← I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST
I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST
The Greatness of Charlie Kirk: An Eyewitness Account of His Life and Martyrdom
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- [00:03]
A
Ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be the most difficult show I have ever done. Many of you know I was with my dear friend Charlie Kirk when he was murdered last week. He was martyred for his bold faith in Christ. And the past five days have been the hardest of my life, and maybe the hardest in your lives as well. And the pain is proportional to the value of the loss. You know, I see people on the news that are killed every day, and it's sad, but I don't know them and they don't have an impact on my life. But Charlie had an enormous impact on my life. And I know your life as well. And so the grief that we're feeling is proportional to to the greatness of the man. Hundreds of you have contacted me directly and thousands have offered condolences online. I really appreciate them all. You're all asking about my well being and you're offering prayers and you don't know how much I appreciate that. I thank you for it. I can actually feel the comfort of the Holy Spirit. In fact, sometimes I feel almost normal. Other times I'm doubled over in grief. So I ask your grace if I say something emotional, unclear, or clumsy. During this show, I'm running on only a few hours of sleep a night. People have asked me, are you having nightmares? No, I'm not having nightmares. The nightmare is when I wake up. Since I obviously can't respond to everyone who has been gracious enough to reach out, I'm doing this podcast to honor Charlie and to address everyone who has reached out at once. And what I'm going to tell you later in this program is something that Erica has asked me to share at the memorial service this Sunday in Phoenix. It is where the Arizona Cardinals play. As of, I think three days after Charlie was martyred, already 85,000 people had RSVP'd. It's going to be completely packed. What I'm going to say is going to be difficult to say, but it also may be comforting to hear once we get there to the end of this program. My goal in this show is to honor Jesus, Charlie and Erica and her family, which means there are some things I saw that day and experienced that I'm not going to share because Erica doesn't need any more pain. But before we get there, I want to honor Charlie by revealing what a Christlike person Charlie was, not just publicly, but privately. By the way, Charlie is still a wonderful person. He's just with Jesus right now. I hate to talk about him in the past tense. I think it was D.L. moody, who said, someday you're going hear that I have died. And he said, don't believe it. I'm more alive now than ever. And if Christianity is true, and it is, that's also true about Charlie. Now, when you say great things about someone who has just died, people think you're just cherry picking the good and ignoring the bad. But that's, I'm telling you, that is not the case here. Of course, Charlie wasn't perfect because none of us are. Only Jesus was. And that's why only Jesus can be the savior that each of us needs. But Charlie had enormous virtues and very few faults. And I'm going to get to them here in a minute. But people often ask me, well, how did you and Charlie ever connect? I didn't reach out to him. Charlie actually reached out to me. And my friend Dr. John Ferrer, who works with us here at Cross Examine, spontaneously sent me this email just a couple of days ago from Charlie. It came to our ministry on January 18, 2020. So Charlie was emailing our ministry. And keep in mind, he was 26 years old when he emailed me this. And here's what he said. He said, hi all, I'm trying to get in touch with Frank Turek. He has played a major role in my life and my advocacy. I run the largest student organization in the country, fighting for conservative values. TPUSA.com Here is some. Here is some info on my work. Charliekirk.com I've watched countless videos of his and want to connect with him. His work has impacted my teaching. To the many millions of followers who look to our platform for guidance. Thank you and God bless Charlie. And then he has his cell phone there. Let me point out, ladies and gentlemen, that you never know who you are going to influence when you put something online for good or for bad. I tell our team all the time that you're reaching a lot more people than I'm reaching because I can't do all this alone. I can't put all of our videos and Q and A and products out online. You're doing it. In fact, on Monday, the Monday before Charlie died last week, Charlie wanted a couple of people from our team, our executive director, Lynn Handley and my wife Stephanie, to meet with the social media people of their team. And they're amazing. This social media team@tpusa and@charliekirk.com we learned so much from them. And I looked at them toward the end of the meeting and I said, the reason, one major reason that Charlie Kirk has been so successful online is because of you. You're reaching more people through your work than Charlie could ever do alone. I said, My mentor was Dr. Norman Geisler. He died in 2019. He never had a big online presence. I reached more people in one video than he reached in his entire career. Because of you, because of people on the social media team. So when you put something online, you never know where it's going to go. Make sure it's true and make sure it's good. So Charlie said, hey, Frank, I want to come see you. And I wound up going out to see him. We did his podcast. It was maybe, I don't know if it was maybe a year after we initially met. We had some contact. He was busy, I was busy. I finally went out there, we did his podcast, and he asked me to mentor him, particularly in Christian apologetics. Now, it could be very hard to mentor someone who's smarter than you, and Charlie is way smarter than me. But it wasn't hard to mentor Charlie because his intellect was only surpassed by his humility. I'll explain why here in a minute. In fact, they have a T shirt that we were given when we met with the social media team, the T shirt. And by the way, this is one of the T shirts they have there at tpusa. This is the T shirt Charlie was wearing when he was martyred. But the T shirt said humility before honor. Humility before honor. So let me relate some of the amazing characteristics of Charlie. Some of them you know, some of them you may not know if you didn't know him personally. First of all, you probably know, number one. And most importantly, he was all about Jesus. I love the fact that he was a 24, 7, 365 Christian in every area of his life. I mean, I've been waiting for a leader in the political world to be sold out to Jesus and the gospel. Someone who wouldn't just refer to some sort of generic God up there, but to Jesus, the true God. Someone who knew that politics, while it's not our most important calling, affects our most important calling, and that is to preach the gospel and to make disciples of all nations, because laws that are put into place can actually restrict that ability. And so we have to be engaged. We also have to be engaged to love our neighbors. Charlie knew that to love our neighbors required us to pass laws that protected our neighbors from evil. And that's the number one role of government, to protect innocent people from evil. We talked about that a lot. It's Romans 13, the ruler does not bear the sword for nothing. He's supposed to punish wrongdoers, to keep innocent people protected. And I love that Charlie was someone who believed all that and had the skill and courage to do that on college campuses. Yet Charlie just said recently, this had to be about a month ago. He said recently, politics is peanuts compared to Jesus, unquote. It's important, but it's peanuts compared to Jesus. And he was absolutely right. In fact, donors would come up to Charlie@tpusa. And some of you already know that TP USA is over $100 million a year in donations because Charlie and his team are just so effective at what they do. And donors would come up to him and say, hey, Charlie, we love all this conservative stuff, but keep the Jesus stuff out of it. You know what Charlie told him? Give your money to somebody else, because without Jesus, we're nothing. This is all about Jesus. Politics is an implication of Christianity. It's an implication. It's something we do because Christ saved us. It's something we do because we love our neighbors. But we want to get people saved and sanctified and then be salt and light. And Charlie would send me, and he'd send many of his other friends, scriptures, usually about once a week, sometimes more often. Here are a few he sent in the past three months. He was a man of peace, and he sent Matthew 5, 9. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they should be called sons of God. He hated all these foreign wars that we tended to get into, and he wanted to make peace with people who didn't agree with him. That's why he had the open mic. He also sent me one on holiness from P. From P. Easy for me to say. From First Peter, chapter one, you shall be holy, for I am holy. And he knew salvation is about grace, not works. He just sent this recently, 2 Timothy 1, 9, that Christ saved us and called us to be holy or saved us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began. He was all about grace. In fact, he was asked by a interviewer not long ago, what would you say to someone, or maybe it was actually, yeah, it was a student. What would you say to someone who had 90 seconds to live? Check this out. Here it is. But what would you actually want to tell me if I have 30 seconds left to live?
