Charlie Kirk: Champion and Martyr
Behold, I send you our as sheep in the midst of wolves; therefore, be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves.
It is almost inconceivable how the life of one man, especially one so young, could challenge even the memory of Sept. 11th, but Charlie Kirk did. It is a testimony to Charlie and his impact on our national identity and our hope for the future.
For decades we have been subjected to horror stories of leftist academia systematically poisoning the minds of our young students with lies and half-truths. We all know parents who have spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on tuition, only to be repaid with estrangement from an ungrateful and unrecognizable child after graduation.
In classrooms across the country, students with dissenting opinions would be ridiculed or worse. Often, they were punished for their diversity of opinion with low or failing grades. The orthodoxy enforcement became so bad that students were afraid to speak out even outside the classroom for fear of being ostracized on social media. To make matters even worse, leftism and the DEI culture followed them into the workforce after graduation.
Regardless of whether they lacked the courage, skills, or knowledge to stand up for themselves, Charlie Kirk showed them how things could be different. Here was a young man making both conservative and Christian principles cool again. He lived these principles in his personal life and proclaimed them publicly to all who would listen.
Listen they did. Wherever the venue would allow, they were turning out by the thousands to hear him speak. Just like they did last week at Utah Valley University. America’s younger demographic now had a powerful voice of reason, one that was engaging them on their own terms and where they lived. Charlie became the champion of a counter-revolution against the insidious leftist revolution which has been going on our campuses for 50 years. (In fact, he may have been the only one doing so. Others have tried but largely given up the campus circuit speaking tour.)
Champions are extremely rare in our society especially among the younger generations. They see what needs to be done and they move forward, undeterred by the odds stacked against them, they defy convention.
Champions are also preternatural. More than just some brave deed or a hero saving a life, they have an unwavering perseverance to a cause, often under pressures and adverse conditions. Their lives, their unique abilities, their emergence onto the scene redefines what is considered humanly possible. They are disrupters. Champions like Charlie Kirk challenge the status quo, rise to national prominence, and eventually succeed in changing the conventional paradigms.
With a schedule that could only be rivaled by Donald Trump, Charlie was everywhere. He ran a multinational organization with chapters in multiple countries and over 400 employees. He hosted a podcast, a radio show, and was an ever-present guest on TV and radio talk shows. His national annual conventions like America Fest and Student Action Summits were enormously popular, highlighting guest speaker lists that read like a who’s-who of American conservative thought leaders. Somewhere, he also found the time to write a half dozen books. Perhaps most famously he held his college campus rallies where, arguably, he was at his finest. His still ongoing American Comeback tour that featured his ‘Prove Me Wrong’ Table was winning the attention of thousands per event. The next event may well reach millions.
And win he did. His TPUSA get out the vote campaign mobilized young conservatives to vote in the 2024 election. He pioneered the Quick-Hit videos on Tik Tok, brief concise messages that addressed issues and encouraged voter participation. Efforts like this paid off.
The biggest single demographic shift in the 2024 elections among voters 18 to 30 who abandoned the democrat party and voted republican, the impact of this is huge in electoral math. Charlie not only brought new voters into the conservative cause, he also switched the minds of many young democrat voters resulting in a two-vote swing. Democrats went down one point that they used to have and the republicans gained a point they did not have.
And you shall be my witnesses…in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the
President Trump is our contemporary force of nature, our present-day champion for all age groups. But Charlie had the future written all over him. Boomers and Gen Xers admired him for all the same reasons as does the younger generation, but we reacted to him differently. Charlie was the antidote to our angst for the future, for OUR children, politically and culturally.
Martyr is the ancient Greek word meaning “to be a witness for something.” Charlie was a prolific witness for Jesus Christ and the Christian faith, akin to Billy Graham but even Rev. Graham had his audiences come to him. Charlie Kirk went boldly to where his audiences were, a much more dangerous undertaking.
He would field difficult questions from students about what the Bible has to say on current events, culture and salvation. He dared to speak the truth in love but nevertheless, the truth, which enlightens some but offends others.
The Pharisees despised Jesus because he had insurmountable answers for every philosophical trap they laid for him. The more they confronted Him, the more His popularity increased and theirs decreased. Infuriated to the point of mental illness, they eventually colluded to kill him.
Evil tends toward the same playbook and it was the same one with Charlie. Those that are offended by the truth seek to silence it. They can’t show their tolerance by co-existing in the marketplace of ideas. They can’t make a valid counter argument. They can’t be content to live in a country that allows them to practice most any lifestyle imaginable so long as they don’t hurt others in the process. Their feelings threatened by words and ideas, and unable to counter them with their own, they resort to violence. Had Charlie stuck merely to a political agenda, he very well might be alive today. He was martyred mainly for his moral beliefs and not his political ones.
It is impossible to know why one bullet fails to kill a president and why another strikes down a vicar of Christ. Many of us still struggle with how God allowed the outcome of the 2020 presidential election to be what it was. But the resurrection of Donald J. Trump since then has been nothing short of tectonic. He and his administration have completely overwhelmed the traditional leftist ramparts and are making history every day, unparalleled in American history.
It is hard to know why God would allow such savagery of one human on another human being. His heart is torn over all sin, and murder is one of the greatest. Surely, He must get tired of seeing a people abuse the freedom and free will with which they have been so blessed. But at the right time, even in the fullness of time, He sometimes allows the unthinkable to happen. He allows Barrabas to be set free and he sends His Son to be broken and spilled out for us. Since that unimaginable day, we’ve come to realize why. Twelve common men, sold out for the Gospel, turned the world upside-down. Eleven of them would eventually be martyred simply for speaking about their Lord and Savior.
Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies…but if it dies, it bears much fruit
They tried to take President Trump away from us by force and by fire. The more they tried the more we rallied to him. Charlie is gone now, but only in the flesh. His spirit is facilitating great change all over the world. Greater things, perhaps more than even Charlie or anyone else could have ever imagined, are still to come.