Nate Saint: Martyr for Christ

The following is a book review on the life of Nate Saint, martyred missionary to Ecuador.

Jungle Pilot, by Russell T. Hitt, Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House, 1997. Pp 320.

“Missionaries constantly face expendability. And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives. They forget that when their lives are spent and the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.” A missionary named Nate Saint who lost his life on the field in 1956 at the hands of native Ecuadorian inhabitants wrote the preceding words. Not only did Saint speak those words over a radio station in Ecuador but he also lived those words. As soon as he married his wife Marjorie, the Saints packed their bags and answered God’s call to foreign missions. Most missionaries experience one or two times in their lives where they strongly sense God’s call. Nate Saint lived through many “mountaintop” experiences where he knew God was with him and would not forsake him. In the end, Saint was worthy enough to be called home to be with his Father.

Nathanael Saint (1923-1956) was the seventh of eight children and was raised in a very traditional Christian family in the state of Pennsylvania. At a young age he displayed a growing interest in aviation. By the time he graduated high school he enrolled in the army hoping to be a pilot. After coming down with a serious illness that put his army career in jeopardy, Saint soon surrendered the call to missions. His special call would be to fly planes over mountainous regions helping other missionary families. He would also minister to the natives who were coping with the hard conditions and sometimes save lives by bringing much needed supplies. Some engineers called Saint an aeronautical genius. However, Saint looked at his gift as being just that, a gift from God to help fulfill His redemptive purpose.

What spurred Nate Saint to live such a faithful life? Maybe it was his near death experience at Yosemite National Park. Despite his friends not accompanying him, as well as the park rangers not giving him “permission,” Saint decided that he would trek through a trail in the dead of winter. As he climbed, the temperature dropped and the visibility lessened. His body then started to ache and moan. Through the snowy climb, Nate ascended nearly 4,000 feet, passed through bear tracks, and at times thought he would not survive the hike. Within a few hours, Saint found himself in dire straits.

Saint recalls: “I guess I’d been ashamed to pray about my fix. After all I had no business up there. I had deliberately started this climb looking for diversion from the endless routine of the Army.” Then Saint realized a fact that would change his life forever: “My life wasn’t my own. The Lord had called me to be a gospel missionary. It had been a clear, definable Christian experience in which I turned every potentiality of my life over to God for His service. That was a couple of years ago.” Fearing he had squandered his life calling, Saint finally called out to God. He realized that he was not afraid to die and started praying to God that he was grateful for what God had done for him in his life. He renewed his vows of service and then suddenly the trail leveled off and the snow disappeared and there was a cabin with someone inside to help nurse Saint back to health.

After a brief six-month missionary stint in Mexico, and a wedding to his sweetheart, Marjorie Farris, he and his new bride moved to the mission field of the South American country of Ecuador. During the next several years, Saint piloted many missions to different Indian tribes in the region. However, one people group, commonly referred to as the Auca (“savage”) Indians were still not reached. This un-reached people group began to be of great interest to five particular missionaries which included Saint and Jim Elliot, whose wife Elisabeth has become a well-known author and speaker for Christianity.

Thanks to Saint’s piloting ability and his ingenious method of dropping a bucket out of a plane, the missionaries were able to contact the Aucas weekly by placing gifts in the bucket. The Aucas amazingly responded with gifts as well. This practice went on for a couple of months. Finally, the five missionaries decided it was time to land the plane on the Aucan beach and make face-to-face contact with a people group who had never heard of Jesus. The five missionaries were killed days later. Much has been written about finding the bodies, but no one but the Waodani tribe knows exactly how and why the martyrdom happened.

Nate Saint was a man of God. He knew his Christian theology. His doctrine of salvation was sound enough that he knew that unless someone was sent to preach Christ Jesus to the Waodani tribe they would go to Hell. General revelation and an awareness of a creator is not saving grace. Therefore, missions to the uttermost parts of the earth are the Christian responsibility. Nate Saint and his friends knew this and they risked their lives to promulgate the Gospel. This knowledge that Saint had would be his positive and in the end negative attribute. Positively, Saint was a Christian solider. Negatively, it cost him his life. However, Nate Saint would disagree. To live is Christ and to die is gain.

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