The Gospel at a Memorial? Surprising Moments from Charlie Kirk's Service

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Welcome to another edition of The Rap Report. I'm your host, Andrew Rappaport, the Executive Director of Striving for Eternity and the

Christian Podcast Community, of which this podcast is a proud member. Now, this is a show where I was on another program, one of the other groups or podcasts from the

Christian Podcast Community called One Little Candle. We recorded in person because I happen to be preaching at her church.

And so we got together and we talked about the memorial of Charlie Kirk because, well, not everybody was completely happy with everything that occurred, had some different views.

We will discuss that in this episode. I do want to give out a little bit of an apology to my audience, you regulars, who have been noticing that, well,

I have been a little bit infrequent lately. I am sorry about that. As some of you know,

I have been moving, I have been having a number of things go on in my personal life that just caused some, well, just time constraints.

And so finding the time to do some recordings, more so the research that I do into preparing each episode, has been a bit harder.

However, I'm going to be working at that. We do have some things in store to be able to improve that, and I'm hoping to get a more regular base.

Now, I've been traveling a lot the last two weeks, sorry, two months, and because of that, that's also played into it, because not only have

I had to prepare sermons for conferences, but also travel to them. And when I travel,

I'm usually out of pocket, not able to do very much. So I will be getting a backlog, building up a backlog of shows so that when

I do travel, I hope to not miss any. So please forgive me for that. And with that,

I hope you will enjoy this. Maybe check out One Little Candle. She does a lot of good stuff there for folks to listen to.

And I think that this will be helpful as we discuss the memorial of Charlie Kirk and well, some views that different people had and some different things that, well, not everyone kind of appreciated about it, or maybe they just had different expectations.

So check this out on the Wrap Report coming your way right now from One Little Candle podcast.

I mean, I was texting a chat group that I'm in, and I asked, guys, are you watching this?

And everyone's like, yeah. I'm like, we're hearing the gospel proclaimed over and over and over. That surprised me, it shocked me, because I expected more messages that were political.

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And thank you for listening to One Little Candle podcast. Hi, and welcome to another episode of One Little Candle podcast.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I am very happy to have you here. But today is a little different because it's not just me you're going to be joining.

I have here with me, I call him my boss, and that is the head of CPC, Andrew Rapoport.

So please give him a nice welcome. Andrew, thank you for being here. We're not just doing a recording together.

We're actually in person. I know. Well, that's true, too. In the flesh. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.

I was up in upstate New York for a men's conference that John Harris had. It wasn't all that far from you guys.

Happened to know your pastor from, well, let's not say how long ago, because then I may feel old.

So we'll just say a long time ago. Yeah. But yes, he's here. He is at my church.

It's Sunday morning. We are doing this before the service. And actually, we have the pleasure of hearing Andrew deliver our sermon today.

So very much. Decide if it's a pleasure after the fact. Very much looking forward to that.

But we are going to talk a little bit about Charlie Kirk's memorial service.

I know you've probably heard a lot going on about Charlie Kirk. I don't know about the memorial service in particular, but we do have some thoughts on that.

And I have a question I want to pose to Andrew at the very end of this that I have given him some time to mull over.

I don't even know if it's honestly, if it's a fair question, but he will be answering that at the end.

So yes, Charlie Kirk's memorial service, I'm assuming you listened to it all.

Not all. I watched a lot of it. It is very interesting because, and I'll just freely admit,

I wasn't someone who followed Charlie Kirk. I seen some of his videos.

I thought what he said was good. Most of the videos that I had seen were really dealing with some political issue.

And so I kind of just wrote him off as a political pundit.

Doing a lot, he was instrumental in getting out youth vote and things like that.

But it wasn't until the memorial that I started to follow and realize, because it was interesting that even the unbelieving liberal pundits were referring to it as a worship service or a revival service instead of memorial.

That's how overwhelming the gospel was. You got to see people who are not

Christians, at least... People who are not Christians present a biblical gospel message better than some professing

Christians. Sadly, yes. But it does go back to something I've said a long time ago, is that if we were, as Christians, focused on sharing the gospel, the politicians will pretend to be

Christian. Because they just stick their wet finger in the air and see which way the wind is blowing. And I really think the

Charlie Kirk memorial was an example of that, because those who knew him well so emphasized his religious beliefs.

And as I started looking into it, I started to realize that, okay, we know that the left, they've wanted to change culture by changing culture to change the country.

And we've seen people on the right try to change the country back, or as conservatives, conserve the country by looking to change culture.

But so much on the right, they didn't have any foundation for that. And what

I think Charlie Kirk tapped into, where these others were trying to just change culture, they're trying to change culture the same way left is, just in thin air.

And Charlie Kirk grounded the change of culture in Christianity. And that is what he's now known for, is his

Christianity more than his politics. And I think that came through at the memorial. Yeah.

