Dear Friends and Members of IBC,
Last week, we started a series looking at some godly men and women whose lives vividly display God’s faithfulness and power. My hope in sharing their testimonies is that we might be encouraged in our own faith and spurred on to seek God more. Last week we began to look at the life of Brother Andrew, a Dutch missionary who lived from 1928 to 2022. We learnt how he came to know the Lord and was called into ministry. We ended ‘part one’ with him in Communist Warsaw, having received a life verse from God in the form of Revelation 3:2, and dedicating his life to strengthening the persecuted Church who lived behind the Iron Curtain.
When Andrew returned home to the Netherlands, he was unsure how to go about doing such strengthening. But quite soon he started to receive invitations to speak at different events. Just three weeks after his visit to Poland he spoke at a church about what life was like for Christians behind the Iron Curtain and was approached afterwards by a leader of the Dutch Communist delegation. She didn’t like his talk and wanted him to get the full side of the story, so invited him on an all-expenses paid trip to Czechoslovakia. On his second trip to Eastern Europe he found it a lot harder to move around so freely but discovered that the country was desperately short of Bibles and that it was illegal to openly preach the gospel. Christians would miss out on education and were excluded. After his trip, he began to think more about what it might mean to strengthen some of the struggling churches he had visited and decided that he should deliver them Bibles. Even though he was refused entry back to the Czechoslovakia, he applied for a teacher’s visa to Yugoslavia and was finally accepted. The only problem was how he would supply all of the Bibles.
God provided for him in a wonderful way. Faithful Christian friends had earlier found out about Andrew’s mission and prayed about how they could help. They decided that if Andrew’s visa to Yugoslavia was approved, then they would give him their brand new Volkswagen Beetle. And so Andrew found himself on the Yugoslav border with a car packed full of Bibles and tracts, about to enter a Communist country where such material was strictly forbidden. It was here that he prayed the prayer that he would end up praying countless times as he crossed Communist borders: “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”. It was the prayer of God’s Smuggler. On this particular Yugoslav border, two guards asked him if he had anything to declare and then ordered him to empty his suitcase and belongings. Despite the piles of tracts being in plain sight, the guards paid no attention to them and allowed him to enter the country. His Bibles met an urgent need – in entire congregations only several people owned a Bible. His resolve to get a Bible into the hands of every one of God’s children who desperately needed one burned brighter.
After more trips across Communist borders, Andrew’s ministry began to expand as it became clear that the work was too much for only one man to do. He asked Hans Gruber, a fellow Dutchman, who he had met on a previous trip, if he would accompany him. Hans was an awkward, heavy-set, giant of a man who struggled with languages yet could keep a crowd of 240 orphaned boys mesmerized. Hans agreed, saying that he had always felt called to travel to Russia. Yet their subsequent journey to Russia left Andrew with a task that was bigger than anything he had accomplished behind the Iron Curtain. After meeting a pastor responsible for a thousand souls who did not possess a Bible, he committed to bringing not hundreds, but thousands of Bibles into Russia. His work had only just begun.
Open Doors
Brother Andrew’s work grew and he was joined by others. What began as a small, one-man ministry has now grown into an international, worldwide organisation that works in more than 60 nations to help the persecuted Church. Open Doors continues to distribute Bible and tracts to Christians in need, as well as training up persecuted pastors who have little seminary training. Their ministry has expanded as the main threat to Christians has changed from Communism to radical Islam.
Brother Andrew took a risk for God and stepped out into the unknown, prepared to trust in the faithfulness of God. After that first trip to Poland, he visited over 125 countries and had countless adventures. Our own adventures may not involve so much travel, but the question still remains: will we also trust in His provision, step out of our comfort zones and follow Jesus wherever He might lead us?
God bless you
James