John* arrived at the airport late in the evening. There was only one more hurdle to get through before he was safely with the secret Christians who were following Jesus in this Middle Eastern country.
He went to the customs line and he hoped the customs officers wouldn’t ask to see inside John’s suitcase; he hoped they would just wave him through. A customs official asked John to open his suitcase. ‘The man opened several of my special ‘presents’ and asked me who these presents were for or where I wanted to sell them. I told him that I personally wanted to give these presents to thank the people for my being welcome in the country.’ The ‘presents’ were Bibles as John is a Bible smuggler. And he’d just been caught trying to bring God’s word into a place where it wasn’t welcome. The customs officers confiscated all 50 Bibles. John was taken to a police station where he was held and interrogated through the night. ‘Continuously there was someone questioning me, without a break. Some were in uniform, others not. They asked me about my material, who it was for or to whom I wanted to sell it. I repeated that these were presents.’ The guards knew there were too many Bibles to be gifts.
John wasn’t sure what would happen to him. He asked one of the officials if he could go to his hotel. The official said he would be deported. ‘The man said that I was different from the others,’ John says. ‘I started to talk with him. [After a while] he told me his father was seriously ill.’
John didn’t hesitate; he asked if he could pray for the officer’s father.
‘He agreed and I prayed for the man,’ John says. ‘After that, I told him my testimony and explained how important Jesus is to me. I took a small New Testament from my pocket. At the end of the book, a ‘plan of Salvation’ was printed.’ John read all this for the man. And incredibly, the official who was overseeing John’s arrest came to see the truth of Jesus.
‘He accepted Jesus as his Saviour,’ John says. ‘I had tears in my eyes.’
God’s faithfulness in action
‘[The officer] said that he would help me to solve my problem,’ John remembers. ‘He asked me if I was only in the cell because of the books.’ The official took John to collect the books, then took him to the plane!
‘From the time my suitcase was opened until I entered the airplane again, I thanked the Lord,’ he says. ‘I had peace; the peace of God that transcends all understanding. I saw the hand of God in all that happened. It went differently to how I had planned. God decided to change everything for this one soul.’
Vital work
In other Bible smuggling news, one member of a small group of Europeans reported: ‘We travelled with half our suitcase full of Arab Bibles. We phoned our contact person – ‘M’ we’ll call him. Soon, he picked us up and we headed with our valuable “presents” to his church. We had an hour [together] before handing over the Bibles and so we spent some time in prayer with M. It was a stirring and very rich time together.’ Later, they participated in a church service. ‘It was moving to be part of a church service with about 80 believers, all coming from a Muslim background,’ the Bible smuggler said. ‘There were also some children present.’ Colin*, who oversees these smuggling trips, says: ‘I thank God that most of our Bible-smuggling trips work out well. Often, the travellers give testimonies after their travel about how God protected the special luggage they were carrying.’ The literature is more than welcome in the Middle East. ‘Having Bibles, Christian books and discipleship material is crucial for a growing church with new believers,’ Colin says. A church leader in one of these places echoes this. ‘We are grateful for the Christian literature we regularly receive,’ he said. ‘A few years ago, our church suffered a lot from lack of literature, and especially gospels for new converts. We now have enough.’