And he should be, because that's what I kept saying, was Charlie Kirk was first and foremost, he was a

Christian. Then he was a husband and father, then a conservative activist, in that order.

And it was, which is why people are going back and forth between, was it a political assassination or is he a

Christian martyr? And I know in your episode on The Rap Report, you did address that. You said he's both.

And I, because I definitely said, yes, he's a Christian martyr for sure, because everything that he did, the foundation was his faith in Jesus Christ.

Everything flowed from that. You can't separate the two. So in essence, he was shot because he was a

Christian as well, yes, politically motivated too. But yeah, I took that away from the memorial service as well.

I started listening to it on my way to a baby shower in the car, and I was just like crying because I just kept realizing that, wow, here we are.

Here's Christians putting out an example that when times are dark, when they're grieving and all this is happening, they're worshiping.

They started out worshiping God, and I kept praying. I just prayed a lot, oh

God, let unbelievers be watching and taking notice as to how

Christians are responding. And God was being glorified. I just kept realizing how much God was being glorified through Charlie's life and through his death.

He was still speaking from the grave, really. His faith was showing.

Actually, I just did an episode about having that influence even at your funeral, was what the episode was about.

But I just thought that was totally amazing. There's a lot of people who are, let's just say, not thrilled with people who will refer to Charlie Kirk's Christianity, and I'm talking on the

Christian side. I asked the question online is, will Charlie Kirk be known as one of the greatest evangelists or will this be a revival, listed with other revivals?

So many Christians did not like that, that I would call him an evangelist, and it's just because he's not in their tribe.

It's amazing and quite pathetic and sad that we have so many Christians that rather than looking big picture and seeing that we have the privilege of being one of God's children, we're saved.

Right. And instead of rejoicing in that, they're upset that Charlie Kirk, who they don't agree with, is getting attention and say, well, he's not an evangelist, but he evangelized.

Well, he wasn't doing it in church. No evangelist does it in church, right?

Really? Yeah. That was the argument. That's interesting. It's the body of Christ. So he was going out to college campuses.

I don't know any evangelist that only evangelizes in church. In fact, that would kind of mean that your church is not saved.

They obviously have completely lost the meaning, the purpose of church. But then you look at Charlie's life and whoever wrote the speech for like Donald Trump Jr.

The way these speeches are done, there's so much calculation.

For some of the other people that work at Turning Point, they write their own speech. But any of the politicians, like Donald Trump Jr.,

because even though he's not a politician, he's closely tied to his father, there is so much that is checked and rechecked and what they say to make sure no word is said wrong.

But what ends up happening with those speechwriters is they work with whoever they're writing the speech for to say, what is it you want to say?

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And I'm just calling out Donald Trump Jr. for one reason. He gave an exposition of scripture.

He explained Christianity and maybe a decent explanation of the gospel, right?

But he's not saved, right? But what does that say? It tells you that whatever private communications he had with Charlie Kirk, what came overwhelmingly to Donald Trump Jr.

was not Charlie Kirk's politic, but the gospel over and over again. And that's why that became the emphasis of his memorial speech to Charlie Kirk.

And so I say that, say there's things we can get enlightenment to, to what their private conversations were in that sense, because all of these people who knew

Charlie Kirk through their political similarities or work together, their messages in memorial were all on the gospel and Christianity, which says, yes, they had the politics in common, but this is what they knew

Charlie for. They knew him for his gospel witness in their life, even if they didn't believe.

As it should be. Exactly. Now, and I shared this with you, I think last week, there was a part that made me very uneasy and I do want to talk about that a little bit and I'll just,

I'm going to read a little section of it. It was White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller. And some of what he said was, and that fire burns with a righteous fury that our enemies cannot comprehend or understand.

Erica is the storm and we are the storm and our enemies cannot comprehend the strength, determination, our resolve, our passion.

We will prevail over the forces of wickedness and evil. They cannot imagine what they have awakened.

They cannot conceive of the army that they have arisen in all of us because we stand for what is good, what is virtuous, what is noble.

And to those trying to incite violence against us, to foment hatred against us, what do you have?

You have nothing. You are nothing. You are wickedness. You are jealousy. You are envy. You are hatred.

You are nothing. You can build nothing. You can produce nothing. You can create nothing.

We are the ones who build. We are the ones who create. We are the ones who lift up humanity.

You thought you could kill Charlie Kirk. You made him immortal. We will fight that much harder because what you've done to us, you have awakened the dragon.

I was very, I'm listening to him and I'm just cringing a little bit because, and I'm thinking back to the

Theology Throwdown episode we did regarding, was it Doug Wilson, the Christian nationalist there, and that CNN interviewer and how, and I've read this before,

I know that that side, the left, believes that as Christians we want to completely take over and force everyone to worship our

God in the way we do and go by our rules or whatever. But when

I saw this, or when I heard him say that, I was like, all I could think of was some of the people out there thinking, see, like you said, it was a political speech, however, we kind of had politics and Christianity being mingled at that moment, and I was,

I don't know. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, first off, the left is going to take anything and say the opposite.

