#207: BOOK REVIEW: God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew, John & Elizabeth Sherrill.

By -

 ‘Lord, in my luggage I have Scripture that I want to take to Your children across this border. When you were on earth, You made blind eyes see. Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind. Do not let the guards see those things You do not want them to see.'

This is the true story of Brother Andrew, a Dutchman who has spent his life working for God in places where Christianity is forbidden by the government. It is the tale of his wayward youth, his conversion, the powerful work of God in his life, and his trust in the sovereign God of the universe.

During the Cold War, Brother Andrew smuggled Bibles into countries behind the Iron Curtain-a term indicating the imaginary boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. This was a very hostile region to Christians. In a time when there were no significant Human Right Movements or the media to cover inhuman treatments, Bro Andrew took risky and daring moves to take contraband items into these regions.

That takes some serious motivation. This was the first thing that caught my attention in his story. Besides this, the story of Bro Andrew hinges on the power of prayer, faith and sacrifice. I mean, most times as followers of Jesus, we may have been held back by the fear of what people will say or being persecuted. I’m sure fear of how people will respond has held back most of us at one time or another. But somehow Bro Andrew dared to smuggle these Bibles into unfriendly regions.

On one occasion, Brother Andrew approached the Romanian border in his car—which was packed with illegal Bibles. Printed material especially was liable to be confiscated at the border, no matter how small the quantity, because coming from out of the country, it was regarded as foreign propaganda. Now here he was with a car and luggage literally bulging with tracts, Bibles, and portions of Bibles.

He could only hope the border guards were moving swiftly and not paying much attention, which might allow him to pass through undetected.

But just as he was hoping this, Brother Andrew saw the guards stop the car at the front of the line. He watched, in anticipation, as the vehicle’s owners were forced to take out all of the car’s contents and spread them on the ground for inspection.

Each car that followed received the same treatment, with the fourth car’s inspection lasting the longest. The guard took a full hour to sift through it, including removing hubcaps, taking the engine apart, and even removing the seats.

“Dear Lord,” Brother Andrew remembers praying, “What am I going to do?”

As he prayed, a bold idea came to Brother Andrew. “I know that no amount of cleverness on my part can get me through this border search.  Dare I ask for a miracle? Let me take some of the Bibles out and leave them in the open where they will be seen.”

Putting the Bibles out in the open would truly be depending on God, rather than his intelligence, he thought. So when the guards ushered Andrew forward, he did just this. “I handed him my papers and started to get out. But his knee was against the door, holding it closed.”

And then, the almost unbelievable happened.

The guard looked at Brother Andrew’s passport and abruptly waved him on. “Surely thirty seconds had not passed,” he remembers.

Brother Andrew started the engine and began pulling away, all the while wondering if he was supposed to pull over so the car could be taken apart and examined. “I coasted forward, my foot poised above the brake. Nothing happened. I looked out the rear mirror. The guard was waving the next car to a stop, indicating to the driver that he had to get out.”

God had cleared the way for Brother Andrew to smuggle the Bible to Christians who had no access to God’s Word.

From one border to the other, he saw the hand of God helping him take bibles into hostile regions. Along the way, Brother Andrew even developed a trademark prayer:

“Lord, in my luggage I have Scripture I want to take to your children. When you were on earth, You made blind eyes see. Now, I pray, make seeing eyes blind.  Do not let the guards see those things You do not want them to see.”

This story hinges on;

The Power of Prayer: Bro Andrew’s story was a perfect reflection of the Power of Prayer. This was the driving fuel for this dangerous work of serving God under Communism’s oppression. Brother Andrew and his coworkers surrendered their lives to a life of prayer.

The Power of Trust: He trusted God, day by day, to provide for his needs, so long as He was following His call. His trust for provision is incredible, and would probably be considered crazy by today’s standards. This was evident on countless occasions when Brother Andrew should’ve been arrested, killed, or stranded (you get the picture), but God intervened miraculously.

The Power of Sacrifice: The kind of life Bro Andrew lived is what most today would deem unlivable. He sacrificed multiple chances for ‘the good life' and gave up even the most basic items that we today take for granted, all so that we could continue the work he felt called to.

Because of Brother Andrew, many people behind the Iron Curtain received Bibles and were shown that God cared about them. This story also reflects that God can use an ordinary man to change the world as He did on many occasions in the Bible.

Find the book via the link below
https://d-pdf.com/book/gods-smuggler-by-brother-andrew-pdf-download

God bless you. 😊

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

#126: The Story behind the Hymn I: When Peace, Like a River

By -
Author: Horatio Gates Spafford  (1873) In November, 1873, Horatio Spafford sent his wife and four daughters on the French ship  Ville du Havre  from their home in Chicago to a vacation in France, planning to set out a few days later himself. Somewhere in the Atlantic, the  Ville du Havre  collided with a British ship coming the other way, and sank in just 12 minutes. Of his family, only Spafford’s wife survived.  Spafford took the next boat over, and as he passed the spot where the ship went down, began to write, “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll,” and continued until he had the text, “It is well with my soul.” His good friend, Philip Bliss, composed the tune for his words, naming it after the ship, VILLE DU HAVRE.  In this hymn, Spafford has given all of us words of comfort and assurance in times of physical and spiritual crisis, paraphrasing those familiar words of Julian of Norwich: “And all shall be well...
Read more

#229: Benjamin's Letter - (Hope for a Tree Pt. 2)

By -
Image
My dearest, I am glad that by the time you receive this letter, the assurance of my love would have been beyond any doubt in your mind. By this time, I am sure that what we share has reached a point where it cannot be broken carelessly or destroyed. Trust would have become the focus of who we are and who we wish to be. Love; our love forgives all things and is not boastful. Neither does it get angry or jealous. God is Love and God is the author of our Love. We have God between us. And it is for this reason that I feel heavily impressed upon me to write to you. You must know that between you and me, there must be forgiveness. If I love you, I must forgive you. Now from the depths of my heart, I desire to love you as Christ loves the Church and if I did so then before I know you or what you've done, I promise under God that I forgive it all because I really do love you. I must confess that your letter was a difficult read. I am writing to you, in response to your letter to share in t...
Read more

#149: THE FORGOTTEN ONE'S 3 (Final)

By -
Image
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building.” (1 Cor 3:6-9) What then can we do? Having established that the mandate to go out there where the people are is the duty of every believer, we’d like to take a look at the kind of believer that goes out there and ways in which the believer can reach out to others. One primary thing to take note of is that God can use anybody. He’s ever willing to use any vessel that is empty, available and yielded for His use. The vessel may be the same at different times, but the method or strategy may not always be the same at different times. A believer that will embark on this mission is a believer that is wholly dependent on the voice of the Holy Spi...
Read more