On May 11, 1928, a baby boy was born to a Dutch blacksmith and his invalid wife. They named their little boy Anne. In the Dutch language, Anne can be a masculine name. This little boy would grow up to become known as “Brother Andrew” in the English-speaking world.

His family was very poor. Although his parents took him to a local church, the boy cared little for religion. Often, he would sneak from the pew in their church to run outside and play during the long worship services. The child cared little about the Bible, God, or Heaven.

During the invasion of the Netherlands by the German Wehrmacht, Anne van der Bijl became associated with the Dutch resistance. Even though he was still a young lad, he assisted in the resistance movement by funneling sand and other such obstructions into German Army fuel tanks. On one occasion, his mother wondered where her cache of sugar had gone. Little did she know that her boy had poured the sugar down into the fuel tank of a German general!

After the end of World War II, young van der Bijl enlisted in the Dutch army. He was sent to the Dutch East Indies to an island group, known today as Indonesia. There, he participated in the suppression of what is now known as the Indonesian National Revolution. Following the end of the Japanese occupation, the native population of Indonesia sought independence from Dutch colonial rule. The Dutch sent their troops to keep the islands under their dominion.

There is no way of knowing exactly how many of the natives of Indonesia were slaughtered by government forces during these years of oppression. Estimates range as high as 90,000 dead! Van der Bijl took part in these killings. He became cold to human suffering and bloody death, closed to pity, and emotionless in the sight of agony and brutality. 

Scenes of bloodshed and mass executions not only made him uncaring regarding the death of others, but the horrors of war hardened his heart against his own death. He sometimes wore a bright yellow hat into battle, shouting at the native Indonesian rebel forces, “Shoot me if you can!”

Finally, they did! Van der Bijl was shot in the ankle. The doctors were able to spare his leg from amputation. During the long recovery, van der Bijl pulled from his bag a Bible that his mother had given him before he went away to war. Now the Word of God gripped his heart. He discovered new meaning in life and found the “Pearl of Great Price,” the only thing that could satisfy the spiritual emptiness in his heart.

He realized that what the people of Indonesia needed was not guns but the Gospel, not bayonets, but Bibles! This was his need, and he recognized that it was also the need of a sin-sick world.

One long night while lying in his bunk, he remembered a story that a Christian nurse had told him. The story was about a monkey who reached into a hole cut in a coconut to grasp a stone. The monkey, eager for the stone, was stuck! He could not pull his clenched fist out of the coconut to be free. That night, van der Bijl realized that he needed to let go of self and sin and give himself entirely to God.

Back home in the Netherlands, he began attending church regularly and faithfully. Many thought him a fanatic. He applied to a Bible school but was initially rejected. After earnest prayer, he decided that he would obey God and go anyway, in spite of the fact that he did not know English, was not accepted at any school, and was lame in his ankle. As he rose from prayer, he felt a sudden pain in his ankle. His ankle was healed!

The Lord opened doors, and van der Bijl was able to finish his studies in 1955 at World Evangelization for Christ (WEC) Missionary Training College in Glasgow, Scotland. Later that year, he traveled to Warsaw and learned about the desperate hunger for Bibles behind the Iron Curtain in the Soviet Union. 

The term Iron Curtain was coined by Winston Churchill in a speech delivered in 1946 in Fulton, Missouri. The term aptly described the military, political, and ideological barrier erected by the Soviets to separate themselves from the Western world. Van der Bijl longed to see the Soviet people come to Christ. He prayed about how God might open doors for him to take the Gospel behind this barrier where Communism and dependence on a secular state repelled any reliance upon God and His Word.

An opportunity came about in a surprising way—a tour sponsored by the Communist party! A Soviet-controlled tour had been organized by the Communist party to see the grandeurs of the Soviet system. The tour was to be in Czechoslovakia. Although he was only supposed to see the things that the “tour guides” showed him, van der Bijl was observant enough to see that all was not as it was supposed to seem. He made secret contact with Christians while on the trip and was determined to do his best to bring Bibles to his brothers and sisters in the faith.

Thus was born a worldwide ministry called Open Doors. With a donated Volkswagen Beetle, van der Bijl, now using the name “Brother Andrew” to protect his identity, traveled into Yugoslavia with a suitcase filled with Bibles and religious tracts. On several occasions, he was miraculously able to drive right past checkpoints, even after guards searched his luggage. 

“Brother Andrew” soon came to be loved by many and was known to often pray, “Lord, You made the blind eyes to see. Now, make these seeing eyes blind.” And God answered. Guards would open his suitcases, look at his illegal cargo, and then amazingly allow him to pass on his way! 

In a related matter, Brother Andrew’s Volkswagen kept on running and running, long after it should have quit. In dozens of small but definitely miraculous ways, the Lord preserved Brother Andrew in his life-giving work of bringing the Word of God to the people of God.

Brother Andrew obeyed the command of our Lord to avoid casting pearls before swine. He gave the precious gift of God’s Word only to those who valued it most. The ministry of Open Doors grew and reached far beyond the nations of Eastern Europe. 

In 1975, Brother Andrew organized a mission effort to bring Bibles into Communist China. Whenever he heard the word impossible, he set out to do the deed by the power of God. In 1981, one million Bibles were smuggled into China on a secluded beach as 2,000 Christians gathered on the shore to receive the Word of God!

Brother Andrew also had a burden for Africa. In 1977, he traveled to Uganda while it was still under the control of dictator Idi Amin. Brother Andrew’s name was put on a wanted list in that country! But Brother Andrew was safe in the care of God Almighty, and he traveled to twenty different countries throughout Africa.

Brother Andrew, operating under a Dutch passport, could go places where no American could safely go. He brought Bibles to Cuba while under the control of Castro. He also visited the leaders of the infamous Columbian rebel group, AUC (Autodefensas Unidas de Columbia) and called upon them to lay down their weapons. In 2001, armed insurgents numbering 15,000 surrendered their weapons in exchange for Bibles!

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Brother Andrew spent the remainder of his life working on behalf of Christians in closed countries throughout the Middle East. He visited Lebanon and spoke to the leaders of Hezbollah. He visited Yasser Arafat and advocated that what Lebanon and the Gaza Strip needed most was the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The ministry of Open Doors still continues the work of Brother Andrew, distributing Bibles and Gospel literature in seventy-seven countries around the world. Brother Andrew died in the Netherlands in 2022, at the age of ninety-four. His autobiography has sold over ten million copies in thirty-five languages. His wife, Corry, died four years before her husband. They left behind five children, eleven grandchildren, and untold numbers of spiritual children around the world whose hearts were opened to the Scripture.

Sources and Further Reference:

Sherrill, John and Elizabeth (with Brother Andrew). God’s Smuggler. Ferndale, MI: Chosen Books, 2015.