Christians risk death to spread Good News

Thursday, January 31, 2002

By GREGORY RUMMO

Missionaries have made front-page news with the U.S. military's "Hollywood-style" rescue of Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer in Afghanistan and the captivity of Martin and Gracia Burnham in the Philippines by kidnappers linked to Osama bin Laden's network.

Such incidents offer ongoing evidence that the persecution of Christians didn't end with the fall of the Roman Empire. It continues throughout the world in record fashion.

"More Christians died for their faith in the 20th century than at any other time in history," writes Harold J. Chadwick, editor of "The New Foxe's Book of Martyrs" (Bridge Logos Publishers, 1997). Additionally, Christian Solidarity International reports that more than "150,000 Christians were martyred last year alone."

When Christians obey the call of God to serve as missionaries on the foreign field, persecution and martyrdom are very real possibilities, especially in countries where the government is openly hostile to the Gospel or in primitive cultures never before exposed to Western influence.

So why do they go? Why are missionaries willing to risk their lives? Love and obedience are the two motivating factors. Jesus commanded his followers to "go into all the world and preach the good news to every creature" (Mark 16:15).

And the apostle Paul wrote: "For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again" (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).

Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer were persecuted for their faith, held captive by the Taliban for more than three months. Some of their friends thought they'd never return alive. But they were spared martyrdom.

The fate of Martin and Gracia Burnham may not turn out the same. Muslim militants in the Philippines kidnapped the Burnhams and 18 other people on May 27. 

The Burnhams serve under the auspices of New Tribes Mission, an evangelical missionary organization based in Sanford, Fla., that plants Bible-teaching churches among tribal people who have no access to the Gospel.

In September, New Tribes Mission learned that three of its missionaries -- Dave Mankins, Mark Rich, and Rick Tenenoff, missing since they were kidnapped from their homes by armed guerrillas in the Darin jungles of Panama on Jan. 31, 1993 -- were in fact killed sometime in 1996, presumably by their captors.

Perhaps one of the most publicized stories of missionary martyrdom in the 20th century was that of Ed McCully, Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, and Peter Fleming.

In 1955, these five Americans were working with the Quechuas, Jivaros, and other Indians of the interior in Ecuador. They believed God had called them to bring the Gospel to the Huaorani, called the Aucas or "savages" by neighboring tribes. Using a small, single-engine plane, they established contact with the Huaorani on several occasions. They dropped gifts and broadcast friendly messages via loudspeaker. Thinking they had gained the trust of the Huaorani, the missionaries decided to make contact in person. But on Jan. 8, 1956, all five men were speared to death.

The incident received worldwide attention. Photographers for Life and Time were immediately on the scene. One news magazine characterized the massacre as "a tragic waste." But Jim Elliot's widow, Elisabeth, said, "This was not a tragedy. God has a plan and a purpose for all things." Two years later, she and Nate Saint's sister, Rachel, went to live among the Huaorani, who by now had realized they had tragically misread the intentions of the five missionaries.

Many of the Huaorani were converted to Christianity as a result of the work of these two women in the ensuing years. Writing in "From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya" (Zondervan, 1983), Ruth Tucker commented, "There were no newsmen or photographers to record the breakthrough, for there was nothing to record except that two women were once again venturing into the jungle to preach the Gospel -- routine missionary work."

Elisabeth Elliot herself was moved by the miracle of God's grace in the years following the martyrdom of her husband and his four colleagues. In the 1958 epilogue to "Through Gates of Splendor" (Tyndale House, 1982), her book chronicling the story of the missionaries' contact with and ultimate death at the hands of the Huaorani, she wrote, "How did this come to be? Only God who made iron swim, who caused the sun to stand still, in whose hand is the breath of every living thing -- only this God who is our God forever and ever could have done it."

Jim Elliot, in his own words, believed: "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." He understood the truth spoken by Jesus Christ: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).

This is why missionaries like Curry and Mercer and the Burnhams are willing to risk their lives in dangerous places like Afghanistan and the Philippines, where the Gospel message is not welcomed. Their stories rarely make front-page news, but are nonetheless profiles in courage in a war against a different kind of terrorism -- involving the unseen spiritual world -- and with eternal consequences for both the victors and the vanquished.

Gregory Rummo is a business executive who belongs to Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Paterson, where he also serves as choir director. You may e-mail him at GregoryJRummo@aol.com

You can e-mail his editor, Lisa Haddock at Haddock@northjersey.com
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