Was Charlie Kirk a Christian Martyr? Catholic? Killed by Israel?

Conversations That Matter

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Hey, guys. Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris. Just a few thoughts

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I want to share with you on some questions that are floating around out there. Some of them have been sent to me personally, like, was

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Charlie Kirk a Christian martyr or a political martyr? What do you think, John? Some people are saying he was a

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Christian martyr. He was martyred for his faith. He was martyred for proclaiming the gospel. That's why Tyler Robinson took a shot and hit him in the neck and killed him, was because he proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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And then another question is, was he killed by Israel? Was there some kind of conspiracy between Tyler Robinson working on the behest of Israel or Jewish interests to kill

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Charlie Kirk because he might have been shifting his views on the topic of whether the United States should support

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Israel at the level that the United States does support Israel? He was publicly executed again before the world.

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The question is why? There's one person who's been out there acting like he is a widow, you know, just saying the absolute most, tweeting first about what happened to Charlie.

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Bibi Netanyahu. I've been to Israel many times. The whole country's a fortress. When I first heard this story,

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I still had the same gut instinct that I did initially. I find this very hard to believe.

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I've been to that Gaza border. You cannot go 10 feet without running into a 19 -year -old with an

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AR -15 or an automatic machine gun that's an IDF soldier, right? The whole country is surveilled.

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And so let me just kind of go through this. We don't talk about Israeli politics very often, and most Americans don't know this.

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The last nine months, Israel was on the brink of civil war. It's not an exaggeration. This judicial stuff, there were hundreds of thousands of Israelis taking to the streets because Bibi Netanyahu is basically redefining the

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Israeli constitution. That's not an exaggeration, right? He said the judicial branch has too much power. There were protests planned this week against Netanyahu, where they anticipated tens of thousands of people to take to the streets.

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That's all gone, Patrick. Netanyahu now has an emergency government and a mandate to lead.

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I'm not willing to say, to go so far that saying that Netanyahu knew or there was intelligence here, but I think some questions need to be asked.

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Was there a stand down order? Was there a stand down order? Six hours?

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I don't believe it. Israel's the size of New Jersey. When I took a helicopter ride from Jerusalem to the

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Gaza border, it's 45 minutes. Six hours. They're live streaming the killing of Jews.

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Did somebody in the government say stand down? That is a legitimate non -conspiracy question.

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The whole country is the IDF. The whole country is. And you're trying to tell me that they're going to concerts.

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And then thirdly, was Charlie Kirk actually a Roman Catholic? Was he in the process of converting to Catholicism when he died?

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And if that's true, I mean, what difference does that make with the assassination? You know, maybe he's not a

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Protestant martyr. I don't know exactly, but that's another controversy that's floating around out there.

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So I want to address all three of these and make a basic call to decency as well to respect.

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I can't imagine what Erica Kirk is going through with all the speculations that are floating around.

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And it's not just by people who are anonymous accounts on X with 100 followers.

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It's people who have 292 ,000 people streaming their content like Candace Owens, who are saying, frankly, irresponsible things right now.

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So let's start with the first question. Was Charlie Kirk a Christian martyr? I think the best way to frame this is he was a

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Christian who was martyred for his political beliefs, it seems like now, because a lot of that is dependent on what were the motivations of Tyler Robinson.

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And if Tyler Robinson's motivation was anti -conservative or he was in agreement with, quote unquote, trans rights, and that's why he killed

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Charlie Kirk. It's not completely clear at this point, but what does seem to be clear is that his family is saying that he shifted to be more leftist.

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Robinson's mother explained that over the last year or so, Robinson had become more political and had started to lean more to the left, becoming more pro -gay and trans rights oriented.

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She stated that Robinson began to date his roommate, a biological male who was transitioning genders.

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This resulted in several discussions with family members, but especially between Robinson and his father, who have very different political views.

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In one conversation before the shooting, Robinson mentioned that Charlie Kirk would be holding an event at UVU, which

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Robinson said was a stupid venue for the event. Robinson accused

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Kirk of spreading hate. His friends are saying that he's been leftist compared to his family, at least since high school.

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He's, the evidence coming in from his roommate and from some of the things he wrote in social media chat rooms, from the inscriptions on the bullets, from what he allegedly wrote under his keyboard.

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All of these things are painting a picture that he was, at the very least, in a disagreement with Charlie Kirk over political things.

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So that's the first thing, I think. It is politics. And I think it could be, you could frame it that his political views were downstream from his religious views.

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He believed in what the Bible proclaimed about gender, about marriage, about what nations are to some extent, about crime.

