A Resurrection In The Valley Of Death

A Resurrection in the Valley of Death

When Phil and Stan kissed their wives good-bye, it was for the last time. On September 19, 1968, the Iowa farm boy and his buddy from Australia climbed into the highlands of New Guinea, going where no Westerner had ventured before. But Stan and Phil wanted to bring Jesus to the Yali people. Their vision was audacious. The Yali were headhunters and cannibals, living in the Stone Age. These most-feared of the mountain tribes were called lords of the earth.

Officials warned Phil and Stan that it was sheer suicide to enter the Yali heartland. But the Iowa farm boy and the Australian outbacker were not easily cowed. They had already hacked their way through impassable forests, carved an airfield out of tangled jungle, and built a mission station with their own hands. Stan had fought the Japanese in World War II, survived a ruptured appendix in the jungle, and pulled five Yali arrows from his body in an earlier attack. Phil said, “They can’t kill me. I died the day that I gave myself to Jesus.”

As the missionaries went over the mountains into the Seng Valley, they were entering misty shadowlands of witchcraft, revenge killings, and human sacrifices. Distant drums warned that shamans were stirring up their people to destroy these white devils. On September 25, 1968, Stan Dale and Phil Masters went down under a hail of arrows as the Yali swarmed over them. Remembering that these missionaries had talked about a resurrection and fearing that they might come back to haunt them, the Yali hacked their bodies to pieces, ate them, burned their bones, and scattered their ashes into the wind.

When Yali drums carried the news of their death down the valleys of the Snow Mountains, it seemed like a monumental tragedy. They left behind two grieving widows and ten orphaned children. No one was available to finish the translation of the Bible into Yali. Persecution broke out against the handful of Yali believers. Stan Dale’s widow went back to Australia, never to return. Phil Masters’s widow cried out in despair, “Why, God? What did we do wrong?” For all practical purposes, the vision to reach the Yali was over.

But God had other plans. Three months later, a plane crashed in Yali territory. Everyone on board died except for a nine-year-old boy. A Yali believer found and hid him. When a party of missionaries came to retrieve the boy, Yali leaders were sure that the spirits of Stan and Phil had returned. In fear, they invited the missionaries to share their gospel. Today there are one hundred churches among the Yali. The lords of the earth have come to Christ and are sending their own missionaries to neighboring tribes. Who would have guessed that fierce cannibals would become gospel preachers? When your dreams have been shattered, remember the story of two martyred missionaries and a tribe of headhunters. What’s true for them is also true for you:

It’s not over until it’s over, and then it’s still not over.

But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will stand upon the earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God!

Job 19:25-26