Brother Andrew

Life

He was born on May 11, 1928, in the province of North Holland in the Netherlands, the fourth of seven children of a poor, nearly deaf blacksmith. As a young man he joined the Dutch army and served in the Indonesian War of Independence. After being wounded in combat, he read the Bible and became a Christian. In 1953 he studied at the WEC Missionary Training College in Glasgow, Scotland. In 1958 he married Corry, with whom he had five children. Corry died on January 23, 2018. He died at his home in Harderwijk on September 27, 2022, at the age of 94.

Ministry and Achievements

His attendance at a Communist youth festival in Poland in 1955 marked the real beginning of his ministry. There he learned that isolated churches were in desperate need of Bibles and support. He is said to have taken the words of Revelation 3:2, "strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die," as his call. Beginning in 1957, he drove a blue Volkswagen Beetle loaded with Bibles across the borders of Yugoslavia and other Communist countries. The prayer he reportedly offered at border checkpoints is widely known: "Lord, when You were on earth, You made blind eyes see; now make seeing eyes blind."

His 1967 autobiography recounting these experiences, God's Smuggler, sold more than ten million copies and was translated into more than 35 languages. The ministry grew into Open Doors. On June 18, 1981, Open Doors carried out "Project Pearl," delivering one million Bibles to China in a single night. The operation is known as an effort to support the Chinese house churches.

After the fall of the Communist bloc, he expanded his work to the Middle East and the Islamic world. In 1992, when Israel deported 415 Hamas members to southern Lebanon, he brought them tents, food, and medicine. He is also known to have met with the Hamas leadership and with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to share the gospel. He served as chairman of the Open Doors board until 1995 and traveled to some 120 countries to encourage Christians living under pressure. In 1993 he was knighted by the Queen of the Netherlands.

Influence on the Korean Church

Open Doors Korea was founded in 1995 to serve the underground church in North Korea. The organization supports persecuted churches around the world, including the church in North Korea, and informs the Korean church about their circumstances. It also publishes the World Watch List (WWL) each year to raise awareness of Christian persecution. God's Smuggler is reported to have been published in Korean translation by JOY Mission.

Assessment

He insisted that helping the persecuted church is the responsibility of every Christian, and he is regarded as having played a major role in drawing the attention of Western churches to the modern persecution of Christians. At the same time, his methods involved secretly bringing Bibles into areas where they were prohibited by law, and in the Middle East he met directly with the leaders of armed groups. For these reasons, his work differed in character from conventional missionary activity. He prayed for Osama bin Laden and called his killing "murder," and he also condemned the "assassination" of his "friends" in the Gaza Strip. Assessments of such statements may differ depending on one's perspective. He consistently maintained that only the gospel of love could break the deadlock of the Middle East conflict.