Anne van der Bijl is a Christianmissionary born on 11 May 1928 in Sint Pancras, the Netherlands, and noted for his exploits in smuggling bibles into communist countries at the height of the Cold War. For his activities, he earned the nickname "God's smuggler". He is known for having prayed "Lord, make seeing eyes blind" when he was stopped at the border of a communist country for his car to be inspected.
Biography
Van der Bijl was born in Sint Pancras, the Netherlands, the fourth of six children of a poor, near-deaf blacksmith and an invalid mother. He told John and Elizabeth Sherrill, when they transcribed his memories for their book God's Smuggler, "From the day I first put onwooden shoes – klompen we call them in Holland – I dreamed of derring-do". In the 1940s, he enlisted in the colonial army of the Dutch East Indies during the rebellion that would eventually form Indonesia, which first adventure initially had unpleasant results; he endured a period of severe emotional stress while he was serving as a soldier. He was wounded in the ankle during the fighting; during his rehabilitation, he read the Bible obsessively, eventually converting to Christianity. Van der Bijl studied at the WEC Missionary Training College in Glasgow, Scotland.
Ministry
In July 1955, van der Bijl visited communist Poland "to see how my brothers are doing", a reference to the underground church there. He signed up on a government-controlled communist tour, the only legal way to be in the country. During that time, he felt called to respond to the Biblical Commission, "Wake up, strengthen what remains and is about to die". That was the start of a mission leading him into several communist-ruled countries in which religious belief was actively persecuted. In 1957, he travelled to the Soviet Union’s capital, Moscow, in a Volkswagen Beetle, which later became the symbol of Open Doors, the organization he founded. An older couple, the Whetstras, had given him their new car because they had prayed about it and believed that Andrew 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. That was the realization of his childhood dreams of darings-do. Van der Bijl visited China in the 1960s, after the Cultural Revolution had created a hostile policy towards Christianity and other religions, during 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 encouraged Czech believers and gave Bibles to the Russian occupying forces. During that decade, he also made his first visits to Cuba after the Cuban Revolution.
''God's Smuggler''
In 1967, he published the first edition of God's Smuggler, written with John and Elizabeth Sherrill. God's Smuggler tells the story of his early childhood, conversion to Christianity, and adventures as a Bible-smuggler behind the Iron Curtain. By 2002, it had sold over 10 million copies in thirty-five languages. A comic book adaptation of God's Smuggler was published in 1972 by Spire Christian Comics.
In the 1990s, van der Bijl again travelled several times more to the Middle East. In his book Light Force, he tells of Arab 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 largely ignoring them. In similar fashion, van der Bijl and a companion, Al Janssen, visited Hamas and PLO leaders, including Ahmed Yassin and Yasser Arafat, and handed out Bibles. Van der Bijl's tenth book, Secret Believers: What Happens When Muslims Believe in Christ, was released on 1 July 2007.
