Interviews with Brother Andrew and Johan Companjen
Seventy years of communist expansion visibly ended when the Berlin Wall came down on 9 November 1989. Over the following weeks, ordinary citizens demolished lengthy parts of it using their hands and bulldozers opened up ten new official crossings between East and West, re-instating old roads.
 Brother Andrew, founder of Open Doors, was there at the Wall's inception and demise. He says, "I was one of the first to drive through the Check-point Charlie after it was built in 1961. I saw a terrible vision when we came to the other side to visit the Christians. They were being treated really badly and there was a wave a suicides going through the country, which included Christians and evangelical pastors. I was also there when that wall came down; I was filled with great happiness but I refused pieces of it because I do not want any souvenir of that dark bleak time in history.
Brother Andrew had been visiting countries in the communist world since his first trip to Poland in 1955, where he observed tens of thousands of communists chanting, "We will win the world for the revolution." He then returned to Holland and prophetically called the church to wake up to what was happening in the communist world and to support the church that was being persecuted there.
Bibles
Brother Andrew recalls that first trip by train, his suitcase bulging with Christian booklets. "I was the only Christian surrounded by communists, about to visit a world I knew nothing about. It was an eye-opener in every respect. I found churches and a Bible society that we knew nothing about. I also found there was a great lack of Bibles but lots of enthusiasm. It was there that a pastor said, 'Andrew, you being here means more than ten of the best sermons.' I knew I couldn't preach very well but I could be there!"
"The Bible Society Director told me stories about professional smugglers who would come to his shop, buy ten Russian Bibles, smuggle them across the border to Russia and make a fortune. Something began to wake up in me. I thought, 'If people do that for the love of money - unbelievers, taking such a risk - how much more we should go over there and take the Bibles to the Russians.' That's where the first seed was sown."
 Presence
Johan Companjen was a constant travelling companion of Brother Andrew at that time. He relates, "Back then, the communists did not tolerate Christians at all and Christians had a tremendous need for Bibles. However, they also were desperate for training and encouragement and our presence was as important to them as the Bibles we brought, because people felt totally forsaken. Many times we heard persecuted Christians say, 'Thank you for coming. The fact that you are here shows that you care for us.'"
Prayer
Johan continues, "Another key factor in our ministry has been prayer. Wherever Brother Andrew went in the early 70s he would ask people to pray. He particularly wanted to bring together people who had a prayer burden for China."
Prayer for China
Johan described how Open Doors gathered together some 400 people from 25 countries in September 1975 to pray for China. During the following year, 1976, the door to China opened as communist party leader Mao Tse-tung died, as did Zhou Enlai, the party premier. The underground house church movement was born and grew enormously during those repressive days – with a desperate need for Bibles. The tens of thousands of Bibles that Open Doors delivered fell pitifully short of the millions that were needed. In one night alone, in 1981, Open Doors delivered one million Bibles to a beach in China.
Prayer for Soviet Union
In 1982, a seven-year prayer campaign for the former Soviet Union concluded with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and a totally unexpected freedom came to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
The very next year Open Doors was able to start 'officially' delivering Bibles, including one million New Testaments to Russian Orthodox Church leaders and 50,000 Bibles to the President of Albania three years later.
Prayer for the Muslim World
When Brother Andrew's book God's Smuggler was first published in 1967, its phenomenal success meant that Brother Andrew could not return to Eastern Europe. For the last forty years he has been serving the struggling Christian church in the Muslim World.
Throughout the 1980s, Brother Andrew prophetically told the Open Doors team, "You think communism is hard – just wait until militant Islam raises its head."
Very few people were talking about Islam back then, but in 1990 Open Doors launched a ten-year prayer campaign for the Muslim World. Johan remarks, "God has answered so many prayers in many closed Islamic countries – Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan etc – where many thousands of people have been finding Christ. Since 9/11, the Church has begun to wake up, and many people are praying for the Islamic world now, which is also an answer to prayer. "
Challenge to the church
Brother Andrew explains, "The Muslim world is absolutely the focus of Christian persecution and threat to the world, but we must learn how to spell ISLAM as 'I Sincerely Love All Muslims', and we must start communicating properly with them and not be so afraid. And by the way, I would much prefer to have a lively debate with a dedicated Muslim than a lukewarm Christian!"
"In our countries, Islam is not a threat as yet but it is a challenge that we are not accepting. If we do not accept a challenge, it turns into a threat. Sometimes people come to my office and they are very upset: 'Oh the Muslims have bought another empty church, and they have converted it into a mosque, isn't that terrible!' No, that's not terrible, what's terrible is that the church was empty in the first place."
Repent
"The church in the West needs to accept the fact that there is a suffering church and repent of our lack of understanding and compassion. We have not taken good care of one another and unless we do that, there will be no change in our culture, which is declining in moral spirituality and church influence. We even have a constitution in Europe now which doesn't mention our Christian past."
Review
"As well as helping Christians who are suffering for their faith, we need to understand why their persecutors behave as they do. Many times people don't distinguish between Christians who know and love the Lord Jesus and the Western nations who have over many centuries plundered and continue to plunder the nations in which they do business and operate. We cannot condemn them – we can only love them and let them know that Jesus forgives."
Reach out
"The Church has lost the art of making friends with ordinary people. Jesus walked with outcasts. He talked with those to whom no-one else wanted to talk. He loved the poor and the oppressed. We need to learn how to do that and stop waiting for a programme, a mission or a revival to bring people to God. I am just an ordinary person, the son of a village blacksmith, who has never even been to secondary school. If I can do it, anybody can."
Receive
"The persecuted church has so much more to teach us than we could ever teach them. To see the way they persevere under opposition, love God and forgive their tormentors is something we need to learn a lot more of in our society. We must learn to pray for those who oppose us. If a person is not prayed for, then he becomes a play for the devil. That's why we must pray for Bin Laden. Hundreds of Bibles are reaching the Taliban. That Word is going to have an influence, to break through with the kingdom of God. We need to see not an enemy, but a person for whom Christ died – that is my main motivation."
Revive
"The most important thing that we can do for the persecuted church is to pray. Pray as we face this terrible dilemma of growing persecution, diminishing church influence worldwide, exodus of Christians from the Middle East. God is building his church but you and I have to help. We have to witness; we have to be obedient to the great commission, we must supply the needs, we must go and say what can we do for you? And they always say, 'Please pray for us.' And if we press the point further they probably say, 'And bring me a Bible, but come; come and encourage us so we can stay here.' Until that point is reached they will leave by the tens of thousands.
"That's the mission of Open Doors: like a cry of distress, an SOS from God, 'strengthen what remains and is at the point of death'. How we need to do this! The problem is that people don't like to be woken up – they are happy asleep! Western Christians talk so much about revival, when what they need to do is wake up and be as Jesus is in this world, love our enemies, befriend the outcast, pray for and strengthen the dying church across the world. Maybe then we will see revival!"
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