Demos Shakarian

Tallman, Matthew William (2010). Demos Shakarian: the Life, Legacy, and Vision of a Full Gospel Business Man. Emeth Press. ISBN 978-1609470029.

Bellinger, Mark (1992). Demos: the man of Fellowship. Upright Enterprises.

John and Elizabeth Sherrill|Sherrill, Elizabeth (1975). The Happiest People on Earth. Steward Press. ISBN 0-8007-8362-X. {{cite book}}: External link in |author= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Demos Sr. died while working on the construction of the Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad in Nevada, and his young son Isaac became the head of the family. Isaac married Zarouhi Yessayian, and he became a prosperous dairy farmer in Downey, California. Demos Jr. entered the family business and their dairy herd grew, becoming the largest in the world at the time. He married Rose Gabrielian in 1933.

Demos Shakarian (Armenian: Դեմոս Շաքարյան; 21 July 1913 – 23 July 1993) was an American businessman of Armenian origin from Los Angeles who founded the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship International (FGBMFI). His story and the story of FGBMFI is the subject of the book The Happiest People on Earth, written by John and Elizabeth Sherrill (Guideposts Magazine) and published in 1975.

Immediately other Spiritual Christian tribes in Kars and Erevan petitioned to follow the Dukhobortsy to Canada. A Russian businessman in Los Angeles, Peter A. Demens had been promoting California to immigrants from Russia for a decade, objected to Dukhobortsy settling in Canada, and personally diverted most all non-Dukhobor Spiritual Christians arriving after 1901 away from Canada to Los Angeles, while the Freedomites began protesting against the Canadian government. As large groups of Pryguny, including the Shakarians and Klubnikins, began arriving in Los Angeles in 1905, most settled within a mile of the Azusa Street Revival as it was starting, and were delighted to meet spiritual faiths in America similar to theirs.

In 1895, neighboring Spiritual Christian Dukhobortsy in Transcaucasia staged a mass protest against the military, burned their guns, about 400 were jailed in Kars and Tiflis, half exiled, and about 2,000 died. The main road from Kars to Tiflis passed through Romanovo, where Klubnikin now lived and witnessed the passing of hundreds of escorted Spiritual Christian prisoners. Writer Leo N. Tolstoy protested to the Tsar about this cruelty, resulting in aid from the Society of Friends, London, and the Canadian government to move over 7,400 (about one-third) of all Dukhobortsy to central Canada.

Demos was named after his Armenian grandfather, who, with most of his relatives were exiled in the late 1800s from Erivan Governorate (Armenia) to Karakala (Merkezkarakale) village, Kars Oblast, Russia, for their heretic folk-protestant religious views. In Kars they met and joined like-minded Spiritual Christian Pryguny, denominations of various volunteer settlers and religious exiles from Russia. Among the Pryguny in Romanovo village was a "Boy Prophet", Efim Gerasimovitch Klubnikin, who, as early as 1855, when he also lived in Erivan Governorate, began to have visions of an unspeakable tragedy and warned that all must flee to a "place of refuge."