my wound desperate and incurable? . . . I curse the day I was born. . .. The “Dark Night of the Soul” was something he felt powerless to overcome.
Yet, because of this intense struggle, his relationship with God, YHWH, was carried on “within a framework of extraordinarily close intimacy.” From within this framework of intimacy, he preached a number of sermons. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether the sermons are individual events, re-tellings of the same event or his re-staging the same words, much like Jesus did in His teaching, where in He preached the same or similar sermon to different people at different times. Remember there was no mass media in that day.
Accept God’s Tough Assignment.
One Such sermon is found in Jeremiah 26: 1-7, perhaps a re-counting of Jeremiah 7.
Say to them, “This is what the LORD says: If you will not listen to me and obey the law I have given you . . . then I will destroy this Temple as I destroyed Shiloh, the place where the Tabernacle was located. And I will make Jerusalem an object of cursing in every nation on earth. as he spoke in front of the LORD's Temple.”
What excuses might Jeremiah have given for not delivering the message to his audience? I could think of a lot. Never the less, Jeremiah accepted God’s assignment regardless of the cost
Don’t Buckle Under Pressure (Jer. 26:8-14)
Now, as you might imagine, this was not well received. The people and the priests wanted to kill Jeremiah for being blasphemous or unpatriotic or just because he didn’t say what they wanted to hear. However, Jeremiah did not give in and recant. He states in his own defense.
"The LORD sent me to prophesy against this Temple and this city," he said. "The LORD gave me every word that I have spoken. But if you stop your sinning and begin to obey the LORD your God, he will cancel this disaster that he has announced against you.
Perhaps some might think my next movie allusion is a bit crass, but one of my favorite movies is The Blues Brothers. Two broken-down jailbird musicians from the South Side of Chicago set out on a quest to raise money to save the orphanage in which they grew up. In so doing, they take crazy risks and anger about every political group and ethnicity imaginable, but they feel it is OK in the end be as John Belushi says: “we’re on a mission from God.” Do people feel that because they claim to be Christians or religious God will protect them? Such is reckless behavior and not born out by the facts. God does not shield us from the price. To do so would be to rob us of the “extraordinarily close intimacy” that Gods us to have with Him.
Trust God for Results (Jeremiah 26:15-16)
At the end of this sermon, from custody. Jeremiah tells the people, the King, the priests and the mob,
“ But if you kill me, rest assured that you will be killing an innocent man! The responsibility for such a deed will lie on you, on this city, and on every person living in it. For it is absolutely true that the LORD sent me to speak every word you have heard."
At that point, the fear of the Lord takes over and his captors relent. God has intervened to save Jeremiah, just as He promised in Chapter 1, remember?
Conclusion – The old B.B McKinney hymn says:
“’Take up thy cross and follow me,’ I heard my Master say; ‘I gave my life to ransom thee, Surrender your all today.’ Wherever He leads I’ll go, Wherever He leads I’ll go, I’ll follow my Christ who loves me so, Wherever He leads I’ll go” (B. B. McKinney, “Wherever He Leads I’ll Go” [Nashville: Broadman Press, 1936], Baptist Hymnal, 1991), 285.
Where ever? Whenever at whatever cost? Really? We’ll see.
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