Because I had planned on opening my sermon tomorrow morning with a brief recount of the life, ministry and death of Jim Elliot, I decided to review the historical accounts of Elliot's missionary endeavors up to the point when his life was taken by the Auca Indians to whom he was laboring to bring the Gospel. I was somewhat surprised to find two sermons that Elliot preached in 1951, just one year before he went to Ecuador as a missionary--and only 5 years before died a martyr.

It is a fitting parallel to what is recorded of  Stephen, the first New Testament martyr, in Acts 6:8-15. In some respects Elliot was an ordinary man, who was filled with the Spirit and ready to lose his life for the Gospel. Those famous words that Elliot penned in his diary in 1949--"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose"-- are the heart cry of each and every man and woman, beginning with Stephen, who gave their lives for Christ.

Here is a sermon Elliot preached on "The Feeding of the Five Thousand;" and here is his sermon on "The Resurrection."