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Boy, you got 30 seconds. In 30 seconds, you're about to meet eternal judgment. And there's only one way that you can get bailed out of that. It's not all the good things you did or the moral scorecard. It's whether or not you have Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior. That's the only thing that's going to matter. And so you got 10 seconds left. You're dying from a gunshot wound, and you ask the question, who is Jesus Christ? And the answer to that singular question, who is Jesus Christ? Is the most important question for everyone in the audience. Not how much money you have, not how much good stuff you do. It is, who is Jesus Christ? You might say, oh, Jesus was, you know, a teller of good tales, or Jesus was a good person, or Jesus was a historical figure. None of that's going to cut it. It's whether or not you repent and you ask Christ to come in as your Lord and savior. That's the only thing that will save you from eternal damnation.
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Charlie was all about the gospel. Tragically, he mentioned you had a gunshot wound. You had 30 seconds to live. We'll see a little bit later that even with the gunshot wound, Charlie didn't have 30 seconds to live. When Charlie asked me to help him prepare to answer questions about controversial biblical doctrines such as, say, the role of women in the church, he wrote this just a week ago. He said, give me answers that are, quote, really biblical, no pandering to the gods of this age, unquote. And he also knew the power and privilege of prayer. A month ago, he. He wrote me this. Please pray for me. I'm under the gun on something right now. Prayers appreciated. So Charlie was all about Jesus. That's the. Jesus was the most important aspect of his life. Secondly, only second to Jesus was his family. The family was second only to Jesus. This is last Monday, two days before he was murdered. Charlie and I went on one of our evening walks. We would meet during the day, and then we'd go. He'd go have dinner with the family, and he said, hey, could we go on a walk, say maybe about 8, 8:30? He said, sure, let's go on a walk. So we did this several times over the summer. Charlie and I were together almost every month. We were together in May, we were together in June, together in early August, and together in September, leading right up to his death. And just about every one of those visits when I was in Phoenix, he would say, hey, let's go for a walk. So we'd go for like an hour walk, always with a bodyguard right behind us. But it was dark, and we would. He would ask me, what do I say if I get this question. What do I say if I get that question? He knew most of the answers already. He was just looking to fine tune himself. Anyway, when I got to where he lived, I texted him, I said, okay, I'm here. And he said, okay, coming out. And then a minute later, he said shortly, gigi just woke up. So he didn't say, hey, Erica, handle Gigi. He did. And then I just waited, which was great. His family should come first now. That night, we walked for over an hour, and the top two issues he wanted to talk about the most were the resurrection of Jesus. Because if the resurrection's true, as he and I spoke many times, Christianity is true. Everything just falls into place. If the resurrection's not true, forget it. It's false. And the other thing he wanted to talk about that night was how to convince young people of the importance of marriage and family. You may have seen a recent survey where Trump voters, the men, their number one goal in life was to get married. Women Trump voters, it was like number five or six. For women, Harris voters, it was like 12 out of 13. And Charlie wanted people to understand the beauty of marriage. He wanted to show the world how. How beautiful marriage and family are and how he was so blessed to have a family with Erica. And so we talked a lot about that. Charlie just tweeted out, speaking of the resurrection on August 31. It said, the resurrection of Jesus is a fact of history. It really happened. Jesus rose from the dead. 6.5 million views. By the way. Andrew Colvett, who produces Charlie's show, said leading up to the election last year, Charlie's content got 15 billion views. He was the most important influencer for young people under 30. 15 billion views. Charlie's also devoted to his family. And the one way he did that was to observe the Sabbath. He just wrote a book. It's going to be coming out shortly. He asked me to review it just for theological purposes, and if I had any insights, I reviewed the whole book. It is an excellent book. There's a lot of great theology in it. He gives in there the reasons to think the Sabbath is binding on Christians and reasons to think it isn't. But he says, regardless of that, you ought to obey it. And he explains why it was such a cathartic thing to do for him and his family to shut his phone off and just spend 24 hours with his family. Look for that book to come out soon. So Charlie was all about Jesus. He was secondly, all about his family, number three. And you know this. It's so inspiring, but I need to say it. Charlie had courage. A few months ago, there was some violent act in the news. And I texted him and I said, I hope you've increased your security detail. He texted me back, he said, quote, I have. I know they want me dead. And I don't know who he meant by they. Maybe just radicals on the left. But that didn't stop him from exposing himself to danger. No. Look, Charlie didn't really like the word safe. He knew that ministry required you to take risks, just like love requires you to take risks. Sure, you can protect your heart if you don't give it away to anyone else, but if you give it away to someone else, you're risking it being broken. Charlie knew that if he wanted to do ministry, he had to risk himself. So safety was not his top priority. Loving people by highlighting Jesus was his top priority. That required him to expose himself to danger. Now, he did take precautions. Obviously there was a security team there, and I'll get to that here a little bit later. But he thought it was worth the risk to love people where they were on campus. Sure, he could have brought it inside, but when it's inside, you're not going to get as big a crowd as outside and you're not going to be able to attract people walking by. And Charlie wanted to reach out to the world. Also, he wasn't afraid to be politically incorrect to say something true that no one else would risk saying, even if it meant his opponents would twist and attempt to smear his reputation. Let me give you an example of this. He rightfully pointed out, now this, this is saying this in this culture, you're, you're going to get hammered for this. But I think he's right. He rightfully pointed out that although well intended, the civil rights legislation made us more race focused rather than less. And I think if you're being fair, it's hard to argue with that. Certainly segregation was wrong and it needed to be corrected, but you don't correct old racism by introducing new racism. For some of the good that the civil rights legislation brought us, it certainly didn't