God’s Smuggler Speaks

The Christian Post has a fascinating interview with Brother Andrew, the famous “Bible Smuggler.” I encourage you to read the entire article, some of which is quite entertaining. Brother Andrew is now in his 80’s, and his work for the persecuted church is immense, primarily accomplished through Open Doors, a ministry he founded in 1955.

Below is a sample taken from the interview. His popular book, God’s Smuggler, is available as a free audio download this month. Check it out at Christian Audio.

CP: How do you personally pray for the persecuted Church?

Brother Andrew: Let me first tell you what I don’t pray. I don’t pray that God will lift the persecution because if there is persecution there is a plan that God has, otherwise God wouldn’t allow it. So do we understand why this persecution? When we read the Bible, all the Bible’s characters met with at least opposition. Our problem is that if we have a little opposition we call it persecution. That is ridiculous. Every Christian is tested; every Christian has and has to have opposition.

How do we pray? Not for God to remove persecution, but use that to purify the Church. And it is my strong belief that the countries where there is persecution are stronger in faith than churches in countries where there is no persecution – whether it is your country or my country (Netherlands). And there will come a time, maybe it has come already, where we will depend on our survival on the faith and input of the church that is now persecuted. They are standing strongly in the storm; we write and speak about them because we admire them. They have qualities that I wish we had: the perseverance of faith. They don’t have Bibles often and they don’t have liberty. But do we need all this liberty that we take for granted in order to function as the Church? And of course the answer is no.

The Church thrives under pressure, that was the very birth of the Church. They were persecuted in Jerusalem and all over. Look at it a different way, what does the Bible say, how do I pray? That whatever happens in the world, the Church will be revived in our countries and be spared from apostasy and unbelief, but God’s way may well be a good dose of persecution because that is good medicine for the soul. At the same time having said that, there can be so much persecution that the Church ceases to exist, like that happened in North Africa and in other places, but these are exceptions. The church in China is of course a glorious example of the biggest, fastest growing church in the world, but we don’t know nearly as much about the church in China as we do about the church in America.

Related articles

• Go Cards! (gregoryccochran.com)
• How China Plans to Wipe Out House Churches (christianitytoday.com)
• Persecution Update from the Fall 2012 (gregoryccochran.com)