Yes. I'm sure we'll get to what Trump said because they've used that to completely opposite the way he actually said it.

So we don't want to fall into the trap of saying, well, we want to be so careful in what we say to make the left happy because nothing we're going to do is make them happy.

Right. Well, and that's exactly what I was thinking. The takeaway from this, there's going to be a lot of change for a lot of people, wonderful takeaway, but you're still going to have people who will see all this no matter how good, quote unquote, it is, and they're going to, the hatred in their hearts is just going to become even more.

Yeah. That's the reality, but yeah, go ahead. I mean, I was actually surprised.

I expected the whole memorial to be speeches like that, to be honest with you.

I was pleasantly surprised and pleased with probably 90 % of the speeches that I heard because they were almost all about Christ.

I mean, I was texting a chat group that I'm in and I asked, guys, are you watching this?

And everyone's like, yeah. I'm like, we're hearing the gospel proclaimed over and over and over. That surprised me, it shocked me because I expected more messages that were political.

I actually heard his message when he was giving it. Now, remember,

I don't think he's a believer in Christ. Right. His was a political message, but it was also raw emotion too.

I mean, this was, as I did, you mentioned on the rap report where I did a whole thing of why does this affect us so much?

And there's a lot of different reasons why so many people have been affected by this one man's death. Plenty of people have died.

Why are we so emotional on this one? And one of the things is that it's because he was standing up for freedom of speech and he was being silenced for that.

It was because he was respectfully communicating to the left a different point of view and he was being effective because he wasn't acting out and things like that.

And so there is this raw emotion of how wrong it was to murder this man.

And I think that there's some who, the emotions run a gamut.

We could get to Erica Kirk, you could see her emotions and you could see that her emotions have gone the gamut.

You look at the previous speech that she made after his death and this one, they're different. She was very, she's angry and rightly so.

And that's what I think was also coming out. Not just the anger over, I don't think his speech was just the anger over the politics as much as it was the anger over this is where the left, with their constantly calling anyone on the right

Hitler and they're going to take over the country and they're an insurrection and they're projecting everything they're doing onto the right.

They project all the time, yeah. And it's, I think that for Steve Miller, it just got to the point of like, he's not only angry that they killed

Charlie Kirk, he's angry that they're foaming the rhetoric that not only brought about the murder of Charlie Kirk, but will be the murder of others.

And it didn't take long to see the copycats that are going after ICE agents and clearly wanting to terrorize and things like that.

I kind of don't fault him. However, you bring up a really good point,

Rebecca, because when you look in light of all the other messages that were spoken that day, his was the one that kind of stuck out because so many of the others unexpectedly were all about Christ and the gospel and his was really purely political.

I mean, even Trump, though his was mostly political, he kind of made allusions to Christianity and Charlie's religious beliefs and things like that.

And Stephen Miller didn't. And I think that's why Stephen Miller stood out because it was the only one that was really purely political.

And that probably be the one that I had the most, I was like, oh, that's almost not fitting.

But if everybody else was giving a political message, then we probably wouldn't have a problem with his message.

Yeah, it did. It did stand out because all I could think of, too, was you've got to be careful with the dehumanization.

This is what got Charlie killed. I mean, you were saying why this has affected us.

Well, Charlie didn't dehumanize. No. They dehumanized him, though, you know, right? I mean. But I say it just because that's what they claim.

They claim by us saying we think homosexuality is a sin, transgenderism isn't real, that we're dehumanizing us, dehumanizing them, therefore, we don't count as human beings.

Wait, who's doing the dehumanizing? Exactly. Sorry, that's the projection again. But that was one of the reasons, too, that I think it resonated with us so strongly is because Charlie Kirk was you and I, the public face of you and me and people who share our beliefs.

He represented us, and so he was our brother in Christ. So yeah, it definitely has had an effect on that.

But I'm seeing a big effect on lukewarm Christians, big time. I hope it sticks. I worry—

I don't know that I like the term, I know what you mean. You know what I mean. Well, people claiming the name of Christ that— But yeah, they're moderate

Christians. Yes, yes. They sit in pews and— Yeah, I'm not sure if they are or not. Well, they don't even sit in pews. Well, they give mental assent to God, but I am seeing people wanting a

Bible now, wanting to read the Bible, wanting to actually go to church now.

And I know it's all over, and I just pray that this sticks, that this isn't another post -9 -11 reaction where everyone...

And then it just actually ended up worse than before, and I really pray that so many of these people are sincere.

