God's Smuggler

by Brother Andrew

That night I promised God that as often as I could lay my hands on a Bible, I would bring it to these children of His behind the wall that men had built.

With Corry, sunshine and warmth came into the place and made it home.

The government substituted a ceremony of its own for the Christian confirmation.

Henrietta laughed. “No,” she said. “I certainly am not brave. I was just a schoolteacher about to retire. I’m not a martyr. But I just could not bring myself to teach these wonderful young people that the State was God.”

was gradually forming a picture of the Church as a whole, as it existed under Communism.

The enterprising German farmer had not taken at all kindly to the collective idea; he had quit the land in such large numbers that that fall there had been no one to harvest the crops.

It was a brazen duel between the new regime and God Himself.

Here in Germany the Communists are trying out a new kind of ‘persuasion,’ in my mind far more dangerous than outright persecution.

“You can’t use strong-arm tactics against the Church without strengthening it. It’s always been that way. Under persecution a man looks at his faith to see if it’s worth fighting for, and this is a scrutiny Christianity can always withstand. The real danger comes with an indirect attack, where a person is lured away from the Church before he has a chance to become strong. Keep this in mind while you listen today.”

For God and the religious instinct, it was attempting to substitute the State, and the emotion of patriotism.

“It’s an open fight for allegiance,”

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

Thank God for bringing the mission field to you!”

He founded a church right there in Caesar’s household.

That night I drove up to the apartment, checked the street to make sure it was empty, and then took inside the first of many, many cartons of Bibles I was to deliver to this man over the years. Petroff and his wife watched me put the box on their one table, their eyes wide in frank and open curiosity. “What’s that?” Petroff asked. I lifted the top and took out a Bible. I put it in the trembling hands of Petroff and another into the hands of his wife. “And—and in the box?” Petroff asked. “More. And still more outside.” Petroff closed his eyes. His mouth was working hard to control the emotion he was feeling. But two tears rolled slowly out from between his closed lids and fell on the volume in his hands.

“Do you know the official reason the government gives for suppressing Bibles here?” Petroff asked me as we sped through a countryside brilliant with roses for the perfume industry. “It’s because Bibles are printed in the old orthography. They hold back education, the government says. Chain people to ancient spellings and usages.”

Petroff sat down and I waited for the hymn, then realized that of course singing was impossible in this church underground.

“The front line is long, Brother. Here we must give a little, there we may advance. This day, Andrew from Holland, we have made an advance.”

tiny nonregistered, underground churches. “Strengthen the things that remain”

the law against evangelizing children.

But the three hundred new converts left Stara Zagora, fanning out across the Balkin Peninsula, disbursed like the church in Jerusalem, to build fires wherever they landed.

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.

The shortest of visits, no more than a glimpse—and yet in those moments was forged a friendship that is one of the bulwarks of my life.

Rumania was known among Iron Curtain Christians themselves as the “greenhouse of atheism.”

While the chief weapon against the Church in Bulgaria was the registration requirement, in Rumania the technique was Consolidation. Consolidate denominations, consolidate physical facilities, consolidate the hours of worship. Wherever there were churches with empty pews, the congregations were merged with others in nearby villages, and the leftover facilities confiscated by the State. In theory it sounded reasonable and even advantageous to the Church: one large united congregation in place of several small struggling ones. In practice it meant that many members of the shut-down churches simply ceased attending anywhere. Most of them were peasants, attached to their old places of worship, and travel between villages was slow and difficult.

“That was not from me,” I repeated, remembering the hundreds of readers of Kracht van Omhoog whose anonymous gifts were represented in that bill. “It is from the believers in Holland to the believers in Rumania. It is a token of oneness in the Body of Christ.” I watched the faces in the room as the man translated, and once again I saw that incredulous question, that dawning hope: We are not alone, then? We have brothers in other places? We have friends we never knew?

We stay because—” he let his eyes travel across the valley—“because if we go, who will be left to pray?”

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.

God’s bountiful care.

She began by reminding me of the scriptural injunction that the ox grinding the corn must not be kept from enjoying the grain. Did I think God felt less about His human workers? Hadn’t I better examine myself to be sure I was not nursing a Sacrificial Spirit? Wasn’t I claiming to depend upon God, but living as if my needs would be met by my own scrimping? I remember her close. “God will send you what your family needs and what your work needs too. You are a mature Christian, Brother Andrew. Act like one.”

Funny how long it took us to learn the simple fact that God really is a Father, as displeased with a cramped, miserly attitude of lack as with its opposite failing of acquisitiveness.

abundance.

How faithful God is, how utterly trustworthy, how good beyond imagining!

After all, guides were government employees, screened and indoctrinated for their jobs.

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

Clearly they underestimated the Bible, and this might be God’s opportunity. I knew

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. 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. But

But God is never defeated. Though He may be opposed, attacked, resisted, still the ultimate outcome can never be in doubt. Every day we see fresh proof that indeed all things—even evil ones—work together for those who are called by His name.

I read the Qur’an before I read the Bible—that wasn’t in God’s Smuggler! So I was interested. I knew if Communism fell, Islam could quickly rise up as a movement.

There was no plan, no vision, certainly no thought about leading a worldwide organization. God revealed a need I could meet, and I did what I could. The work grew, and many others joined me, including people in other countries—South Africa was the first in 1970, after the Netherlands, of course, followed by Australia and Switzerland, then the U.S. and the U.K. Deryck Stone, a pastor in South Africa, was the first to suggest the name Open Doors. He was on our international board for many years.

Everywhere I go I seek my brothers and sisters in Christ.

What is the difference between ministry in Communist countries and ministry in Islamic countries? Islam is a much stronger movement.

The challenge of Communism is the stupid proclamation “There is no God.” The challenge of Islam is “Who is God?”

As you can see, this clearly isn’t my story. It is God’s story, and a lot of staff and volunteers have participated. I have always said that if I, an uneducated Dutchman—you know I never officially graduated from high school or Bible school—can do these things, then anyone can do them. If, that is, you are led by God and live and work by faith.

am not pro- or anti-Israel. I am not pro- or anti-Palestinian. I am pro-Church, and my calling is to go where the Church is persecuted and struggling to survive.

The devil will do everything possible to thwart the advance of God’s Kingdom. Jesus told us that if the world hated Him, it will also hate us. So we must not be surprised by the increase in persecution around the world.

There is much we can do, starting on our knees.