Part 3. ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF APRAHAM HOJA OF AINTAB, Part Three of Seven Parts

A continuation of the Preface to APRAHAM HOJA OF AINTAB  - This post is Part Three . . .


Just as his father Sarkis had done, Vartan Bilezikian, the youngest of Sarkis’s children, broke with tradition, albeit the new Protestant tradition, by leaving the safe haven of his father’s 'congregational' church and, with his brethren, ‘on fire for the Lord’, went into the streets, preaching the Word of God and the saving power of Christ to all who would hear it -- a church without walls, as it were, a church of believers whose story Rev. Vartan Bilezikian relates in his book APRAHAM HOJA OF AINTAB.

Sensing the political turmoil to come, Vartan left Marash, Turkey, and immigrated to the United States in 1912, leaving Turkey just before the genocide of 1915-1918. Working from his home as a tailor, he continued to preach the word of God outside of a church building, this time to the Armenian community in Boston  At first his following met in various of their homes, but soon, the Brothers and Sisters in Christ began meeting at Rev. Bilezikian’s apartment, 613 Massachusetts Avenue, his home in Boston.  As the group of believers grew in number, the young church moved to a location above Dexter Hall in Watertown.  Soon the congregation outgrew this space. The generous donations of jewelry from the women of the church who had little else (my Grandmother Epros Kurtguzian Bilezikian donated her wedding ring and other wedding jewelry -- the typical wedding gift of the day) made possible the building, in 1940, of the Armenian Bretheren Evangelical Church on Arlington Street in Watertown, Massachusetts, (later united with sister churches in Pasadena, CA and Philadelphia, PA).


To be continued . . .