Yeah, I think there is a difference. And, you know, one other thing I want to say about Stephen Miller, he's not a theologian, but he said we're immortalizing

Charlie Kirk. No, Charlie Kirk was immortal as every human being. That's true. Every human being is immortal.

We have a beginning, no end. Which means after Charlie Kirk's death, he is present in the

Lord. Daniel 12 .2 says that all of us live forever.

It's just that some for eternal life and others eternal contempt.

So for the listener, which is it for you? That would be a thing there.

But I think that there's a difference between 9 -11 and here. 9 -11, people saw evil when they were living in this post -modernity, thinking there is no evil, everything's good, they can live this way.

There's no such thing as evil, it's just something that people use to control people. Religions use. And then they saw real evil.

And people were looking for answers. They didn't know what questions they were really asking, but they just wanted something to explain what they saw.

And so in light of that, they went to church. Not because they were looking for Christianity, but they were looking for something to comfort them.

And either they went to liberal churches where they felt comfort because, hey, we just want you to feel good, or they went to biblical churches where they heard the gospel and either got saved or said, this is uncomfortable,

I don't like it. The difference here is because of what Charlie Kirk was preaching over and over and over again, and we've heard his message now louder than we did while he was alive because his videos have been shared a lot more, and where I never heard him share the gospel prior to his death, all

I've been hearing, not all, most of what I've been hearing is him at events sharing the gospel over and over again, and I'm realizing, wow, he did this a lot.

This was like at every event, it seems. And so the difference is that people that follow

Charlie Kirk are now coming to church because of the message, he said, and I'm saying that because we've had it happen in our church.

So two young men come to church this past Sunday, one who had been baptized in the church and he'd been coming to church on and off for years, and he saw his friends rejoicing the way he said it was, he saw the way his friends reacted to Charlie Kirk's death and he said, this is wrong.

And he said he walked away from the faith during COVID, and seeing their reaction he went, this is wrong,

I've got to start getting back to church. Another guy who was following Charlie Kirk for political reasons, he agreed with the politics, but he said when he saw

Charlie Kirk assassinated, he said it stirred up something in him, he knew it was wrong.

And it was interesting, he didn't want to come to church on that first Sunday because he didn't know how to go to church.

So he waited till Monday and called the church to meet with the pastor. And when they met, the pastor was able to share the gospel with him and he prayed to receive

Christ. And he came to church that next Sunday, and I was talking with him, and he said, I came to church because of Charlie Kirk.

He said, I only listened to him for the politics, but when he was assassinated, I started to realize what he had been saying about Christ.

And that I'm hearing from a lot of other pastors. God is using so much of this for good, like only

God can. And stuff that was intended for harm is good. Erica Kirk, real quick, she publicly forgave

Charlie's killer. There's been on both sides, Christians, non -Christians, there's been some pushback on that.

And some people think this is beyond forgiveness, and also that if she's going to forgive him, and then also he needs to not be punished according to the courts of law.

But I was surprised by the people that claim the name of Christ that were completely against any forgiveness here.

And that, by the way, that's my next podcast episode on forgiveness. But... Yeah, it's...

Let me put it this way. First off, I was surprised that Erica Kirk was not last.

I thought they should have done Trump and then Erica. But then as I thought about it and heard her, I said, she went for 15, 20 minutes,

Trump went for like 45 or something. And he's the more experienced speaker,

I get it. She at that time is more gonna be emotional. She probably couldn't do a long speech.

And probably, I wonder if she wanted to be last. That's my thought as you're saying this.

I have a feeling she arranged it so that he closed it. And so, if I could, let's deal with some of the things that people are saying online, right?

Well, she's really Roman Catholic because she had rosaries or Charlie Kirk had a St. Christopher medal or a necklace around his neck.

Why did he have it? Why did she have it? We don't know. Everyone's so quick to say, oh, they're

Catholic. Well, it'd be weird Catholics since they attended Christian church, preached the gospel, and he clearly said things about salvation through Christ alone.

Catholics wouldn't agree, right? So it's... Yeah. Well, they're taking what he said about Mary, saying that in the

Protestant religion, they've gone too far the other way. Perhaps they have. I mean, Mary deserves recognition for her faithfulness to God and her obedience.

Of course she does. And she... What a blessing and privilege to have been able to carry

Jesus in her womb. But he was not saying to venerate her in the way that the

Roman Catholics do. And in July of 2025, I don't know who was interviewing him. He was talking and he was very much countering

Catholicism in that. And that's the thing. In his words, he countered. Yeah. And someone asked me, but what do you do with the fact that he had a

St. Christopher necklace? I said, what do you do with the fact that I wear a chai? I got it at my

Bar Mitzvah. It has some meaning to me because it was given to me by my parents, right?

There's a tie to it that has nothing to do with the religion of Judaism. Because I wear it, it doesn't mean that I follow

Judaism. It means that it was given to me as a gift and has special significance to me.

