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Re: Azusa Street Revival
continued from part 2
It was the beginning of great changes in our family's life, and one of the first was a change in attitude toward Kara Kala's most famous citizen. This person was known throughout the region as the "Boy Prophet" even though at the time of the incident with the steer's head the Boy Prophet was 58 years old.
The man's real name was Efim Gerasemovitch Klubniken, and he had a remarkable history. He was of Russian origin, his family being among the first Pentecostals to come across the border [into Armenia], settling permanently in Kara Kala. From earliest childhood Efim had shown a gift for prayer, frequently going on long fasts and praying around the clock.
As everybody in Kara Kala knew, when Efim was 11 years old he had heard the Lord calling him again to one of his prayer vigils. This time he persisted for 7 days and nights, and during this time received a vision.
This in itself was not extraordinary. Indeed, as Grandfather had been accustomed to grumble, anyone who went that long without eating or sleeping was bound to start seeing things. But what Efim was able to do during those seven days was not so easy to explain.
Efim could neither read nor write. Yet, as he sat in the little stone cottage in Kara Kala, he saw before him a vision of charts and a message in a beautiful handwriting. Efim asked for pen and paper. And for 7 days sitting at the rough plank-table where the family ate, he laboriously copied down the form and shape of letters and diagrams that passed before his eyes.
When he had finished, the manuscript was taken to people in the village who could read. It turned out that this illiterate child had written out in Russian characters a series of instructions and warnings. At some unspecified time in the future, the boy wrote, every Christian in Kara Kala would be in terrible danger. He foretold a time of unspeakable tragedy for the entire area, when hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be brutally murdered. The time would come, he warned, when everyone in the region must flee. They must go to a land across the sea. Although he had never seen a geography book, the Boy Prophet drew a map showing exactly where the fleeing Christians were to go. To the amazement of the adults, the body of water depicted so accurately in the drawing was not the nearby Black Sea, or the Caspian Sea, or even the farther-off Mediterranean, but the distant and unimaginable Atlantic Ocean! There was no doubt about it, nor about the identity of the land on the other side: the map plainly indicated the east coast of the United States of America.
But the refugees were not to settle down there, the prophecy continued. They were to continue traveling until they reached the west coast of the new land. There, the boy wrote, God would bless them and prosper them, and cause their seed to be a blessing to the nations.
...And then, a little after the turn of the century, Efim announced that the time was near for the fulfillment of the words he had written down nearly 50 years before. “We must flee to America. All who remain here will perish.”
Here and there in Kara Kala Pentecostal families packed up and left the holdings that had been their ancestral possessions time out of mind. Efim and his family were among the first to go. As each group of Pentecostals left Armenia, they were jeered by those who remained behind. Skeptical and disbelieving folk --including many Christians-- refused to believe that God could issue pinpoint instructions for modern people in a modern age.
But the instructions proved correct. In 1914 a period of unimaginable horror arrived for Armenia. With remorseless efficiency the Turks began the bloody business of driving two-thirds of the population out in to the Mesopotamian desert. Over a million men, women and children died in these death marches, including every inhabitant of Kara Kala. Another half a million were massacred in their villages in a progrom that was later to provide Hitler with his blueprint for the extermination of the Jews. “The world did not intervene when Turkey wipe out the Armenians,” he reminded his followers. “It will not intervene now.”
The few Armenians who managed to escape the besieged areas brought with them tales of great heroism. They reported that the Turks sometimes gave Christians an opportunity to deny their faith in exchange for their lives. The favorite procedure was to lock a group of Christians in a barn and set it afire: “If you are willing to accept Mohammed in place of Christ we’ll open the doors” Time and again, the Christians chose to die, chanting hymns of praise as the flames engulfed them.
Those who had heeded the warning of the Boy Prophet and sought asylum in America, heard the news with dismay.
Grandfather Demos was among these who had fled. After his experience with the Russian patriarch, Grandfather no longer discounted the validity of prophecy. In 1905 he sold the farm which had been in the family for generations, accepting whatever bit of money he could get for it....
The family reached New York safely but, mindful of the prophecy, did not settle there. In accordance with the written instructions they kept traveling across the vast bewildering new land, until they reached Los Angeles. There, to their delight, they found a small but growing Armenian sector where several friends from Kara Kala were already living....
...there was one time each week when all cares were set aside: the Sunday worship service. The house on Boston Street had a large front parlor which quickly became the community meeting place. The service followed the customs of the house churches back in Kara Kala. The focal point was a large table on which lay an open Bible. On either side of this sat the men, ranked according to age, the older men closest, behind them the younger ones, finally the boys; on the other side of the room, just as it had always been, were the women, also seated according to age. The elders continued to sport full black beards, although occasionally a younger man shocked everybody by growing only a mustache. And it was expected that, for church (if not for the rest of the week), the men would wear their bright-hued tunics, the women the long, embroidered dresses and hand-crocheted head scarves that had come down through the generations.
What comfort it must have been for Grandfather to draw on spiritual support from this body of Christians. They had long since learned that God could speak to them directly from the Bible. With his need for work on his mind, Grandfather would kneel on the small oriental rug that had been brought from the old country and ask “for a word.” Then the whole congregation would start to pray softly, often in the unknown, ecstatic languages called tongues. At last one of the elders would step to the Bible and place his finger on a passage at random. Always the words seemed to speak straight to the need. Maybe they were about the Lord’s faithfulness, or about the coming of milk-and-honey days just as the Boy Prophet had foretold. Well, the little Armenian church was waiting for those days to arrive, but at least while it waited, there were these beautiful moments of communion.
One day there was another encouragement It happened that Grandfather and his brother-in-law, Magardich Mushegan (the same man who had predicted Isaac’s birth) were walking down San Pedro Street in Los Angeles, looking for work in the livery stables. As they passed a side road called Azusa Street they stopped short. Along with the smell of horses and harness leather came the unmistakable sounds of people praising God in tongues. They had not known that anywhere in the United States were people who worshiped as they did. They rushed up to the converted stable from which the sounds were coming and knocked on the door. By now Grandfather had collected a few English words.
“Can we ...in?” Grandfather asked.
“Of course!” The door was flung open. There were embraces, hands lifted to God in thanksgiving, singing, and praising the Lord, and Grandfather and Magardich returned to Boston Street with the news that Pentecost had come even to this distant land across the sea. No one knew then that Azusa Street was to become a famous name. There was a revival going on in the old livery stable which would spark the charismatic renewal in scores of different places around the globe. At the moment Grandfather saw this other body of believers simply as a welcome confirmation of God’s promise to do something new and wonderful in California.
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