The Eric Metaxas Show - Michael Wilkerson on the Loss of Charlie Kirk on Discourse in America

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Michael Wilkerson on the Loss of Charlie Kirk on Discourse in America. Michael Wilkerson is the author of Puritans, Pilgrims, and Prophets, Why America Matters: The Case for a New Exceptionalism (2022) and Stormwall: Observations on America in Peril (2020). More at stormwall.com.

Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. We'll get you from point A to point B. But if you're looking for point C, well, buddy, you're on your own. But if you'll wait right here in just about two minutes, the bus to point C will be coming right by. And now here's your Ralph Cramden of the Airways, Eric Mattaxas. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program.

My guest right now is my friend Mike Wilkerson. not related to David Wilkerson. Mike Wilkerson is the author of Puritans, Pilgrims, and Prophets, Why America Matters, the case for a new exceptionalism, and other books. But of course this week, everything has to start with the subject of the recent murder of my friend Charlie Kirk. And Mike Wilkerson has written about that. Mike, welcome back. Thank you very much, Eric. It's good to be with you, but it is a sad, a sad day and a sad week indeed.

Yeah, it's incomprehensible stuff, but God has a plan, and I've talked about that a lot. I don't need to talk more about it. You wrote an article at stormwall.com. People can find you at stormwall.com. So what are your top-of-mind thoughts on where we are in the nation? Well, I was terribly distressed in terms. terribly sad, Eric, I think that we've, you know, I've been on your show a number of times. We've talked about a number of things. When we got together a year ago, or just over a year ago, we were forced to talk about the attempted assassination of the now president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. We warned about what this meant, that as terrible as it was, that it was symbolic of something much worse going on in our country, that we were in a season of violence.

You know, in the book of Genesis in the days of Noah, the Bible describes it that, you know, wickedness was abounding and the earth was full of Hamas, full of violence. And I feel as though we're in another period like that. Some call it political violence. Some call it other things. when you just said, you spoke honestly about the murder of Charlie Kirk. One of the things that's been terribly distressed for me is to watch mainstream media over and over again talk about the killing of Charlie Kirk, the death of Charlie Kirk,

as if this wasn't a murder, as if this wasn't an assassination, as if this wasn't a shame and a disgrace on the nation, trying to minimize it, trying to hide it, trying to turn it into something else. trying to pretend that we're not facing the kind of evil that we are. So thank you for being honest. And even in what I've seen you speak and write and post over the last few days, calling this for what it is. Oh, my gosh.

I mean, listen, if this wasn't a murder, there's no such a thing as a murder. This was murder. This was evil. And, you know, people, it's funny because when I used to speak about Bonhoeff, everywhere I went, people would say, inevitably, in the Q&A, if there was a Q&A, how could a pastor, how could a man of God get involved in, in murder of anybody, you know? And I say, excuse me, killing Hitler is not a murder any more than killing Osama bin Laden

was a murder or any more than when you go to war and you carry a gun. You're not going to murder people. It involves killing, but not all killing is murder. When somebody is executed by the state for committing murder, that is not a murder. there's a difference. The Bible doesn't say you can't kill. David killed Goliath. He didn't murder Goliath. We need to understand that a sanctioned killing, as horrible as it is, is not murder. Murder is murder, and God forbids murder in all cases. So we need to be clear about that. And listen, you know, even the civil law makes that kind of distinction. Think about it. There are such,

there's distinctions of grades of seriousness. There's manslaughter, involuntary, voluntary, meaning whether something was intended or accidental or negligent an accident but you are still responsible for the law there's murder but even within that there's there are types that are premeditated in cold blood or an act of passion but you know the culture and society has always treated the killing of an official a police officer for example as something else is something distinct from a cold-blooded killing or a killing in passion when you go and after an elected official, a judge, a police officer, it's a more serious matter. And then finally, you know, there's political assassination, the most serious degree of all, because it attacks the nation,

it attacks the ideas of the nation, the ideas of free speech, the ideas of a democracy, ideals and ideas which Charlie Kirk advocated. He was a man of peace who wanted to have the debate, wanted to have the discussion who loved Jesus, loved his country, loved his family, and they killed him for it. That is what we're up. You know, it's funny, the day after Charlie was murdered, I wrote a piece and I put it out on my Eric Metaxus.com email list. And part of what I had to say is, and I think it's worth saying, is what the left has become

in America. The left in America in the 60s, there was an innocence, a hopefulness, to some extent, a naivete, almost. Innocence to the level of naivete, that didn't really understand about evil. But they were hoping to end the war in Vietnam, hoping to end real racism in our laws, the Jim Crow South. There was something on the left in America, which was beautiful. And over the decades, the left has devolved and devolved and devolved to what? What is it now? Now, what I say in the article that I wrote is that it has become the party of power and pleasure.