I don't know why he had the necklace. I don't know why. I don't even know if she had the rosary beads.

I don't know. And for all we know, she walked up and some Catholic gave it to her and she had it in her hands.

They've never explained it. So I'm not gonna jump to conclusions that are opposite all the evidence we actually know.

Exactly. And so we got to be careful looking at what's actual evidence versus what, when we see something, we're gonna make it up.

Well, there's so much fake AI stuff out there. I see pictures of Charlie Kirk's children. They're not his kids, but they have all these fake

AI. It's just actually disgusting that people do that. So yeah, you never know what you're seeing is real.

Yeah. And so I actually... So there's a difference.

Let me put... I know you had questions of Trump's, what he had said. I think he put

Erica's and Trump's together because they're two sides of a different coin. When Erica got up,

I actually anticipated she was gonna say that she forgives him. And the reason I say that is because the prosecutor came out saying, we're seeking the death penalty firing squad, and we're looking to do it quick.

And people were like, and make it public. Then the prosecutor... Geez, I didn't know that. Well, that's what the death penalty should be.

It is something that... Because it's not a deterrent when it's done behind closed doors. So a public execution puts a stop to the copycats when they go, oh,

I don't want... They want their name in lights. They want movies made about them. They don't want their last thing on earth being the image of them being shot to death.

Right? And so if it is, you know, that's why they had public executions.

It was a deterrent. But the thing is, is that the prosecutor afterward kind of backpedaled from death penalty and said, we are in communication with the

Kirk family on the punishment. Which I said, okay, Erica Kirk is probably saying, let's not do the death penalty.

We take that off the table. As a believer, I can understand why she might want that, because she wants this young man to live as long as he can to have opportunity to repent and believe the gospel.

Right? I was asked once about, like, if my wife was on her deathbed in the hospital, you know, would

I pull the plug? I said, my wife, sure. My parents, never. And someone went, why that?

I said, well, I'm just going to heaven. Like I'll miss her, but it'll be the greatest thing for her.

My parents don't know the gospel. They got more opportunity to share the gospel. So I could see Erica being motivated by that.

When she got up there, I was like, I'll just speak for me. I wanted to hear her say, this man deserves justice, but I forgive him.

She didn't say the first part. Trump said that. Trump's message was one of justice.

Her message was one of forgiveness. And this is the thing. And a lot of the left are saying, well, now that she forgave him, he shouldn't be punished.

There's a difference between forgiveness and justice. She as the victim forgave him, that does two things.

For herself, it frees her from that overwhelming burden of bitterness.

John MacArthur has a book on forgiveness. The subtitle is really good. I mean, the book is good too.

But it is the power and freedom of forgiveness.

Because forgiveness, when you don't forgive, it's a bitterness that weighs on you heavy.

And when you can forgive people, that burden's not there.

Biblically, the story of Joseph, the account of Joseph. I have a message, it's probably the most requested message

I preach, is on the life of Joseph, dealing with his perseverance. And really what it deals with is,

I don't think he was a bitter man. Why? Because you see, time and time again, when he had every excuse to be bitter about people that did wrong to him, we don't see that anywhere.

To the point where his brothers finally come to him and he says, oh my God. You know, what you meant for evil,

God meant for good. He could see the good in what God was doing because he wasn't bitter toward his brothers. When his brothers come into town, he's not like, oh,

I finally got them. No, he's testing them to see if they've repented. But he was weeping over them.

And I think that was Erica's message, one of forgiveness. She was releasing herself of the bitterness.

She was also releasing that man so that he doesn't have to live with the guilt of what he did.

Because if he does come to repentance, which I think is what her prayer is, he'll live with that guilt of,

I can never make it up. And she's basically saying, I release you from that. But that's different than justice. Donald Trump's message was justice.

His message was, and the media hates the way that he did it, and they completely misrepresent the way he did it.

He's admitting that he knows he's wrong personally for wanting justice. Because he's like,

I know Charlie's looking down on me. He's not happy with me. It was a self -deprecating, kind of humorous way of saying, he feels the justice.

Same as I think we said with Steve Miller. He feels that righteous indignation about what happened. And Trump has said that, but see,

Trump's in a different position than Erica Kirk. He's the law. He's the government. He carries the sword for a reason.

Which was instituted by God. Correct. And so Trump is approaching it as a magistrate, not as a victim.

And in that sense, he's saying, you know, we got to go after the enemies. We have to go after the evil. We have to go have justice for those who do evil.

And so in that sense, he's got to be the arm of justice.

Yet he's admitting personally, Erica's going to disagree with me. I know Charlie's looking down.

He realizes that personally, he's got to be forgiving.

But there is that struggle. And I think every one of us that are Christians probably went through that struggle.

When it first happened, there was anger. There was indignation over the fact that this man was executed because of his

Christian beliefs that led to his political beliefs. There's a reason. It's not just that he's politically conservative.

