Open Doors - History

History

Open Doors was founded in 1955 by Andrew van der Bijl, a Dutchman more widely known as Brother Andrew, when he decided to smuggle Bibles to Christians he felt were being discriminated against in the then-Soviet Poland. Brother Andrew continued this work in smuggling Bibles to many of the Soviet countries and in 1957 was given a blue Volkswagen Beetle which he used to make deliveries within the Communist bloc. With this new car he was able to carry more literature. Thereafter, the work of Open Doors continued to expand as it extended its network throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

In 1981, they delivered one million contraband Chinese Bibles in one night to a beach in the village of Gezhou in China on a mission they named Project Pearl. In 1988, Open Doors used Glasnost as an opportunity to openly provide one million Russian Bibles to the Russian Orthodox Church, at a cost of $2.5 million. Open Doors partnered with the United Bible Societies to complete the task in just over one year.

As of August, 2007, Open Doors had offices in 27 countries.

In 2010, 428,856 people from over 70 different countries signed Open Doors' global Right to Believe petition, saying YES to religious liberty and NO to the UN's Defamation of Religions Resolution. The petition was presented to the UN in New York on Monday 6 December 2010.

In 2011 Open Doors International:

• Delivered more than 3.1 million Bibles, Children's Bibles, training and other Christian materials in nearly 50 countries
• Trained around 263,500 people worldwide
• Served 172,000 people through community development projects.