Elisabeth Elliot, Christian Author, Missionary, Goes Home to Heaven

News Staff : Jun 15, 2015
CBN News

"Setting her sights 'on things above' (Colossians 3:1), Elisabeth ministered among three indigenous groups in Ecuador before helping listeners and readers find joy in the ordinary affairs of life—like cooking meals and cleaning toilets—on her globally syndicated radio program."

[CBN News] Famed Christian author, speaker and missionary Elisabeth Elliot passed away Sunday morning. She was 88 years old. (Photo via TheGospelCoalition.org)

Elliot's husband, Lars Gren, said his late wife had been battling dementia. He added that she handled her mental decline with the same aplomb as the deaths of her first two spouses.

"She accepted those things, [knowing] they were no surprise to God," Gren said. "It was something she would rather not have experienced, but she received it."

Elliot authored numerous books but perhaps her most famous were those she penned about the martyrdom of her first husband, Jim Elliot. He was killed in 1956 by Waorani tribal members while he and 4 other missionaries attempted to reach them with the Gospel. At the time, the Waorani (also called the Aucas) was one of eastern Ecuador's unreached tribes.

"Our daughter Valerie was 10 months old when Jim was killed," she said. "Since then, my life has been one of writing and speaking."

In 1969, she married Gordon-Conwell Seminary professor Addison Leitch. He passed away four years later from cancer.

"After his death I had two lodgers in my home," Elliot wrote. "One of them married my daughter; the other one, Lars Gren, married me."

Elliot, the daughter of missionaries and a Wheaten College graduate, later went on to launch the radio program called, "Gateway to Joy."

"Elisabeth Elliot never set out to be a radio personality. She set out to do the will of God—something we don't hear much about these days," her cohost, Jan Wismer, wrote in a 2013 tribute.

"Elisabeth believed in asking this foundational question: Is this God's will for me, right now, in this place? ...Unapologetically, Elisabeth espoused such truths as: give to get, lose to find, and die to live," Wismer continued.

"Setting her sights 'on things above' (Colossians 3:1), Elisabeth ministered among three indigenous groups in Ecuador before helping listeners and readers find joy in the ordinary affairs of life—like cooking meals and cleaning toilets—on her globally syndicated radio program," she said.

"She called it living sacramentally, and her rock-solid principles shaped my life," she concluded.

Elliot leaves behind her husband and daughter, Valerie Elliot Shepard.