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These are all things that flowed from his Christian understanding. I think more so before he died, to be honest, because I think, like I said on the podcast last week, right after his death,

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Charlie Kirk, before 2020, leaned more libertarian on some social issues.

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He also was, and in Turning Point USA, was, I would say, going in a direction that was not overtly

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Christian, even though I think Charlie Kirk personally claimed to be Christian. But after 2020, something happened, especially after around 2021, 2022, and he became much more overt with his

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Christianity. So I think by the time he died, yes, he was linking a lot of his beliefs to Christianity.

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But does that make him a Christian martyr? I don't think it specifically makes him a martyr for the faith.

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I think, at the very least, he is a political martyr. And you could say that he is, or he was, targeted and martyred for standing for some basic moral principles, it sounds like.

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Principles that come from God, principles that he believed in because of his Christian convictions.

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But does that make him uniquely a Christian martyr? He had an organization that employed many

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Mormons. In fact, this is from the event before he passed away. This is what he was saying apparently earlier that day.

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I love my Mormons and missionaries around the world. I love how he employed

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Roman Catholics. He even at his pastor's conferences had speakers, one of which I know who was an atheist.

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He had a number of diverse viewpoints religiously at Turning Point USA, platformed by Turning Point USA.

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I think it's safe to say Turning Point USA was a political project. And there's nothing wrong with being cobelligerent with people of other persuasions in order to forward basic moral views.

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But you actually have to keep the lines clear. And I think he did try to say, look, I'm an evangelical. I do employ

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Mormons. I don't agree with their theology, but they do work for me because, again, it's a political project.

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But I think it would have been interesting to see what would have happened had Charlie lived because he was moving more and more towards, it seemed like, a very overt

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Christian message. He was proclaiming the gospel very boldly in his personal interactions, at least on college campuses.

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And this, of course, was under the banner of Turning Point USA. He used that political platform to proclaim the gospel.

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And if he would have continued, I don't know what would have happened. Turning Point may have become more and more of a

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Christian flavor. In fact, it already was becoming more that way because they were hosting things like pastor's conferences.

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So I would think it's safe to say, like I said at the beginning, he was a political martyr, but he was holding to Christian beliefs,

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Christian moral beliefs concerning politics. And that was why he was targeted. Second question, was he killed by Israel?

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Was he killed by Israel? I'm contending what Israel is doing is bad. So what Israel is doing isn't bad? Killing children isn't bad is what you're saying?

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Hold on a second. But you have to go instance by instance. Is it or not? I need a yes or no. Are they intentionally killing kids? Is that what you're saying? Yes. No, they are not.

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That is complete BS. Dead kids. Why are you okay with dead babies? Good question. Why are there dead kids? Because Hamas has no kids.

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Because of war crimes. Time out. So you think Israel, let me get this straight. Let's think how irrational this is. Israel sits around. Are you okay with dead babies? Let me, hold on.

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I want to make sure this is okay. No, I need a yes or no. Of course I'm not okay with dead kids. Okay, ridiculous. I'm a pro -life person. I've debated for two hours.

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Time out. Stop interrupting me. Do you think Israel sits around and they say, how do we kill more kids in Gaza today?

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I mean, so why are they killing kids then? Exactly. Let's think. Maybe it's because Hamas uses the kids as human shields on top of their military bases.

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Maybe that's why. Maybe because the people of Hamas have no concern for the life of their own people.

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I hate being lied to. And I hate being propagandized. And this weekend, there was an all out propaganda campaign trying to make it seem as if Israel is intentionally starving the people of Gaza.

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I hate being lied to, especially by the media networks. They lied to us about COVID. They lied to us about the vaccines.

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They lied to us about open borders. They lied to us a hundred by a laptop. There's a lot of speculation about this, whether it was

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Jewish interests or Israel specifically. And at this point you would have to believe that I guess

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Mossad was in these online chat rooms influencing Tyler Robinson. It doesn't seem likely.

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I've said this from the beginning. I actually made a whole post about it on X saying, look, look at the evidence even within hours, within a day of what we knew at that point.

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And it does not have the markings of a Mossad special here. The person who obviously carried it out was using a hunting rifle.

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And it wasn't the kind of shot that a trained marksman would have taken.

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They don't usually go for the neck. And if it deflected off of the chest, they don't usually go for the chest.

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It depends on how far they are, but it doesn't have the markings of that at all. Secondly, it's not something that would be in the interest of Israel at all.

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If Israel pulled this off, it's the dumbest thing Israel's probably ever done in their relationship with the

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United States. Let's make a generally pro -Israel administration angry. Let's make the potential future president of the

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United States, J .D. Vance, who was closer with Charlie Kirk, let's make him angry. This just isn't something that I think would have crossed any of their minds or something that you would have to think they are the most foolish people in the world to do something like this.

