I’ll never forget how I found out Charlie Kirk -- who was followed by 100 million, who read his posts one billion times -- was assassinated. This update came in from JewishBreakingNews.com: 🚨*BREAKING: Pro-Israel Commentator Charlie Kirk Has Died After Being Shot at Utah Valley University.*

Charlie Kirk

by Hector J. Ramírez M.

A Christian was killed yesterday in America for speaking up and using common sense to debate with young people on some of the critical issues of our time. Yes, this happened in America, the champion of human rights and freedom of speech; the country founded on the principles of the Bible, which were being advocated for by this young man. His name was Charlie Kirk, a thirty-one-year-old married man with two children. I am not an American, but I am a Christian who came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior because of the work of American missionaries. And this is the reason I do not want to remain silent in the face of this horrific event. So please allow me to contribute the following words.

Looking at the events taking place in America and the West at large at this critical moment, one can easily conclude that the battle is not a political battle, nor is it an ideological one, nor a social one. The real crisis the West is going through at this pivotal moment is a spiritual and cultural one. It is indeed a spiritual warfare, a clash between the preservation of a Christian culture and the resurgence of a pagan one; between the advocacy of good and the advancement of evil; in a world where Christians are being persecuted, cancelled, fined, and even imprisoned for preaching the word of God in public, or for praying silently in the streets; in a world where artists of many disciplines produce works that desecrate and mock the Bible or the

name of the Lord Jesus Christ; where pastors, religious leaders, and churches have to assign a significant part of their budgets for security to protect their lives and their buildings; where churches, children, and religious advocates are being targeted and brutally assassinated, for the only crime of being Christians. In a world like this, it is obvious that the time of persecution for the Christians has begun.

This means that we are going back to the very place where the Church was born. And this is so because, at the beginning of the Church, the very foundation, the cornerstone, was laid by the Lord Jesus Himself. He was indeed the cornerstone - dishonored, rejected, mocked, and killed, as it had been prophesied in Isaiah 53. Soon after that, the Lord's followers had to walk in His steps and were also persecuted, crucified, and thrown into the circus to be eaten by the lions. The foundation of the Church was laid by hundreds, if not thousands, of Christians who followed in the Lord Jesus´ steps and paid with their lives for their faith in Him.

For the Christians of the early Church to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ meant being willing to die for Him - literally. But for them to die was a gain, and instead of being scared and accepting the spirit of defeat, they found strength in weakness. They knew that their battle was not against flesh and blood. They knew that they were not to fight for political ideologies, for social causes, or even for religious values. They knew that they were supposed to live and die for the cause of the gospel and the fulfillment of the great commission, which implied nothing else than the living out and the preaching of the Word of God. They knew that their only enemy was sin and the devil, and that the only real battle they needed to fight was spiritual warfare. They knew that it was in God that they could find their strength and their guidance to stand their ground and live up to the teachings of the Bible.

Dark times have certainly arrived for those who believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in the West. This resurgence of a neopagan culture has been going on for some time already, and it has had many names on the way and many mutations as well: Humanism, Illuminism, post-Christianity, Postmodernism, Communism, Socialism, Fascism, Globalism, and Wokeism. But let us not deceive ourselves. The culture wars going on in the West have nothing to do with political or philosophical ideologies, nor with social causes. It has all to do with a spiritual battle that has now become an open battle.

However, as the disciples quickly learned in the book of Acts, the same question assaults us at this time: who should we obey, the rulers of this world or the Word of God? As the disciples did in their own time, it is our time to seek God in unity and ask for the same things they did when they found themselves in a critical moment. Acts 4:29-31 states: 

Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant, Jesus. After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly.

Indeed, there is no other hope for Christians in the West at this crucial hour. The power of God must be claimed and declared. The Lord's power must be manifested, and his outstretched hand must perform the signs and wonders He only can. But we, the Church, the children of God, must humble ourselves in prayer and repentance and claim and expect the healing of our land. God is real and His love for this lost world as well, but so is his power to intervene even in moments of crises, apostasy, and persecution, while His children continue to be the light and testimony we need to be.

And we must not forget that, after Stephen's death, came the martyrdom of the apostles and the open persecution of the Christians that inaugurated the outstanding growth of the Church. Yes, the Church continued to grow at such a rapid pace that, over the course of three hundred years, a pagan Roman Empire was transformed into a Christian Roman Empire. As a martyr died, hundreds more gave their lives to God. Lord, be with us as you were with the disciples of the early Church, as they paid with their lives for their faith in you and their obedience to your Word. Amen.

I think it's interesting that Hector, Gloria Robles, and Dutch Sheets all felt led to reference the martyrdom of Stephen in the wake of this tragedy. 

Lord, may the blood of this martyr water the growing Revival!

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Please join me in praying for the right place to share my one-man play about 9/11 next year on the 25th anniversary.