God's Smuggler

God's Smuggler is a memoir by Brother Andrew, written with John and Elizabeth Sherrill, recounting how a Dutch villager with limited formal education became one of the most prolific Bible smugglers of the Cold War era. The expanded edition includes an epilogue covering Brother Andrew's later ministry in the Islamic world.

Andrew grew up in the 1930s in Witte, a tiny village in the polder land of Holland, low-lying terrain reclaimed from the sea and protected by dikes. He was the son of a deaf blacksmith and a devoutly religious mother who had a serious heart condition. The family was poor, and Andrew was mischievous and restless. His oldest brother, Bas, who had a developmental disability, possessed a remarkable gift for playing the family's pump organ. When Bas died of tuberculosis in 1939, Andrew felt betrayed by God. Germany invaded Holland on Andrew's twelfth birthday, May 10, 1940, and the occupation brought escalating hardship: Andrew's brother Ben went into hiding, radios were banned, and the family nearly starved. When Canadian forces liberated Witte in spring 1945, Andrew ran five miles to beg bread from the soldiers, bringing it home to a mother too weak to leave her bed.

After the war, Andrew enlisted in the Dutch army and shipped out to the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) as a commando. A traumatic incident haunted him: His unit, after stumbling into a minefield, massacred an entire village, and Andrew found a young mother and her baby killed by the same bullet. Consumed by guilt, he drank heavily and embraced suicidal recklessness. He learned by letter that his mother had died. In 1949, a bullet shattered his ankle. Doctors told him he would never walk without a cane.

During his hospital recovery, a buddy accidentally mailed a confessional letter Andrew had written to Thile, a girl he had met during training. Thile responded with compassion and a Bible study outline. Franciscan nuns encouraged him to read his mother's Bible, which he had ignored since she gave it to him. He began reading Scripture seriously. Back in Witte, he attended church services obsessively and studied the Bible with an intensity that alarmed his family. One stormy January night in 1950, he surrendered his life to God.

Andrew took a job at Ringers' chocolate factory in Alkmaar, where he reconnected with Corry van Dam, a young timekeeper he had first seen at a tent meeting. He learned about the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade (WEC) missionary training school in Glasgow, Scotland. Praying by a canal, he made an unconditional commitment to God's will, and his lame ankle began to heal. He applied to the Glasgow school but was denied for lack of space. Despite this and other setbacks, he felt compelled to go.

At the Glasgow school, Andrew made a covenant: If he was even one day late paying fees, he would return to the factory. Throughout two years of training, the money arrived precisely on time from unexpected sources. He learned what he called "the Game of the Royal Way," trusting God to provide without manipulation or begging.

Just before graduation in 1955, Andrew attended a Communist youth festival in Warsaw, Poland, carrying Christian booklets in multiple languages. He broke away from the official tour, visited Protestant churches, and distributed literature openly. On his last morning, watching thousands of young socialists march, he read Revelation 3:2: "Awake, and strengthen what remains and is on the point of death." He felt called to minister behind the Iron Curtain, the boundary between Communist Eastern Europe and the West, but could not imagine how one person could make a difference.

A trip to Czechoslovakia deepened his conviction. There he discovered the government's strategy of frustrating the Church: sponsoring a Bible translation that was never published and preparing a Bible dictionary for a country with almost no Bibles. Young Czech Christians presented him with a tiny silver pin shaped like a cup, the "Cup of Suffering," a symbol of their persecuted Church. Back in Holland, a prayer group in Amersfoort led by Karl de Graaf became Andrew's spiritual support network. Philip Whetstra, a longtime family supporter, and his wife gave Andrew their nearly new blue Volkswagen for his mission work.

In 1957, Andrew drove into Yugoslavia with hidden Bibles, praying what became his signature petition: "Lord, make seeing eyes blind." He connected with local Christians, held over 80 meetings in seven weeks, and distributed Scripture. At a church in Belgrade, he asked how many congregants owned Bibles; only seven hands rose. He resolved to bring Bibles behind the Iron Curtain in whatever quantity he could.

Andrew courted Corry, proposing just before a trip to Hungary so she could experience the separations their life would entail. In Hungary, he held revival meetings until the secret police summoned him. Seven Christians prayed together that night, and by morning the hostile official had fallen ill; a lenient deputy released Andrew. Corry accepted his proposal, and they married on June 27, 1958.

Andrew penetrated what he calls the "Inner Circle" of Communist countries, the more tightly controlled states such as Bulgaria and Romania. In Bulgaria, he met Petroff, an elderly believer who had been typing out missing books of the Bible to create copies for churches that had none. Andrew delivered cartons of Bibles, and Petroff wept. In Romania, guards subjected every car to lengthy inspections, but Andrew placed Bibles in plain sight, prayed, and was waved through in seconds. He found churches where Bibles were so scarce that owners held them aloft so neighbors could read along.

Andrew and Corry's first son, Joppie, was born in 1959. Andrew recruited Hans Gruber, a towering Dutchman who had studied Russian since childhood, as his first partner. Together they traveled to the Soviet Union. In Moscow, they identified a believer from Siberia who had traveled two thousand miles because a dream told him he would find a Bible there. They delivered over a hundred Bibles through a daring exchange near Red Square.

Andrew campaigned to produce pocket-sized Russian Bibles for easy concealment. When he and Corry reached willingness to sell their house to fund the printing, the Dutch Bible Society offered to pay half the cost. The pocket Bibles became a reality in 1964, and the team grew to 12 members. Andrew and his partners also ventured to Cuba, where he preached to growing congregations, and to Albania, where Communist control was so total that not a single piece of literature could be given away.

Andrew made an exploratory trip to China in 1965, finding a country where religion was treated with indifference. His attempts to give away Bibles failed; people politely handed them back. He left distressed by the Church's apparent irrelevance but hopeful that the government's underestimation of the Bible might prove to be God's opportunity.

The book closes with Andrew's vision of multiplication: thousands of ordinary Christians becoming ambassadors, each carrying a Bible across a border and visiting small churches to deliver a message of solidarity.

In the epilogue, Brother Andrew describes how publication of God's Smuggler made him too recognizable to continue personally in Eastern Europe. Open Doors, the organization that grew from his work, scaled up dramatically, executing "Project Pearl" in 1981, which delivered one million Bibles to China in a single night via barge. Andrew turned his attention to the Islamic world, visiting Lebanon during its civil war and meeting Hezbollah leader Ayatollah Fadlallah. He helped found Bethlehem Bible College with Palestinian educator Bishara Awad and reached out to Hamas leaders in Gaza. At 86, no longer able to travel, Andrew maintains that no door is truly closed to the Gospel and that the Church's mission is not survival but fulfilling the Great Commission, Jesus' command to spread the Christian message worldwide.