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So that's another reason to be more dismissive of those kinds of claims. I think too, there wasn't anything in the evidence and there still hasn't been anything in the evidence that would show a sentiment of pro -Israel fervor.

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We don't see anything from the shooter himself that seems to indicate he was being influenced by pro -Israel kinds of people.

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In fact, we haven't even seen anything that looks like anti -Israel stuff either. We haven't seen pro -Palestine stuff.

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We haven't seen anti -Palestine stuff. What we've seen is evidence that it was other social issues that he had disagreements with Charlie Kirk on.

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So the likelihood is very small. But I did notice, you know, this is sort of going against some of my own judgment because I could pick on people here.

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I'm not going to. But I did see influential people on the right saying things like, not just speculating, but saying it with a level of assurance that they think

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Israel was involved in this within hours of Charlie Kirk dying. And I just thought this isn't ridiculous.

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This has to come from some kind of an anti -Jewish ideology that makes Jewish people or Israel the explanation, the interpretive grid by which you evaluate all social problems or something like that, or most social problems, to immediately jump to it must be

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Israel without any evidence. And knowing that there are all kinds of interests that did not like what

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Charlie Kirk was advocating, not just the pro -transgender rights people, but you're talking about foreign agents from places like China, from,

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I mean, the Middle East, from Iran, from Palestine. I mean, you have a lot of people in a lot of different countries and from different political persuasions who would have had a big problem with Charlie Kirk.

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And to think that Charlie Kirk, who was pretty supportive of Israel, even in the recent weeks before his death, to think that he was being targeted by Israel seems a bit far -fetched.

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At the very least, you'd have to say if he was going in a direction that was a little bit more critical of Israel, it was a direction that he was still open to persuasion on.

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And that characterized Charlie Kirk. He was a man that was very open to persuasion. And so why would you want to stop trying to persuade him and just start killing him when the blowback, if it's found out that it's you, would be immense?

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Doesn't make any sense. But that's what people were saying. And I think it's just, it's a suspension of any kind of common sense when you just jump to that without any kind of evidence going that we just suspect it because that's our interpretive grid.

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That's an ideology. That's not an evidence -based or a fact -based assessment at all.

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So one of the big people, one of the individuals who was pushing the idea, now it was more of an insinuation from this person, but insinuating that there was some kind of issue that Charlie Kirk had, that he had rejected donations, pro -Israel donations, that he had rejected

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Zionist money, that he was in disagreements, very intense disagreements with donors over this issue.

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And who knows, maybe that played into things. But one of the people who's been revealing this to a very large audience is

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Candace Owens. And she specifically talked about a fundraising event that took place.

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Bill Ackman was very upset and threats were made.

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And he had an event not long before Charlie passed away in the summer where supposedly there was a big disagreement.

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And Charlie Kirk was, it was a turning point for Charlie Kirk on the issue of Israel.

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Well, this is what Andrew Colvette, I don't know how you pronounce his name, but he's the executive producer for Charlie Kirk.

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This is what he had to say about that theory, about what Candace Owens was putting out there. He said,

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I've been asked about the Bill Ackman event more than a few times now. So I asked our staff who were traveling with Charlie to find out what's true and what's not.

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His team was with him a hundred percent of the time when he wasn't in his hotel room. Here's what they told me.

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Bill never yelled at Charlie, never pressed him on Bibi Netanyahu, never gave him a list of Charlie's offenses against Israel.

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There was concern raised about having Tucker at SAS. We don't believe this came from Bill.

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And Charlie's reply was honestly, people telling me not to have Tucker makes me want to have Tucker. And I'm going to lock him in for AmFest too.

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Charlie personally told me he had very cordial relationship with Bill and the event was productive. Those are the facts.

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So you have Charlie's producer, you have Charlie's team denying what Candace Owens is saying about this.

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But why is this even a controversy? There's not even been a public funeral yet. I mean, it hasn't even been a week and you already have people like Candace Owens saying,

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I have the inside scoop. I know Charlie in ways that all of you, you think you know him, but you don't know him like I know him.

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She's speaking almost as if she's like Erica or something. Like she really knew him, the real Charlie Kirk.

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And we need to reveal these things because why? I mean, the only reason you'd reveal something right this second is because it must have something to do with his death.

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She's not waiting. She's putting it out there now. And she's also saying things like, and this is the third thing in question

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I wanted to ask, is that he was in some kind of a process of converting to Catholicism. Um, was definitely on the brink of changing some of his perspectives.

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And, um, I can tell you factually, Charlie was praying the rosary. Charlie was going to mass.

