Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim nation. Did you ever go back after fighting there with the Dutch army?
Yes, a wealthy brother in Jakarta paid for all my trips. We traveled through New Guinea, Bali, Java and other islands. I spoke in churches and Bible schools and did a lot of teaching. I visited many of the old places where the Dutch army fought. Several times when I spoke I openly asked forgiveness for what we, the Dutch army, had done to them. I believe that the war was so dirty, so hypocritical. One reason Muslims are so angry at the West is because seven-eighths of the Muslim world was occupied and ruled by “Christian” nations until the end of World War II.
I visited St. Elizabeth Catholic Hospital in Semarang, where I was treated after I was shot in the ankle during the war. The same nuns were there, and I showed them God’s Smuggler and read aloud the section we wrote about them.
So they remembered you?
I don’t think so. But they remembered the Dutch soldiers descending on their hospital. It must have been quite an experience for them to be surrounded by a bunch of wild men who were swearing and making dirty jokes about the nice nurses being trained by the nuns.
While you were branching out into the Muslim world, what was happening in Communist countries where you used to work? Did the ministry of Open Doors continue to smuggle Bibles?
Absolutely! We had teams that modified trucks and vans and created ingenious spaces to hide Bibles—many more than my little car could hold. These men and women were smuggling thousands of Bibles each month into Eastern Europe and Russia. Other teams carried Bibles in suitcases into mainland China. My staff called this “Project Hernia.” One of the house church leaders in China told us that while they deeply appreciated the Bibles we were bringing, the need was far greater. When asked how many they needed, the request was for one million Bibles to be delivered in a single night.
Obviously that produced the biggest challenge ever for our ministry. How do you smuggle one million Bibles into a closed country with a well-armed military patrolling the border? An amazing team based in the Philippines worked on the problem. They built a barge that would carry the waterproofed packages—total weight 230 tons. They bought an ocean-going tugboat to pull the barge. It took eighteen months to plan the details of “Project Pearl.” Obviously this was a huge step of faith. Our budget doubled in one year, but God met the need. On the night of June 18, 1981, the team sailed past a Chinese naval vessel—were their seeing eyes made blind?—to a remote beach on the coast of China. Two thousand believers were waiting to take delivery and distribute the Bibles around the country. Time magazine wrote a story about it, calling Project Pearl a bold expedition “executed with military precision.”†
Later, as the Soviet Union began to crumble, we delivered one million Bibles to Russia. I was finally allowed back into the country and personally gave the one millionth copy to the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. The team also began to take Bibles into the Islamic world, and they had some amazing experiences. One of our staff had a vision to smuggle one million desperately needed Bibles into a certain Muslim country—I can’t reveal which. It took several years but was a huge success.
As you can see, this clearly isn’t my story. It is God’s story, and a lot of staff and volunteers have participated. I have always said that if I, an uneducated Dutchman—you know I never officially graduated from high school or Bible school—can do these things, then anyone can do them. If, that is, you are led by God and live and work by faith.
So as the Open Doors continued and expanded the work you started, you saw a growing need in places like the Middle East. What were some other countries you visited?
I made several trips to Egypt—until they blacklisted me. I became friends with Menes Abdul Noor, pastor of the largest Protestant church in Egypt. I met with Pope Shenouda of the Coptic Church; our ministry helped to support their printing and publication programs. We assisted various ministries, such as a clinic in the basement of a Presbyterian church in Asyut that treated 23,000 patients a year free of charge. Most of the patients were Muslims. The church was surrounded on three sides by five mosques with loudspeakers aimed at the church. I was preaching there one evening, and because it was so hot, all the windows were open. My text was 1 Samuel 17, the story of David and Goliath, one of my favorites. Suddenly the call to prayer came from all five mosques. It was so loud that, even though I was using a microphone, it drowned out what I was saying. So I prayed, “Lord, cut the power and shut down all these evil voices.” Immediately there was a power failure and everything went silent, including my microphone. But the church had an old generator in the basement, and they managed to fire it up. So we had power but the mosques did not, and I finished my message.
