Devotional Guide
For the week of January 22, 2006
END OF THE SPEAR
About loving the lost
To Read: Jeremiah 7-9
To Know
³The Lord reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad!
Clouds and thick darkness are round about him; righteousness and justice are
the foundation of his throne.²
(Ps. 97:1,2)
End of the Spear opened Friday in the nationıs theaters. The Byfield Parish
Church has special reason to pray that this film will awaken Americans to
the power of Godıs grace to change human nature. The first guest speaker we
invited to Byfield after our arrival as pastor and wife was Elisabeth
Elliot, whose husband was one of the men speared to death in the rain forest
of Ecuador.
Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, and Peter Fleming began working among
the Quechua, Jivaro, and other Indian tribes of eastern Ecuador. On the
Pacific side of the Andes there lived another tribe feared by other Indians
themselves. These were the ³Huao² or ³Huaorani,² which means ³people.² The
Quechuas called them ³Aucas,² which means ³savages.² They lived in total
isolation from the outside world. Strangers were almost always killed on
sight. Even the Jivaros, who were themselves headhunters, lived in fear of
the Huaorani. The four men believed they were called of God to reach the
Huaorani. To succeed, the team needed a fifth man and Roger Youderian, a
WWII paratrooper, joined the expedition.
The year before the missionaries made their first contact the Huaorani
killed six Quechuas. On Sunday January 8, 1956 the Huaorani killed five
more. This time it was the American missionaries, who had sacrificed the
comforts of home to tell these lost ³people² that there is forgiveness of
sins in Jesus Christ, that were murdered. Fourteen years later Jim Elliotıs
widow described for the women of the Byfield Parish Church the life she
lived when she returned to the Auca village to lead those that murdered her
husband to her husbandıs Lord.
To Ask:
Father, give me your love for the lost.
01236$-01236
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