The Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International is an organization sovereignly ordained by God. From its humble beginnings - one small chapter in Los Angeles, California 1951 - it was thrust into global ministry by prophetic visions and prophecy. The Fellowship’s story graphically depicts man’s plans falling short of the mark, but God’s plan succeeding. The complete story is in the classic inspirational book, The Happiest People on Earth, by Demos Shakarian, the California dairyman who is the Fellowship’s founder. The book is co-authored by the celebrated Christian writers John and Elizabeth Sherrill.
Today the Fellowship operates in approximately 150 countries. Thousands of chapters hold meetings in small hamlets, farm towns, outlying suburbs and urban power centers. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, these meetings are a time of fellowship, outreach and personal ministry.
Our vision for the fellowship is based upon a series of prophetic messages given over a period of time and confirmed by a literal vision from God.
In the vision, untold masses of men from every continent and nation, of all races and diverse culture and custom, once spiritually dead, are now alive. Delivered and set free, they are filled with power of God’s Holy Spirit, faces radiant with glory, hands raised and voice lifting their praises to heaven.
We see a vast global movement of laymen being used mightily by God to bring in this last great harvest through the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit before the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our Mission Statement
- To reach men in all nations for Jesus Christ
- To call men back to God.
- To help believers to be baptized in the Holy Spirit and to grow spiritually.
- To train and equip men to fulfill the Great Commission
- To provide an opportunity for Christian fellowship
- To bring greater unity among all people in the body of Christ.
Our Doctrinal Statement
- We believe in one God, Maker of all things and being in Trinity of Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
- We believe that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, became incarnate, was begotten by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and is true God and true man.
- We believe in the resurrection of the dead, the eternal happiness of the saved, and the eternal punishment of the lost.
- We believe in personal salvation of the believers through the shed blood of Christ.
- We believe in the Bible, in its entirety, to be the inspired Word of God and the only infallible rule of faith and conduct.
- We believe in divine healing, through our faith, and healing is included in the Atonement.
- We believe in the Christian’s hope - the imminent, personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ.
- We believe in intensive world evangelization and missionary work in accordance with the Great Commission, with signs following.
- We believe in the baptism in the Holy Spirit, accompanied by the initial physical sign of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit of God gives utterance (Acts 2:4) from the new birth, and in the nine gifts of the Spirit, listed in 1 Corinthians 12, as now available to believers.
- We believe in sanctification by the blood of Christ, in personal holiness of the heart and life.
The Vision
By Demos Shakarian
In 1952 God told me to start a Fellowship for men who would meet in small and large groups in cafes, hotels and public places to fellowship and minister spiritually one to another. To attempt to accomplish this, we organized a group and met in Clifton’s Cafeteria in Los Angeles every week for a whole year. Interest and attendance was so small that it appeared that we would be forced to give up a ministry I was sure God called me to do. God was so good and gave me a vision in my home while I was on my knees the night before I was going to stop the meetings.
God said to me, “I am the One, Demos, who alone can open doors. I am the One who removes the beam from unseeing eyes.”
“I understand, Lord Jesus. And I thank You.” “And now I will let you see, indeed.”
With that the Lord allowed me to rise to my knees. Lifted me almost, as though the power which had pressed me to the floor was now bearing me up. And at that moment, Rose, my wife came into the living room. She stepped around me and walked over to the Hammond organ in the corner. She said not a word, but sat down and began to play.
As the music swelled through the living room, the atmosphere grew brighter. To my amazement the ceiling seemed to have disappeared. The cream-colored plaster, the ceiling light - they were simply gone, and instead I found myself staring up into the sky, a daytime sky although it must have been pitch dark. How long she played while I gazed into the infinite distance I don’t know. But all at once she stopped, fingers still resting on the keys, and began to pray aloud in tongues. She paused a moment, then spoke in English:
“My son. I knew you before you were born. I have guided you every step of the way. Now I am going to show you the purpose of your life.”
It was the Spirit’s gifts of tongues and interpretation, given together. And as she spoke a remarkable thing began to happen. Although I was on my knees, I felt as if I were rising. Leaving my body. Moving up, away from the living room. Down below me I could see the rooftops of Downey, California. There were the San Bernardino Mountains, and over there the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Now I was high above the earth, able to see from the west to the east.
Whether the world was turning, or whether I was traveling around it, I do not know. But now beneath me the continent of South America. Then Africa. Europe. Asia. I could see people on the earth - millions and millions of them standing shoulder to shoulder. Then, just as a camera can zoom in at a football game to show first the stadium, then the players, then the very laces on the football, my vision seemed to move in on the millions of men, I could see tiny details of thousands and thousands of faces. Everywhere it was the same.. Brown faces, black faces, white faces - every one rigid, wretched, every one locked in his own private death.
Afterward Rose told me that I said nothing. But in the vision it seemed to me that I wept and pleaded aloud.
Suddenly Rose began to speak. Humanly speaking, of Course, she had no way of knowing that I was seeing anything at all. But what she said was:
“My son, what you see next is going to happen soon.” The earth was turning - or I was moving around it - a second time. Below me again were millions upon millions of men. But what a difference! This time heads were raised. Eyes shone with joy. Hands were lifted towards heaven. These men who had been isolated, each in his prison of self were linked in a community of love and adoration. Asia. Africa. America - everywhere death had turned to life. And then the vision was over. Today...
There are many thousands of chapters meeting in over a hundred countries ministering one to another, but the greatest harvest is yet to come. You can be a part of it...
