The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Church Under Fire & Into All the World
Brother Andrew (Anne van der Bijl)
1928–2022
Anne ("Andrew") van der Bijl (May 11, 1928 – September 27, 2022) — known globally as "Brother Andrew" — was a Dutch missionary and the founder of Open Doors, the world's principal Christian ministry to the persecuted church.
The life
Anne ("Andrew") van der Bijl (May 11, 1928 – September 27, 2022) — known globally as "Brother Andrew" — was a Dutch missionary and the founder of Open Doors, the world's principal Christian ministry to the persecuted church. He served in the Dutch military in Indonesia (1946–1949), was converted in 1950, and beginning in 1955 conducted clandestine Bible-smuggling and pastoral encouragement trips behind the Iron Curtain in his blue VW Beetle (the "miracle car").
His autobiography God's Smuggler (1967, with John and Elizabeth Sherrill) sold 10+ million copies in 35+ languages and became a foundational missions-formation text for evangelicals worldwide. Open Doors continues globally, present in 60+ nations, distributing Bibles, training persecution victims, and providing emergency relief. Brother Andrew was knighted by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands (1993) and awarded the World Evangelical Fellowship's Religious Liberty Award (1997).
Go further
Read them yourself — the works below are the next step, and the public-domain ones are free to read in full.
- God's Smuggler1967
International bestseller (10M+ copies); standard evangelical missions-formation text; foundational for the persecuted-church-awareness movement.
- Light Force: A Stirring Account of the Church Caught in the Middle East Crossfire2004
Brother Andrew's articulation of the Christian engagement with Muslim-world contexts — particularly Lebanon, Palestine, the broader Middle East church. Distinct from triumphalist-political-Christian-Zionism in tone.
- The Calling: A Challenge to Walk the Narrow Road1996