God's Smuggler

by Brother Andrew

“Brother Andrew,” he said at last, “I have just become a believer. It is mechanically impossible for this engine to run. Look. The air filter. The carburetor. The sparks. No, I’m sorry. This car cannot run.”

The mechanic only shook his head. “Brother,” he said, “would you permit me to clean your engine for you and give you a change of oil? It hurts me to see you abuse a miracle.”

Nikola and I stood on the platform facing a crowded room. It was so full that we did not even have room to put up the flannelgraph with which I illustrated my stories of the gospels.

Surely they hadn’t understood! I explained again how serious a step this was. I made the conditions of discipleship under a hostile government painfully clear. And then I made a second appeal, this time asking the people to stand.

“Prayer, yes, that we can do each day. I like what you have said about this. But Bible reading . . . Brother Andrew, most of these people do not have Bibles.”

With the pastor we worked out a system of Bible-sharing: a schedule of group study combined with individual use, so many hours on such-and-such a day for each member.

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.

In 1957 there was not a single Communist border over which you could take books of any kind—let alone religious books!

might feel desolate, but He was going to give me more “children,” spiritual children, than I could ever have as a flesh-and-blood father. I had written the answer beside the request.

“I don’t like the message, Lord, but at least it’s clear.”

“Lord, Paul prayed three times for release from the thorn in the flesh that was bothering him. And You refused him. I have prayed two times for a wife. I am going to pray once more. Perhaps You will refuse me a third time, too, Lord, and if You do, I shall never again bring up the question. I’m going to write it here in my Bible.” I opened the Bible to the back cover and scribbled one last notation, “Prayed . . . for . . . wife . . . third time . . . Witte, July 7 . . . 1957.” Then I closed the Bible with a snap. “Some people, Lord, are built for the lonely walk. But not me, please. Not me.”

Between visits I would often try to imagine myself proposing to Corry, and it sounded so awful that I knew ahead of time it was no use. Please marry me. I’ll be gone much of the time and I won’t be able to give you an address where you can write to me, and weeks will go by when I can’t get letters out to you, and though we’ll be in missionary work you’ll never be able to talk about the places and people we’re working with, and if one time I shouldn’t come back you’ll probably never know what happened. Add to that no foreseeable income, a room over a toolshed for a home—Corry was just too smart, as well as too pretty, to settle for a life like that.

I didn’t answer right away. How could I give advice when I had never stood in his shoes? It was easy to say, “Be strong.” But this man knew that his license, and therefore the support of his family, depended week by week on the whim of the government.

“This is the way we preach to most people these days. Folks today are afraid to enter a church except for funerals and weddings. So we preach to them then! A government official said to me last week, ‘I’ll bet every night you pray for your friends to die so you can get your sermon in.’”

“They’re looking for the secret police,” Professor B explained. “We know many of them by sight. After the revolt it has been dangerous to attract large crowds for any reason.”

There were seven of us that night, seven Christians gathered in much the same way Christians had gathered since the Church began—in secret, in trouble—praying together that through the miraculous intervention of God Himself we be spared a confrontation with the authorities.

Together, the following week, we went to a jeweler in Haarlem and bought two wedding rings. In Holland the custom is to wear the ring on the left hand during the engagement and transfer it to the right at the marriage ceremony.

“Corry, we don’t know where the road leads, do we?”

“But, Andy,”

“let’s go there t...

“Once again, you must not be downcast. We praise the Lord.”

Conditions were so desperate that a girl would sell her body for 50 pfenning—about 15 cents.

Henry Dunant.

founder of the Red Cross,

I began to think of an Outer Periphery, countries where according to my own experience and the reports of others there was still some degree of religious freedom: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and East Germany. Beyond these, according to those who had escaped, was an Inner Circle, where the attack against the Church was strong indeed: Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania and, Russia itself.

“Oh, Andy!” she said. “How can I leave the camps? There’s so much to do and no one to do it! How can I go?”

And so occurred the first separation of our married life—not because of my ministry, but Corry’s.

There were police everywhere. They stood at the bridges, at factory entrances, at public buildings—stopping people at random, searching briefcases, shopping bags, pocketbooks. And no one complained at this arbitrary treatment. No one protested. The lack of protest was part of the dreadful silence that hung over the city like a poison-filled smog.

Germany was a land of contradictions. On the one hand, it was by far the hardest country I had yet penetrated; indoctrination and police coercion were rank. And yet, at the same time, there was more religious freedom in East Germany than I had found in any other Communist country.

“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.”

“You can help us remember that the Church is larger than any one nation or any one political scene. We have forgotten that with God on our side we shall conquer.”

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

Don’t complain to yourselves that you can’t go to the mission field! Thank God for bringing the mission field to you!”

I told them about the time Paul was in prison in Rome chained between two soldiers. “Now there were two possibilities,” I said. “Either he could sit there and complain that he could not get out, or he could make use of the situation. Well, Paul began to thank God that he had a captive audience. He began to preach the Gospel. After a while the guard was changed; two more soldiers came in. Paul thanked God for the two new ones and began again. And the result was that he made these men Christians. He founded a church right there in Caesar’s household. And this, I feel, is the incomparable mission of Christians behind the Curtain.”

I was appalled at the change that had come over her in less than three weeks. She had lost weight, her skin had a strange yellowish pallor, and there were circles under her eyes.

A man and woman made a natural traveling team and aroused far less suspicion than a man traveling alone.

I was persona non grata in Yugoslavia.

But that was not the Royal Way; the King’s servants didn’t have to stoop.

“A bargain’s a bargain,” she said. “After all, I signed on as the wife of a missionary.”

Paul had been in prison in this place, just as I was in prison too: a prison of pain and discouragement. Paul and Silas had been doing the same thing I was doing, preaching the Gospel where it was not allowed. God had performed a miracle to get His men out of prison then, and in that instant I knew that He was even now performing another one to get me out of mine.

And suddenly I knew that I had to go ahead and drink that beer, that to turn it down would be to turn them down, that their kindness and hospitality ranked higher with God than one observance of a rule.

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.

The three of us spent our first few moments together on our knees, thanking God for having brought us together in this wonderful way, so that there was not a minute of time wasted, so that there was a minimum of risk involved.

“And there are many such churches in this country. You’ll find the same in Rumania and in Russia. In the old days only the priests had them; ordinary people couldn’t read. And since Communism, it’s been impossible to buy them. It’s not often I have a piece of luck like this.”

The present patriarch praised the regime in all his official utterances: His speeches had as much to do with the glories of Narodna Republika Bulgariya as with those of the Kingdom of God.

“In effect there are two churches here now,” Petroff told me, “a Puppet Church, which echoes the voice of the state, and an Underground Church. You’ll see one of these underground churches tonight.”

There were exclamations that threatened to be too loud before those assembled caught themselves and put hands to mouths.

After we had stayed together for as long as we dared, we separated as we had come, in ones and twos, at intervals, for over an hour.

Most of the year, he said, Abraham and his wife lived on wild berries and fruit and a little bread.

Petroff called the old man Abraham the Giant-Killer, because he was always setting out to find his “Goliath”—some high-ranking Party official or army man to whom he could bring his witness.