Is the proverb “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose” as applicable to the life long-lived as it is to the young martyr? Jim Elliot, the young martyr who authored that statement, had a little-known older brother who also epitomized this quote. Bert and Colleen Elliot …
Sixty-five years ago today, January 8, 1956, five young missionaries—Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian—were martyred by a remote tribal group in the jungles of Ecuador when they attempted to make friendly contact. Several years early Jim Elliot had written these words in his diary, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
In reflecting on the death of Mincaye, I have been thinking again about the martyrdom of those men sixty-four years ago. Jim Elliot’s older brother Bert and his wife Colleen were home in Portland on their first furlough after spending six years in the jungles of Peru. They visited Jim, Elisabeth and Valerie in Ecuador …