Through Gates Of Splendour

Description

The whole incredible story of one of the boldest and most dramatic exploits in modern times. Nothing in current literature has dramatised so strikingly the collision of old and new, darkness and light, as this story of the five missionary martyrs who were the first to penetrate the dread land of the Auca Indians in Ecuador with the Christian Gospel, only to be ambushed and slain. ‘Operation Auca’ utilised in the service of God all the instruments of modern communication: aircraft, two-way radios, miracle drugs, public address systems, tape recorders, modern psychology – still its first efforts were defeated by primal fear and hatred. Yet transcending this tragedy was the five’s unquenchable faith in the ultimate purposes of God and their joyous devotion to Christ and his cause that constantly break through the episodes in the book. Long planning and careful preparation preceded the first contact with the stone-age Aucas. The five young men kept meticulous and revealing diaries, took pictures constantly, recorded much on tape and kept in touch steadily by radio with their base camp, where wives and families waited and prayed. For outright suspense, for an unprecedented look inside the hearts and minds of present-day missionaries, for detailed documentation of one of the last frontiers of savagery, but above all for the working out in action of invincible faith, there is nothing like ‘Through Gates of Splendour’.

There can be no doubt about the dedicated heroism of the five young Americans,

The Observer—Will surely rank as a modern missionary epic…This is a memorable, arresting and exciting book,

Sunday School Chronicle. —This thrilling story, The Christian. —Intensely moving…the great power of the book lies in the fact that it is not a retold story of a past pious age, but a factual account of something which happened in our own day and age, J B Phillips.