Andrew "Anne" van der Bijl (; 11 May 1928 – 27 September 2022), known in English-speaking countries as Brother Andrew, was a Dutch Christian
missionary and founder of the Christian organization
Open Doors. He was known for smuggling Bibles and other Christian literature into communist countries during the
Cold War and, because of his activities, he was nicknamed "God's Smuggler".
Biography
Van der Bijl was born in
Alkmaar
Alkmaar () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, located in the province of North Holland, about 30 km north of Amsterdam. Alkmaar is well known for its traditional cheese market. For tourists, it is a popular cultural destination. The ...
, the
Netherlands, on 11 May 1928, the fourth of six children of a poor
blacksmith and an invalid mother.
In the 1940s he enlisted in the
colonial army of the
Dutch East Indies during the
Indonesian National Revolution. After being involved in a massacre of Indonesian villagers while he was serving as a soldier,
he endured a period of severe emotional stress, and later was wounded in the ankle during the fighting. During his rehabilitation, he began reading a Bible given to him by his mother. When he returned to the Netherlands he started attending church and committed himself to Christianity.
In 1953, Van der Bijl studied at the
WEC Missionary Training College in Glasgow, Scotland.
[J. Lee GRADY]
Secret Agent Man
Charisma mag, USA, 28 February 2005
Ministry
In July 1955, van der Bijl visited Communist
Poland to attend the
5th World Festival of Youth and Students in Warsaw, where a Christian bookstore owner told him about a lack of Bibles in the
Soviet Union.
He signed up on a government-controlled Communist tour to Czechoslovakia, the only legal way to be in the country, during which he left the tour to meet with local Christian groups. Later that year, van der Bijl founded
Open Doors, a
non-denominational mission
Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to:
Organised activities Religion
*Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity
*Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...
supporting
persecuted Christians.
Open Doors was involved in smuggling Bibles and Christian literature, offering training for Christian leaders, and providing financial and other support for persecuted Christians.
In 1957, van der Bijl travelled to the Soviet Union's capital, Moscow, in a
Volkswagen Beetle
The Volkswagen Beetle—officially the Volkswagen Type 1, informally in German (meaning "beetle"), in parts of the English-speaking world the Bug, and known by many other nicknames in other languages—is a two-door, rear-engine economy car, ...
, which later became the symbol of Open Doors.
An older couple, the Whetstras, had given him their new car because they had prayed about it and believed that van der Bijl would need the car. A man who lived in Amersfoort, Karl de Graaf, claimed that God told him to teach van der Bijl to drive. Later, when van der Bijl was in a refugee camp in West Germany, Philip Whetstra called van der Bijl to come to the Whetstras' new house in Amsterdam.
Although van der Bijl was violating the laws of all of the countries that he visited by bringing religious literature, he often placed the material in view when he was stopped at police checkpoints, as a gesture of his trust in what he believed to be God's protection.
[Brother Andrew, with John and Elizabeth Sherrill. ''God's Smuggler'' (1967), pp. 174, 198.]
Van der Bijl visited China in the 1960s, after the
Cultural Revolution had created a hostile policy towards Christianity and other religions, during the era of the so-called
Bamboo Curtain. He went to
Czechoslovakia when the suppression by Soviet troops of the
Prague Spring had put an end to relative religious freedom there. He visited with Czech Christians and gave Bibles to the Russian occupying forces. During that decade, he also made his first visits to
Cuba, which was relatively easy for him to visit because the country did not require visas from Dutch citizens, to bring Bibles after the
Cuban Revolution.
At that time, several Christian organizations, such as the
American Bible Society and the
Southern Baptist Convention's
Foreign Mission Board, did not support the practice of Bible smuggling, calling it dangerous and ineffective, and noting that Bibles were "freely on sale" in many Iron Curtain countries.
KGB informers ultimately infiltrated Open Doors, and the KGB tracked van der Bijl's activities.
