This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
As memorial messages about Charlie Kirk, assassinated in cold blood yesterday, are arising from admirers around the world, one very moving and profoundly meaningful remembrance – and warning – comes from American author, speaker and radio host Eric Metaxas.
In his post, titled simply "My friend Charlie," Metaxas writes:
"Today is 9-11 and just as we will all remember where we were when that tragedy struck over two decades ago, I know I will never forget where I was yesterday. I was sitting on a weight bench in the gym. I read a text from a mutual friend confirming what I couldn't dare to imagine. It hit me hard. And I took my head in my hands and wept. The cliche is true: No words can suffice. Ever. And soon thereafter I realized that my friend Charlie is a martyr. Nothing less. He was murdered for his faith in Jesus. By forces that hate truth and hate love and hate God – and anyone who represents God."
Metaxas, who was a long-time friend of Kirk and his wife Erika, at first briefly reminisces about their relationship and good times together, but then gets to his stunning assessment of his friend, his work, and the meaning of his assassination:
Ever since meeting him I never had the slightest doubt that Charlie would be the president of the United States. Had he lived. And a truly GREAT president of the United States. He was simply one of the most naturally gifted human beings we have ever had. His level of talent – and what he did with that talent in such a short time – was truly awe inspiring and almost shocking.
But it's vitally important to say that at the center of his truly astonishing gifting was his deep faith in Jesus. He wasn't "sort of" Christian. He was outspokenly and boldly Christian. That was at the heart of everything he said and did – at the heart of his patriotism and conservatism. Jesus was at the heart of it all. Which is the one reason I don't need to mourn his death as the world mourns. No. Charlie is with Jesus. That is inescapably glorious, however much we will miss him, and of course we will miss him A LOT.
But we can rejoice that according to God's plans – which are not our own – Charlie fulfilled his assignment. And therefore Jesus says to him what we should all earnestly desire to hear more than anything in the world: "Well done, good and faithful servant." We should all live to hear those words from the Author of our lives. From the Author of goodness and truth and peace and love and joy and hope. There is nothing more wonderful. Nothing. I can rejoice today because I know that Charlie understood that and lived for that.
Metaxas compares Kirk's assassination with "the murders of JFK and MLK Jr. and RFK," the "inspiring leader[s] of a great movement – to whom millions looked for leadership, and who gave those millions hope," yet who were "killed in cold blood." He adds, "Everything in us recoils in horror at the very idea of it. It is inconceivable."
But then, the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author zeroes in on the appalling current state of the American left.
[I]t has been a truly hideous and shocking thing to witness the degradation of the left in this country, to see what they have become since the Sixties. It seems that over the decades they have gone downhill and downhill and downhill. Today they seem to stand for nothing other than power and pleasure. It is truly horrifying to think of it.
When RFK was murdered in 1968 he represented a party that had noble aspirations. Caring for the poor. Ending the Vietnam War. Standing up for the little guy. What are their fundamentals now? They have stumbled downward to become the party of nothing much more than "I want total freedom to have sex for my own pleasure and gratification whenever I want WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES. And if there are consequences I want the right to legally murder those consequences." How horrifying.
But isn't that about it at this point? Is it any more complicated than that? So it follows that if anything gets in their way, whether it's an innocent baby in the womb or a brilliant young man who with his words makes me see the horrific emptiness of my positions – I will stoop to murder. I'm sorry to say that the left has become something seriously disturbing and ugly, has become the party of self-gratification and murder. But perhaps the murder of my friend Charlie will help some of them to see what they have become – and to ask God to lead them out of the abyss in which they now reside. May his tragic death wake some people up. May his murder lead some on the left to honest introspection about what they really believe and stand for. There is a way out of that abyss.