bring us our goal of a race neutral society. In fact, Charlie and I were recently talking about the different, you know, people say we're a colorblind society society. No, we're not a colorblind society. We never will be a colorblind society, but we, we should be a color neutral society. Now, in some ways, Charlie was. Let me put it another way. The civil rights legislation certainly in some ways created more division. It did some good things, but it created more division. Charlie made those points even though he knew people on the left would twist what he said and falsely accuse him of being a racist. So he had courage number four. He was humble. As I said, the only thing that was more impressive than his intellect was his humility. I mean, he would send me videos and ask, how did I do? What would you do differently? What would you say here? What would you say there? And some of his favorite quips, many of them are from the Bible. He would say, a wise man invites correction. Wisdom listens. Pride goes before the fall. The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. And if you noticed, with Charlie, it was never about him. It was always about the team. Like, I'd see something online, I go, man, Charlie, that was great. And he'd go, that's my team. Or he'd put out a tweet and he'd go, I got really. I got good people helping me with that. That's my team. He was always putting other people. He's always given other people the credit. And when you complimented him, it was like he went into all shucks mode. He was kind of like, you know, he's 6 foot 4, but he would. He would kind of just, you know, go, oh, shucks. You know, he kind of get a little bit embarrassed. And later, he finally just learned to say, well, thank you. And in fact, Tuesday, just before he died, my wife and Lynn and myself were all at the TP USA headquarters, and Charlie and I were meeting with some other folks, and we were talking about the questions that he might get the next day at Utah Valley. And when we had a break, I said, hey, come on, I want to introduce you to my wife. And he's met Stephanie before, but I want to introduce you to Lynn and everything. And so he comes in the room. It's just me and he and Lynn and Stephanie, and, you know, they're. They're just complimenting him up and down about. About how much the team. Because they just saw the whole TPUSA operation, and they were just so impressed with how. How professional these people were and how much enthusiasm they had for what they were doing and particularly working for Charlie. And he was just. He was in the aw, shucks mode. That's what my. My wife later said. So he was humble. You need humility. That's why he got so good at what he did, because he asked everybody for advice. He had other mentors. It wasn't just me. He had people all around him that would help him to Go from great to, to the greatest at what he did. Also number five, he was brilliant and gifted in so many ways. He was really good at everything. Obviously, he was good at leadership. Look what he built. I mean, he comes out of high school, he's 18 years old, and he winds up building TP USA, which is the greatest grassroots conservative political organization maybe in the history of the country, for all I know. It certainly is the biggest now. And he's a real good judge of character and talent. Now, a little bit later, I'm going to tell you about some of the talent that Charlie selected when we get to the end of the podcast here about what happened on that terrible Wednesday. And he was really great at connecting with people. Charlie, the chief of staff of President Trump, Susie Wiles, just said this yesterday when Vice President Vance filled in for the Charlie Kirk Show. Susie Wiles said, Charlie never talked at you. He always talked to you. And he listened. Charlie was also a great coalition builder. You know, Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson obviously don't agree on the Israel situation, but Charlie knew that he wanted to keep people like Ben and Mark Levin and Tucker Carlson all under the same tent. He kept a coalition between them for the greater good of the country. He knew that getting 80% of what you wanted was better than getting zero. And in politics you never get 100% of what you want. So he was really good at keeping people who, if they didn't have somebody like Charlie as the glue between them, might have gone in different directions. He kept them, as Ben Shapiro just said, he kept their ships, our ships, all going in the same direction. He was a coalition builder. He was also a man of action. A couple of months ago, I sent him an article about a clause in the big beautiful bill that would inadvertently hurt Christian schools. Charlie said thanks and he immediately called Senator Rick Scott and he flew, fixed it, boom. Right away. He turned also into a great apologist. James Lindsay, who was an atheist but is now a kind of an agnostic, tweeted out, or I think he sent to, he put a tweet out and then he sent it to Charlie and he said, with all this evil in the world, I'm really starting to believe in Satan. And Charlie sent a four word response back. Here's what he said. If Satan, then God and James was blown away because he's absolutely right. If there's evil, there has to be good, because evil is a lack in a good thing. Evil doesn't exist on its own. It's a privation in good. Evil is like cancer if you take all the cancer out of a good body, you got a better body. What happens if you take all the body out of the cancer? You got nothing. It doesn't exist on its own. Evil is like rust in a car. If you take all the rust out of a car, you got a better car. What happens if you take all the car out of the rust? You got a Pinto. You got to be old enough to know that joke, but you get the idea. Evil can't exist unless good exists. But good can't exist unless God exists. So if Satan exists, God exists. Satan is a fallen angel. Metaphysical reality can't be evil alone. Metaphysical reality is good. Anything that is a dep, a deprivation or a privation in metaphysical reality is what we call evil. We might say evil is anti creation. God creates something good and then we degrade it. And Charlie knew that. Charlie also, as everyone has to know, is extremely hardworking. Just before he went to Utah Valley, he took, get this, a 72 hour trip to hit Korea and Japan. This is in the last week of September. In fact, he got back Sunday night and I flew in Sunday night to meet with him on Monday, Tuesday, and then go to the event on Wednesday. And so I think he left Wednesday night. And I saw that he was doing a Freedom Night in America on that Wednesday night. Not Freedom Night in America. I'm like, charlie, I thought you were heading to Japan. He goes after Freedom Night. So I texted him, I said, you need to learn how to cram more into each day. And he texted back, I'm working on being less lazy. Well, mission accomplished, ladies and gentlemen. And then, by the way, Andrew just said this and Charlie told it to me too, when he went to Japan. You know, Japan has very few Christians, but they love Charlie. And he preached the Gospel to the leaders and the audience he was meeting with in Japan. He wanted to