Why were you blacklisted from Egypt?
I think a remark I made from the pulpit at Kasr el Dobara Church in Cairo may have been the reason. I said that we evangelicals ought to be the ones in Egypt to build bridges to the Islamic fundamentalists. We ought to know where they are, and we ought to influence them and lead them to Christ. I guess that was too political, too dangerous. Maybe too radical?
Is it true that God’s Smuggler has been published in Arabic?
It has been translated and published in more than 35 languages. On one of my first trips into Israel I saw the book, in English, at a hotel shop. Later it was translated into both Hebrew and Arabic, and I have given away many copies of these editions. I give them to political and religious leaders to share with them my testimony and show them what Christianity is about. I gave a copy to (PLO leader) Yasser Arafat, and he requested more copies to distribute.
Once, I was on a flight from Cairo to Beirut, and the Grand Mufti of Lebanon was also on the flight. I noticed him because he had a red fez on his head and was surrounded by bodyguards. I thought, That’s an important man. I want to meet him. So after we took off, I got up and passed by him and greeted him. Once he returned my greeting, the bodyguards did not stop me from talking with him. I gave him a copy of God’s Smuggler and said I would love to come by his office and pray with him. A week later I visited him, and he told me, “Andrew, I am reading your book to my children, a chapter after every meal.” Six weeks later the Mufti and six of his bodyguards were killed by a massive car bomb.
You spent a lot of time in Lebanon?
The first time I went was to help a Dutchman who had a burden for deaf people. In Muslim culture a deaf person is considered demon-possessed. Parents will shut their little deaf child in a closet. My friend started a school for the deaf in Beirut. It had a nursery and primary and secondary schools as well as vocational training. I went there to take meetings and raise support for him.
Then civil war broke out, and it became very dangerous for foreigners to travel in Lebanon. I went there twice a year between 1975 and 1990. Partnering with the Bible Society, I took Bibles and visited churches and isolated missionaries. We had to pass through as many as ten roadblocks a day, and at every one we evangelized and gave out Scriptures. At one roadblock they searched all the stuff in our Volkswagen bus and found the Scriptures, of course. We offered to give them some. They said yes, but added, “We don’t want the Israel book. We want the Jesus book.” They didn’t want the Old Testament, only the New Testament.
You mentioned the radical statement you made in Egypt about reaching out to fundamentalist groups. I understand that you made your first contact with such a group in Lebanon. What were the circumstances of that meeting?
During the civil war, a powerful Shi’ite leader preached a revolutionary message in one of the Beirut mosques, and tapes of his sermons sold by the tens of thousands on city streets. His name was Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah. Under his inspiration, a new political and military force emerged in Lebanon: the Hezbollah, or “party of God.” Then in the 1980s a number of people were kidnapped and held for several years. A relative of someone I knew was kidnapped, chained to a radiator and held hostage for more than three years. No one knew where he was being
held, but we had word that he was very ill.
Apparently Hezbollah was responsible, so I made an appointment with Fadlallah through an intermediary ironically named Jihad. Carrying a large, gilded Arabic Bible wrapped in plain paper, I waited in the lobby of the Garden Hotel in West Beirut and wondered what would stop Hezbollah from adding this Dutchman to their collection of hostages. Suddenly several heavily armed men burst into the lobby. Loiterers quickly exited as the man in charge asked me if I was Andrew. I was ordered to ride with Jihad and follow a van that had been converted into a crude armored personnel carrier. I could see gun barrels pointing out of the windows of the van and a similar vehicle behind us as we tore through the city streets.
After passing through a heavily protected checkpoint and having my body and belongings searched, I was escorted to meet with the sheikh. Fadlallah, who later was known by the title Ayatollah, waited for me, dressed in a long gray caftan covered by a black cape-like robe, wearing a black turban on his head.
How do you, a Westerner and a Christian, obtain an appointment with a fundamentalist leader like the Ayatollah?
