John Allen Chau, a Covenant Journey alumni, was martyred on November 17, 2018 by the Sentinelese tribal people on the island of North Sentinel. “When I heard the news of John’s death, I couldn’t believe it. I was numb. John loved people, and he loved Jesus. He was willing to give his life to share Jesus with the people on North Sentinel island,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Covenant Journey and Liberty Counsel. “Ever since high school, John wanted to go to North Sentinel to share Jesus with this indigenous people,” said Staver.
Wikipedia:
John Allen Chau (December 18, 1991 – November 17, 2018) was an American evangelical Christian missionary who was killed by the Sentinelese, a tribe in voluntary isolation, after illegally traveling to North Sentinel Island in an attempt to introduce the tribe to Christianity.[3][4]
Later that day he made another attempt, this time landing on the island.
He laid out more gifts, then approached the hut he was chased from earlier, staying out of arrow range. About half a dozen Sentinelese emerged and began to “whoop and shout”. He walked closer to try to hear what they were saying. He tried to “parrot their words back to them”, and the Sentinelese burst out laughing. They were probably “saying bad words or insulting me”, he concluded. He sang worship songs and preached from Genesis. For a while the Sentinelese seemed to tolerate his presence.
Then a boy shot an arrow at him. The arrow struck the waterproof Bible he was holding. He pulled it out, gave it back to the boy, and hastily retreated. The Sentinelese had taken his kayak, so he was forced to swim almost a mile to the fishing boat.
“I‘m scared,” he wrote that night in his diary. “Watching the sunset and it’s beautiful.” He was “crying a bit” and “wondering if it’ll be the last sunset I see before being in the place where the sun never sets”.
“You guys might think I’m crazy in all this,” he wrote to his family, “but I think it’s worth it to declare Jesus to these people.”
Is this “Satan’s last stronghold”, he asked God – a place “where none have heard or even had a chance to hear your name?”
He decided he would make his next attempt without the fishing vessel floating nearby. Appearing alone might make the Sentinelese more comfortable, he thought. And if the approach went “badly”, this would spare the fishermen from having to “bear witness to my death”.
His diary makes it clear that he didn’t want to die, but accepted the possibility. “I think I could be more useful alive,” he wrote, “but to you, God, I give all the glory of whatever happens.” He asked God to forgive “any of the people on this island who try to kill me” – especially “if they succeed”.
Shortly after dawn on 16 November, the last day he was seen alive, John Chau asked the fishermen to drop him off alone. He knew the risks; but the people of North Sentinel were damned, and he was determined to save them.
He struck out once more for the shore.
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