It's not about anything noble. It's about I want what I want. And if you try to prevent me from getting it, I will murder you. I want sex without consequences. And if those consequences are a baby in the womb, I want the legal right to murder that. I want to kill anything that gets in the way of my will to power. And it's a satanic thing, this will to power. It's this, that Nietzschean idea, which is ultimately satanic.

And that is what the left has become in America. And so I think we're at a moment right now where a lot of people are waking up, if they haven't already woken up in the last five years of the madness, to see that whatever that party once was, it is no longer that party. It has become a party of real hate that condemns the other side of hate while it's hating, that murders those with whom it disagrees, and then says, oh, we need to stop political violence as though it's coming from both sides.

So we're living through a clarifying moment right now. I think that this is as historic as it has ever gotten in our lifetimes, what we're experiencing right now. It's extraordinary, and you speak about the 1960s aptly as the last time that the culture went through this kind of convulsion. In that moment, it did force the nation to really stop and think about what was happening. I don't remember a time when people got out on the streets and there was no social media, but in whatever forum, in bars or restaurants.

and cheered the death of President John F. Kennedy, or cheered the death of Martin Luther King as if it was something to celebrate and rejoice. Maybe I'm wrong. But what's disturbed me greatly in this time is the absolute lack of humanity, of decency, of civility, of any understanding that Charlie Kirk was a human being,

even if you disagreed with them, to mock, to gloat, to scorn, tells you the depth of depravity that we're facing now. I think it's Psalm 128. It says the wicked strut about on every side when vileness is exalted among the sons of men. And we live in a period where vileness is being exalted, where the trans movement has migrated so far

from just to give us the right to gohabitate and have civil rights to let us put on drag shows for your children. let us castrate them chemically without your knowledge, parents. It's going to a state of deep darkness and vileness. And as more and more facts come out around the people around Tyler Robinson, it appears that I don't want to go too far in a speculation here, but it appears that this was not a lone wolf operation, that there was a trans. I mean, by the time this airs, we may know more.

Folks, I'm talking to Mike Wilkerson. You can find him, and you should find him at. stormwall.com. Stormwall.com. We'll be right back. A major retail chain just canceled a massive order leaving my pillow with an overstock of the classic my pillows. And this is your gain. Because for a limited time, my pillow is offering their entire classic collection at true wholesale prices. Get a standard my pillow for just 1798. Want more upgrade to queen size for only 2298 or king size for 2498? Snag body pillows for 2998. And verse personal multi-use pillows for just $998.

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Now. Don't forget to use promo code Eric to grab your standard. My pillow for only 1798 only while supplies last. Welcome back talking to my friend Mike Wilkerson, whom you can find at stormwall.com. We're talking about where we are in the nation right now. And it is interesting what you were saying. Just we went to the break, Mike. People mocking the deaths of Charlie Kirk or either celebrating it or or saying, well,

you know, he kind of got what he deserved because he was an advocate for gun rights or whatever. You know, there's a spectrum of wrongheaded thinking. But what's interesting to me as a marker in where we are in a culture is the extraordinary immaturity of much of it. In other words, if you're really an idiot, like a real idiot that you're so ignorant that you don't even you don't even have the maturity to appreciate what it means when somebody is murdered. You're so childish. It's like all a video game or it's not real. You're so childish that you're not, you're not an adult. You don't have any wisdom. You don't have any gravitas. That is a

marker that we have a culture where many people are like that. And part of that culture was when you think of this 22-year-old murderer, one of the bullets, you know, is engraved to say, you know, if you're reading this, you're gay, L-M-A-O. And you think how extraordinarily childish for a 22-year-old man to think that's funny, that's, you know, that's like a seventh grade joke. like it's a lame, bad thing from early adolescence, like that level of stupid humor. This is a 22-year-old, you know, old enough to vote, old enough to buy a gun. And so we have a whole culture of people that are,

they have been raised in a media culture, suffused with meaninglessness, with the idea that, listen, there's no God and there's no meaning and that's that's that leads to what we just saw and so a big part of the national conversation for me has to be about our media what are the films that we have been pushing out for decades and decades and decades it didn't start yesterday I mean this is since you and I were growing up films with themes that are sexual that promote bad ideas that demonize beautiful ideas like honor and dignity and whatever Hollywood has been pushing this stuff out and making a lot of money off of it. And so this has been decades of this in the

culture. And it's produced people young and old who are just so lost that they can't even they can't even respond like adults. I mean, imagine, you know, you mentioned earlier when Martin Luther King was killed. A lot of people hate it. him for all kinds of reasons, good and bad. It would not have been acceptable to publicly say, oh, I'm glad he was killed. If you'd said that in most places in America, you would have been condemned. Today, we have people saying, I'm glad Charlie was killed. And you think, like, look, even if you, in your deluded way, believe he was this and this and this,

which he wasn't, and you believe that, nonetheless, you don't need to say anything about it. Somebody was murdered. And so there has been a coarsening of the culture. That's kind of what we're talking about. And what are the roots of the coarsening of that culture? You know, your book about American exceptionalism and your book about the Puritans. America was, there was another culture in decades previous, in centuries previous.