show them the truth. He was really an evangelist again. Jesus was number one. Also, he loved young people and wanted to prepare himself to serve them. Just before he was going on the trip, he texted me, I have 22 hours of flights to Asia. Please send me more to read prepare. And then he said, I'm really excited. I would love for you to review some of my old footage and would love your thoughts on best ways to proceed. I am taking prep for this tour more seriously than any other prior, unquote. So when he's going in there on Wednesday, he is studied up. Also, Charlie was kind to the students who disagreed with him. I mean, he would always say, hey, people who Disagree. If you disagree, come to the front of the line. Of course, that's what true fascists do. They give the microphone to their opponents. Isn't it just incredibly absurd how people label somebody like Charlie a fascist? That this killer really honestly thought he was a fascist? Ladies and gentlemen, news flash. Fascists don't give the microphone to their opponents. They kill their opponents. It's madness how deceived people have become, how demonic forces are at work. Let me point out one thing about Charlie and debating young people. He understood, and many other people don't understand this. Most of the time when you're debating someone, you're not going to convince the person you're debating. He or she is too dug into their position. You are there to show grace and truth to someone who is against you in the hope of planting a seed that will flourish later. And maybe more importantly, here's what many don't get. You're there to plant a seed to persuade others who are watching the debate. Lee Strobel famously called this ricochet evangelism. Right? You think you're talking to one person, but the people watching are the ones actually being blessed. Greg Koukl, my friend, would say that most evangelism is planting or watering. It's not harvesting, it's gardening. It's not harvesting. It's moving people along. It's planting seeds and watering seeds. It's moving people toward Jesus and away from their old worldview. You don't get them to the foot of the cross in every conversation. And remember, as Charlie understood, when you're answering a question, you're answering a person, not just a question. Also, Charlie was loyal. If two of his friends disagreed, he would never speak ill of them or try and pit one against the other. In five years of close contact with Charlie Kirk and in many private meetings, I never. Let me say that again. I never heard Charlie engage in gossip or backstabbing or negative talk that wasn't justified. I mean, if somebody was wrong, he would say that. But he would never gossip or backstab people. Never. Also, he was generous and completely other focused. He asked me to minister to people on his team because he loved them. He invited me just to. Look, apologetics is not mainstream. I'm nobody. But he invited me to all the major TPUSA events, including Amfest and the Believer Summit. In fact, In July of 2024, this is right after President Trump was shot, that Believers Summit was scheduled, and it was supposed to be two days, Friday night, all day Saturday, and it was in Palm Beach, Florida. And at the very last minute, President Trump said he would like to come. I don't know how it worked out whether president. He wasn't president at the time, but he was running, as you know. And he asked Charlie, can I speak? Or Charlie asked him to speak. And it was only three miles from Mar a Lago, so he came and this was the first speech that Trump gave after they took the bandage off his ear. And so he was going to speak on Friday night. So the whole schedule needed to be changed. And Charlie put me as one of the few speakers to precede the president on Friday night. Me. Who am I? I mean, he had that director of the rnc, he had Ben Carson, he had others, and he picks me. And he had complete trust in me, even though he knew I didn't agree with President Trump on everything. But of course, who does? In fact, I said in the speech, I said, look, I don't agree with President Trump on everything. I agree with 90% of what he's doing. I don't even agree with 90% of what I'm doing. Okay? But Charlie trusted me and he was gracious to me even though he didn't need to be. Charlie also built people up. He was very complimentary to everybody. Every day I would, for the past month or so, I would send him a one liner because he liked some of my one liners I would use on college campuses, because, look, people would say, what are the hardest questions to answer? And actually, the answer is not that everyone has all the answers, but most of the questions aren't hard to answer. They're just hard to answer in two minutes. That's all the time you have. Sometimes you have to kind of compress things down and put them in pithy sayings. And so I would send him one every day, except on the Sabbath. And one of the ones I sent him recently was when accused of judging, say this, why are you judging me for judging? So he writes back so good, he's got like 20 O's in good with a bunch of exclamation points. He says, you are a true friend. And then he sent me after we met in August, and he wanted me to come back in September. He said, thank you so much for everything. I feel like a real breakthrough has happened because we were talking a lot about, really, tactics on how to answer questions, partially from Greg Koukl's book and partially from some of the things that I've learned. How do you ask a question of the questioner that would expose the assumption that they have and how can you identify self defeating statements? Easily. We worked on that a lot. And so he felt like that was a breakthrough. Finally, let me say this, that Charlie maintained his integrity in the face of temptation. I know this for a fact because I was with him. In August, he got this long text from a donor who gave over a million dollars a year to tpusa. And they were essentially threatening to pull funding because the donor didn't like something Charlie had said on a disputable matter. Not an essential matter, but not a disputable matter. But this donor thought it was essential to them. But Charlie wasn't going to give in or compromise for money. And I said to him, charlie, this is one of the many reasons I love you. You're not going to compromise the truth for money. In fact, on that last walk on Monday night, we talked about the Modesto Manifesto. He hadn't heard of it, but he was doing it anyway. The Modesto manifesto is something the Billy Graham organization pledged to themselves. The principals of the Billy Graham organization pledged to themselves in Modesto, California, probably in the late 1940s. And they realized there were three things that could tarnish their reputation and put a black eye on the cause of Christ. And those three things are sex, money, and power. So what they agreed to do would was to never be in the same room with another woman who was not their wife alone. And of course, Charlie said, yeah, that's the Mike Pence rule. I said, yes, Mike penol. But he got it from Billy Graham. Remember, I'm twice as old as Charlie. I'm 63 and more than twice as old. He's 31, so we're in different generations. But