Kim Kardashian, 34, is an American TV celebrity most famous for her reality TV show Keeping up with the Kardashians. It was rumored she was the highest paid reality star at the time. She has since branched out to other TV programs, movies and the retail and fashion industry.

Her father, Robert Kardashian, is a 3rd generation American-Armenian and most famous for his role in helping defend former NFL star OJ Simpson in his notorious murder trial in 1995.

Research by the Daily Mail has recently uncovered a strange story of how a prophetic word by a 11-year-old boy saved Kim’s family on her father’s side from the Armenian genocide.

The Kardashian family originated in Russia and at that time had the last name Kardaschoffs. Sometime in the mid to late 1800s, they moved to the village of Karakale, in present-day Turkey. It is found near Mt Ararat, considered the resting place of Noah’s ark.

The family was considered religious rebels as they did not belong to the Russian Orthodox church but instead favored the protestant group Molokan which translated means milk-lovers. They were tagged with the name because on Russian Orthodox fast days they drank milk which was forbidden.

The Russian Orthodox church branded them as heretics and heavily persecuted the group.

The particular Molokan group the Kardashian family belonged to was impacted by an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in 1833. As a result, their services took on a very pentecostal flavor including raising hands in worship, dancing (jumping), prophecy and other Holy Spirit manifestations. There was also a release of miracles said to rival what happened in the early church.

One person influenced by this outpouring was Efim Klubnikin. During the 1850s as a 11-year-old boy, he received a prophetic revelation that many Armenians would die unless they fled the area to a land across the great ocean.

He said:

“Those who believe in this will go on a journey to a far land, while the unbelievers will remain in place. Our people will go on a long journey over the great and deep waters. People from all countries will go there. There will be a great war. All kings will shed blood like great rivers. Two steamships will leave to cross the impassable ocean.”

Though the Molokans believed in prophecy, because it came from a boy, it was basically ignored.

However, in 1901, Efim, now grown, called a meeting of the elders of Molokan churches and villages in the area surrounding Karakale. He reminded them of the prophetic word he received 40 years earlier. He told them the decades-old prophecy would soon come to pass and people needed to leave.

He added two further revelations. One was a warning — there was only a small window of opportunity. The Armenians needed to move quickly because the government would soon close the door to people leaving the country.

The second was that they were not only to go to the US but to America’s west coast and used a crudely drawn map to point to California.

Over the next decade or so, about 2,000 Armenians obeyed the prophecy, abandoned their homes and fled to America. Those who stayed behind mocked the families as they departed.

In 1913, Kim’s great grandfather Tatos Kardashian, then 17, headed on a steamer to America following his parents, who had left a few weeks earlier, to Los Angeles. He would eventually marry fellow Armenian and Molokan refugee, Hamas Shakarian.

Those who left avoided the Armenian genocide (1915-23) where it’s estimated the Turks slaughtered upwards of 1.5 million Armenians, World War I (1914-1918) and the 1917 Russian revolution.

What I found unusual was why the prophecy told them to specifically go to the US West Coast. The answer to that question may lie in the Azusa Street Pentecostal Revival that took place in Los Angeles between 1906 and 1915. Because of their previous experience with the Holy Spirit, the Molokans in both doctrine and spirit played an important role in this Holy Spirit outpouring which sparked the world-wide Pentecostal movement.

Kim’s great, great-grandfather Demos Shakarian, father of Tatos’ wife Hamas, was a famous pentecostal preacher in Los Angeles and his grandson was given the same name and followed his grandfather in the ministry. Demos Shakarian (1913-1993) founded the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International in 1952.

Though the ruling Ottoman government was Islamic, many believe the motivation behind the “Armenian Genocide” was largely political versus religious. According to history.com:

“This resentment was compounded by suspicions that the Christian Armenians would be more loyal to Christian governments (that of the Russians, for example, who shared an unstable border with Turkey) than they were to the Ottoman caliphate.”

The Daily Mail reported that Kim Kardashian plans to visit the region in 2015 — the anniversary of the Armenian genocide — to explore her roots.

Read more:

• Exclusive: Keeping up with the Kardashians circa 1900! How Kim’s ancestors heeded prophet’s warning of looming slaughter to escape rural Armenia for a new life in the US: Daily Mail

• Armenian Genocide: History.com