And I think part of what we're going through right now is we have to get back to that. we have to get back to understanding there is a God who loves us, there is meaning in the world, there is evil. There's somehow in our lifetimes we have devolved into this general coarsening in the culture. And again, the media, as far as I can tell, is mostly responsible. Well, it's largely responsible. Think about the educational institutions that brought this about. You know, we've gone through 50 years a generation of critical theory, deconstructionism,

postmodern thought. of which have been about dismantling the institutions of ideas of our nation. Institutions and ideas of our nation. So for the generation that is now in their early 20s, they have grown up completely. I think you said it right, infantilized because they're not, haven't been allowed to be confronted with ideas. They've been told, never mind all of that, it's meaningless, but not replaced with any kind, with any meaning.

And you can't live life in a vacuum without ideas without meaning to inspire to give a life purpose and meaning. And so what happens? They end up hopeless, helpless. As you said, stuck on social media, meme culture, internet, video games, porn, everything else that is robbing them of understanding. And when they're confronted with a basic idea or a suite of ideas like what Charlie Kirk would put forward, identifying right and wrong, truth and falsehood, it's frightening. And because they don't have the ability to argue or to defeat those arguments with facts, with words, they result of violence and evil. And so in Charlie's case, they silenced him with an assassin's bullet in the neck, in the throat,

the voice of all places. Not unlike Arina Zaruska in the train, just a week before, very spiritually symbolic, two sacrifices slaughtered in the neck over the last two weeks. But this, this silencing through violence is always the way of evil. It's always the way of cowards who are unable or unwilling. to confront ideas and facts, because they know they've lost on that front, so they're results to violence and power. And, you know, when we talk about the purveyors of these bad ideas,

there are active purveyors and then there are passive purveyors. And I say this, you know, it's one thing to be pushing out evil and bad ideas. It's another thing to go along with it or to say nothing. So it's the famous quote, I could never find, I don't believe Bonhofer actually said it, but it's usually attributed to him. Nonetheless, it's true. People can say that I said it. It's just true. The quote is, silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak, is to speak, not to act, is to act. God will not hold us guiltless. In other words, if you're silent in the face of evil,

if you do nothing when you can do something, God sees that you are complicit with evil. And what we're dealing with right now is a culture where we have had evil voices, liars, saying horrible things about all kinds of things. But we've had a lot of people going along with it. And, you know, the first place that I go is to the pastors and to the churches. It is your job to speak about these things, to catacize your people to understand what is right and what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what is true and beautiful. and what is false and hideous. And a lot of pastors that said, no, no, no, we just preach Jesus,

which is such a meaningless statement. What does that mean? Jesus didn't just preach Jesus. Like, it's so ridiculous, but they kind of hide behind this. And again, you know, I've been talking about this for years now with my book letter to the American Church, religious Christianity, this religious carve out.

Like, well, we don't want to go there. And the complicity with evil, I mean, we have to lay this in part, at at the foot of the churches that have said we don't want to get involved we don't want to they didn't even acknowledge the murder of charlie kirk in their sermons a couple of days ago they they they said well that's divisive or whatever it is i believe there's a sifting going on mike where those churches are dying they've been cursed like the fig tree by jesus it's like you're not bearing fruit people are looking for answers people are looking

for bold truth. And if they're not going to find it at your happy, clapy church, you know, with the latte bar, they're going to go, they're going to find it someplace else. And so I'm actually hopeful that this is a, this is a dividing line in the culture. This was so horrible that people are going to be bolder. And they're going to say, I want, I want real answers.

I'm not going to, I'm not going to go along with this anymore to pretend like we're living in an okay world. And an okay world doesn't have this kind of thing. happen. I strongly believe that the assassination of Charlie Kirk will prove to be a watershed moment for our society, for our nation. The organization named Turning Point now proves to be prophetic in that I believe this is a moment that we see it already in the nation's reaction. So we talked already about the extreme left reaction. But for most people, this has been a huge wake-up moment, a clarion call, a point of spiritual awakening.

