Today is the first anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. At 12:23 EST, Charlie was shot by Tyler Robinson at Turning Point Prove Me Wrong rally at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. About two hours later, President Trump confirmed the worst: Charlie Kirk was dead. He was 31 years old and left behind his widow, Erika, and two children, a daughter born in 2022 and a son born in 2024. Taking into account the years that Charlie and Erika were married (in 2021) up to the time of his death, he had enjoyed five years of family life and almost three years as a father.
It was a Wednesday. I was in my office at church when the alerts came up on my phone. Soon the laments were rising up all over the spectrum of conservative and Christian podcasts from Ben Shapiro to Hank Kunnemen. Megyn Kelly fighting back tears asked people to get on their knees and pray that Charlie might survive when the news first broke, but after the actual footage was uploaded, it was a virtual certainty that Charlie was killed the moment that bullet struck – a kill shot through the neck. A body convulsing with instant blood loss, collapsing to the ground.
I collapsed on my knees in my office.
I too have a Truth Social account. I was reviewing what I posted from that morning onwards. Here are some of the posts:
“Good morning President Trump and all who see this post! I hope that you have a wonderful day. Praying fervently for you and Vice President Vance and for your families and administration. Praying also for all of our friends and allies in this nation and around the world. May God bless you and keep you safe and prosper you greatly.”
As news of the assassination came: “Praying for Charlie”.
After President Trump posted his passing: “Dear God in heaven…Charlie went out a martyr! God bless you my boy!”
While on my knees in grief and prayer, I received a message from the Lord which I spoke that night at our Wednesday night service. I uploaded that Scripture and the main idea of that message before I could speak it in full that evening. “John 12:24-25 (the Lord Jesus speaking): “Unless a grain of wheat falls in the earth and died, it remains along; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me: and where I am, there My servant will be also, if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him.” - the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Charlie Kirk’s soul belonged to Jesus Christ. To be absent from this life is to be present with Him. It is not for his soul’s salvation that we need to pray for-that was already done the day He accepted Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. I pray for the comfort of his family, his parents, his wife and children-the people nearest and dearest to him whose lives have been shattered into a thousand pieces. May the Peace that passes all understanding, guard their hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
The subsequent 12 months were anything but tranquil, stable, restful, or stable. Rather, the façade fell from many a so-called “Christian”/Conservative ‘friend.’ Almost immediately, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson spread the conspiracy theory that Israeli intelligence agencies such as the Mossad were responsible for the assassination. This in spite of the fact that the assassin, Tyler Robinson, a trans radicalized Utah boy who was turned over to the authorities by his father, confessed to the crime, and a whole host of evidence all indicating him to almost a 100% certainty that he committed the crime, including video and still camera footage from Utah Valley University.
Candace Owens began a vicious verbal assault which as I said before played to raising the ratings for her podcast. Her conspiracies became more demented as the days went by with increasingly sordid innuendos which began to affect TPUSA and Erika Kirk personally. From Candace came rumors about instability in Charlie and Erika’s marriage, a lie that was so vile that a new rumor was released that Erika was involved in her husband’s murder. Candace likes to say that she, personally, never said that and that people who listened to her made their own judgements. Perhaps she thinks that her Roman Catholic confessional will absolve her from any guilt. After all, according to her, she was about to convert Charlie to Roman Catholicism! A lie from the pit of hell!
The lies and innuendoes became more depraved and more widespread. Many of the so-called friends (previously mutual friends of the Kirk family and Candace Owens) could not, would not, do anything to contain the diatribes or condemn them until way after the damage was done. Candace exuded an air of “danger” and seemingly “had information on everyone.” Megyn Kelly, Liz Wheeler, Allie Beth Stuckey, (to name a few) did not provide any kind of restraint. “She is my friend.” “She is my sister.” “She has her contacts.” “She’s been right about stuff before.” Que sira sira. Whatever will be, will be.