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One of my last conversations with Charlie was me joking with him saying, just make the last step.

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Okay. You are, uh, I said specifically, you're too smart to be a Protestant. Just take the last step,

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Charlie. He says, ha ha. And on this point,

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Charlie Kirk's pastor, Rob McCoy said, Charlie Kirk was my friend and I was his pastor. And I want to simply say this regarding Candace Owens.

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Charlie Kirk was a friend to Candace and never publicly spoke poorly of her though. He disagreed with her. He never operated nor entertained gossip or innuendo concerning Candace.

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My only comment I offer regarding Candace is this one only wish at this tragic time of mourning that she would be a friend to Charlie, that he was to her.

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He would never have treated Candace or her family in such a way. Had God forbid this tragedy been hers.

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A friend loves at all times. Proverbs 17, 17. I think that's an excellent response from Rob McCoy.

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And that is the sense that I have about this as well. It is incredibly insensitive during a time when someone has just been murdered to start these rumors and speculations.

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And if you even believe, let's say you believe what Candace Owens is saying, if that is true, I don't think it necessarily is, but let's say it's true.

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Let's say what Candace Owens is saying is true. Charlie Kirk was in a process of conversion to Roman Catholicism.

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That's not for her to share, especially now. And Charlie didn't share it. And why wouldn't

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Charlie share it? Well, he obviously didn't want people to know that if that was the case. Here's what Charlie said not long before he passed away about Mariology.

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But I personally would not be able to enter into a faith that believes that anybody except Jesus Christ our

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Lord was without sin. And that's my final comment on Mariology. Happy to debate it.

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So the question is, are you going to believe Candace Owens? Are you going to believe the public statements that Charlie Kirk made himself?

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If there was something like what Candace describes going on, that's for Erica to share. That's for the people in the family to share.

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If there is ever a time to share it, it wouldn't be now. And this is the kind of thing though that I think creates unnecessary controversy.

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The only motive I can think of, why would someone share this is they want you to trust them and to think that they're giving you the true truth and other people aren't.

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It doesn't make any sense to share this kind of thing in this moment, especially to slam

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Protestants. You know, Charlie's too smart to be a Protestant. It's just not, it's not in good form. It's not in good taste.

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It doesn't honor the memory of Charlie Kirk. It actually kind of, I mean, he didn't reveal that he was in this process.

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So it actually kind of insults him and his audience. So a very ill -conceived thing for Candace to do.

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And I'm very disappointed, obviously. I mean, I've been disappointed with Candace for some time and the direction she's going, but 292 ,000 people so far streaming that.

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I mean, that's not a small number. It's going to grow. There's people that all over the place, people in this audience who probably have seen some of these comments.

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And so I think it's right for me to address it and to say, look, this isn't right.

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And you have no reason to believe what Candace is saying. I would just believe what Charlie himself has said, believe what his wife is saying.

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His wife is still going to a Protestant church. And why don't you just honor the memory of the Charlie Kirk that you actually knew, the one who actually put out public information he wanted you to know, that proclaimed a message of salvation that did not include the hallmarks of Catholicism.

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So those are the three questions that I wanted to address. I hope that was helpful for people that are thinking through some of these things.

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I hope those clips were helpful and some of those posts were helpful. I am a little concerned.

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I'll just say this in closing for some people on the more edgy right. I'll put it that way, perhaps.

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I do think that there is a, there are dividing lines that are, some of them are here, some of them are coming, but we're in a transitional process.

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And I think that you're going to see some figures that you've trusted in the past be on one side of that line and some figures be on the other side of that line.

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And I think one of those issues is how do you think of Israel and Jewish influence and Jewish people.

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There's going to be people on one side of the line who I think, and there's multiple lines here, but this is the line that I'm most concerned about.

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There's going to be people on one side who are willing to say things like Jewish people primarily vote

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Democrat in the United States. People from the Jewish community have exerted tremendous influence and some of it has been for very bad causes in Hollywood, in the pornography industry, in other harmful arenas, and they have not reflected

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Christian values. They have a tremendous amount of influence and they're very successful people.

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And many of them, because they don't share Christian values, have pushed things that we as Christians disagree with and that poses or has posed a problem.

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There are people who can say that, who can look at the facts honestly, and they can say the truth on those kinds of things, but they don't make that an interpretive grid.

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They don't look at that and make it ideological and just assume that because something negative happens, it must be the fault of Jewish influence.

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It must be the fault of Israel. You've heard me say before, all the problems we talk about, pretty much, socialism, feminism, progressivism, all predated heavy levels of Jewish immigration.

