But…it is more difficult to find the unique story of how the Shakarian family and their friends in the Turkish village of Kara Kala near Mt. Ararat escaped the slaughter through their obedience to a prophecy! The prophecy came through an eleven year old boy named Efim Gerasemovitch Klubniken. He believed God led him to fast seven days. During that time he saw a vision of charts and handwriting, which he meticulously copied as he saw them although he could not read or write. What he wrote was a warning a future danger for his people and an escape plan. They were to flee to the western coast of the United States, but not yet. About fifty years later, a little after the turn of the century, Efim announced that the time to flee had arrived. He warned that all who remained would perish. Efim’s Pentecostal church and any others who believed him migrated to the United States.
The prophecy proved correct. In 1914 the great disaster began.
One of the survivors in California was Grandfather Demos Shakarian. He never lived to meet his dairyman grandson, Demos Shakarian, who founded an organization that was used tremendously by God all over the world in the latter part of the twentieth century. That organization was called Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International (FGBMFI). So many testimonies of glowing Christians were linked to FGBMFI that best-selling authors, John and Elizabeth Sherrill, knew a thrilling story must lie behind the group. This book is the result of their research.
Demos was reared in a godly home, but he really began to put God first after the death of an infant daughter. He had wondered since his teens what God intended for his life. He pondered, “I had not become a preacher. I remained as bumbling and as awkward as ever in front of an audience. I was not a prophet. I was not a teacher or an evangelist or a healer…” Then, during an event held at the Hollywood Bowl, sponsored by business men he had helped to organize, Demos found his divinely appointed role, a helper. (I Cor. 12:28)
It was as though the word were written in the twinkling flames themselves. [a candle lighting ceremony] A passer-on of what one man has to the next man. A provider of time or place or occasion for candles to come together. An encourager of the spark that could set the world on fire…. God had call me - me! - to be a helper…the wonder of my appointment would never leave me.
Afterwards, Demos and his wife Rose helped set up crusades with thousands in attendance. Then he shared his dream of laymen meeting together; Oral Roberts was his first guest speaker. After a year of discouragement, God showed Demos that the floundering of the fledging group was because of self-effort instead of depending on God’s power. From that day forward, amazing things began to accelerate the growth of the Fellowship, and chapters began opening all over the world. By 1975, over 1700 chapters were operating. The rest is history, a history recorded in heaven’s annuls, in their Voice magazine, and in the memories of the thousands who were privileged to attend one of the meetings. Each one of the attendees shares in the wonderful legacy of the Armenians of Kara Kala who obeyed when God spoke. They taught us the wisdom of the verse: Despise not prophesying. (I Thess. 5:20 KJV)
1Demos Shakarian, as told to John and Elizabeth Sherrill, The Happiest People on Earth. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1975, pp. 98-99.