The Work
God's Smuggler was published in 1967 by Chosen Books (Grand Rapids) and by Hodder and Stoughton (London). It was written with John and Elizabeth Sherrill, the writing team who also collaborated with Corrie ten Boom on The Hiding Place. The book is approximately 260 pages. It tells the story of Andrew van der Bijl (born 1928), a Dutch factory worker and army veteran who, after his conversion to Christianity, began smuggling Bibles and Christian literature into countries behind the Iron Curtain -- initially Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and East Germany, later Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union itself. He founded the ministry Open Doors, which continues to support persecuted Christians worldwide.
Biblical Engagement
Acts 5:29 ("We ought to obey God rather than men") is the text that grounds the entire enterprise. Peter and the apostles' declaration before the Sanhedrin, when commanded to stop preaching, is Brother Andrew's foundational answer to the question of whether Bible smuggling is justified. The higher obedience to God's command (the Great Commission) supersedes the human law forbidding religious literature.
Matthew 28:19 ("Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost") is the Great Commission that Andrew understood as addressed to him personally. The "all nations" of the Commission specifically included nations closed to conventional mission -- behind the Iron Curtain, under Communist governments, in Islamic countries. Andrew's ministry was a literal enactment of this universal Commission.
Romans 1:16 ("For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek") became the personal confession that gave Andrew courage to cross borders carrying forbidden Scriptures. His prayer at each border crossing -- "Lord, in my luggage I have scripture that I want to take to your children. When you were on earth you made blind eyes see. Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind" -- is a direct application of the gospel's power to the immediate situation.
Revelation 2:10 ("Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days: be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life") is the text that sustained Andrew and the underground church Christians he met. The churches he encountered behind the Iron Curtain were living under exactly the conditions Revelation 2-3's letters to the seven churches describe: persecution, pressure to compromise, the temptation to deny Christ for safety.
Author and Context
Andrew van der Bijl was born in Sint Pancras, the Netherlands, in 1928. He grew up during the Nazi occupation and served in the Dutch army in Indonesia after the war, where he was wounded. His conversion to Christianity came through the Worldwide Evangelism Crusade (WEC International) in the early 1950s, and he received training at the WEC missionary training college. His first trip behind the Iron Curtain -- a youth conference in Warsaw in 1955 -- convinced him that the underground church was desperately in need of Bibles and that God was calling him to provide them.
The book was written at a moment when awareness of the persecution of Christians under Communism was growing in the West but was not yet widely understood. It was one of the first popular accounts to document the spiritual vitality of the underground churches in Communist countries alongside their suffering, countering both the Communist claim that religion had been freely suppressed and the Western liberal assumption that religious practice was simply fading away.
Critical Reception
The book became an immediate bestseller and remained in print for decades. It inspired generations of Christians to pray for and support persecuted churches worldwide. Its influence on the growth of persecution awareness within evangelical Christianity in the late twentieth century -- eventually producing organizations such as Voice of the Martyrs (founded by Richard Wurmbrand, whose Tortured for Christ appeared the same year as God's Smuggler) -- was substantial.
Theological Significance
God's Smuggler represents the theology of absolute obedience to divine command in the face of human prohibition -- a theology derived directly from Acts 5:29 and applied to the specific circumstances of Cold War religious persecution. Its theological simplicity (the Bible must be delivered; God will provide the means) masks a sophisticated conviction about the priority of Word and Spirit over all political arrangements.
Legacy
Open Doors, the ministry Andrew founded, now operates in more than sixty countries and distributes millions of Bibles annually to persecuted Christians. The book's influence on Christian missions and persecution advocacy has been enormous. The "Smuggler's Prayer" has become one of the most famous missionary prayers of the modern era.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Acts 4:18-31 (the apostles' refusal to stop preaching), Acts 5:27-32 (obedience to God rather than men), Acts 16:22-34 (Paul and Silas in prison -- a type of the suffering and deliverance Andrew witnessed), Matthew 28:18-20 (the Great Commission), and Revelation 2:8-11 (the letter to the persecuted church in Smyrna).
Further Reading
- Andrew van der Bijl with Verne Becker, Secret Believers (2007) -- a sequel focused on Muslim-background believers. - Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ (1967) -- a complementary account of Christian suffering under Communism from a Romanian pastor's perspective. - Glenn Penner, In the Shadow of the Cross: A Biblical Theology of Persecution and Discipleship (2004) -- a theological framework for understanding Christian suffering and witness.