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Most Jewish immigration, the heavy levels from Ashkenazi Jews came in the, starting in the 1880s from the

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Russian pogroms, and we had all these problems here before these levels of immigration.

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In fact, many of the Jews who lived in the United States before that were Sephardic and many of them were very conservative.

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It doesn't line up. If it's just a cut and dry narrative, it doesn't make sense of even many of the

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Hasidic communities who have, in recent times, have gone for Donald Trump in very high numbers. I live near some of them, so I know about that.

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To take a very black and white view of this and to make it an interpretive grid by which you evaluate all the information that comes in, where you do things like you make one of your central pillars of taking back

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America anti -Zionism, instead of just a nativism that would repel all foreign threats, but making it uniquely, that is the threat.

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Assuming that Charlie Kirk's murder must be motivated by Jewish interests or Israel before any evidence comes in.

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Those are hallmarks, those are indicators that someone's operating on an ideology more than they are a careful assessment of the facts.

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I think that's one of the big dividing lines. Someone can honestly look at the facts, see what they say, but it's another thing when you start making that an ideological narrative that where you just can turn off your brain and essentially just assume that Jewish people are bad in every situation just about, and so we can have a cynical view of Jewish people.

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There's a lot of very many good things as well, even in the present administration.

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You think of even the immigration issue. I mean, who's been the most outspoken on that? It's a

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Jewish person, so don't take the simplistic narrative that is not a paradigm that makes sense of all the facts.

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I think also another related line is whether or not, and this is for more for voices that have really jumped off the cliff, but whether or not you actually hate people because, and the left likes to talk about hate, they don't, you know, they hate conservatives, they don't seem to have much of a,

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I would say, a leg to stand on when it comes to lecturing others about hate.

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But if you think that it's justified to kill people simply because, not because of any crime they've done, but just because of the fact that they belong to a certain ethnic group, or you should, that you can just say very disparaging things.

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You can say things that disparage their humanity. You don't treat them as a human.

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You dehumanize them in some way. That's wrong. That's not biblical. That's not Christian.

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I've been privileged to know people, even in my own personal circle, who have converted to Christianity from more alt -right, leaning, this is sort of an older word now, but alt -right influences.

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I've even been privileged to be part of the conversion of someone from that. And in years prior, it's been obvious to people that that was not something that had anything in common with Christianity.

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That was something to convert to Christianity from. And now

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I'm seeing the same kind of views that I used to be critical on the alt -right are now becoming mainstreamed within supposedly

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Christian circles to some extent. And that is something that I think we're going to see more and more of going forward.

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And I do want to make very clear where the lines are. Someone who converts to Christianity from that particular position is going to say, like I've heard them say,

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I did used to hate. I did used to fantasize about murder. I did used to want to destroy these kinds of people.

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And now I love them because I know that they're made in the image of God. It doesn't mean that you can't look at different people groups and see negative influences coming from a majority of people in those groups, or being prevalent among those groups, or posing a threat to the sovereignty of your country.

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It doesn't mean those things. It just means you actually also see them as people. And you want what's best for your group,

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Order of Morris. You want what's best for your people, for Americans, for your region, for your family, for your church, for your community.

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But it doesn't mean you don't want the best for other peoples and other groups as well. And of course, for a

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Christian, the main thing, and the thing that Charlie Kirk advocated, is we want to see all men come to a knowledge of the

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Lord Jesus Christ, to come to know the Lord in a personal way, as their Savior, as their Lord, to repent of their sins, and to be controlled by the influence of Jesus Christ.

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That's what Charlie Kirk stood for. That's the takeaway. We don't cower under terrorism.

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We're not going to stop speaking. If anything, the time is now to get out there and be bolder.

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Go to college campuses. Go anywhere that the Lord's given you a platform. And bring, most importantly, the message of salvation that Kirk brought to those places, to all people in every group.

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So that's my message today. I hope that was helpful. God bless. It's time to break out your flannels and start driving up to the beautiful state of New York in the

29:08

Adirondack Mountains for our men's retreat. It's September 25th through the 28th.

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And I think this is going to be one of the most beneficial men's retreats we've done. We're going to be talking about music and masculinity.

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That's the theme. Musicandmasculinity .com is the website if you want to sign up. And you don't have to be a musician or even someone who can sing a note.

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You can just be someone who is curious about how music impacts your spiritual life and also corporate worship.

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We've lost a lot, but we can regain a lot. And that's the point of the retreat. It's to equip you and also have a good time.

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We're going to be singing songs around the campfire, as well as in the corporate settings. My dad's going to be preaching on Sunday.

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We've got a number of pastors coming who all know a thing or two about music. See you then.