So what makes Brother Andrew’s story such an interesting one. Read on and find out!
Brother Andrew was born Andrew van der Bijl on 11th May 1928 in Sint Pancras, Netherlands. At the age of eighteen, he joined the Dutch army where he was quite the notorious commando. However his army adventure came to an abrupt end when, at the age of twenty, he was shot in the ankle during combat. It was whilst he was recovering in hospital that he began to read the Bible obsessively, eventually converting to Christianity.
In 1952 Andrew left his home in Holland and moved to England so he could begin his studies at the WEC Missionary Training College in Glasgow. In 1955, he left bible college and went on a trip to Warsaw, which would be the first of many such trips to Communist countries. He visited local churches, a bible shop and spoke with Christians about their experience living behind the iron curtain.
Shortly after his visit to Warsaw, he went on another organised trip to Czechoslovakia and learnt more about the plight of the church in Communist countries and discovered how scarce bibles were. Once officials learnt that he had made contact with Christians, he was prohibited from entering the country again but Brother Andrew had seen enough to realise that the church behind the iron curtain needed his help and this became his mission field.
In the following years, Andrew dedicated his life to the needs of Christians in Communist countries, mainly by smuggling in bibles and religious literature, hence the nickname “God’s Smuggler”. He worked tirelessly by himself for the first few years and when he had finished one trip he would return to Holland to share his experiences and then go back to another one of the countries. The work soon became difficult to do alone so Andrew enlisted the help of a co-worker, Hans. Slowly the number of co-workers grew until eventually there were several of them smuggling bibles into the communist countries.
In 1967, Andrew published the first edition of his book “God’s Smuggler” which tells the story of his early childhood, about his conversion to Christianity and his adventures behind the Iron Curtain. This book has now been translated into thirty five languages and sold over ten million copies.