God's Smuggler

by Brother Andrew

I urged the German Christians to become missionaries; because it has been my experience that a missionary church is an alive church.

The clerk seemed satisfied. “All we have,” he said, “is this little one here.” He pointed to a small hand-painted street plan under the glass on his desk. It would never be of any help to me; only the names of the biggest boulevards were shown. But I bent over the map to please him, and as I did I saw an amazing thing. The cartographer had indeed penned in the names only of major avenues, with one terribly important exception. There was a single, tiny street just a few blocks from the hotel that had a name on it. And it was the street name I was looking for! Not one other street of similar size on the entire map bore a name. I felt again the most amazing sense that this trip had been prepared long before.

As we neared the front door, I glanced for a fraction of a second into the face of the man who had arrived at the precise moment I did. And at that instant I experienced one of the common miracles of the Christian life: Our spirits recognized each other. Without a word we marched side by side up the stairs. Other families lived in the house too. If I were making a mistake, it would be very embarrassing. The stranger reached his apartment, took out his key, and threw open the door. Without invitation I walked into his house. Just as quickly, he closed the door behind him. We stood facing each other in the darkness of the single room that was his home. “I am Andrew from Holland,” I said in English. “And I,” said Petroff, “am Petroff.”

It is never safe to call a church a puppet—no matter how dead, no matter how subservient and temporizing it may appear on the surface. It is called by God’s name, it has God’s eye upon it, at any moment He may sweep the surface away with the purifying wind of His Spirit.

What would happen, I wondered, if we were to converse with each other via the Scriptures? I took my own Dutch Bible from my coat pocket and turned to 1 Corinthians 16:20. “All the brethren greet you. Greet ye one another with an holy kiss.” I held the Bible out and pointed to the name of the book, recognizable in any language, and to the chapter and verse number. Instantly their faces lit up. They swiftly found the place in their own Bible, read it, and beamed at me. Then Gheorghe was thumbing the pages, looking for a reference, which he held out for me. Proverbs 25:25: “As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.” Now we were all three laughing. I turned to the epistle of Paul to Philemon. “I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord. . . .”

The next day I went down to Amsterdam and picked up the money. Mr. Whetstra handed it to me in bills. We signed no papers, made no arrangements about paying it back. Nor did I mention the loan to anyone else. And yet over the next three years, enough money came in above and beyond the needs of the work that we were able to repay the loan in that short period of time. Immediately, mysteriously, as soon as the house was paid for, the flow of excess funds stopped—and it remained dried up until there was need for it again. In the years of living this life of faith, I have never known God’s care to fail.

What a great experience to live this way.

And yet in spite of this experience—and others like it occurring almost daily—I was still a novice in this whole business of God’s bountiful care. I still depended on the isolated miracle, the emergency dispensation to get me out of one spot or another, instead of leaning back in the arms of a Father Who had more than enough and to spare.

I raised the lid to my suitcase, revealing the stacks of Bibles. And as I did, I had my first puzzling experience with the Chinese Communists. The customs officer did not touch a thing in my suitcase. She looked at the Bibles for a moment, then raised her eyes: “Thank you, sir,” she said, with the ever-present smile. “Are you carrying a watch? Do you have a camera?” No reaction at all to what she had seen in the suitcase. She was 20, perhaps 25 years old. Was it possible that she had never seen a Bible? That she had no idea what it was . . . ?

Persecution is an enemy the Church has met and mastered many times. Indifference could prove to be a far more dangerous foe.

I found one ray of hope in the very disregard with which the government held the Scriptures. They apparently made no effort to prevent them from being brought into the country, sold, and even printed there. Clearly they underestimated the Bible, and this might be God’s opportunity. I knew from personal experience how powerful a tool the Bible could be in the hands of the Holy Spirit. Hadn’t I myself been converted simply by reading this book?

