Self-Supporting Work in the Armenian Mission Field by Z. G. Baharian

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 7, 1914

Self-Supporting Work in the Armenian Mission Field

By Z. G. Baharian

Z. G. BAHARIAN

LAST summer when I made a missionary tour from Malatia to Diarbekir, Haini, Lidja, Kharput, and back to Malatia, one of our members of the Malatia church, Brother Mergerius Barsamian, who is a coppersmith, planned to make a self-supporting missionary tour in the plain of Kharput, where there are many Christian villages. He took with him another brother, Khosrof Barsamian, of the same trade, and started, August 18, for Kharput, preparing their instruments for tinning the copper utensils mostly used in those villages. In two days they arrived at Mezireh, the capital city of that province. Through the kindness of the Bible agent they were directed first to a village called Kouyoulou, where no tinner had yet gone. Brother M. Barsamian relates his experience in this way:—

"We were cordially received. They saw that we were masters of our trade, and they said that no coppersmith so skillful had ever visited this village. By and by they began to understand that we were Sabbath keepers. Several persons have thought to send us back with the dust of our shoes, but others have opposed them, saying that we were good Christian young men who had called there both to work and to preach. In this way we remained and began to sow the words of the Lord. Several Protestant brethren and sisters were interested and began to ask us questions. They began to look about us and examine how we pray, sing, and trade, and how we keep the Sabbath. In this village there is a pastor. These brethren and sisters called on him and asked about the Sabbath. Poor man! he did not know where to flee. He called on us, but seeing that we knew the Bible, began to evade. . . . He preached on Sunday about the ten commandments, their perpetuity,—just as we believe; but about the fourth commandment he tried to show that the change of the day does not affect it. Moreover, he confessed that the Sunday-sabbath was established by men three hundred years after Christ. This sermon opened the eyes of the people, and they saw clearly that Sunday is a tradition of men. In this village there are four families whom I found to be near to the truth. Though they did not decide to obey, yet while parting with them, they entreated us to call again next spring.

"Twice also I visited the village called Pazmashen. While we were dining in the house of an aged Protestant, there came another Protestant, seventy years old, and began to speak against me. When he saw that he could not answer any more, his wrath was flamed against me, and he wanted to beat me, but did not dare. The owner of the house confessed that the seventh-day Sabbath is the true and Biblical Sabbath.

"In this village I talked in a shop with two school-teachers also. They asked me many questions, and I answered. This village is composed of three hundred houses, all Armenian. I visited Husseyinik also, where there are eight hundred Armenian and two hundred Moslem families. Here I talked with a group of scholars who did not believe the Bible. While a woman was saying to others that false prophets have come to the village, another woman said, 'No, it is not so; our own men deny the Bible, but these defend it.' There are many villages, and much work to be done in them. More can be done in them than in larger cities. If the Lord is willing, I shall go again next spring and stay longer and work."

May God move upon every member of the churches to do some kind of self-supporting missionary work.