100 Bible Verses that Changed America: John Eliot, The Missionary Who Learned America's Native Tongue

On this episode of Our American Stories, John Eliot translated the Bible into the language of a people who were there before the state: the Massachusetts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. If you want
to know about the history of America, it's imperative that
you know the role that the Bible played in shaping
our country. Our founding fathers, both Christian and non Christian alike,
were heavily influenced by the Bible. Here to share another
story is Robert Morgan, who's the author of one hundred

(00:32):
Bible verses that made America, defining moments that shaped our
enduring foundation of faith. Let's take a listen.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
I want to introduce you to one of America's early heroes,
a man who has left a lasting impression on our
history books, although many of the newer ones neglect his story.
John Elliott was born in England in the very early
years of the sixteen hundreds. He was a teenage when
he heard about the Pilgrims coming to America and about

(01:03):
the Puritans establishing the city of Boston. John Eliot attended
Cambridge University in England, and he made a decision to
follow Jesus Christ as his savior under the ministry of
a local pastor named Thomas Hooker. Because of the pressure
on Puritans by the English government, John Eliot joined those

(01:24):
who emigrated to Boston, and shortly after arriving he was
hired to be the pastor of a church in nearby Roxbury.
That was in the year sixteen thirty two and John
was in his twenties. He kept that job for fifty
seven years, imagined serving as the pastor of the same

(01:45):
church for nearly six decades. But that's not all that
Elliot did. When he was forty two years old, he
grew burdened for the nearby communities of Native Americans and
he began studying Algonquin. It was a daunting task, especially
because of the length of their words. For example, and

(02:06):
the Algonquin dialect, the phrase our lusts was expressed by
word that I can even pronounce, but I can spell
it to you n U M m A T c
h e k O d t A n t A
m O n g A n u n n O

(02:26):
n a s h. Imagine trying to find a way
of expressing the simple words of the Bible and a
language in which the words are so long. Well. Elliott
faced those linguistic challenges, and he persevered until he could
speak the language himself well enough to preach, with the
help sometimes of an interpreter. Elliot later wrote of his

(02:50):
first attempt at preaching to these people. He said, I
then preached Jesus Christ into them as the only means
of recovery from sin and wrath and eternal death. I
explained to them who Christ was, and whither he was gone,
and how He will one day come again to judge
the world. I speak to them of the blessed state

(03:10):
of those who believe in Christ and know him feelingly well.
In just a short time, a number of Native Americans
confessed Christ to save Europe. These converts established their own
village and named it by an Algonquin word that meant
in English rejoicing. It was the town of Rejoicing, for

(03:33):
that's what they were doing. As time went by, other
villages arose, and Elliott traveled up and down the coast
all the time maintaining his primary ministry as a pastor
in Roxbury. It was very hard, rigorous work. In a
letter dated December twenty ninth, imagine how cold in New England.

(03:56):
The year was sixteen forty nine, he wrote, I was
not dry day or night from the third day of
the week to the sixth. But I traveled and at
night I pulled off my boots, wrung out my stockings,
and on with them again. And I continued, and yet
God stepped in and helped me. He said, I considered

(04:17):
this first second Timothy two three, that we should endure
hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Well, Algonquin
and Native American churches were planted in nantic Plymouth, Cape
Cod Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard. Elliott lived to see fourteen
praying villages, as he called them, and each one had

(04:40):
between twenty five hundred and four thousand inhabitants, and there
were twenty four Native American preachers by the time he died.
All the while he was serving his church at Roxbury. Plus,
he founded a school, the Roxbury Latin School, which still
is going today. It is the oldest school and continuous

(05:03):
existence in North America. John Elliott's most prodigious feat was
the production of the first Bible published in America. The
New Testament came out in sixteen sixty one and the
Old Testament three years later. It was in Algonquin. It's
hard to imagine how Elliott accomplished such a thing, reducing

(05:25):
a near impossible language to writing, training Native Americans to read,
and then translating the entire Bible for them. One historian
said that it was a work which excited the wonder
and admiration of both hemispheres, and has rendered his name
ever memorable in the annals of literature and piety. When

(05:48):
he was in his eighties, Elliott grew too weak to
preach it as church in Rocksbury, and he asked the
church to finally seek another pastor. He said, I wonder
for what the Lord Jesus continues to let me look.
He knows that now I can do nothing for him.
As he sought for some final work to do for Christ,
he heard about a youth who had fallen into the

(06:09):
fire and had been blinded. Elliott invited the church to
live with him, and he devoted the latter years of
his life to helping this young person memorize full chapters
of the Scripture, and he taught him how to pray.
Elliott himself was a man of deep prayer. When confronted
with distressing news, he would always say, brethren, let us

(06:32):
turn this all into prayer. On May the twenty first
of sixteen ninety, in his eighty six year, after a
remarkably productive life, and his last words were welcome, joy, pray, Pray, pray.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
And a terrific job by the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to
Robert Morgan. He's the author of one hundred Bible verses
that made America and what a story. Imagine this. You're
John Elliott, you graduate from Cambridge and then what do
you do? You give that all up and you come
to America, to the wilderness, and then he gets the

(07:17):
idea to translate the first Bible in America into Algonquin.
Remarkable the story of John Elliot. Here on Our American Stories.
This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the
show where America is the star and the American people,
and we do it all from the heart of the
South Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't do this show

(07:40):
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