You ask. You knock on doors. Remember, our mission is called Open Doors because we believe no doors are closed to the Gospel. You’ve heard about unreached people groups? Well, Hezbollah and the Taliban and Islamic Jihad and Hamas, they are unreached people. So I go and share the Gospel with them.
How did you share the Gospel with the leader of Hezbollah, and what was his reaction?
After we were introduced, I told Fadlallah, “I am a Christian, and I am here representing Jesus Christ, attempting to do whatever I can to help bring peace to Lebanon.” He nodded as his left hand fingered a string of prayer beads. Then I offered him my gift, saying, “That is why I want you to have a copy of the Bible. I don’t know what the Qur’an says about hostage-taking, but I know what the Bible says, and God is against it. That is why I hope you will read this book. This is my present to you.”
Fadlallah graciously accepted the Bible and in a soft baritone voice said, “We are friends with Christians. If both Muslims and Christians would read their holy books, they would understand each other better.”
Not a bad start. Taking a deep breath, I said, “In that spirit of cooperation, I believe God wants you to release the hostages. All of them.”
The Ayatollah did not respond immediately but finally said, “I don’t see how I can help you.”
“You are the leader of Hezbollah. Surely you can order the hostages released.”
With a wry smile he answered, “You can meet with Hezbollah leaders, but I do not represent Hezbollah.” It was also obvious that he could deliver a message to those leaders.
So what was my message? I told him about the man, a devout Christian, who was among the hostages. “I have put my house in order. I am fully prepared to stay here and take the place of this man. He has suffered enough. Chain me to the radiator and let him go.”
Clearly this request caught the sheikh by surprise. I could see it in the momentary shock on his face. Then like a champion poker player he covered his emotions. Quietly he asked, “How can you say that?”
“This is the spirit of Jesus,” I answered. I stood and spread out my arms to demonstrate. “He died on the cross to let us go free. He died so we could live. Now I’m ready to give myself up so my friend can go free. That is what Christianity is all about.”
“I have never heard about this kind of Christianity,” Fadlallah said.
The Ayatollah did not grant my request to let the hostages go. But we did start a conversation that lasted for several years before he died in 2010.
When you met with the Ayatollah, what did the two of you talk about?
We met five or six times. There was one meeting where we sat and drank Arab coffee and Fadlallah said to me, “Andrew, you Christians have a big problem.” Well, I knew Christians had problems, but I was curious to find out what this Muslim leader thought was our big problem. His answer: “You don’t follow the example of Jesus anymore!”
It was hard to disagree with him, so I asked him what we should do.
“You need to go back to the book!” He meant, of course, the Bible.
We were quiet for a while as we drank another cup of coffee. Then Fadlallah shook his head sadly and said, “We Muslims also have a problem.” Now I was really curious. What did he believe was their big problem? His answer: “We Muslims aren’t following the life of the prophet Muhammad anymore.”
I nodded my head, while thinking that not following Muhammad really wasn’t such a big problem. Then I asked, “So what is the solution?”
“We have to go back to the book!” he answered. Of course he meant the Muslim book, the Qur’an, not the Bible.
We had many conversations and he recorded them all. I understand he wrote about our talks in a couple of books. They are in Arabic, so I can’t tell you what they said. I once proposed to him that we have a dialogue on the topic “What kind of person does each book produce?” We never had that discussion, but it would have been very interesting. What kind of people does the Qur’an produce? What kind of people does the Bible produce?
You also made many trips into Israel. Wasn’t it a problem to meet members of Hezbollah, who are considered Israel’s enemy?
The best thing we can do for Israel is win her enemies to Christ. How do you do that? First you need to become friends. You can never win an enemy to Christ. As long as we see any person as an enemy—whether Communist, Muslim or terrorist—then the love of God cannot flow through us to reach them. So I reach out to the most radical fundamentalist Muslim leaders. However, I never go alone. I always take local church leaders with me. That is why there must be a church in every country. This is their mission field. I simply open the door and show them the way.