In the meant time, the antisemitic drivel flowed like a sewer, particularly after the Iran war started. It became so vile that Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens were not aware that the façade that they once had completely fallen off. Both of them publicly endorsed Islam (something that the predecessor to Charlie on the college campuses, Milo Yiannopoulos, has also done now), sharia law, Hunter Biden and almost every single socialist running for office now.
In spite of all the evil that was perpetrated by Candace Owens in the aftermath, nothing could drown out the Christian testimony of Charlie Kirk and his conservative defenses which millions see every day on Youtube. Millions are still challenged, and the fact that a man can die for what he believes…well let’s just say there is nothing else that signifies a “seal of authenticity” like that.
I said it last year, and I’ll say it again. I agreed with Charlie in just about everything. When the 2020 election debacle happened, we were of the few at the time who believed that come hell or high water, God would bring President Donald Trump back to office. And spiritually we were in alignment and almost in total agreement. I understood he was in politics and I am in ministry. As part of his job, he had to gather the largest group of people to achieve his political objective which means finding consensus with the groups of people with ideas that will not agree with the Dogmatic Theology that I have to stand on (i.e., Protestants, Evangelicals, Roman Catholics, and conservative atheists can agree on political issues but never on Biblical Truths!).
He understood as much as I did the spiritual darkness and wickedness behind the political left and the ideas that they espouse currently. But that does not mean that most of the people around him shared that spiritual knowledge and experience. And therein lies the biggest loss. There are many conservative podcasters, debaters, college campus speakers, but there are very few who understand the spiritual dynamics behind the politics, policies, and debates which threaten to turn this nation from the chance of being (what I called in a previous article) the Garden of Eden into the second advent of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Charlie Kirk as an unapologetic Evangelical Christian was able to bridge the divide between our churches and mainstream America, not just on college campuses but also outside of it in rural, suburban, and even urban America. When beginning TPUSA, he drove from Chicago to Indiana University to sit at a table on the campus under a sign that said “BIG GOVERNMENT SUCKS! PROVE ME WRONG.” A start of hundreds of thousands of miles to thousands of college campuses and venues discussing not only problems of “big government” but also the spiritual rot that had caused the foolish compromises that made government not only intrusive, but destructive, and future generations hopeless, searching for meaning and yet losing their souls and their freedom in one foolish dream or imagination after another. The boy with a high school education (and a few semesters in community college) proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that a university diploma is not what turns your brain on, but rather what the Bible said many times (most famously by King Solomon): “The Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom and Knowledge.”
I saw him preach a couple of times in different churches. Just before his death, he was ministering at a church in Seoul, South Korea, and there was a move of the Holy Spirit there that was absolutely beautiful. Charlie was in a strange element in the sense that this was not something that he was overly familiar with; he just closed his eyes and raised a hand with his head bowed while the thousands of people who were there were singing “How Great is our God”, praising the Lord, and praying for him.
It just hit me. When he went up on that dais at Utah Valley University… even there at that moment, God was with him. The Lord was there just as he was with Stephen in the seventh chapter of the Book of Acts.
He was there as He was with Paul the second time he was brought before the Roman Emperor Nero.
He was there as He was with seven missionaries who were martyred by the Auca Indians at the Curaray River in Ecuador in 1956.
He was there when an evangelist named Dawson Trotman, who founded the Navigators ministry to supplement the evangelistic work of Billy Graham and other itinerant preachers with follow up ministry toward the new converts, died while saving the life of a girl named Allene Beck from drowning in a water skiing accident at Schroon Lake, New York. The Navigators ministry was in a ‘crescendo moment’ as both it, along with Billy Graham’s ministry, was becoming mainstream.
Nothing was a shock or surprise. The Lord Jesus was always there.
And that is why as painful as Charlie Kirk’s passing was last year, and even with all the foolishness that happened in the subsequent months, I still have hope that God will raise up new people to take up the task from where Charlie had stopped. They need not be any particular age group, but rather a person who would be 100% surrendered to the Lord, and 100% in love with the Freedom that comes from Him, the Freedom that made the United States the greatest country in the world.
God bless your memory, Charlie Kirk.