He led the way down the nave of the ancient basilica. Even from a distance they could see the Book on the altar, an enormous volume studded with jewels. Then all at once, four yards from the altar, the priest stopped—so abruptly that Rolf bumped against him. For several moments the four stood in silence, gazing at the treasure before them.

When the priest turned to go, Rolf burst out, “But—I want to go closer! Can’t I look at it? I mean, open it. See the pages.” As the guide translated, the priest’s eyes widened in horror. Closer! But no unordained person ever stood closer than four yards to the Holy Scriptures! Then, faltered Rolf, what was the sense of the new translation? Since the priests read Greek, what was this Bible used for? Why, to be carried in solemn procession. To receive the homage and adulation of the people. What else would a Bible be used for?

And so Marcus and Rolf returned home having seen only the outside of a book, with the feeling indeed that they had seen only the outside of a people and a nation.

“Remember,” I said, “that these people getting caught are depending on their own cleverness. Their motives are probably another disadvantage. Hatred and greed are heavy loads. Your motive, on the other hand, is love. And instead of priding yourselves on your cunning, you recognize how weak you are . . . so weak that you must depend totally upon the Spirit of God. . . .”

We believe that our particular group has grown as large as it ought to. We have stopped short of being an organization; we are an organism instead, a living and spontaneous association of individuals who know one another intimately, care for each other deeply, and feel the kind of respect one for another that makes rules and bylaws unnecessary.

Wow, this is so awesome. Could this applly to a church?

A group is the right size, I would guess, when each member can pray every day for every other member, individually and by name, interceding for his personal needs as well as for the success of a particular mission.

Shortly after that I was invited to join Open Doors and work with Brother Andrew to help him write what became two major books about the Church in the Islamic world, Light Force and Secret Believers, plus several devotionals.

Islam is a much stronger movement. Communism lasted barely 70 years in Russia and Eastern Europe. Islam has already been around for 1,400 years. Islam is based on monotheism and a holy book. The challenge of Communism is the stupid proclamation “There is no God.” The challenge of Islam is “Who is God?”

At one roadblock they searched all the stuff in our Volkswagen bus and found the Scriptures, of course. We offered to give them some. They said yes, but added, “We don’t want the Israel book. We want the Jesus book.” They didn’t want the Old Testament, only the New Testament.

There was one meeting where we sat and drank Arab coffee and Fadlallah said to me, “Andrew, you Christians have a big problem.” Well, I knew Christians had problems, but I was curious to find out what this Muslim leader thought was our big problem. His answer: “You don’t follow the example of Jesus anymore!” It was hard to disagree with him, so I asked him what we should do.

“You need to go back to the book!” He meant, of course, the Bible. We were quiet for a while as we drank another cup of coffee. Then Fadlallah shook his head sadly and said, “We Muslims also have a problem.” Now I was really curious. What did he believe was their big problem? His answer: “We Muslims aren’t following the life of the prophet Muhammad anymore.” I nodded my head, while thinking that not following Muhammad really wasn’t such a big problem. Then I asked, “So what is the solution?” “We have to go back to the book!” he answered. Of course he meant the Muslim book, the Qur’an, not the Bible.

I once proposed to him that we have a dialogue on the topic “What kind of person does each book produce?” We never had that discussion, but it would have been very interesting. What kind of people does the Qur’an produce? What kind of people does the Bible produce?

As they gave me a tour of the camp, I observed that I didn’t see a mosque. They responded, “Every tent is a mosque!” That deeply challenged me about my own home country. I wondered what it would mean if every Christian considered their home a church.

Pakistan has a terrible law called the Blasphemy Law. Anyone who is accused of insulting the prophet Muhammad is automatically given a death sentence. Anyone accused of desecrating the Qur’an gets life in prison. Simply the accusation by a neighbor with a grudge can ruin a person’s life. I have met with government leaders to plead with them to abolish this law. But because of pressure from fundamentalist groups like the Taliban, no politician is willing to risk his neck on this issue.