International (MNN) — Brother Andrew, famous for smuggling Bibles into the Soviet Union, has died at 94. He is best known for smuggling Bibles into Romania in 1957, asking God to blind the eyes of the soldiers who searched his car.
Eric Mock with the Slavic Gospel Association says, “For people under the Soviet Union, there was a forced code of atheism. They had actually converted a lot of churches into museums of atheism. So to have a single Bible was like gold. It was to be treasured. In fact, SGA through the 50s, 60s, and beyond used to broadcast the Bible at dictation speed.”
“Families would gather Bibles together and they would handwrite them, Bibles as much as a foot and a half thick.”
At the checkpoint, Brother Andrew watched soldiers meticulously search each car in front of him. But they waved him through in thirty seconds. Mock says, “The guards would have been so focused and so intent on finding any level of what they termed contraband (which would have included the Bibles) it seems almost impossible that he made it through without an inspection.”
Brother Andrew’s life
In the following years, Brother Andrew would have many more experiences like this. He often asked God to “Make seeing eyes blind.”
He became known as “God’s smuggler.” A book written about his ministry shared the same name. God’s Smuggler has sold over 10 million copies and was translated into 35 languages.
He was a humble and loving man who served God with courage. Praise God for his witness, and pray Christians around the world would follow his example.
The former Soviet Union
Today, the region of the former Soviet Union faces great upheaval. Mock says, “We have the conflict in Ukraine. We also have the new confusion that’s going on in Russia, with not only the call-up of people through the mobilization but also the conviction that many of the people will not bear arms against their Ukrainian brothers and sisters.”
The header photo shows Brother Andrew in 2007. (Photo courtesy of Jako Jellema, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
