More on Charlie Kirk

The biggest news of this week in the United States, if not the world, was the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a political organization. Earlier this week I also called it martyrdom and religious persecution. Why? Because of Kirk’s unabashed and very public stand for Jesus Christ, all of his positions related to his Christian worldview. He was killed for beliefs identical to what we would have. That’s not saying that I believe that Charlie Kirk was a member of a true church and took the same stand that we do as a church. He didn’t. One, he was in a Charismatic church, an Assemblies of God, which took a continuationist position on the sign gifts, including the gift of tongues. They also practiced false Charismatic worship of which we do not believe.

In many different ways, Charlie Kirk believed different than we do, but those are not reasons why an assassin shot him dead earlier this week. Those were reasons we would agree with him. For that reason, I lauded Kirk, very much like the Apostle Paul did with some in Philippians 1 with whom he had no fellowship with, but who preached the same gospel he did. Many Assemblies of God congregations do not believe in eternal security or are at least confusing about it. Kirk did believe and preach eternal security himself, believing “once saved, always saved.” Our church would not fellowship with Charlie Kirk, but we stand with the same stands that he took through his political organization and like him would connect those to the Word of God. Kirk did not marry an evangelical or someone from a denomination that preached a true gospel, Roman Catholicism. I say all this because I don’t want anyone to be confused on the belief and practice he had.