52 pages • 1 hour read
Elisabeth ElliotThrough Gates of Splendor
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1957A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Infinite Adaptability”
This chapter leaves Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming’s narrative to follow the story of Ed McCully, another prospective member of their mission team, a story that is again told by weaving the account together with extracts from letters and diary entries. Ed had been a friend of Jim’s during their Wheaton College days, where the former had excelled in academics and sports. Ed had strong skills in public speaking, and after initially majoring in economics and business, he planned to head in the direction of a law career. Shortly after enrolling as a law student at Marquette University, however, he became convinced that God was calling him to life as a missionary: “I have one desire now—to live a life of reckless abandon for the Lord, putting all my energy and strength into it” (50-51). He partnered with Jim Elliot in 1951, when Jim was back from Ecuador for a few months, and Ed became widely known as a radio speaker with a compelling presentation of the gospel message. Upon receiving an invitation to speak at a Christian youth gathering in Michigan, he happened to meet his future wife, a young woman named Marilou.
Ed and Marilou began preparing to serve in international missions, undertaking courses in field medicine before sailing for Ecuador in December of 1952. As Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming had, they began by living in Quito and studying Spanish, in preparation for a move to join the mission team at Shandia. This plan was interrupted by a catastrophic flood that destroyed all of Shandia’s buildings (including the home being prepared for the McCullys) and part of its airstrip. Rather than give in to disappointment, however, the McCullys resolved to press on. Ed met with Jim and Pete in Shandia and together they developed a plan to rebuild.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Expendable for God”
Chapter 5 introduces yet another of the book’s main characters, Nate Saint. Nate was a missionary pilot, who had been in Ecuador longer than any of the other young missionaries. Nate had trained in aviation with the Air Force, but an injury kept him from serving in the role for which he had hoped, and he felt God beginning to turn his heart toward missionary work. He and his wife Marj arrived in Ecuador in 1948 and settled at Shell Mera, where they organized a ministry of flying missionaries out to their assignments in remote villages, often dealing with difficult conditions of jungle and mountain terrain. Marj assisted Nate in the operations of the ministry, serving as the on-the-ground radio coordinator for each flight. Although he often worked in dangerous circumstances, Nate considered the danger a necessary part of the missionary life, as illustrated in a quotation drawn from one of his sermons: “During the last war, we were taught to recognize that, in order to obtain our objective, we had to be willing to be expendable […]. Missionaries constantly face expendability” (60).
Nonetheless, Nate approached his work with diligence and caution, making safety a leading priority on every flight. In some cases, this meant that he had to design entirely new systems from available parts in order to keep the plane flying in a safe and dependable manner, but he was such a talented mechanic that some of his jury-rigged systems ended up becoming standard features of mission planes. Among his most useful inventions was a bucket-and-cable feature that could be lowered from the plane, and, when paired with a tightly circular flight pattern, made for a surprisingly efficient way to transfer goods without having to land, thus opening up the possibility for contact with areas that had no airstrip. In this way, Nate and Marj built a ministry that quickly proved to be indispensable, not only for missionaries needing transportation, but for delivering food, medical supplies, and other resources to remote areas. This system could even be used to lower a telephone to workers on the ground, permitting them to speak directly with the circling plane. As he developed this ministry of aviation, Nate heard reports about the Huaorani people and began to prepare for a future mission in their direction: “Few white persons have contacted them in a friendly way and lived to tell about it. We expect the airplane to play an essential part in reaching these people with the Gospel” (71).
Chapter 6 Summary: “Missionary to the Head-Shrinking Jivaros”
This chapter focuses on the last of the five main missionaries who joins the Huaorani mission, Roger Youderian. Roger and his wife Barb had arrived in Ecuador in 1953 and taken up residence at the Macuma mission station. Macuma, founded some eight years earlier, focused its attention on the Jivaro people, who had become internationally famous for their unique cultural tradition of shrinking and preserving a person’s head after death. Roger had intended for a career in teaching and agriculture, but when World War II came around he was deployed in active duty in Europe. While in England to train as a paratrooper, he encountered the message of the Christian gospel and committed his life to following God: “With this new faith, […] I fairly ache within from happiness and rejoicing in sharing God’s manifold blessing which He gives to this world with infinite mercy and grace” (74). After returning to his home in Montana after the war, he met and married Barbara, and they began their studies to prepare for a missionary career in Ecuador.