It was that he grounded it in the Bible and said that transgenders, it's not biblical.

Homosexuality is not biblical. That's what they had the issue with. And so there is these two things.

We were angry, rightfully so. But we had to process that and get to where we can forgive the man.

Still though, there's a justice. There's consequences for your actions.

Yeah, forgiveness does not eliminate justice. Exactly. Trump's not in the position to be able to forgive.

He's in the position of the law. The law has to act justice.

The victim can give forgiveness. Trump personally could want and give forgiveness.

But his law, he doesn't have that right. Exactly. You know what

I would have liked to have seen? I was hoping that they would publicly pray for the salvation of Tyler Robinson at that time too.

But, you know, who knows? We don't know that perhaps a lifetime in jail or prison would be the best thing that ever happened to Tyler Robinson.

It's possible he could come to Christ during that time. We just... Yeah. God's done it before while people are in prison, hardened criminals.

I will be anxious to see what's going to happen at his sentencing because that's a time they give the victims a chance to speak.

And I think at the memorial was the appropriate time for her to say, I forgive him.

But I think at his sentencing will be an appropriate time for her to share the gospel with him.

Absolutely. And the weight of it then will be, the weight of when he hears that guilty sentence, then the weight of her saying, you're not just guilty before men, you're guilty before God.

Yes, absolutely. That's the big thing, right? That's the big thing. I like what you said too, on your episode, just wanted to mention that about the bracelets.

I am Charlie Kirk, the shirts and the bracelets. And what you said for believers would be, what about saying,

I am Jesus Christ? I'm of Jesus Christ. I'm of Jesus Christ. I'm all about Jesus Christ.

That's what I am. I do like that idea. I think that's a lot better. Yeah, because there's...

Look, a lot of people are, I'm Charlie. We're rising up a thousand Charlie Kirks. Politically, okay.

Because we should engage politically the way Charlie Kirk did, open exchange of ideas, being able to discuss these things, being able to respect the person that disagrees with you, giving them opportunity to speak.

As you know, I do a podcast, a live stream called Apologetics Live. Anyone can come in and join.

The regular listeners know that when there's people who come in, they have prepared for months to debate me, and I don't know

I'm debating that night. And we had one guy had eight pages of notes, and he wanted to get through all eight pages.

And it's interesting because he, you know, this guy was claiming, oh, they wouldn't let me speak. And yet,

I actually ran the time, it was Aaron and I were hosting that day. In the first hour, he spoke twice as much as Aaron and I combined.

And in the second hour, he spoke almost equal to Aaron and I combined. And so he's like, oh, they didn't let me speak.

And the audience was going, basically, they were getting upset because we're giving him so much time to explain his view.

And he felt like, well, I didn't get to explain everything. No, you didn't like that we challenged some of it.

And the challenges didn't go the way you expected it to go because you were speaking in a monologue and now you're having a dialogue.

And that's what Charlie did. He took people out of that monologue into a dialogue. And we as Christians are also guilty of this, even with other

Christians, that we just want the monologue. And if you don't agree with what I say, I'm going to call you stupid,

I'm going to belittle you, I'm going to make fun of you, I'm going to just shut you down, I'm going to block you, whatever it is.

Of all people, Christians should be the ones that are going to dialogue like Charlie Kirk was doing, especially as Christians.

Politically, I think we all should, as Christians especially. However, the point of saying I'm not

Charlie Kirk, I'm not going to go out and say I'm of Charlie Kirk because that's not a high enough standard. I'm not a follower of Charlie Kirk.

I'm a follower of Jesus Christ, so I want to be of Jesus Christ because we can't be Jesus Christ, right? I understand what people are saying,

I'm Charlie Kirk, but I'm never going to be God, right? But I'm of Jesus Christ.

And therefore, I have a higher standard than Charlie Kirk. I have to represent

Jesus Christ, Almighty God. So, now there's even more pressure that I have respect, openness, honesty with people

I disagree with because the goal is not to make them conservative. The goal is to share the gospel, say repentance, and they become

Christian. It's a higher goal, but the more, if we as Christians were doing that, the more people get saved, the more the culture will change, and the more the politicians, if they're not saved, will pretend to be.

Yeah. Well, like you said, instead of complaining about the culture, speak up. Get out there and speak up.

And something, too, that Erica Kirk had said, which that was my big takeaway, she called on believers.

And she said, for those of you who are already believers, for the new believers, it's your job to shepherd these people.

She said, do not take that lightly. Water the seed of their faith, protect it, and help it grow.

And I loved it when she said that. Very wise words. When I was watching, I texted a group of friends, guys that I know, and my response was, guys, now is the time.

Trump getting elected, I called it a reprieve. The Marxists will come back in power, and they're going to look to,

I mean, we already know they were targeting Christians, they're going to look to wipe us out next time. So I always said it was a reprieve, but here's the thing.