he already knew the mike pencil. He knew and he practiced that as well. And the second thing, money. They at the Billy Graham organization had other people handle the money. And Charlie does the same thing. He doesn't get involved in that. I mean, he fundraises, but he's not the one handling money. And then power. Power includes pride and reputation. I said the Billy Graham organization would never inflate their numbers. They would never say there were, you know, 100,000 people there. If the police said there were 50,000, whatever, the police said that's what we would say. And Charlie said, you know, that's a good reminder. I don't want to inflate the numbers either. He was already doing the Modesto manifesto because he was wise beyond his years. Even though he didn't call it that. Charlie was focused, focused on Jesus, focused on his family, focused on the mission. Of bringing people to Christ, of making disciples and making the country a better place to live. So this leads us up to that terrible Wednesday, September 10th. He sent me this on Tuesday, the day before, and he sent this to other friends too. The Passage is from First Corinthians 16, 9. Paul says, A wide door for effective work has opened up to me and there are many adversaries. And we found out the next day one of the adversaries had a 30 odd six. So we got up on Wednesday morning and headed for Utah Valley University. And we were peppering Charlie with questions on the way because he was constantly trying to learn better ways to answer questions to serve students. And it wasn't just me. Blake Ness came. Many of you know Blake. If you watch Charlie show, Blake is on occasionally. Charlie calls Blake the most intelligent person he's ever met. He said, blake is my number one weapon. And so Blake is. In fact, when I was talking to Blake, Charlie said, hey, ask Blake to tell you all the Roman emperors. So I said, blake, go. And he just blow right through them all. I'm like, whoa. He just knows history, he knows politics, he knows so much about a lot of. And so Blake has been a mentor to Charlie as well and would help him deal with some of the hardest issues and the hardest questions. Now, on our way to that university, we had a stop to make because Charlie's cousin wanted Charlie to speak to an entrepreneurial group. Entrepreneur group, sorry, that he was a part of. They were all folks that had restaurants. And he went in there and gave a speech, and it was like he owned a restaurant himself. He just knew what to say. He knew how to be an entrepreneur. Anyway, I was kind of walking out, and before the event was over and a young person was walking out, she goes, I need to leave. I don't like Charlie Kirk. And so I said to her, well, why don't you like Charlie Kirk? Because Charlie Kirk doesn't like me. He doesn't like a queer woman like me. I said, no, Charlie loves everyone. And she just kept walking. And here is one of the biggest myths that I think many on the left believe that, ladies and gentlemen, we have to try and dispel. And it's this. Love does not mean approval. If you love someone, you're not going to improve or you're not going to approve of evil they want to do. You're not going to approve of lifestyles you know are harmful to them. You're not going to approve of things that God doesn't want people to engage in because God wants people to flourish. And if you affirm what they want to do, that is against God's will, against nature's law. You're not loving, you're enabling people. And look, every parent knows that love doesn't mean approval. Every parent knows that if you approve of everything your 13 year old wants to do, you're not loving. You need to love people by tactfully telling them the truth. In fact, there's a clip in our, in our tribute video to Charlie where he's talking about grace and truth that Jesus was 100% grace, but also 100% truth. You can't have one without the other. Both need to be put together. You can't approve of evil. You're not helping people, you're hurting them when you do that. You know, in the passage that everybody reads at their wedding, but nobody obeys. 1 Corinthians 13, Paul says, Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing. Love rejoices in the truth. Love always protects, love always perseveres. If you want to love people, you protect them. You don't enable them to do evil. You don't approve of what they want to do that God doesn't want them to do. And to the people who hate Charlie, to the people who are celebrating his murder, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this. Maybe we'll do it for a future program. Charlie was doing this to reach out to you. Charlie was doing this to love you. You don't love people by enabling their continued rebellion against the God of the universe. You tell them the truth. Anyway, on our way in, we had drone footage of the crowd building and had Charlie had it on his phone. I said, charlie, I don't like this place. There are too many buildings. Charlie just kind of brushed it off because, look, we have a security team and he wasn't going to cancel an event. And as far as we knew, the university police were there and they would scout out the place and put people in appropriate positions. I don't know any of the details on this now, but that was the thought anyway. So we get there, we pray, we get out of the car. There's a whole bunch of TPUSA leaders there that want to pose for pictures. Charlie graciously poses for pictures. He posed for a picture with me. And we'll show this picture here. This is me, Charlie, and in the middle is Butch Hibbs. That's the brother of Jack Hibbs, Pastor Jack Hibbs. And he came to the event, wanted to meet us both so we took a picture. This picture was taken maybe 20 minutes before the assassin struck. So we head right into the base of the amphitheater. Charlie's like, welcome to the big leagues. I mean, there are just people everywhere. We'll show you some footage here. I mean, they were everywhere. I've never seen a crowd so enthusiastic to see Charlie. So Charlie starts flipping these hats. You know, he's got the Make America Great again hats, the 47 hats. And so I'm just kind of standing there and some. Someone on staff just hands me a row of hats. So I go, I guess I get to flip them too. So I'm flipping them all over the place and people are just excited. They're chanting, USA, USA. I mean, they just love Charlie. So I start FaceTiming my wife. I'm saying, look at this, this is incredible. Then I start facetiming my son and my daughter in law while Charlie sits down and begins to ask questions. Now this is where you may have seen an Internet conspiracy. The man in the white hat was, was giving signals to the shooter. Yeah, the man in the white hat was me. Okay? I did this with my hat. Maybe I touched my nose or something while I'm holding my phone. Because I'm FaceTiming my son and daughter in law and they're huge Charlie fans. So I'm maybe 30ft from Charlie. I'm right off his right elbow. I'm standing probably just off camera. If the camera's going forward on him, maybe about his 3:30 or 4:00'. Clock. And I'm just filming away. And by the way, to show you how stupid this is, they thought Dan, his main security guy, was