So Many Books; So little Time

End of the Spear

End of the Spear
by Steve Saint

I bought this book off the regular rack at Wal-Mart (unusual for me–most of my books come off the clearance rack at Hastings or BAM) after our youth group went to see the movie thinking it would expand upon the movie and tell more about Steve’s childhood with the stone age tribe that killed his father and four other missionaries. I couldn’t have been more wrong nor could I have been more engrossed in a story than I was with Steve’s.

Steve Saint is the son of Nate Saint, the missionary and was a pilot in the Equadoran Amazon Jungle in the 1950’s who was killed by the “Auca” along with 4 other missionaries. His sister Rachel Saint was also a missionary in the area and after Nate’s murder, she, along with Jim Elliot’s widow Elizabeth and daughter Valerie, went to live with the Waodani who had killed Jim and Nate to bring them to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. After several months of living with them, Rachel Saint went to Nate’s widow and asked permission to take Steve to live with her and the tribe. Permission was granted and Steve became a member of the Waodani tribe and a “son” to the men who speared his father.

The book starts with the death of Rachel Saint and Steve’s journey to Equador to bury her with the Waodani. While there, the tribe comes to him and begs him to do what only he could and they hoped he would–come live with them and teach them to take care of themselves in the modern world. After some time in prayer and making a trip to the villages without and later with his wife, Steve, Ginny and their four teenagers move to the Equadoran Amazon and live with the Waodani, teaching them to do for themselves rather than rely on “foreigners” to provide for them.

The entire focus of this book is how to let people do for themselves rather than to do for them and how to do that. In this Steve maintains as his goal self-sufficiency for his tribal family and not the reservations and dependence that tribes in the United States suffered. To that end, Steve and Ginny had to leave the tribe after 15 months to keep the tribe from becoming dependent on them.

The ending of the book has Steve showing his tribal father Mincaye how the evil he did God used for good. This is a faith journey for Steve and more than once, he declares that if he could go back, he would change nothing. He does find out who speared his father Nate (Mincaye) and the entire story behind the spearing. But in the heart of his tribal father Mincaye, he finds a God so much bigger than any storm he can ever face that it changes his prayers and he learns something so amazing about his Nate’s death, it will bring tears to your eyes.

Elizabeth Elliot’s book Through Gates of Splendor is the book to read before you watch the movie. End of the Spear is the book to read after the movie. And Steve’s new organization I-TEC is something to prayerfully consider for the rest of your life.

www.itecusa.org
e-mail: itec@itecusa.org
or Write:
I-TEC
10575 SW 147th Circle
Dunnellon, FL 34432

Steve Saint’s book is available in hardcover and audiobook

The Journals of Jim Elliot

The Journals of Jim Elliot

Edited by Elizabeth Elliot

What sort of man gives his life to go to the jungles of Equador to reach people who have never heard the name of Jesus? What kind of determination does it take in a Christian walk to go wherever God would have you to go? What sort of a man waits on God not only to show him whether to marry and who to marry but also when to get a ring and have a wedding? Do men with that kind of faith feel the same physical challenges as other men or are they beyond them?

Jim Elliot candidly gives us the answers to these questions in the journals he kept from his Junior year in Seminary on and his widow graciously allows us into thoughts that many wives would consider much too private to share.

Jim Elliot was a young man in love with the Lord and wanting to be used by God when he started keeping a journal that he admits will someday be read by others. Had he known, he might have have written less but then, he admits after several months, he wrote more than candidly than he expected with that in mind. Jim notes his daily scripture reading and lets us in on his private insights into God’s word. He leads us on the journey to find where God would have him serve. He shares his disappointments with his own Christian walk and his preaching and shows us times when he blames himself and his walk for the lack of response in meetings.

He contemplates being celebate while in college and looks to Betty as a friend who challenges his intellect. He admits he feels something for her and acts differently around her. He mourns her leaving the same place he is in. After seminary he keeps in contact with her and she eventually spends some time with his family who are less than impressed with her. Over time, Jim realizes that she is the woman he is to marry. They go seperately to Equador and work with many of the same people and then is when he wonders how he could ever have contemplated being celebate. He begs God to tell him when he can marry.

As he becomes busier in the mininsty and does marry and they have a daughter, Jim writes less and less leaving us with Elizabeth Elliot’s Through the Gates of Splendor to fill in the missing months leading up to Jim and four other missionary’s ultimate sacrifice in January 1956 in the jungles of Equador.

Jim’s insight into scripture and candid writings about his feelings make this a worthwile read. It is also quite readable. Where Jim wrote in notes that the reader would not understand, Betty is there to edit or, in Equador, translate.

This is the book for anyone who ever wondered what sort of man would leave all and go into the wilderness in search of lost sheep and die so that they would understand what it meant to forgive having been forgiven by the families of these men whom they had murdered.

My copy is paperback from the clearance rack printed in 2003 by Revell, a division of Baker House.

It is copywrite 1978 by Elizabeth Elliot.

A Table in the Presence

A Table in the Presence

by Lt Carey H. Cash, Chaplain Serving with the U. S. Marines

This is perhaps the most uplifting book I have read in a while. Lt. Carey Cash is a young man on a mission to find his place in God’s army. He tells you how he came to be a chaplain with the U. S. Navy attached to a Marine battalion and how he came to spend 40 days (yes, 40 literal days) with those marines in the desert of Kuwait before moving into Iraq as part of the first group of Marines to liberate the country. He witnessed Biblical faith on the part of his men in those 40 days in the desert and followed it with Biblical-type happenings in the opening days of that liberation.

Is God still God? Can God still make things happen like He did in the Old Testament? Can Biblical-sized miracles happen today with our armies?

Ask any one of the Marines in the 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment and they will tell you. Or read Lt. Cash’s book and he will tell you. He will tell you how he almost didn’t get to join the service. He will tell you how many men made decisions for the Lord, some in miraculous ways, in the desert before going into Iraq. He will lead you to the oil fields of Ramallah and then to downtown Baghdad (where they got lost) fighting their way to Saddam’s palace. Carey Cash will tell you a story you thought you would only read in the Old Testament.

All my life I have heard there are no atheists in foxholes. I don’t know about that. But I know that Lt. Carey Cash took some strong Christians and some new Christians into a war zone and they all came out with a strong faith that many never realize. I thank God for Chaplain Cash and pray for his ministry wherever God decides to take him.

Warning: This book may cause you to cry tears of joy or shout praise to Lord unexpectedly.