Now's an even greater time. See, 9 -11, people were coming to church, but there was still the pressure not to share the gospel.

That's different now. Charlie Kirk's memorial was a change. It basically said, it is okay to speak of Jesus Christ in public.

That had always been like, no, you keep that for the church. Like, people don't even realize the shift that went on.

Homosexuals that were, remember the term, hiding in the closet? And they're coming out, and then they came out of the closet, they announced publicly that they're homosexual, they had to come out of the closet, but what did they do in that process?

They told Christians, keep your Christianity in the closet. Yeah, you go in the closet, I'm coming out. Yeah, you shove it in your four walls of your church building.

And Christians went, okay, okay, we don't want to offend anybody. Basically, what the memorial did was say, it's okay to proclaim the gospel and the truths of God's word to a lost and dying world.

And the fact that the leaders of the free world were there, pretty awesome. And they were doing it.

Marco Rubio, sharing a gospel message, I'm like, okay.

That was a really clear message, because I think he's Catholic. I'm not 100 % sure, but I think he's

Catholic. But the thing I would say is, my encouragement to every Christian listening is this, now is the time.

Redeem the time, because this will not last long. However, if we are very active, if we get out there now, while we do have this reprieve and this time when we can publicly share the gospel and not be so worried about ramifications, now is the time to do it, because the more people that get saved, the harder it's going to be for them to shut it down.

And the more it's going to be that we can proclaim even more. So we got to take advantage of the time. Now is the time not to say, oh, but what might happen to me?

Oh, I might lose my job. Are we losing our life? Jimmy Kimmel crying, freedom of speech is being suppressed.

You're still alive, buddy, with your millions of dollars. You were gloating over the fact that Charlie Kirk died for his freedom of speech.

And so we have to take the time. The worst they could do to us is kill us and bring us into the one we love the most.

Do not fear those who kill the body. Fear the one who can destroy both body and soul and health.

And so this is the thing, Christians, now is the time. Go out and share the gospel, because now we are entering into a time where there could be, we'll see if this is true, but this could be a revival.

People have been praying for revival in America for decades. If you are one who's been praying for revival, and if you're a regular listener of One Little Candle, go back several episodes, okay, long, many, many episodes to where Rebecca did a whole review of a book on revival.

But many people, like when you did those series, people pray for revival.

Okay, it's not enough just to pray. It's time to do something about it, and that's our job now.

Starts with you. Amen. Amen. All right, well, now is the time for the question of the day.

And I know, because I'm asking you to give an answer here, or your opinion, from your earthly perspective, right?

But there's a question that really kept going through my mind as I was watching and listening to the memorial service and thinking about all the responses, and that is, if Charlie Kirk could see and hear, and I have no idea whether he can or can't,

I don't know, everything that's going on in the memorial service, what we've been saying, what would be going through his mind, having his eternal, heavenly, perfect perspective now?

Is there something that we would be missing the point on, or something we would be focusing too much on, or not enough on?

Like, do you have any thoughts on that? Well, first off, I may do a show on, is

Charlie Kirk looking down on us today? Because so many people were talking about it, and I was like,

I don't know, I don't know about that. This weekend at the men's retreat, so many people were talking specifically about all the people during the memorial that were saying,

Charlie's looking down on us, or they're talking to Charlie. So ultimately, we don't know what they can see in heaven, because we're not there yet.

However, I think that you look at the one podcast that he said before he died, where he said, you know, what do you want to be remembered for the most, and he said his faith in Jesus Christ.

Now here's the thing. There are people who say things because they think it's the right thing to be said, okay?

And you really don't know what he was thinking, because he's just saying, well, this sounds good.

It makes me sound spiritual. Is it really what I believe? We don't know. However, like I said earlier, you see the conversations that he must have been having with people just based on the fact of the way they wanted to memorialize him, not about his politics, but about Christ, okay?

I think that was a major aspect in his life, and I think, as a

Christian, looking at that memorial service, you just, as a

Christian, you gotta go, God is being glorified. Amen. Yes, he was. He will get to glory.

And one of the speakers said, Charlie wouldn't want us here talking about Charlie, but he would want us here talking about Christ.

Yes. Now, granted, there was one of the guys that worked as a turning point, I guess, and it wasn't one of the main speakers, so you had to actually hear it where it wasn't the pundits like talking over it on the news channels.

But I think that's the thing, like, yeah, this is what Charlie would have wanted was

Christ being spoken of. And in reality, when you think about it, I walked away from that not going, wow,

I really feel I know Charlie better. I mean, some of the turning point people would talk about him as a boss, and one person was talking about him as a, you know, he was like a little brother.

But overall, the whole message was not about Charlie, but Charlie's God.

