The most dangerous book on the planet

When I walk into my local bookshop, they’ve a table labelled “Banned Books.” On it there are offerings from Mikhail Bugalov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell and Anthony Burgess, Harper Lee and Mark Twain. There is even a replica of Alice in Wonderland, banned by one Chinese province in 1931 for portraying animals because the mental equals of humans. 

Books are dangerous – they’re stuffed with ideas and stories that may encourage, re-enchant and disgust. All autocratic regimes ban some books, sometimes even some democratic nations do too. Certain books are a step too far. But there’s one book that you’re going to never find on the banned books table; one book that even today is banned or heavily restricted in 52 nations. A book that in some countries people die to read. This book is the Bible.

This month, Open Doors celebrates its seventieth anniversary. A young Dutch missionary often called Brother Andrew began to smuggle Bibles within the Soviet Union in his blue Volkswagen Beetle. He did so since the Christians there have been desperate for them. They treated the words on these pages not simply as stories or information, but because the source of life itself. For them, the scriptures weren’t a luxury, but a necessity – a necessity that many, even now, would risk their lives to access. If you need to see what a deer panting for water looks like, then watch a video of Chinese believers receiving a Bible for the primary time; it’s life-giving, shocking and convicting.

I’ll always remember hearing the story of a person who, in the course of the Soviet era, heard that Bible smugglers from Open Doors were bringing Bibles to his area. He woke up early and hiked all day within the bitter Siberian winter. When he arrived, he found a person holding an empty box. The man had given away all of the Bibles. “Can I no less than have the box that they got here in?” asked the Soviet believer, “that’ll sustain me until you next come.” 

Every 12 months, since 1993, Open Doors has produced a rating of the toughest countries on the planet to live as a Christian. For a few years North Korea has sat at the highest of that list (it briefly dropped to second place when the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan). In North Korea the Bible is seen as probably the most dangerous book on the planet. It just isn’t only the case that owning one will result in execution or imprisonment in a concentration camp, but even having an prolonged member of the family who’s caught with one can lead to your imprisonment. There are reports of babies being imprisoned in these camps after their parents were discovered to own a Bible.

And yet, even in these circumstances, the Bible is the centre of those Christians’ lives. One North Korean described how she can be worked to the bone all day in these camps, then, in the midst of the night, she and her Christian friends would get up and sneak out of their dormitories. They would go to a tree under which they’d buried a Bible, uncover it and browse it together at night, only to get up early to return to the labour that was their each day burden.

The authorities see something within the Bible in these repressive nations. In China, online copies of the Bible have long since had the Chinese characters for ‘Christ,’ ‘Christian(s),’ and ‘Jesus’ replaced or just removed. Likewise, Bible apps have been faraway from Apple and Google stores within the nation. In 2019, Chinese individuals who had purchased Bibles as much as a decade earlier from the Wheat Christian Bookshop, were arrested and questioned. 

As Open Doors celebrates our seventieth anniversary, we now have been reflecting on the central role that Bibles have played in our work. We began, in 1955, with one man faithfully obeying the decision of God to get Bibles within the hands of believers – risking his life to take them into places which feared its liberating power. In June of 1981, Open Doors smuggled a staggering a million Bibles, behind the Bamboo Curtain, into China in a single night. Today, we proceed the legacy of Brother Andrew by getting Bibles into the hands of those that would otherwise never read one; smuggling the book into the hardest-to-reach places on earth – although lately, a few of these are on data cards the dimensions of a fingernail.

When I take into consideration how those that don’t have easy accessibility to Scripture treat it, it confronts me with my very own attitude. We have freedom to read our Bibles, to go to church and listen to it preached, to look at or take heed to sermons – I’ve just checked and I even have five different Bibles on my phone! The Bible is powerful. That is why it’s feared by regimes who want all power to rest solely with them. Scripture dignifies, gives hope and brings life. The words of the Bible have the ability to remodel lives and nations, it has the ability to tear down and construct up, it has the ability to avoid wasting.

“Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” – Romans 10:17 

“For the word of God resides and lively, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the center.” – Hebrews 4:12

Daniel McIlhiney is parliamentary officer for Open Doors UK & Ireland. Find out more concerning the work of Open Doors at opendoorsuk.org