Elliot - The Journals of Jim Elliot

Also by Elisabeth Elliot

Through Gates of Splendor

Shadow of the Almighty

Let Me Be a Woman

A Chance to Die

Discipline: The Glad Surrender

Gods Guidance

A Path Through Suffering

On Asking God Why

The Shaping of a Christian Family

Keep a Quiet Heart

The Mark of a Man

Faith That Does Not Falter

Passion and Purity

Quest for Love

1978 by Elisabeth Elliot

Published by Revell

a division of Baker Publishing Group

PO Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.revellbooks.com

Repackaged edition published 2020

Ebook edition created 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4934-3454-1

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture is taken from the American Standard Version of the Bible.

Scripture marked KJV is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture marked WEYMOUTH is taken from WEYMOUTHS NEW TESTAMENT IN MODERN SPEECH by Richard Francis Weymouth. Published by special arrangement with James Clarke & Company, Ltd., and reprinted by permission of Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.

Scripture marked PHILLIPS is taken from The New Testament in Modern English, revised editionJ. B. Phillips, translator. J. B. Phillips 1958, 1960, 1972. Used by permission of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.

Scripture marked CONYBEARE is taken from The Epistles of Paul by William John Conybeare (N.Y.: Charles C. Cook).

Scripture marked THAYER is taken from the Greek Modern Bible by J. R. Thayer.

Scripture marked TRENCH is taken from Commentary on the Epistles to the SevenChurches in Asia by Richard Chenevix Trench (N.Y.: Scribners, 1869).

Scripture marked DARBY is taken from Synopsis of the Books of the Bible by J. N. Darby.

Does Jesus Care by Frank E. Graeff 1971. Dayspring Music, a division of Word Music, Inc. Used by permission.

Excerpt from TOWARD JERUSALEM by Amy Carmichael used by permission of the publisher, The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. American edition published by Christian Literature Crusade.

TO Herbert Ironside Elliot:

brother, partner in a Portland garbage business, fellow servant of Jesus Christ, who early recognized the scope of Jims gifts and declared his willingness to spend his life at home praying for him. He prayed, but not at home. In the providence of God, he went to Peru where he has been a missionary for thirty years in the high Andes and the tropical forests.

Upon Berts leaving Jim wrote to his mother: Remember we have bargained with Him who bore a cross.... Our silken selves must know denial. Hear Amy Carmichael:

O Prince of Glory, who dost bring

Thy sons to glory through the Cross,

Let us not shrink from suffering,

Reproach or loss.

A few years ago Christ Church of Hamilton, Massachusetts, set up a missionary committee. Among the members were two former missionaries, of whom I was one, and a currently active missionary, the Flying Priest of the Quebec-Labrador Mission, the Reverend Robert Bryan. As we became acquainted, Bob was thunderstruck to learn that I was the widow of Jim Elliot. To find in so unlikely a place this living link with a man who, to Bob, was a legend was what startled him. After the meeting he told me that it was the story of Jims death, along with four other missionaries, at the hands of jungle Indians called Aucas, which had goaded him to become a missionary. Each generation has its heroes, Bob said. Sir Wilfred Grenfell inspired my fathers generation. Your husband inspired mine.

Bob is only one of hundreds who have told me what the story (recounted in newspapers, magazines, and in a book Through Gates of Splendor) has meant to them. I have never counted the pile of letters I have received from readers of Jims biography, Shadow of the Almighty, many of whom said it had the greatest influence in their lives of any book except the Bible. The book quoted heavily from Jims personal letters and journals.

When, twenty years after his death, a publisher first asked for the rest of the journals, I was hesitant. I had edited them carefully for the biography, trying to include enough to show the true man, trying not to include what seemed too private. There were those who felt despair on reading the biography, for Jim seemed larger than life, too holy, too single eyed to be believed. I felt that such readers had not read very carefully, for the flaws, the flesh, the failures were there. There was no denying, however, the impact of his dedication to God. If that was what the reader remembered, that was as it should be.

Here, then, is the rest. More flaws, flesh, and failures are revealed here. More also is revealed of that consuming thirst to do the will of God. There is, I discover, considerably more of our own love story than I had remembered. To include more than I did of the details of this part of Jims life would have been disproportionate in the biography but needs no defense in the journals, for they are presented almost in their entirety. The sum of all deletions amounts to perhaps two or three pages. Occasional lapses in grammar, inconsistencies in the spellings of names, and disorders in syntax have been allowed to stand. Notes which I have added for the sake of clarity are in brackets.

The eleventh chapter of the Book of the Epistle to the Hebrews recounts wonderful stories of things done by faith:... these men conquered kingdoms, ruled in justice and proved the truth of Gods promises. They shut the mouths of lions, they quenched the furious blaze of fire, they escaped death by the sword. From being weaklings they became strong men and mighty warriors; they routed whole armies of foreigners. Women received their dead raised to life again, while others were tortured... exposed to the test of public mockery and flogging, and to being left bound in prison. They were killed by stoning, by being sawn in two... (vv. 3337 PHILLIPS ).

Some, in the twentieth century, were killed by wooden lances. The Hebrews account goes on: All these won a glowing testimony to their faith, but they did not then and there receive the fulfillment of the promise. God had something better planned for our day, and it was not his plan that they should reach perfection without us. Surrounded then as we are by these serried ranks of witnesses, let us strip off everything that hinders us, as well as the sin which dogs our feet, and let us run the race that we have to run with patience, our eyes fixed on Jesus, the source and the goal of our faith. For he himself endured a cross... (11:3912:2 PHILLIPS, italics mine).

ELISABETH ELLIOT

W heaton is a small liberal-arts college about twenty-five miles west of Chicago. Its motto is For Christ and His Kingdom. When Jim went there in the fall of 1945, it was with the object of preparing himself for the Lords service. He eliminated all that he felt would distract him from this objective, dating being one example of such a distraction. He made a habit of getting up early in the morning in order to have uninterrupted time for prayer and Bible study, but it was not until his junior year that he began to keep a journal as a means of self-discipline. Forcing himself to articulate something on paper helped him to concentrate and gave direction to his devotional times.