Friday, January 27, 2006

The End of the Spear

I am usually somewhat cynical when paying money to see a "religious" movie. I have found them usually lightweight, poorly photogaphed and acted, and a waste of my time and money.

A movie now playing in regular theaters is just the opposite of all the above--The Eye of the Spear. I highly recommend this story about the unfortunate missionaries who went to Ecuador in the 1950's and were killed by one of the native tribes in the rain forest.

One thing that struck me as I watched is how much better we prepare missionaries today. We would never think of sending out missionaries to an unfamiliar place without language training. One of the reasons for the missionaries'deaths was that they could not understand what the Indians were saying, nor tell them why they had come to the rain forest. The missionaries had been there for awhile, and one of the missionaries had a sister who knew and spoke the language, yet the men who landed in the Ecuadorian jungle could not communicate. What a tragedy.

I remember reading the Life Magazine account of their deaths. And of course, Elisabeth Elliott's book about the event Through Gates of Splendor has become a classic.

Please go and support the movie--half of the monies made will go toward helping indegenous peoples. It ranked 8 on the attendance list last week. I saw buses of people from churches in Nashville at my theater.

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