Pastor Seth Hedman, Garwin Valley Community Church.

On September 10, 31-year-old Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at a college campus in Utah. He was married and the father of two young children.

Charlie was known for these kinds of events, travelling around the country to speak on college campuses. He usually sat under a banner saying “Prove Me Wrong” as countless college students engaged him in debate. He spoke about politics but also about culture and faith. He seamlessly transitioned between speaking about economics and then defending the resurrection of Jesus. He did so in a self-controlled, joyful, and masculine way, embracing the best of our country’s long tradition of free speech and the “marketplace of ideas.”

His faith in God and belief in the Bible was the foundation of his politics. We should see him not just as a political activist but as an evangelist in the Old Testament prophetic tradition: challenging idols in the centers of power.

And like the prophets of old, Charlie was killed for it. The main things that Charlie was killed for was for his testimony in God as Creator of our bodies, male and female. Like the shooters in Nashville and Minneapolis, the shooter was a young man who rejected God’s complementary design of our bodies and sexuality as male and female. He was all-in for the idolatry of self and, in his self-destructive perversion, lashed out in hatred and destruction towards those who would affirm God’s design. Charlie was fundamentally killed, not for his politics, but for witnessing in public to God as the Creator.

In Christian terms, we would say this makes Charlie a martyr. In America. In 2025. This is the world we live in. This should be a sobering wake-up call to Americans across this country. To a certain segment of the population, free speech is dead and the only solution to silence your opponents is violence. Yet, when a seed dies and goes into the ground, it bears much fruit. As Tertullian said nearly two thousand years ago, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Charlie Kirk’s witness is cementing the center around Jesus again. Hundreds of millions watched his memorial service. Young men are coming back to church. They are thinking, “I want to be a man like Charlie.”

Now is the time. Now is the time for revival. Now is the time to advance. Be the kind of man who has the right kind of enemies. Be prudent, yes. But, as Jesus said, rejoice when you suffer for the name. Pray for even more boldness. Forgive your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. And watch the multiplication that happens when a good man’s death meets the resurrection power of Jesus.