God's Smuggler

by Brother Andrew

For several weeks all of us, girls as well as boys, worked at the Ford factory in London, learning how to take a car apart and put it together.

“It’s an exercise in trust. The rules are simple. Each student on your team is given a one-pound banknote. With that you go on a missionary tour through Scotland. You’re expected to pay your own transportation, your own lodging, your food, any advertising you want to do, the renting of halls, providing refreshments—”

“Worse than that. When you get back to school after four weeks, you’re expected to pay back the pound!”

“Oh, you’re not allowed to take up collections! Never. You’re not to mention money at your meetings. All of your needs have got to be provided without any manipulation on your part—or the experiment is a failure.”

“I know you don’t need money or you would have mentioned it,” someone would write. “But God just wouldn’t let me get to sleep tonight until I had put this in an envelope for you.”

But money or produce, we stuck fast to two rules: We never mentioned a need aloud, and we gave away a tithe of whatever came to us as soon as we got it—within 24 hours if possible.

Fast as we could give money away, God was always swifter, and we ended with money to send to the WEC work overseas.

With this kind of experience behind me, I was not really surprised to find waiting for me when we got back to school, a check from the Whetstras that was exactly enough, when converted into pounds, to pay my second term’s fee.

I never mentioned the school fees to anyone, and yet the gifts always came at such a moment that I could pay them in full and on time. Nor did they ever contain more than the school costs, and—in spite of the fact that the people who were helping me did not know one another—they never came two together.

I had made a covenant with God never to run out of money for school fees. My covenant said nothing about running out of soap. Or toothpaste. Or razor blades.

Perhaps He was using these experiences to teach me the difference between a Want and a Need.

I was certain that should a real need arise, God would supply it.

I had discovered that when God supplied money He did it in a kingly manner, not in some groveling way.

At ten o’clock in the morning, one of the students shouted up the stairwell that I had a visitor. I ran down the stairs thinking that this must be my delivering angel. But when I saw who it was, my heart dropped. This visitor wasn’t coming to bring me money, he was coming to ask for it. For it was Richard, a friend I had made months ago in the Patrick slums, a young man who came to the school occasionally when he just had to have cash.

It lay among the pebbles, the sun glinting off it in just such a way that I could see it but not Richard. I could tell from its color that it was a shilling.

How could I judge Richard when Christ told me so clearly that I must not.

With a light heart that told me I had done the right thing, I turned to go back inside.

And there was. A lot of money: a pound and a half—thirty shillings. Far more than enough to send my letter, buy a large box of soap, treat myself to my favorite toothpaste—and buy Gillette Supers instead of Blues.

The game was over. The King had done it His way.

Most of the bag was filled with small 31-page booklets entitled “The Way of Salvation.”

Karl Marx had said, “Give me twenty-six lead soldiers and I will conquer the world,”

Through her I preached my first sermon behind the Iron Curtain. It was short and insignificant except for one inescapable fact: Here I was, a Christian from the other side of the Iron Curtain, standing up and preaching the Gospel in a Communist country.

I had a special purpose in coming out so early. I wanted to pray for each person I had encountered on my trip.

Man was his own master: The future was his to take.

As far as I knew, back then in 1955, there was not a single missionary working in this largest of all mission fields.

“If You want me to go, Lord,” I said in a flash prayer beneath my breath, “You will have to supply the means.”

The people with books were sharing them with those who had none. In the notebooks were copied, note by note and word by word, the favorite hymns of the congregation.

It was only later that I learned how dangerous a thing for him this was in the Czechoslovakia of 1955. He told me that the Government was trying to get a total grip on the Church. It was the Government that selected theological students—choosing only candidates who favored the regime. In addition, every two months a minister had to renew his license. A friend had recently had his renewal application denied—no explanation. Each sermon had to be written out ahead of time and approved by the authorities. Each church had to list its leaders with the State.

All in all, that day I preached four times and visited five different churches.

If missionary work was a poor life to offer a beautiful girl—the girl in my dreams was gorgeous—what would she say to this new mission field I had glimpsed, where separation and secrecy and uncertainty would be the best I could offer?

And thus began the most amazing story of supply.

The first gifts from my unknown friends were small because my needs were small.

Later as my work expanded and there was greater need, so too did contributions from readers increase. It was only when there was need for really large sums, years later, that God turned elsewhere for our funds.

The Holy Spirit, the letter said, had instructed them to get in touch with me; they didn’t know why—but could I pay a visit to Amersfoort?

It was as though every individual in that room sensed that God was very close, and in the delight of His company wanted nothing, needed nothing, except occasionally to express the joy bubbling up inside.

“Andrew,” Mr. de Graaf spoke patiently, as to a slow-witted student, “I’m not arguing the logic of the case. I’m just passing on the message.” And with that, he was striding across the bridge to his waiting car.

“That’s the excitement in obedience,” he said. “Finding out later what God had in mind.”

We plunged into this sea of need like swimmers on the edge of the ocean,

And so I began, working mostly through interpreters, holding a few small classes in the most basic kind of Bible education. I knew from experience how powerful this knowledge can be, but I was scarcely prepared for its effect on lives in which it was totally new. People who had been sunk in despair became pillars of strength for a whole barracks. I saw bitterness change to hope, shame to pride.

Only once in filling out the application blank did I hesitate. There it was, halfway down the page, the familiar space for “occupation.” I had the feeling that mine had weighed against me before in these applications. But what was the phrase we had been taught in Glasgow? Walk in the Light, nothing hidden, nothing concealed, everything open and transparent for all to see. And so, as I had before, I wrote MISSIONARY in block letters, and left the completed forms on the desk.

And all at once I was recalling the words of the Great Commission: “Go ye, and teach all nations. . . .” Then, I was a teacher, wasn’t I? On the application form I wrote TEACHER and handed the forms across the desk.

“Andrew, you are on the King’s business! No,

The families of Witte had often given me pennies from their grocery money for my work in the refugee camps. That money stopped now. My relationship with my hometown was never quite the same again.

But Mr. de Graaf showed no surprise whatever. “Yes,” he said, “I thought you’d have it by now. Because,” he went on, drawing an envelope from his pocket, “God has told us that you will be needing an additional sum of money these next two months. And here it is.”

the Prayer of God’s Smuggler:

“Lord, in my luggage I have Scripture that I want to take to Your children across this border. When You were on earth, You made blind eyes see. Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see those things You do not want them to see.”

“Lord, make those seeing eyes blind.”

He repeated the theme I had heard first in Poland, that my “being there” meant everything. They felt so isolated, so alone.

On this first car trip behind the Iron Curtain I discovered that I had energy I never dreamed of. My visa was good for fifty days. For seven straight weeks I preached, taught, encouraged, distributed Scripture. I held more than eighty meetings during those fifty days—speaking as many as six times on a Sunday. I preached in large cities, hamlets, isolated farms. I spoke openly in the North, covertly in the South, where Communist influence was strongest.

Every morning in our Quiet Time, Nikola and I would include a prayer for the car. “Lord, we don’t have either time or the money for repairs on the car, so will You please keep it running?”