Brother Andrew 1928-2022
Brother Andrew was the name Anne van der Bijl took to protect his identity when smuggling Bibles through the Iron Curtain. He was born May 11, 1928, in the village of Sint Pancras in the northern part of the Netherlands. His formal education ended in sixth grade when the German army invaded in 1940 and occupied the Netherlands until its liberation in Spring 1945.
Shortly after the end of World War II, van der Bijl enlisted in the Dutch army and was sent to fight in Indonesia where he was selected for special commando training. A bullet shattered his ankle and prematurely ended his career as a soldier. That led to a crisis of faith. While recuperating in a Catholic hospital he began reading the Bible. Continuing his recovery in the Netherlands he committed his life to following God wherever that led.
He spent two years studying to be a missionary at the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade school in Glasgow, Scotland. One day while standing before a world map at the college he realized that a large part of that map covered communist countries. Strangely, there were never missionaries from those countries visiting the college. That triggered his interest to travel behind the Iron Curtain.
In 1955 he journeyed with a Dutch delegation to the World Youth Congress in Warsaw, Poland. There he discovered a remnant of the Church behind the Iron Curtain desperately in need of Bibles. Brother Andrew distributed a suitcase full of Christian literature, marking the humble beginnings of Open Doors.
Brother Andrew’s autobiography, God’s Smuggler, an international bestseller with more than 10 million copies distributed in at least 35 languages, details dangerous border crossings, KGB pursuits, and his courageous journey of living radically for Jesus Christ. After the publication of this book, the world became Brother Andrew’s concern, specifically everywhere Christians were under pressure.
He made several trips to Vietnam and his first trip to China in 1965 shortly before the Cultural Revolution. He revisited Indonesia and everywhere he spoke in that country he asked forgiveness for what the Dutch army had done.
In 1975 Brother Andrew had a strong desire to bring together people who were seriously interested in reaching into Communist China. Many experts were saying it was impossible to work in China. With the help of the Open Doors Asia team, he organized “Love China” in Manila, Philippines, that brought together more than 400 mission leaders, most of whom had worked in China before Mao’s government kicked them out.
Johan Companjen, Founding President of Open Doors, says “Every time Andrew heard that word ‘impossible’ he perked up. He had a vision to bring together people who were seriously interested in China. Our organization paid most of the costs. Andrew challenged the group that now was God’s time for China.” Within a year, Mao Zedong died and most of the conference participants started working in China. In 1981 Open Doors completed its most ambitious smuggling operation, delivering one million Bibles in a single night to two thousand Christians waiting for them on a secluded beach in China.
Brother Andrew also travelled to Africa, visiting some 20 countries. During one of his early trips to the continent, he spoke at universities in South Africa during the protests against apartheid. A pastor in Johannesburg, Deryck Stone, launched one of the first fund-raising bases for the work and gave it the name Open Doors, which soon became the name of the international work.
In 1977 Brother Andrew travelled to Uganda to encourage the church when dictator Idi Amin was purging the country of all perceived threats. After returning home Brother Andrew learned his name was on a list of people Amin wanted arrested and executed. “Somewhere in my office I still have a copy of that list,” he said. The next year Open Doors organized the “Love Africa” conference in Malawi that brought together 250 church and organization leaders from 37 countries south of the Sahara. At the conference, Brother Andrew taught about the lessons learned from the Church in communist countries.
Brother Andrew made his first trip to Cuba in the late 1960s and later visited several other Latin American countries. In 2001 he met with leaders of the Colombian rebel group AUC (Autodefensas de Colombia) and urged them to lay down their guns. Within a year 15,000 members of AUC surrendered their guns in exchange for Bibles.
Never afraid to go into dangerous situations, Brother Andrew visited war-torn Lebanon twice per year during the 1980s, encouraging the Christians and attempting to build bridges among the various factions. With Bibles in hand, he went to see the prime minister and the president and most of the generals of the various armies engaged in civil war. He also had his first contact with Ayatollah Fadlallah, the spiritual inspiration for the fundamentalist group Hezbollah. Later he made contact with Hamas when their leaders were deported by Israel to Southern Lebanon in 1993. For several years after that, he reached out to various terrorist groups, claiming that the best thing he could do for Israel and Western nations was to “lead their enemies to Christ.” That story is told in his book Light Force, co-authored with Al Janssen. Light Force was published in September 2004. It has been translated and published in nine languages.
Besides God’s Smuggler, Brother Andrew wrote 15 other books, including The Calling, which reveals his secrets for ministry. His last major release, co-authored with Al Janssen and published by Revell and Hodder and Stoughton, was Secret Believers: What Happens When Muslims Believe in Christ. It is written in two parts. Part 1 is in the form of a non-fiction novel and tells the story of the Church in an unnamed Islamic country. Part 2 issues a challenge to the Church in the West.
In 1993, Brother Andrew was knighted by Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands. In 1997, he was the recipient of the World Evangelical Fellowship’s Religious Liberty Award, recognizing his lifetime of service to the Persecuted Church and passion for spreading the Gospel. On February 22, 2003, in California, he received the Heritage of Faithfulness Award from the Christian Association of Senior Adults. However, Brother Andrew said he was proudest of being named a “Blood Brother” of the Apache Indian tribe in the 1980s. As part of the ceremony, he was given an Apache name that means “He who breaks through the lines.”
One more honour that Brother Andrew was proud of: after the fall of the Iron Curtain he obtained copies of the KGB reports numbering more than 150 pages about his work in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He was surprised that they knew so much about him yet were not able to stop his work.
Brother Andrew’s work through Open Doors has led the organization into places where most Christians are unwilling to go. Today Open Doors works in more than 70 to strengthen the Persecuted Church, sustaining indigenous Christians in hostile lands so they can spread the Gospel in their cultures and languages. The organization trains thousands of Christian pastors and lay leaders through trauma counselling, theological education, and preparation-for-persecution seminars. It also assists with economic relief, literacy training, and vocational training in the most dangerous countries in the world.
Brother Andrew passed away on September 27th, 2022. He and his late wife, Corry, who passed away in 2018, are now with Jesus. They lived all of their lives in the Netherlands and are survived by five children and eleven grandchildren.