given signals too. Signals for what? You don't need signals. There's a sniper up there, he doesn't need anyone to signal anything. He can look through his scope and see what's going on. What do you think? He's looking through a scope and going, what's the signal? It's crazy that people actually believe this stuff. But you know, if it's on the Internet, it must be true, right? Don't believe in these crazy conspiracy theories. You need evidence. It's ridiculous. I didn't even know about it for probably 36 hours after the murder or 30 hours after the murder. We were in a bubble. We were just paying attention to the family, we were just paying attention to the friends. Didn't go on the Internet much. When I finally meet my wife back in Phoenix, she goes, there are millions of people who think you were in conspiracy to kill Charlie, I'm like, what? That's crazy. So thanks to my friends Alisa Childers and Seth Dillon and others, they tried to clear the air on that. You still have people saying, oh, yeah, we need to check into this guy and this other guy too. That security guy. Ridiculous. So the first question, Charlie's presenting evidence for the gospel to a Mormon. That's one of the things that we, one of the questions that we had prepared for just before the event. And then he began to answer a question on trans violence. Someone was saying, oh, should we take guns away from trans people? Well, in light of what happened, the answer is yes. Because right about then, I hear this pop. It sounded like it was close. We later learned it was from over a hundred yards away. And out of the corner of my eye, I see Charlie go back. And so I start to head toward Charlie and I see that the security guys are already there. So then I duck, thinking, okay, maybe there's other shots coming. And then I'm still on the phone and I. My daughter in law told me these were my first words out of my mouth. No, no, no, no, no. So I went behind. There's like a, I don't know, a backdrop. Charlie's sitting here, there's a backdrop. I'm over here. So I go behind because I know the security guys are taking him out the other side. So I'm running with them toward the car and the phone is still on. And ladies and gentlemen, I, I was afraid that at some point this was going to happen. I thought that somebody would take a shot at Charlie. And I think maybe Charlie did at some point think so too. But he thought that the security was good and his security team was good, but somebody way up there, whoever should have had that, blew it. I don't know who that was, but I thought about what would I do? What would I do if that happened? And I was there. Now here's what Erica wants me to relate on Sunday. This is going to be the hard part, but maybe also the comforting part. Charlie Kirk was literally like a son to me. I have three sons. He was like my fourth son. My three sons are a little bit older than Charlie. He was like my fourth son. So when he was hit, if your son got hit, what would you do? What would you do? I got in the car because if there was any way I could save him, I had to do something. I couldn't just take him. You guys got it. So they got him into the side of the car. It was an suv. Was the suv. We took over and I'm on one side and there's actually some video of this. Somebody was taking video of this. I'm on one side of the car, the right side. And they're getting Charlie in. So I run over to the other side. But the, the guy was dragging him in is now blocking that entrance. So at that point I run around to the back. I popped the top, the back gate open and I jump in the back. The car lurches forward. Apparently somebody jumped in the car. The car lurches forward. So I almost fall out of the car or the suv. Then I grab the thing and, and close it. And there's five of us in the car now. Justin is driving. Dan is up front with the, with the gps. Rick has got him. Rick's on my left and Brian is there and I'm coming over the back seat and Charlie's laid out in front just right in front of me and Charlie. So tall. We can't, we can't close the door. We drove four miles some, I don't know, it's four something miles all the way to the hospital with the door open. To this day, I don't know how Brian stayed in the car because we're just go, go, go, go, go where? You know, we're trying to do, we're trying to stop the bleeding. You saw it. And I'm yelling, come on, Charlie, come on, come on. Meanwhile, my phone is still on. My son and daughter in law are hearing this whole thing. And his security team again. Justin, Dan, Brian and Rick, they love Charlie, but they were much cooler than I. I mean, they're just carrying out. They're calmly, but they're swiftly doing exactly what they were trained to do. Rick starts praying out loud. I'm praying out loud. We're yelling, come on, let's go, let's go, let's go. My son's hearing all this and we're, we're doing the best we can to navigate traffic. This is not a highway. We're on surface streets and suddenly there's an ambulance coming toward us. And there was conversation in the car. Should we stop? We're like, no, no, just keep going. Just keep going. The doctor later said that was the right thing to do. Ambulance goes by us. We're still heading to the hospital, trying to get there. At one point somebody says, let's get there in one piece because we're just, we're cutting through intersections. You know, we're just beeping the horn. This is not an emergency vehicle. There's no, there's no lights, there's none of this. And I go, we got to start cpr. So I try and start that now. Charlie wasn't there. His eyes were fixed. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking past me, right into eternity. He was with Jesus already. He was killed instantly and felt absolutely no pain. That's what I was told later, but of course we had to try. And by the way, there was just nothing any of us could do about it. We were giving him cpr, but nothing was happening. It wasn't like if we had better first aid or we had better medical facilities or we were faster to the hospital, we could have saved him. We couldn't. So if that's any comfort at all, Charlie didn't suffer. He was gone. He was with Jesus, absent from the body, present with the Lord. That's where he was. Now it is true when we got to the hospital and they started working on him right away, they did get a pulse back. And so Rick and I were just. Everyone's praying, we're just praying for a miracle. We had a, we had a small sliver of hope and the doctor later said that we got a pulse because Charlie was a very healthy man, but the shot was catastrophic. So 20 or 30 minutes later the surgeon came out and said he was dead. Now first of all, the hospital staff and the law enforcement were amazing, but let me tell you who the heroes were in this whole thing. We're going to start with 23 year old Mikey McCoy, who is Charlie's chief of staff and the son of Pastor Rob McCoy and his wife Michelle. Charlie considered Rob his pastor and Charlie hired Mikey, I don't know, almost right out of high school. And Mikey, demonstrating the wisdom and coolness well beyond his years, just like Charlie did, immediately contacted Erica and sent a plane to get her and some other friends and co