God Takes Tragic Events and Turns Them Into Glorious Triumphs

But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid, for am I in God’s place? ²⁰ As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.
 
Genesis 50:19-20
 
Joseph Stowell was the president of Moody Bible Institute. He told about standing along a small strip of sand along one of the hundreds of bends in the Curaray River, deep in the Ecuadorian jungle. 
 
In that place, over 60 years ago, five gifted young men gave their lives for the cause of Christ. 
 
The five men—Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, Roger Youderian, and Nate Saint—had affectionately named the spot “Palm Beach.” They had flown there and set up camp for the purpose of reaching tribe referred to as Aucas, notorious for periodic acts of violence and brutality. 
 
The men had built a brief but hopeful relationship with three of the Aucas who visited them on the beach. 
 
Suddenly a killing party rushed out of the jungle, hurling spears at the five men and leaving them dead. 
 
The bodies of the five men floated in the river for five days until a search party arrived to bury them just a few yards from where Stowell and his wife stood. 
 
That 1956 incident was so tragic; but God has marvelous ways of taking life’s worst tragedies and turning them into His glorious triumphs. 
 
Word soon reached the United States, as LIFE Magazine and major news services gave the killings in-depth coverage. And all across North America, hundreds, perhaps thousands of young people on college campuses stood to say, “I’ll take their place.” 
 
The new wave of missionaries took the torch of Christ from those five men and carried it around the world to the nations. 
 
An old Auca Indian sat in the back of the dugout canoe that guided the Stowells down the river to Palm Beach. 
 
He had been a member of the killing party; but on the beach with the Stowells that day, he stood as their brother in Christ. 
 
The head of the killing party, the one who’d speared Nate Saint, had also become a Christian. When someone asked him what he would do when he got to heaven, he said, “I will look for Nate Saint, throw my arms around him, and thank him for bringing the gospel to the jungle.” 
 
Stowell concluded, “I don’t think my life will ever be quite the same after standing in that place. I saw that Christ gives us a cause not worth living for, but worth dying when necessary . . .  Those five men at the beach were willing to push their lives to the brink because they served the one who had pushed His life to the brink for them.” 
 
My pastor friend James Merritt says, “I’d rather die for a conviction, than live with a compromise.” 
 
Jesus tasted death, too; and after Jesus died, Hell threw a party. 
 
But the party was cancelled after three days. The Devil was like a person trying to blow out trick candles on a birthday cake. The candles won’t go out. 
 
You and I serve a Lord who’s light couldn’t be extinguished.
 
So you can go out and boldly proclaim that Jesus is Lord to a world that desperately needs to hear it. 
 
And I don’t know what tragedy you may be facing today, but please know that God will have the final say.