Pastor David Engelhardt, who was Charlie Kirk’s pastor, said Friday on Newsmax that the late conservative activist had “found his purpose” in life, which was to “declare truth and beauty and righteousness and justice and faith.” In other words, to point others to God, “just like Jesus did.”
“Charlie was a guy that was a brilliant mind,” Engelhardt told “National Report.” “He could memorize vast quantities of information, but he always brought it down to the personal – that man, that his listeners, that the students, were made for something. They were made for a relationship with God, and they were made for an adventure to live here on earth. And that adventure was to fight back against the wave of darkness and confusion, and you’re not here for a purpose, you’re just kind of a biological mechanism wandering in the stars.
“Charlie was saying, No, you’re made to be in relationship with God, to glorify him and to be loved by him and that love would replicate in you and through you and around you,” he said. “That could change America and that’s why Charlie’s faith was so essential and fundamental to who he was, because he didn’t just believe it, but he acted on it. And his whole life was living for that purpose of declaring and seeing his faith multiplied across college campuses in our nation.”
Kirk, the co-founder and CEO of conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, was fatally shot in a targeted attack Wednesday while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. He was 31.
Asked about the celebratory reactions to Kirk’s assassination from some on the left, Engelhardt said that the people cheering his murder are animated by “spiritual darkness.”
“There are two kingdoms at war,” Engelhardt said. “That’s what Jesus told us. That’s what Charlie repeated to everyone. The Scripture says in Ephesians that we fight not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, spiritual forces of wickedness and darkness in the heavenly places.
“These diabolical forces animate people that are, I don’t want to specify, but let’s say on the left, in Reddit, the people that are fueled with hatred, the people that are confused about, Am I a boy or a girl?”
“This is not merely a biological discussion,” he said. “This is a spiritual discussion and there’s spiritual darkness that animates these people, that traps their minds in these arguments, and they think to themselves, Charlie is the enemy because he’s saying something about me that’s judgmental towards me. And Charlie is saying, no, no, no, I want to say the truth so that you can walk in freedom and you don’t have to be a slave to the bondage and hatred that you’re currently walking in.”
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