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Savage Love: A Review of the Work of Elisabeth Elliot

November 26th, 2018 | 14 min read

By Matthew Loftus

“‘You are loved with an everlasting love,’ that’s what the Bible says, ‘and underneath are the everlasting arms.’ This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot…”

I grew up hearing those words regularly on the radio as they opened Elisabeth Elliot’s “Gateway to Joy” broadcast, a daily program wherein Elliot discussed how to live as a Christian in the contemporary world. Her radio show, like the 21 books she wrote over her career as a writer and speaker, focused on many of the same overlapping topics: marriage, childrearing, obedience, joy, suffering, discipline, and missions. Initially propelled into the public consciousness by the martyrdom of her husband and four other missionaries in South America, Elliot’s first book about her husband’s final days established her as one of the most prominent voices of her generation trying to negotiate an unchanging Gospel in a rapidly changing world. From the deaths in an Ecuadorian jungle to the mundane give-and-take of marriage, Elliot was animated by the idea that we are indeed loved with an everlasting love — and that such love requires nothing less than a total surrender of our desires to God’s will.

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Matthew Loftus

Matthew Loftus teaches and practices Family Medicine in Baltimore and East Africa. His work has been featured in Christianity Today, Comment, & First Things and he is a regular contributor for Christ and Pop Culture. You can learn more about his work and writing at www.MatthewAndMaggie.org