Upon their arrival in Macuma, the Youderians set about learning the Jivaro language while under the advisement of the senior missionary at the station, Frank Drown. While Roger appreciated the opportunity to learn about the Jivaros’ culture, he felt called to a field of service where the Christian gospel had not yet been preached: “Knowing that Frank Drown could carry on the work of this established station alone, Roj began to pray for a wider sphere of service” (80). This impulse, together with his conversations with other young missionaries like Nate Saint, began to draw him toward considering the Indigenous people groups that still lay beyond the reach of Christian contact.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Breaking Jungle Barriers”
In 1954, Roger Youderian moved from Macuma to Wambimi, a spot with an abandoned airstrip that was closer to the Atshuara people, with whom he wanted to establish contact. The Atshuara spoke a related language to the Jivaros but had less exposure to the gospel, so Roger undertook the dangerous work of finding and establishing contact with them. The task was made even more difficult due to the Atshuaras’ resistance and hostility to outside contact, driven in part by their fear of communicable diseases. Eventually, Roger was able to enter their territory on foot, with intermittent contact maintained with the outside world via Nate Saint’s airplane flyovers.
Most of Chapter 7 is a transcribed account from a Nate Saint recording, which describes several incidents that occurred while trying to maintain contact with Roger’s location in the jungle. Roger was attempting to clear an airstrip in his new location, but it was a difficult place to get to, and Nate had significant problems in locating the site. While flying over the area with limited gas reserves and searching for the correct spot, Nate noted a type of structure in the jungle he had never seen before, likely associated with an as-yet-uncontacted people group. Nate noted the sight before pressing on: “These are people for whom Christ died, and you have to find them before you can take the Gospel to them, so I was happy to have stumbled on them” (90).
Even so, Nate needed to find Roger and make a landing, both because his gas was running out and because Roger’s own condition in such dangerous circumstances might not remain strong indefinitely. The tension was also heightened because there was a desperate need for medications to treat the Atshuara people, many of whom, cut off from outside medicine, had preventable diseases, and Nate’s plane bore the remedies. Further complicating the matter was the rough condition of the new airstrip, but Nate Saint was able to find the site and make a safe landing, after which a frenzied scene of distributing medications ensued. Despite the dangers of the episode, Roger had succeeded not only in establishing contact with the Atshuara, but in winning their confidence by providing them with medical help.
Chapters 4-7 Analysis
Chapters 4-7 relate the backstories of the three other men on the Huaorani mission team beyond the first two (Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming). Chapter 4 covers Ed McCully, Chapter 5 Nate Saint, and Chapters 6-7 Roger Youderian. In each case, the dominant theme is that of Discerning the Will of God, particularly in those sections related to the men’s exploration of a missionary calling. All three concluded as young men that God was calling them into missionary service, but in none of their cases was that development a foregone conclusion—McCully had intended to train as a lawyer, Saint as a military pilot, and Youderian in teaching and agriculture. Nevertheless, all three eventually decided for the life of the missionary, drawn to it through a combination of biblical study, theological principle, prayer, and communication with friends. While the book’s primary focus is on the five men who are killed in Huaorani territory in 1956, it is important to note that Elisabeth Elliot also concentrates sporadic attention on the men’s wives, many of whom go through similar journeys of discernment regarding the will of God. In Barbara Youderian’s case, the call to be a missionary had been present from her childhood, thus illustrating the variety of ways in which the process of discernment can play out: “I believe that the Lord just spoke to me, while I was a child, and made me feel that that was what I should do” (75).
Of the book’s two other major themes, Faith and Sacrifice plays a small role in these chapters, particularly with regard to faith as the men’s primary motivating factor in leading them into missionary service; but even greater attention is given to the theme of Cross-Cultural Dynamics of Missionary Work, especially in those sections that narrate the men’s early experiences in Ecuador. Chapters 6 and 7, focusing on the work of Roger Youderian, provides an in-depth view of interactions with two Indigenous people groups, the Jivaros and the Atshuaras. Some of the terminology used in those sections is reflective of a mid-20th-century context and would not be viewed as appropriate cross-cultural rhetoric in contemporary society—as, for instance, when Nate Saint writes, “[…] with those unconverted Jivaros who were known to be rascals. And, I guess many of them out there have killed—they’re killers and some have survived killings” (85). Nevertheless, the narratives successfully convey both the challenges and the benefits of cross-cultural interaction. Roger Youderian’s adventures in understanding Jivaro and Atshuara culture are winsomely portrayed, and the practical benefits to the Indigenous people in the stories are evident, as in the story of their reception of medical supplies at the remote village.
Elisabeth Elliot’s continued usage of primary sources gives added strength to the narrative. This literary practice has the potential downside of feeling like a jumbled, disconnected mess if done poorly, but Elliot weaves the various sources and quotations together smoothly. Her longest extracts come from Nate Saint’s journals, which have the benefit of being detailed and well-written, and these are interspersed with a judicious use of quotes from the other men’s sources. The cumulative effect of these interwoven extracts is to bring a distinct and sincere sense of the men’s individual personalities into the text.