What was the nature of your ministry in Israel?
At first, I visited rabbis and spoke in various churches. I was preaching about the suffering Church one Sunday in Narkis Road Baptist Church. After the service a woman came up to me and said, “There’s a suffering Church here in Israel. It’s the Palestinian Church.” I had never heard about it. Soon after that I met Bishara Awad, who was principal of the Hope School in Beit Jala, just north of Bethlehem. He introduced me to Palestinian Christians, and I discovered that there were ten times more believers among Palestinians than there were Messianic believers.
Bishara took me to see the Church of the Nativity, one of the oldest church buildings in the world, built over the place where supposedly Jesus was born. As we walked through Manger Square, Bishara told me about his vision to start a Bible school in Bethlehem. He explained that the number-one need for the churches in Israel, West Bank and Gaza was leadership. “We have beautiful church buildings here, but buildings are not enough. The Church is dying because there are fewer and fewer shepherds.” At the time, to our knowledge, there was no Arabic-speaking Bible college in the Middle East, and most of the pastors were trained in Western seminaries. Unfortunately, many of those seminarians stayed in the West, where it was safer and more comfortable. “We need to train leaders here—pastors, youth workers, ministry leaders,” Bishara told me. “It is my dream to see dozens of Palestinians of every denomination coming to Bethlehem to study the Bible in Arabic, their native language.”
So I worked with my new friend to raise funds to start Bethlehem Bible College. It has been going now for more than thirty years and has trained hundreds of leaders for Arab churches. Many ministries have come out of this. For example, Musalaha was started by Salim Munayer, who was the academic dean of the college for many years. This is a ministry of reconciliation that brings together groups of Palestinians and Israelis in a three-day desert experience to bridge the huge divide between believers on both sides. For many it is the first time they have ever actually had a relationship with someone on the other side.
Why do you focus on Palestinians instead of Jews and Messianic believers?
I am not pro- or anti-Israel. I am not pro- or anti-Pal
estinian. I am pro-Church, and my calling is to go where the Church is persecuted and struggling to survive. Strengthen what remains and is at the point of death—that was God’s message from Revelation 3:2 on my first trip to Poland in 1955. The Palestinian Church is dying, so I have done everything I can to build up Bethlehem Bible College so the Church won’t die. I have gone many times to Gaza, where there are only 2,000 Christians among 1.5 million Muslims, and only a single evangelical church with maybe a hundred members. That church must not die because the eternal destiny of the people in Gaza depends on it.
You reached out to the leaders of Hamas in Gaza. How does that fit with your calling to strengthen the Church?
I was getting ready to speak on New Year’s Eve at the Missions ’93 conference in Utrecht when I received a message asking me to go and meet a group of 415 leaders of Hamas whom Israel had arrested and deported. They were deposited in winter on a God-and-Allah-forsaken mountainside, Marj al-Zohour in southern Lebanon, where not even grass would grow. The United Nations had already passed a resolution condemning the action and demanding that the Palestinians be returned to their homes. I felt in my spirit I needed to go.
A few days later I found myself in the rain-soaked camp. It was so wet they couldn’t even make a fire. It was pouring rain, and I had to take off my boots and pour out the water. I met Abdulaziz Rantisi and Mahmoud Zahar, both medical doctors and two of the founders of Hamas. As they gave me a tour of the camp, I observed that I didn’t see a mosque. They responded, “Every tent is a mosque!” That deeply challenged me about my own home country. I wondered what it would mean if every Christian considered their home a church.
As I visited the various tents, men started giving me slips of paper with names and addresses of family members. That is when the idea came to me to visit each of those families, who were no doubt worried about their husband or father or uncle. A few weeks later I traveled to Israel and met up again with Bishara. We visited the names on the slips of paper. In every case the homes we visited filled up with friends and family, and we could tell them we had visited their loved one. Bishara then shared a passage of Scripture and prayed for the families, and we took pictures that I carried back to the camp a few months later.
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