FGBMFI - Who We Are
By Richard Shakarian
International President
- The largest network of Christian businessmen in the world.
- From every part of the world - 160 nations.
- Every race, color, culture and almost every language - we include:
Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers, former Presidents, Senators, Members of Parliament, Generals, Judges, Captains of Industry, businessmen, executives professionals, sales and office workers, factory workers, educators and young people just getting started.
Our mission is:
“Fellowship And Destiny With God And Man”
Personal and Business, Excellence - Honesty - Integrity
Transparency - Accountability - Faithfulness. These are our core values.
In 1855, an eleven-year-old Russian boy who lived in Armenia received a wonderful, supernatural visitation. For seven days and seven nights he was under the power of God writing prophecy of things to come. He neither ate, drank nor slept during the seven days and seven nights. Although he was an illiterate boy, he wrote in beautiful handwriting and drew pictures and maps and charts. He foretold that peace would be taken from the earth and that Armenia would be overrun by the Turks and that the Armenian Christians would be massacred unless they went to a land across the ocean, which the pictures and charts and maps showed to be America. God promised to bless and prosper everyone who would heed His warning and go to the country where they would be free from persecution.
As is the case with most prophecy, the warning had no meaning at the time for it was not until twenty-five years after the Pentecostal outpouring in Russia that the same experience came to Armenia. Nevertheless, the Russian boy’s prophecy was carefully preserved, awaiting such a time as its full meaning would be revealed by God.
The Demos Shakarian family consisted of father, mother and five daughters. In Armenia, in those days, it was as much a reproach for a wife to be without a son as it was in ancient Israel.
On May 25, 1891, the mother was sitting in the large one-room home sewing, weeping as she worked, because God had not blessed her with a son.A great-uncle was visiting with the family and was sitting across the room from her, reading his Bible. Suddenly, he arose, walked across the room, and stood before the weeping mother. Looking down at her, he said, "Sister, God heard your prayer. One year from this day you will be the mother of a son." Exactly one year from that day, on May 25, 1892, a son was born. The parents named him Isaac, for, as with Abraham’s son, he was a son of promise.
Revealed By God
WHEN ISAAC was about seven years old, a group of faithful Russian Pentecostal Christians began coming to the Armenian village of Kara Kala for fellowship with the Armenian Pentecostals. They would come every few months in a caravan of several covered wagons, with about twenty persons to the wagon, each wagon being pulled by four horses. These Russians dearly loved the Armenian Presbyterians who had more recently received the marvelous Gift of God as promised by Jesus Christ before He ascended to the Father.
Because Demos Shakarian could speak Russian fluently, he would place the visitors among the Armenian homes in the village, and each evening for an entire week, his home was used as a place of worship. He raised cattle, and upon notification that the Russians were coming, he would butcher a fatted steer to provide beef for the feast service upon the arrival of the visitors.
One day, word came that the Russian caravan was near at hand. Demos went among his heard to select the finest steer he could find, for this was to be given as unto the Lord. The fattest steer he could find had only one eye, the other having been destroyed by an injury. He knew it to be according to Scripture that he should not offer a blemished animal to the Lord, yet he decided to compromise with his better judgment, since the blemished steer was the fattest of the herd.
Acting on this compromise, he killed the steer and quickly severed the head. Not having time to bury this tell-tale portion, he placed it in a sack and hid it underneath a large pile of threshed wheat in a corner of the barn, then proceeded with the butchering so that the beef was ready for the feast by the time the Russians arrived.
In Los Angeles, the same as in Kara Kala, the Demos Shakarian home became the place of worship for the Armenians and Russians.
Promised Prosperity
ISAAC SHAKARIAN was sixteen years of age when his father died, and he went to work in a harness factory and labored there three years to support his widowed mother, his sisters, now six in number, and himself. At the age of nineteen, he went into the wholesale fruit business. Soon, he married, moved to Downey, near Los Angeles, purchased twenty acres of land and three milk cows and started his first dairy herd. Faith in God, good judgment and hard work eventually multiplied that first little herd one-thousand fold, until in 1943 the Shakarian herd had reached three thousand, the world’s largest dairy!
Not only did the Shakarians prosper, but every one of the Armenians and Russians who left and went to America as a result of the prophecy prospered according to the promise the Lord had written many years before by the hand of the eleven-year-old Russian boy. The promise is holding true, according to the Bible promise, even to the third and fourth generation
On July 21, 1913, at Downey, Demos Shakarian, Junior, was born. He was born into a Pentecostal home and grew up in a Pentecostal church. Concerning this, he says: "I cannot remember a time when I did not love God. I cannot remember a time when I did not believe that I was a child of God and on my way to Heaven.
AT THE AGE of ten, Demos was practically deaf from a childhood injury. There were periods of time when his hearing would partially return and other times when he was totally deaf. The injury and resulting affliction caused him to pray as he never prayed before in his young life. His mother, a great prayer warrior, held on to God earnestly seeking deliverance for her son.
Three years passed. Demos was thirteen. He was sitting in church worshipping God. Suddenly the power of God fell upon him and filled him. He was Baptized with the Holy Spirit. For four hours, from eight until midnight, he was unable to speak a word of either Armenian, English or Spanish, the three languages with which he was familiar. The Spirit of God took complete charge of his vocal organs, and during those four hours he spoke with other tongues as the Spirit gave utterance.
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