About Armenia.

Located south of the Caucasus mountains between the Black sea and the Caspian Sea, Armenia is a region of both rugged mountain ranges and semi-arid highlands that embraces, among other things, "the mountain of Ararat"--the point, according to the author of Genesis 8:4, where Moses and the ark finally came to rest after the flood.

About half of the region is more than 6,000 feet above sea level. Both the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers have their sources in ancient Armenian mountain streams.

Surrounded by Russia on the north, Azerbaijan on the east, Iraq and Iran on the south, and Turkey on the west, Armenia has been Christian for a long time despite successive invasions by Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Turks, Mongols, the Catholic Crusaders, the Ottoman Turks, and the Russians.

Western Europeans and Americans tend to think of Constantine as the emperor who first made possible a Christian state, with the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D.; in reality, however, the distinction is Armenia's, which became the world's first Christian …