Ararat – The Biblical Testimony of the Existence and Eternity of the Armenian People

· November 11, 2025

By Seta Margossian – Khedeshian

Seven years after the so-called Velvet Revolution, we find ourselves not celebrating with

inspiring dreams but burdened with painful realities. Day by day, heavy with new

anxieties and bitter revelations, we are left wondering: Where is the Armenian state

going? Where are you leading our people ?

The year opened with a new image of Armenia’s Prime Minister posted on Facebook. He

appeared clean-shaven— “without moustache, without beard”—presenting himself as

renewed, as if to declare the end of the revolution. Behind him stood Mount Arakads, not

Ararat, and a new map of Armenia—without Artsakh. This was, perhaps, the

government’s version of a New Year’s greeting card: a new Armenia, symbolized not by

our eternal Ararat but by Arakads, and accompanied by a shallow slogan:

“Here is state, here is bread,

here is homeland, here stay.”

Instead of inspiring confidence, such imagery strips away national memory. For

centuries, the Armenian people have suffered more defeats than victories. Yet every

defeat was turned into a vow, a renewed commitment. Our leaders and commanders

rekindled hope in the people’s hearts, urging them to continue the march toward a

brighter future, anchored in the promise of eventual victory.

Poets and singers transformed loss into songs of struggle. They passed down to new

generations the vision of ultimate triumph. With burning words, they vowed: “We shall

reach you, sacred Mountain, your summit!” And with the spirit of belonging to Ararat,

Armenians endured on foreign shores, keeping Komitas’s melodies and Narekatsi’s

prayers alive on their lips.

Even the defeat of Vartan became victory when he declared: “Christianity is the color of

my skin.” Against invading Persian forces, he preserved the spiritual balance of the

Armenian people and turned Christianity into a guiding pillar of their existence.

From the gallows and death marches, our martyrs cried “Vengeance!” with their final

breath. And from the deserts of Deir-el-Zor, our people took revenge by surviving—by

living, multiplying, building, and creating.

How can one deny faith in the homeland?

How can one be unfaithful to the vow of commitment?

Defeat must not impoverish our souls with threats of surrender and submission. Even

genocide could not erase from our hearts Ararat and Cilicia, Van and Vaspurakan, Mush

and Sassoun—the hope of re-possessing the homeland. All our defeats became vows

renewed with the call for justice, affirmed with steadfastness, sworn with iron will,

continuing still—unsettling the enemy even today.

Open our literature of the last century, and you will hear the cries of poets and writers

calling for vengeance: not to forget, not to deny, not to despair, not to lose hope, but to

continue the struggle—the struggle for homeland, for land, for the purity of the Armenian

golden language, for freedom, for identity, and for the indestructibility of the nation.

Generations rose, inspired by the cry “A voice echoed from the Armenian mountains of

Erzrum.” With weapons in hand, they swore: “We, your children, will forge a new dawn

of glory.” And they kept that vow—they liberated Artsakh and placed it in our hands, as

the first step on the long road leading to Van, Mush, Sassoun, and Ararat.

And yet see what has become of Artsakh—before even three decades of independence

were completed.
Listen to our music, and you will hear the reproach of our poet:

“Shall we still be silent, when our rocks, our cliffs speak?

Have they not said that Armenians deserved the shameful slave’s condition?”

Do not destroy the millennial pillars of our existence—our faith, our culture, our symbols

—that empower us and lead us to victory.

When two women once came before King Solomon to decide who was the true mother of

a child, Solomon declared he would divide the child in two. The true mother cried: “Let

him remain with her, only let my son live!” (1 Kings 3:5).

We are crying today as did the real mother: let Ararat remain in Turkish hands for now,

as long as we cannot “bring it home.” But let it remain alive—in our souls, in our dreams,

in our vision. Do not kill for a second time the victories that beat within our hearts. Do

not take away Ararat—our symbol of national pride, our identity, the meaning of our

existence. It is ours, even if captive. Sooner or later, we will bring it home.

Ararat is the biblical certificate of our existence, the divine testimony to our history and

identity. It is the symbol of divine forgiveness, the starting point of humanity’s rebirth

and the beginning of civilizations. It cannot belong to a genocidal enemy. God Himself

chose where the new beginning of mankind would arise—and He gave us this gift, one

which many nations would have desired for themselves.

And yet, how easily now, without pain, without remorse, without conscience, we

surrender—giving away millennia of pride, of victories, of property to the enemy.

This is dreadful ignorance. It is the denial of God’s gift.

Are our leaders truly unaware of what they are losing? Or have wealth and power blinded
them to all dignity and pride? Even in defeat, there is honor—there is dignity in

preserving the awareness of one’s nation, one’s rights, one’s heritage, one’s worth. But

not in flattery to the enemy, not in surrender, not in subjugation.

“Know well,

He who denies the word of God,

For throne, fear, glory,

Weakens from the bond of the vow,

Worms squirm his body

Before descending

Into the bosom of the earth…

Drying, like a thunder-struck

Mighty oak—

Its height from its own root.”

The Jew demolishes Palestine and slaughters Palestinians, but cannot steal from their

souls the determination to reclaim their homeland.

But the Velvet Revolution has stolen the Armenian people’s trust. It now steals our hope,

destroys our identity, kidnaps our vision—and threatens to erase the future of

generations.

How else to explain constitutional amendments, the revision of our Declaration, the

erasure of the Armenian Genocide and the Armenian Cause, the dismissal of “national

ideology and national unity” as false categories, the isolation of the diaspora, the removal

of Artsakh from textbooks, the shouts from rooftops that “Artsakh is Azerbaijani

territory,” the declarations that “There is no Historical Armenia”?

And beyond this: history deleted from schools, teachers silenced, the Church endlessly

slandered, the Armenian language distorted, our symbols erased, our culture emptied of

meaning and denationalized. New borders drawn, victories surrendered. What remains?
The millennial pillars of our history, our culture, and our identity are collapsing.

“Forgive us, Ararat…”

With blind eagerness to please the enemy, will we lose all dignity, all awareness, all

values? Do we not see what we are losing?

This is where the “marchers” of the Velvet Revolution are leading us.

“I lament you, Armenia…”

Let all statesmen remember: the homeland belongs to the people. It has been preserved

for centuries, passed down generation after generation, and entrusted to you.

Governments are but temporary guardians, tasked with protecting, safeguarding and

developing this sacred inheritance. Statesmen are not the owners of the homeland. They

have no right to put it up for sale.

And let all who deny their faith and break their vows not forget:

“New and old regimes all come and pass, with their presidents and secretaries, their

prime ministers and ministers. But what remain are the true deeds of history, the creators,

and the eternal landmarks of our journey—Ararat, Etchmiadzin, the Manuscripts,

Hripsime, Narekatsi, Komitas.”

And once again, as the poet says:

“Like the sun, my country, you burn.”