''God's Smuggler''
In 1967, van der Bijl published the first edition of ''God's Smuggler,'' written with
John and Elizabeth Sherrill. An autobiography, ''God's Smuggler'' tells the story of his early childhood, conversion to Christianity, and adventures as a Bible-smuggler behind the
Iron Curtain
The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...
. Due to the press exposure following the book, van der Bijl stopped personally smuggling Bibles and Christian literature to other countries, and shifted to evangelism and fundraising campaigns in North America and Europe to support Open Doors.
By 2022, it had sold over 10 million copies and was published in thirty-five languages.
A comic book adaptation of ''God's Smuggler'' was published in 1972 by
Spire Christian Comics
''Spire Christian Comics'' was a line of comic books published by Fleming H. Revell starting in 1972.
In the 1980s, Barbour & Company, founded by Hugh Revell Barbour, acquired the rights to republish many of the titles in the Spire Christian Co ...
.
Later life
After the fall of
Communism in Europe, van der Bijl shifted his focus to the Middle East and worked to strengthen the church in the
Muslim world, visiting
Lebanon several times in the 1970s. In the 1990s, van der Bijl again travelled several times more to the Middle East. In his book ''Light Force'', he tells of
Arab
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, No ...
and Lebanese churches in
Lebanon, Israel and Israeli-occupied areas expressing great delight at the mere visit of a fellow Christian from abroad since they felt that the church in the Western world at large was mostly ignoring them. In similar fashion, van der Bijl and a companion, Al Janssen, visited
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni- Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Br ...
and
PLO
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO; ar, منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية, ') is a Palestinian nationalist political and militant organization founded in 1964 with the initial purpose of establishing Arab unity and st ...
leaders, including
Ahmed Yassin
Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin ( ar, الشيخ أحمد إسماعيل حسن ياسين; 1 January 1937 – 22 March 2004) was a Palestinian politician and imam who founded Hamas, a militant Islamist and Palestinian nationalist organiza ...
and
Yasser Arafat.
Arafat granted van de Bijl permission to open a Christian book store in the
Gaza Strip. During the trip, van der Bijl also spoke about Christianity at the
Islamic University of Gaza
The Islamic University of Gaza ( ar, الجامعة الإسلامية بغزة), also known as IUG and IU Gaza, is an independent Palestinian university established in 1978 in Gaza City. It was the first higher education institution to be establ ...
.
Later visits also included trips to Pakistan in the 2010s, where van der Bijl attempted to meet with members of the
Taliban.
Van der Bijl criticized the
US invasion of Afghanistan
In late 2001, the United States and its close allies invaded Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban government. The invasion's aims were to dismantle al-Qaeda, which had executed the September 11 attacks, and to deny it a safe base of operation ...
in 2001 and the
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Ba'athist Iraq, Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one mont ...
, stating that American evangelical Christians were too supportive of these wars.
He also criticized the
killing of Osama bin Laden, having previously prayed for him, and called the operation "murder".
Van der Bijl's tenth book, ''Secret Believers: What Happens When Muslims Believe in Christ'', was released in 2007.
Van der Bijl died at age 94 on 27 September 2022;
he had been married for 59 years to his wife, Corry (1931–2018). They had continued to live in Holland and were survived by five children and 11 grandchildren.
At the time of his death, Open Doors was active in over 60 countries. The ministry yearly distributes 300,000 Bibles and 1.5 million Christian books and materials. The group is active in providing relief, aid, community development, and trauma counseling, while advocating for persecuted Christians around the globe.
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References
External links
Short biographyOpen Doors International WebsiteCo-author of ''God's Smuggler'' talks about writing with such heroes as Brother Andrew
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bijl, Andrew van der
1928 births
2022 deaths
Bible smuggling
Converts to Christianity
Dutch anti-communists
Dutch Christian missionaries
Dutch evangelicals
Dutch expatriates in the United Kingdom
People from Langedijk
Royal Netherlands East Indies Army personnel