workers. He called the President, the Vice President of the United States. He quizzed the doctors, asked them hard questions. He, he dealt with the police, the FBI, were all being interviewed by the FBI. He scheduled the funeral home and a couple hours later, transportation, hotels, Air Force Two. Mikey McCoy is an absolute hero. And keep in mind he's doing all this after his best friend and boss was just martyred before his eyes. This is the kind of people that Charlie hired. Tpusa. Look, I was in the Navy for eight years. I know good quality people when I see them. They have people who I would put up against anyone. There are just, they're tremendous servants, tremendously capable people. Let me just name a Few of them who are involved in all this. Katherine locastro came up with Erica, man, amazing woman. Young, I don't know, in her 20s somewhere, but she was helping Mikey organize everything. Andrew Colvett, many. You know Andrew, he is the producer of the Charlie kirk show. He wasn't there, but he got there quickly with his wife. Amazing man. And you can see what he's doing on the Charlie kirk show right now. Danny Phillips, a newly hired researcher. Let me just show you how. What kind of attention to detail these people have. Let me just say that when the three of us in the back of the SUV got to the hospital, we had to change our clothes, and so they all gave us scrubs. So when we all get to a hotel later that night in salt lake city, Mikey looks at me and he says, I'm going to go get you some new clothes. Why, Mikey? I can wear these scrubs. No, you want new clothes for tomorrow. Air force two is coming. You don't have to wear scrubs. I'll go it. So he delegated to Danny to go. To go buy me clothes. Can you imagine this level of detail? Their boss has just died, Their friend has just died martyred, and they're. They're worried about whether I'm in scrubs or not. In fact, this is kind of funny. We're down in the hotel lobby again. This is the same day as the murder. And by that time, Mr. And Mrs. Kirk, Charlie's parents and sister, had gotten there, and Mr. Kirk wasn't feeling well. And somebody looks at me and says, are you a doctor? And I looked at him, I go, no. And I'm thinking, why would anybody ask me if I'm a doctor? I'm wearing scrubs. I didn't even realize it. Well, I'm not the kind of doctor that can help you anyway, you know. But anyway, Danny, Phillip was a great help and still is a great help at tpusa. Tyler Boyer. Many guys know Tyler. He runs tpusa action. And with Charlie's help, Tyler, I think, secured the white house for president Trump because they know how to chase votes. Robin poe was a friend and a consultant. He was there. Jeff Nieman, the attorney, was there. These are just wonderful people who came and dropped whatever they were doing. Robin from Dallas, Jeff from Miami. He actually was in San Antonio and came up Brian, his cousin, who actually orchestrated the whole trip. These were all just amazing people. And the security guys, Dan, Justin, Brian, Rick, Blake, and another Blake, every one of them would take that bullet for Charlie. They just didn't have an opportunity to. And then when Erica got there, she spent a lot of time talking to the. She probably got there, I don't know, somewhere around 4pm Maybe. And she spent a lot of time, as you could imagine, talking to the surgeon and talking to the hospital staff and seeing Charlie. And the rest of us were just waiting to see if we could be of any assistance at all. Meanwhile, the car that we came in had been considered a crime scene for whatever reason. I don't know why we were. Had nothing to do with the crime, but we couldn't get anything out of it. So I couldn't get. Couldn't get my wallet out, couldn't get my bag out, couldn't get my computer out. Charlie was actually laying over my computer bag on the way to the hospital. And so we really couldn't do anything or go anywhere. We were just there to support. Meanwhile, the hospital staff brought us food. Anyway, when Erica did come down into the hall where I was, she came up and she said, he loved you, and he was doing what he wanted to do. And then we just held one another. And she expressed that she wanted to keep Charlie's legacy going. And, man, did you see her on Friday night. That was one of the most amazing, if not the most amazing speech I've ever seen. That woman is not going to be denied. If this assassin thought that he was going to end Charlie's legacy, he just poured gasoline on it. And Erica is going to lead the charge. Finally. Well, not finally, but when we were about to leave, we finally got access to the car again. And Erica was asking for a necklace that Charlie was wearing. It's a cross necklace and had some medallions on it. And when I went into the backseat of that car, I pulled my bag out, and that necklace was attached somehow, just kind of draped over the bag. So I gave it to Mikey and I said, mikey, I want you to give this to Erica. It was a comfort to her and Pastor Rob that night. Pastor Rob McCoy. And I've never seen somebody so good at comforting someone who had just lost their husband, the father of their children, her best friend. He was phenomenal. And Erica, man, is she strong. In fact, I just got this from just last night from one of the staff members I just mentioned. He said, see you soon, Frank. We're all staying strong for Erica and helping her in any way she needs. The team is strong and on a mission to continue. That was his first text. Why? Because Charlie would want it. And by the way, we're doing whatever we can to Continue what we're doing this Wednesday night. That would be tomorrow or maybe you're listening to this on Wednesday we're going to Western Carolina University and doing if God, why Evil? A Q and A in honor of Charlie Kirk. That event was already scheduled. It was supposed to be if God, why Evil? We just didn't know we'd have another instance of terrible evil in our own lives before we scheduled it. So we're going forward with that. It will be live streamed 7pm Lord willing, it's a new world. We have security now and we have some events next week. You can check our calendar for those. Why are we doing this? Because Charlie would want us to do it. Jesus wants us to do it and people are hurting. Anyway, the staff member went on and in the next text to talk about Erica. Check this out, ladies and gentlemen, check this out. He said this. She's the strongest person I've ever seen. You can see the hand of God on her. The amount of prayers are working. Everyone I've talked to to has said the same thing, that we all feel a sense of peace and calming as soon as we're around Erica. It's incredible, unquote. Erica is amazing. Charlie, as you know, was amazing and still is with our Lord right now. Let me tell you about one other person you probably haven't heard of who's behind some of this for good. Her name is Stacy Sheraton. I met Stacy a month ago when we were at a event in California. And I learned that within the past year, Stacy, who has a 10 year old daughter, lost her husband to cancer. Then her house burned down in the California fires. And so Charlie, since she was working for TP usa, asked her to move near him and Erica in Phoenix. And so