In his youth Edvardsen was active in local politics for the Workers' Youth League, the youth wing of the Norwegian Labour Party, and also performed in a country music band.[1] He claimed to have been born again in 1956,[2] an experience which led him to redirect his life towards evangelical work.[3] Then, in 1960, he experienced what he described as a calling, instructing him to start worldwide evangelising through the use of native missionaries.[4]
In 1965 he founded the organisation Troens Bevis (Evidence of Faith), an organisation that would grow to support around 1000 native missionaries around the world.[4] The organisation today includes a multi-media venture, with daily television broadcasts reaching as many as 200 different nations.[1] In 2007 Aril Edvardsen's son Rune took over leadership of Troens Bevis.[5]
Edvardsen married his classmate Kari when he was 17 years old.[5] It was allegedly while his wife was in the hospital giving birth to the couple's first daughter that Edvardsen went along with a friend to the meeting where his conversion happened.[1]
He died on 6 September 2008, in Mombasa, Kenya, where he was on vacation with his wife after a missionary campaign in Zanzibar, Tanzania.[4] According to friends he had experienced cardiac problems for a time before his death.[5] Edvardsen's funeral on 15 September 2008 was attended by some 1,500–2,000 people, including the Norwegian Minister of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs, Helga Pedersen.[6]