Yeah. And I think in that sense, yeah, I think, I mean, I'll just put it this way, if it was me, if when

I pass away, if my memorial service is like that, where everyone is reflecting on how

I pointed them to Christ, and Christ is getting all the glory, and everyone's talking about Christ, I will be thrilled.

Yeah. Someone let me know if that happens after. Well, thank you for that.

Yeah, absolutely. It was all about God. Of course, yeah, Charlie was in there, you know, because it was for Charlie.

But I was thinking he would have definitely been happy with that. My only thought was people have to be careful not to idolize

Charlie himself. And some people, I think, will take it to that degree, but they have to remember who it's all about.

Yeah. It's all about Jesus Christ. You know what? We'll see how this plays out. You know, it's hard when you have a show called

The Charlie Kirk Show, and they're gonna continue doing it. I mean, I almost wonder if they should rename it

Turning Point. That'd be my advice. You know, they have an empty chair, I guess, that they're leaving empty every week, and right now, every one of their shows, and I'll be honest,

I never listened to their show before Charlie Kirk, when he was alive. Did Erica? Is Erica in? I thought... She was on one.

She didn't sit in the chair? I don't know if she sat in the chair. Okay. Yeah, she did do one episode.

If they continue to have an empty chair where they're constantly talking about, well, Charlie would say this,

Charlie would say that, then I think that's going to hurt them long -term, in both the message of the gospel and the message of...

Because it becomes an idolization of a human. Yeah, it's time for someone else... But it's hard when the show isn't named after him.

That's true. But it's time for someone else to pick up the baton. But it's gonna be hard because...

Sure it will. Look, I'm an open air evangelist, right? So I go out on the streets and I do kind of what

Charlie does, just not on school campus. I do go to campuses, but I don't get the big crowds like he did, and I don't put up a table the way he did.

But I think it is time for many of us to get up and do that. And that's why I would say, change the podcast maybe to Turning Point, continue what

Charlie was doing without naming him every week, because there is a concern about the idolization.

You have a very valid concern. But I didn't think that at the memorial, because the memorial is about remembering the individual.

And much of it was not about remembering Charlie. There weren't all these stories about, hey, when I was with Charlie, he did this and that.

It's interesting, like Donald Trump Jr. is talking about stories of him sharing the gospel with him, right?

So even the stories they had about Charlie were about Christ, because that's where it pointed to.

And so in that sense, even though it was a memorial for Charlie, it really was more about Jesus Christ.

Amen. All right. We've got to go. You've got a sermon to preach. I'm just going to ask you to leave. What am I preaching? I don't know.

I can't wait to hear. I am going to ask you to leave my listeners with a way to be that one little candle, be that light in the darkness.

Yeah. And since we are going to drop this on mine after you drop it on yours, I'll just say for my audience, do check out

One Little Candle podcast. You will get a lot of good stuff there. You'll maybe go back and, as you went through the book on Calvary's Road, I think.

The Calvary Road by Roy Heshin, yep. And I had read that many years ago, so it was like, when you went through that, I was like, God, that's refreshing.

I remember that book. Pulled it out and reread it at that time. It's an amazing book. It's a short little book. We're going to teach that in the life group

I teach here, too. We're doing that next after we finish Titus. So great book if you haven't read it. Yeah.

So check out One Little Candle. So what

I would leave with the listeners is really what I said. I mean, it's time for us to go and evangelize. It's time for us to disciple the young believers in our church.

I don't care how young you are, how old you are, it's time to get off the pew, get off your butt, and start serving

Christ. I mean, look, Charlie knew that this was a risk he could face, and, you know, that was what ended up happening.

Will it happen to us? Doubtful, but I can tell you this. If we don't share the gospel now, there'll probably be a time when we won't be allowed to legally, and so let's take advantage of it right now.

So that'd be my parting words for your listeners. Great words.

Also, you can listen to Andrew on any of your favorite podcast listening platforms, as well as ChristianPodcastCommunity .org.

His podcast is The Rap Report, R -A -P -P. He also hosts Apologetics Live on Thursday nights.

You can watch that on YouTube or... Easy way, ApologeticsLive .com. It tells you, you can watch it there.

It tells you how you can join the discussion there, and you can follow the podcast from there. You know what the topic's gonna be that week.

Exactly. Or Theology Throwdowns, which the podcast community does together, as well. Which the topic,

I'll let you in on a little secret, I know it's gonna surprise you. The topic is gonna be, how do we deal with Charlie Kirk's assassination?

Okay. Good. It'll be a good one. So you can prep for it now. I can't wait to hear what everyone says. Yeah, absolutely. Andrew, thank you so much.

It was wonderful having you. Thank you so much for having me. And in person. Yes, in person. This was great. What an opportunity.

Thank you. Thank you. It's the light of mine. I'm gonna let it shine.

Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine. Let it shine.