she did. Very close to Charlie and Erica. But recently her daughter was lamenting of course, that her father was gone and their house was burned and why are we here, mom? And so I sent Stacy some books I sent her Stealing from God and there's a section in there on if there is a good God, why is there evil? And why would God allow my husband to die? That kind of thing. Well, Stacy came with Erica that day and has been an absolute rock of support for Erica. In fact, the day after we got back, let's see, this happened on Wednesday. We got back to Phoenix after Air Force Two. I wasn't on Air Force Two, but I was with. We were right there and watched the whole thing. I took another plane home. Some took Air Force Two home. There was only so many that could go on it. But we all got back to Phoenix late afternoon on Thursday. That next morning I get a text from Stacy, please come to church. Erica and I want to create some normaly for the kids. Was like, wow, talk about wisdom. How do you do that? How do you, how do you. 36 hours after, after Charlie is murdered, you want to take your kids to church to give them some normalcy. That is amazing. Now we were already heading out of town, but I just marvel at people like Stacy and Erica. In fact, I texted her at one point and I said, why does God allow evil? He allows evil because he allows free choice. And that's the only way we could have loved love. But he also, when he allows such evil, he also provides a source of comfort. And that source of comfort is spelled S T A C Y to Erica. And now Stacy's 10 year old daughter knows why they're there because she often looks after Gigi and Mac. So Stacy and her daughter are ministering to Erica and the kids because of tragedy after tragedy. She's there. This is right out of 2 Corinthians 1, ladies and gentlemen, that when God comforts us, it enables us to comfort other people. Stacy had been comforted by the Holy Spirit and others through her tragedies, multiple tragedies. And now she's able to pass that comfort on to Erica and her kids. So why did God allow this to happen? Well, that's for another show, ladies and gentlemen. We'll get to that some other time. But if you have eyes, I think you can see one big reason he probably allowed this to happen. If Charlie was asked, would you give your life if thousands or probably millions were to come to Christ because of your martyrdom? I can tell you that he would say yes. Of course he wouldn't want to cause pain to Erica and his kids, but he would realize that God can bring good from evil. In fact, he promises that in Romans 8:28 he says, and we know that all things work together for good to those that love God and are called according to his purpose. It doesn't say all things are good, it says that all things work together for good, that God brings good from evil. And by the way, if you continue to read that passage in Romans, it then talks about to be conformed to the image of his son. You get conformed to the image of Jesus by going through difficulty. Jesus himself learned obedience through suffering. And he didn't have a sin nature. There's many other reasons, but we don't have time to get into I'm not talking about a theodicy here, but this passage and of course the passage in the Old Testament with Joseph after he sold into slavery and then rises to save his family from a famine. When he rises in government in Egypt, he says, what you meant for evil, God meant for good the saving of many lives. There are, there's, there's people who are now looking to Jesus because of what happened to Charlie. People that would never darken the door of a church, people that would never crack open, a Bible. People that would never consider the gospel of the Lord. Now I'm going to miss Charlie so much, and I know millions of other people are, but he's going to be remembered as he wanted to be remembered. When he was asked how he wanted to be remembered, here's what he said. If everything completely goes away, how do you want to be remembered? If I, like, die, everything just goes away. How would you. If you could be associated with one thing, how would you want to be remembered?
- [70:13]
B
I want to be remembered for courage, for my faith. That would be the most important thing. Most important thing is my faith in my life.
- [70:22]
A
Charlie, mission accomplished. Mission accomplished, good and faithful servant. At one point, Charlie did a. A talk on evil. It was after one of the shootings on his program. And he. He texted me and he said, what would you add to this? And I texted him back. I said, christianity is the answer to the problem of evil. There would be no need for Jesus to sacrifice himself for us if we had never sinned. Christ's work will ultimately fix all wrongs. As Sam says in the Lord of the Rings, one day everything sad will become untrue. And Charlie wrote back. I love that it's true, Charlie. Although we're sad now, one day in a certain sense it's going to become untrue. We're going to join you and join Jesus. Those that want to join you and join Jesus. But God is not going to force anybody into heaven against their will. The only way that a infinitely just God can allow any of us to go unpunished is if he punishes an innocent substitute in our place. And none of us, ladies and gentlemen, have been completely innocent. So if we are judged by an infinitely just standard, what do you think's gonna happen to us? What do you think's gonna happen to you? I hear on college campuses, and Charlie has heard on college campuses, that people are screaming for justice, ladies and gentlemen, in the afterlife. Do you want justice? I don't want justice. If I got justice, I'd be punished. No, I don't want justice. I want grace. How are you going to get grace? You can't earn it. Charlie knew this. You don't earn this. Grace is a gift. The only way that you can be forgiven of your wrongdoing and I can be forgiven of my wrongdoing is if the Infinitely Just God places our punishment on an innocent substitute who volunteers to take our punishment for us. Where's he going to find an innocent substitute? Not in any one of us. We're all fallen. The only person who is innocent is God himself. So Jesus adds humanity to his deity. He comes to this earth and he allows the creatures that rebelled against him to torture and kill him so he could take them their punishment upon himself. And he offers that forgiveness as a gift to you. Have you taken that forgiveness? Have you taken that gift? If not, why wouldn't you take it? It's free. It's grace. And it's true. That's what Charlie was all about. To let people know of the freedom, the freedom that comes by trusting in Jesus. You're free from the penalty of your sin because Christ has taken it upon himself. Yeah. Another man died for you. An innocent man died 1,992 years ago. And Charlie devoted his life to making heaven crowded. And that's what we're going to do now. Let's do what Charlie would want us to do. Let us. Let's do what Erica wants us to do and the entire TPUSA family wants us to do. And that is to make heaven crack crowded. Let's do this. Let's all gather on Sunday in Phoenix and get to work. The Lord will prevail. Thank you for your prayers. I will see you there.