God's Smuggler behind the Iron Curtain

 

God’s Smuggler Behind the Iron Curtain

God’s smuggler? What an oxymoron! How could anyone be God’s smuggler, as if God condones such an activity? The God who has prescribed Ten Commandments and other moral codes, would he involve a person in smuggling? Still, that is what Brother Andrew writes in his quintessential book “God’s Smuggler.” What was he smuggling on behalf of God? He was smuggling Bibles, lots of them, through the iron curtain, which separated the communist countries from the rest of the world. Wasn’t it a risky business? Of course, yes, he could have lost his life many times over in this business. How did he develop this passion? How did he manage to do it? Let’s see more about that.

Brother Andrew started as many European children do, as a church-going and Sunday Class attending child. He was born in Holland in 1928, one of six children of his parents, and lived in a village called Witte, along the land reclaimed from the sea and the dyke. As his family attended the church dutifully every Sunday, he would find himself a seat close to the church door and slip away to roam around and return just in time when the congregation started to go out after the service. There he stood near the pastor, at the door, as he wished every one good bye, and no one knew that he had been away during the service. Of course, his simple-hearted and trusting family, never suspected it.

In 1940 Germans landed in Holland and started occupation of their area. Rotterdam was bombed and the next day Holland surrendered. Andrew in his wandering over his small village, made friends with all sorts of people. One was an old couple, Mrs. and Mr. Whetstra. He would get a cookie or two from their kitchen. He managed to get a cherry bomb and succeeded in exploding it and run away as fast as he could. Government has called for a general mobilization for the army. Squads of soldiers were entering houses to search for able-bodied men to be conscripted. Young boys of his age and older men raced for the swaps to hide from this forced military service. There was no electricity for the Dutch for it was reserved for the Germans. They used oil lamps making oil form cotton seeds themselves. They lived on rations for two and dug up tulip bulbs to eat to survive. One of his brothers died earlier to that and his mother was on sick bed. In the spring of 1945 occupation ended and the Germans left, and Canadians arrived. People stood in the streets weeping for joy, for the war was over.

When he turned eighteen, Andrew joined the Dutch army in search for adventure, and was sent to East Indies. In Gorkum where he was undergoing training, every Sunday he went to the local church, because families invited soldiers home for lunch, for they were toiling to serve their country, far away from homes at the young age of eighteen and nineteen. Before he left for Indonesia, in his invitation-hunting mission, he had seventy names, who had promised to write to him, while he was overseas. Quite an enterprising chap! When he finally left home, his mother gave him her Bible and asked him to read it, and not being able to say no to his mother he took it and off he went to Indonesia.

During his hand combat training in Indonesia, he realized that he was being trained to kill human beings. On the battle ground he soon became hardened. They had killed not just soldiers, but ordinary working men and women and children. He says, they fought like madmen and then they drank and drank till their reason left them. He was in touch with some of the families in Gorkum, especially to girl Thile, to whom he poured out his heart. His sense of guilt grew like a chain around him, but he could not understand how anyone can forgive him, as Thile suggested. He acquired a monkey as a pet and together they ran for ten to fifteen miles every day. His mother died in the meanwhile. Then in action in 1949, he was hit in his ankle, and was crippled for life. He could never run as he once used to. He was just twenty years old. As he was recuperating in the military hospital, he started to read the Bible which his mother had given him. He was also impressed by the loving Franciscan sisters, who attending to the injured solders and others without a complaint.

Starting with Genesis Andrew read his Bible feverishly. Noting down the questions he had, he wrote them to Thile, who labored to consult, research and reply to him. Still, he was angry, angry at God, for him leaving in this crippled condition. One of the Franciscan nurses advised him to let go the grudge that was keeping him from freedom and happiness. He returned home soon after. He was twenty-one. Two of his siblings had got married; he visited his mother’s grave; and started to use the bicycle, training himself to use his damaged leg. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do with his life. He met his old friends.

Kees, a friend was absorbed in studying theology, for he was eager to go into ministry. On the invitation of a girl at the rehabilitation hospital, he attended a tent meeting. There were prayers for souls. It was all very funny for Andrew and his friends. They laughed it foo. But suddenly he started to read his Bible again. A week later he started to go to church in his village. Sunday mornings, then every week day evenings and nights he kept going, pedaling his cycle with difficulty. Then he started to attend churches in the neighboring towns. He took careful notes of what the preacher said, and spent the day, searching for these passages in the Bible. His family wondered what had happened to him; he also didn’t know. He spent his time with his friend Kees, his old friends Whetstras, his old schoolteacher, and Thile. One night while a storm was raging outside, he let go of his ego, and turned himself over to God, “lock, stock, and adventure.” He just said, “Lord, if You will show me the way, I will follow you, Amen.” He felt free and happy.

