27/04/2025
In commemoration of the 110th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, we share excerpts from Diana Apcar’s book In His Name, written in 1911 — after the Adana Massacres (1909) and before the Armenian Genocide (1915–1923).
The book vividly portrays the terrible suffering of Armenian children, women, and men. In its final vision, Diana Apcar shows how the Lord crowns innocent Christian Martyrs with holiness and promises retribution for these atrocities.
Although In His Name is often categorised as a fictional work, considering Apcar’s deep Christian faith and her lifelong concern for the plight of her people, it is very likely that the visions she describes — in powerful Biblical English — were rooted in genuine spiritual experience during prayer.
Apcar, who possessed a sharp understanding of world politics and a prophetic sense of approaching danger, already foresaw that an even greater catastrophe was looming for her nation and was seeking ways to help.
Remarkably, in this book, she envisions the Martyrs of Adana ascending into sainthood — a profound parallel to the canonization of the Armenian Genocide victims by the Armenian Apostolic Church more than a century later.
IN HIS NAME
“And when they had killed all the women and the children, burning some alive, and cutting others into pieces, or beating their skulls; they came to us three men and broke the shins of our legs, and our arms which were hanging downwards, and they poured oil upon our heads and lighted a fire below on the ground, and the oil from our heads hanging downwards dripped into the fire, and the flames caught up and licked our heads, and so with burning heads we died.”
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“But we refusing to denounce our Saviour Lord, whose name had been anointed on our foreheads, and yet fearing lest we being only lowly village maids, the heart of one weak one amongst us might fail her in the hour of cruel death, braided our tresses one with another’s that the strong might uphold the weak, and so we remained in the burning house where some two hundred of our people were being burned to death and perished in the flames with them.”
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And I saw the clouds of the heavens parted asunder, and like the breaking of morning light a great company of angels in shining white garments descending upon the earth; and they joined the martyred host of my people, and they wiped the tears from the faces of them whose tribulation had been written on the scroll: and straightaway a river of light ran into the earth and divided me from them, so that I stood on one shore of the shining river and they on the other; and they proceeded farther and farther from my sight, and I turning away from looking at them saw again the mighty One who had commanded me:
“Daughter of thy people! Write what the slain of thy people shall speak unto thee.”
And he stood encircled in a cloud of fire, and on either side of Him waited two mighty angels with their arms folded over their breasts, and the sword of one lay under his feet, and I knew that the name of the one was Gabriel and the name of the other was Mikhael, who waited before the presence of the King; and I durst not lift up my head for mine eyes dazzled by the glory before me, in fear and trembling I bowed down to the earth, and laid my scroll at the feet of the King.
“The husbandmen have cast out the hears out of the vineyard and slain them! What therefore shall the Lord of the vineyard do unto these husbandmen?”
And the King answering said: “Thou knowest the book; open it and read what is written therein, and let it be for a sign and an answer unto thee.”
https://issuu.com/dianaapcar.org/docs/apcar__diana_agabeg._in_his_name._yokohama__japan_
