Faithful Servants of Christ: JOHN ELIOT

0:00Let us not be weary and well-doing. For in due season, we shall reap if we faint not. Believers have God's promise that when we faithfully obey Him and don't give up, we will enjoy the very best returns. Let the Lord encourage your heart as Jovacic, pastor of Northeast Baptist Church of Danberic Connecticut, urges us to stay the course. I challenge you to do an image search of the phrase Massachusetts' Colony Seal, 1600s. You'll be surprised at what you discover. King Charles had granted the inhabitants of Massachusetts the authority to establish a colony and to create a seal for their colony. In the center of that first seal is the image of an Indian with a bow in his left hand and an arrow in his right hand.

1:01And he is speaking the words, come over and help us, a reference to Acts 169 when God gave Paul a vision of a man in Europe pleading for him to come and preach the gospel, come over and help us, an American Indian pleading for the gospel. In the introduction of the book The Life of John Elliott by Nehemiah Adams, published in 1847, the author writes, a prominent object with the pilgrim fathers in coming hither was to preach the gospel to the Indians of this continent. They regarded themselves as foreign missionaries to North America. The first man to make powerful and enduring progress among the Indians in North America was an Englishman named John Elliott. John Elliott arrived in America in November of 1631 at 27 years of age. He had already been saved and had prepared for the ministry in England. A year after arriving John married Hannah Mumpard.

2:02They would be happily married for 55 years and they had six children. John became a pastor in Roxbury, Massachusetts where he would serve for nearly six decades. And he had a great burden to improve the quality and availability of education. John Elliott helped establish the Roxbury grammar school, which is still an operation. It's the oldest existing school in North America. By the mid-1640s John had become greatly burdened for the plight of the Indians. On October 28, 1646 John had his first interaction in a village of Indians that was just a few miles from his own house. He would later describe his visit in a tract he published titled The Day Breaking If Not the Sun Rising of the Gospel with the Indians in New England. Here's a brief excerpt of that tract. A little before we came to their wigwams, five or six of the chief men of them met with English

3:02salutations, bidding us much welcome. Leading us into the principal wigwam, we found many men, women and children gathered together from all quarters. Being all there assembled, we began with prayer, which was now in English, we being not so far acquainted with the Indian language as to express our hearts therein before God of them. We hope to be able to do this air along the Indians desiring it that they also may know how to pray. But we began thus in a tongue unknown to them. When prayer was ended, it was an affecting and yet glorious spectacle to see a company of perishing and forlorn outcasts diligently attending to the blessed word of salvation then delivered, and professing that they understood all that was then taught them in their own tongue. For about an hour and a quarter, the sermon was continued wherein I ran through all the principal matters of religion.

4:03John Elliott soon realized that he could not hope to make an impact among the Indians, unless he could show them and teach them the scriptures in their own language. The problem was, not only did they not have a Bible in their language, they didn't even have a written language, not even an alphabet. This is hard to comprehend, but it had been a thousand years since an alphabet had been created for an unwritten language. Think about that. John Elliott decided that he was going to tackle this impossible task. First, he learned to speak the Massachusetts language that they spoke from a Piquat Indian so that in just a few years John could preach without an interpreter. Next, he created a Massachusetts alphabet from which he constructed words. He then wrote dictionaries and grammar books in this language. Finally, he translated the New Testament into their Massachusetts language and then the

5:07entire Bible. This incredible project took 14 years. In 1661, John had 1500 New Testaments printed in the Massachusetts tongue and in 1663, 1000 complete Bibles. The Elliott Indian Bible, as it became known, was the first Bible printed on American soil and it was responsible for countless American Indians putting their faith in Jesus Christ. John Elliott died on May 21, 1690, at 86 years of age. The cemetery where he's buried in Roxbury, Massachusetts is now called the Elliott Barrier Ground. His grave marker calls him the Apostle to the Indians. The town of Newton, Massachusetts, where John Elliott delivered that first sermon to the Indians, has a picture of Elliott preaching to the Indians on its city seal.

6:08Numerous places, including the town of Elliott main, are named for John Elliott. Christian, God will enable you to overcome impossible obstacles to reach souls with the gospel. Stay the course. We pray that today's program was a blessing to you. If you have any questions or comments, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at staythecourse at NBCDanbury.org. God bless you. So be a Christian, stay the course. God's policy and yours. We shall read that we faint night.