Along with his friend Kees, he attended a meeting of a Dutch evangelist, who enlisted both of them for an adventurous first assignment of arranging an open-air meeting in their own town Witte and start preaching the gospel. When they convened the meeting, everyone in Witte turned out, may be just out of curiosity. While narrating his religious decision, Andrew announced that he would become a missionary. His girl, Thile, was not happy, and stopped being friends with him. He went to the work in a chocolate factory, and met a girl, a sweet and religious one, who had invited him and his friends from the rehab hospital to a meeting in a tent. After knocking at many doors for evangelic training, Kees and Andrew landed in Worldwide Evangelization Crusade (WEC), in their training school in Glasgow, Scotland. They train them for two years and then send them out into the world.

With this started a life of faith, depending for the next meal, or the next penny on the Lord fully. He didn’t want to be missionaries who hinted their wants and, not really depended on the Lord. As he prayed about it for days on end, he was still holding on to his lame leg as an excuse to join as a missionary. But he suddenly remembered the ten lepers who came to Jesus and were healed as they went. He jumped up and said “Yes” to the Lord, lame or not, and that day he was healed and was able to walk without a support. He just had thirty pounds in his pockets, after selling his new cycle, his books and tit-bits, the admission fee for the first semester. He joined the school in 1953, after some initial hiccups, and soon was to learn how hard it was to live on faith.

The school grounded the students in faith from the very start. They had to trust God to do what He said He would do. He witnessed how God met the practical needs of the students, organizers and families connected with WEC. In his own life he started to experience it. He lived frugally and did every mean and manual work himself. The students had to cook, clean and do everything themselves. They also learned some practical skill and Andrew learnt at the Ford factory in London, how to take a car apart and put it back together. Then came training trips in evangelism, an exercise in trust. They were not allowed to beg or throw a hint or borrow any money to conduct these meetings. They had to depend on the Lord to provide. It was His mission anyway. Money came in as they prayed, from parents, from long forgotten friends, and some even said, “God wouldn’t let me sleep until I put this money in an envelope for you.” They learnt that God did supply even if it was bit by bit, and never too much, but just enough for their wants. The students were taught to pay tithes of whatever money the Lord thus provided. 

He had to look to God to supply the next thirty pounds to pay for the second semester. He had no other job, no income and no money. He had to know for sure that God will provide him his practical needs. So, he prayed. In time a cheque came from Whetsras for exactly the right amount. Such gifts came as and when necessary and he was able to pay all the semester fees. He experienced God’s faithfulness continually. He also learnt the difference between a Want and a Need, want being basic necessities, and need being luxuries. God provided for necessities, but not for luxuries. So much for the prosperity gospel preachers!

After completing his two years training at WEC, Andrew went to attend a three weeks youth festival in Warsaw in 1955, and on the side, he visited a few churches there, and discovered that the real biblical churches had no Bibles! They were behind the Iron Curtain of Russian Communist rule. Bible smuggling was a highly remunerative business in these countries, especially in Russia, for people bought them for high prices, as Bibles were rare commodities. Suddenly a decision was formed in Andrew’s mind that he must smuggle Bibles into these communist countries and give them to the churches free of cost. He also realized that his life work was behind the Iron Curtain to strengthen the remnant church that was struggling to survive, to keep the flame burding. That was his calling.

Then started the saga of carrying in his car, presented to him by an old friend, Bibles in the local languages of the East European countries, Poland, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, East Germany, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Russia, smuggling these into these countries. How at each border security-check, God would listen to his prayers and make the guards go blind and not see the stoved away Bibles, and the way these Bibles were then distributed to the pastors and worshippers behind the iron curtain, and how in tears they received the precious Bibles and how happy they were to know that they were not alone in their struggle, but some foreigner cared enough for them to risk his life and come to them bringing the Bibles, and how grateful they were, that these Bibles were donated by the countries in the West like Holland and even the Bible Society in England, all these will fill much more pages. There were severe persecutions too. I am not even attempting to do that. My main purpose of writing this account is to show how Br. Andrew came to accept Christ, a very unlikely candidate, the training at WEC and how he developed the faith that could move mountains with his prayers. A lesson to many of us, who struggle to have such a solid faith.

Brother Andrew worked in this field for many years, risking his life every year, and slowly others, another twelve, joined him and the mission field also widened to include Red China and Arab and Egyptian Islamic countries. With all these, Br. Andrew married Corry, the girl who invited the soldiers recuperating in the military hospital for a tent meeting and later worked in the Chocolate factory, as indicated by the Spirit. They had five children and eleven grandchildren. Corry had died in 2018. Br Andrew died in 2022, at the ripe old age of 94. Praise God for his life and ministry.

Today Russia is open, after the fall of Soviet Republic of Russia in 1991. Still there are other countries where Bible is prohibited, evangelism is a punished and Christians are persecuted. Let’s pray that God of Br. Andrew will raise many others for such an adventurous life in His Service. Amen.