Adventist News Networks weekly segment on Seventh-day Adventist history (http://news.adventist.org/)
Dr. Benjamin Baker:
Welcome to "This Week in Adventist History."
It was during this week in 1921 that Diran Chrakian was last heard from in a letter penned from a dungeon in Iconium.
Years earlier, Diran Chrakian had been famous in his native Armenia, holding professorships at the most prestigious universities in Istanbul, authoring bestselling books, and highly celebrated as an astronomer and psychologist. An outspoken atheist, he was known to scoff at all things religious—until a fellow professor gave Adventist books to him.
Chrakian read himself into Adventism, quitting his career to join the ministry—his friends and family, including his wife, disowning him. The years that followed were difficult for Chrakian, marked by imprisonment for his faith, all while his country, Europe, and the larger world were embroiled in World War I, the bloodiest conflict in history up to that point.
Chrakian nevertheless won scores of souls to Christ throughout Asia Minor. Known as a man of exceptional spirituality, he spent entire nights in prayer and was said to be surrounded by a holy atmosphere. Witnesses attest that on one occasion he resurrected a missionary from the dead.
Diran Chrakian's storied life ended in the same manner it did for some 1.5 million of his fellow countryman, when he was killed in the Armenian Genocide in 1921.
And that was "This Week in Adventist History."