John Eliot: Apostle to the Indians

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Speaker 1: And we continue with our American stories. If you want to know about the history of America, it’s imperative that you know the role that the Bible played in shaping our country. Our founding fathers, both Christian and non Christian alike, were heavily influenced by the Bible. Here to share another story is Robert Morgan, who is the author of one hundred Bible verses that made America, defining moments that shaped our enduring foundation of faith. Let’s take a listen.00:00:41
Speaker 2: I want to introduce you to one of America’s early heroes, a man who has left a lasting impression on our history books, although many of the newer ones neglect his story. John Elliott was born in England in the very early years of the sixteen hundreds. He was a teenage when he heard about the Pilgrims coming to America and about the Puritans establishing the city of Boston. John Eliot attended Cambridge University in England, and he made a decision to follow Jesus Christ as his savior under the ministry of a local pastor named Thomas Hooker. Because of the pressure on Puritans by the English government, John Eliot joined those who emigrated to Boston, and shortly after arriving he was hired to be the pastor of a church in nearby Roxbury. That was in the year sixteen thirty two and John was in his twenties. He kept that job for fifty seven years, imagined serving as the pastor of the same church for nearly six decades. But that’s not all that Elliot did. When he was forty two years old, he grew burdened for the nearby communities of Native Americans and he began studying Algonquin. It was a daunting task, especially because of the length of their words. For example, and the Algonquin dialect, the phrase our lusts was expressed by word that I can even pronounce, but I can spell it to you n U M m A T c h e k O d t A n t A m O n g A n u n n O n a s h. Imagine trying to find a way of expressing the simple words of the Bible and a language in which the words are so long. Well. Elliott faced those linguistic challenges, and he persevered until he could speak the language himself well enough to preach, with the help sometimes of an interpreter. Elliot later wrote of his first attempt at preaching to these people. He said, I then preached Jesus Christ into them as the only means of recovery from sin and wrath, an eternal death. I explained to them who Christ was, and whither he was gone, and how He will one day come again to judge the world. I speak to them of the blessed state of those who believe in Christ and know him feelingly well. In just a short time, a number of Native Americans confessed Christ to save Eurek. These converts established their own village and named it by an Algonquin word that meant in English rejoicing. It was the town of Rejoicing, for that’s what they were doing. As time went by, other villages arose, and Elliott traveled up and down the coast all the time maintaining his primary ministry as a pastor in Roxbury. It was very hard, rigorous work. In a letter dated December twenty ninth, imagine how cold in New England. The year was sixteen forty nine, he wrote, I was not dry day or night from the third day of the week to the sixth. But I traveled and at night I pulled off my boots, wrung out my stockings, and on with them again. And I continued, and yet God stepped in and helped me. He said, I considered this first second Timathy two three, that we should endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Well, Algonquin and Native American churches were planted in nantic Plymouth, Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard. Elliott lived to see fourteen praying villages, as he called them, and each one had between twenty five hundred and four thousand inhabitants, and there were twenty four Native American preachers by the time he died. All the while he was serving his church at Roxbury. Plus, he founded a school, the Roxbury Latin School, which still is going today. It is the oldest school and continuous existence in North America. John Elliott’s most prodigious feat was the production of the first Bible published in America. The New Testament came out in sixteen sixty one and the Old Testament three years later. It was in Algonquin. It’s hard to imagine how Elliott accomplished such a thing, reducing a near impossible language to writing training Native Americans to read, and then translating the entire Bible for them. One historian said that it was a work which excited the wonder and admiration of both hemispheres, and has rendered his name ever memorable in the annals of literature and piety. When he was in his eighties, Elliott grew too weak to preach it his church in Locksbury, and he asked the church to finally seek another pastor. He said, I wonder for what the Lord Jesus continues to let me look. He knows that now I can do nothing for him. As he sought for some final work to do for Christ, he heard about a youth who had fallen into the fire and had been blinded. Elliott invited the church to live with him, and he devoted the latter years of his life to helping this young person memorize full chapters of the Scripture, and he taught him how to pray. Elliot himself was a man of deep prayer. When confronted with distressing news, he would always say, brethren, let us turn this all into prayer. On May twenty first of sixteen ninety, in his eighty six year, after a remarkably productive life, and his last words were welcome, joy, Pray, Pray, pray.

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Speaker 1: And a terrific job by the production, editing and storytelling by our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to Robert Morgan. He’s the author of one hundred Bible verses that made America and what a story. Imagine this. You’re John Elliott, you graduate from Cambridge and then what do you do? You give that all up and you come to America, to the wilderness, and then he gets the idea to translate the first Bible in America into Algonquin. Remarkable the story of John Elliot here on Our American Stories liehbib here and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to hear again can be found there daily again. Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps us keep these great American stories coming.