We saw it in the fact that while many churches couldn't be bothered to say more than the events of last week, not mentioning Charlie Kirk's name, even the prayers of the people, horrific, many other churches were full yesterday in the last few days of people who were coming back, to try to understand, to try to put meaning into the events of Charlie Kirk's assassination into what they're seeing happening in their country. We know that the radical left want a civil war. They want societal breakdown. They want to see the so-called extreme right, which means, you know, let's say 50% of Americans who go to church or vote for Trump,

react with violence in the same way that they did in the summer of 2020. But there's a fundamental difference here, which you know very well, which is the left only knows how to destroy, how to deconstruct, how to tear down. It is people of faith. It is conservatives. It's people who love their countries, who love their families and their communities who actually know how to create, how to invent, how to build, and how to sustain. We're going to go to break, folks. I'm talking to Mike. Forgive me, Mike.

We're going to go to break. Talking to Mike Wilkerson, stormwall.com. We'll be right back. Plenty more with Mike Wilkerson. We're talking to Mike Wilkerson. You can find him at stormwall.com. Mike, you were just talking about this. that the left only knows how to tear down.

That is true. They know how to criticize and tear down, but they don't know. You know, it's so funny because what did Charlie talk about? Charlie talked about get married, have a family, buy a house, be a part of the solution. We used to be that country. And I think there are many people that they're lost

and they're looking for answers. And I think I have actually, I said it on X the other day, you know, to young men in particular. Like, if you're sleeping with somebody you're not married to, shame on you. Stop it immediately. Be a real man.

Pray that God would lead you to the person he wants you to marry. Marry that person. That is God's plan. Have a family. Be a man. Be a real man. We need to hear that in the culture. Because a lot of young men,

they're hearing confusion. voices or voices that say you're nobody, your life has no meaning. Your life has infinite meaning. Jesus died for you. He has a plan for you. I think many people are hungry for that. And I think Charlie was talking to those people and saying, you know, and Jordan Pearson does to some extent. Obviously, there are many voices out there that say God is real. Like, that's not just an idea. And he has a wonderful plan for you. Be if you're a young man, be a real man. step up and say, I want to serve God's best purposes. I want to build a family.

That's hard. Raising kids, being married. That's real beautiful, honorable work to build something and not just to be kind of floating through space, pretending like there's no meaning to life. And I think that there are a lot of young men that the reason they turn to these dark philosophies is because they don't know where else to go. And actually my heart breaks for them. You know, you think about one of the things that really encourages me

is that for every person who was impacted by Charlie Kirk during his lifetime, we can see already that 10 or even 100 are going to be impacted by Charlie Kirk through his martyrdom and through his death. People will be exposed to ideas, young men and women that they hadn't been touched by before. And while it's a horrific and tragic outcome here, it is not the end. It's not the end of the Charlie Kirk story, which really wasn't a Charlie Kirk story. It was a story of his love for God, his love for his nation, his love for his family, and trying to communicate those things and share ideas in the most peaceful and nonviolent way possible.

And that message is going to carry on. And in fact, I think it's going to amplify. The lifestyle that Charlie is advocating that you were just describing is countercultural. It runs against everything that people, many young people have been taught in this culture and a culture of permissiveness and a culture of promiscuity, but they're tired of it because it is empty and it is vain. And I believe we can have a lot of hope that Charlie Kirk's murder, assassination, his martyrdom will be the seeds that.

flow into many, many transformed lives and part of the Renaissance, the recovery that we are seeing in the United States, in this country. And so I remain hopeful. It's deeply saddened, but hopeful. I just have no doubt that, you know, again, it beggars the imagination, but that somehow this was part of God's bigger plan, that Charlie fulfilled his assignment, and that in his death, we're going to see an explosion of the ideas that he tried to promote of his faith in Jesus, that we're seeing that being spread around the country in a way that we could barely imagine it. But I really do think that we're going to experience deep revival and reformation. And the ideas that Charlie spoke against everywhere he went are going to be repeated.

that the, you know, the sexual revolution of the 60s will be repealed, this idea, that life has no meaning. It's about pleasure. What a, what a dark lie. What a sad lie. And how many people bought that idea and how many's lives have been destroyed or harmed by that idea? Mine certainly has been harmed by that idea before I came to faith around my 25th birthday. I didn't know what I believe that was not some hardcore sinner but I was lost and and I was really harmed by these ideas. The idea that there's real truth and that we can get it out there, I believe that we're going to see that. We're seeing that now and we're going to see more of it and people have prayed about this for decades. I wrote a couple years ago an article called, we're living in a death cult.

And the idea was just to point out how in how many ways, everything that that we're was being taught through our educational system, through mainstream media, was not realistic, that it was emptiness and meaninglessness. And people, I do believe that this young generation, they're hungry for truth. They're tired of the meaninglessness. They've lived it. They've not been taught anything. They're so desperate.

I don't know if you saw Eric, but over the weekend, university arenas, stadiums were full of people remembering, celebrating, mourning together for Charlie Kirk, but in a way it wasn't just for Charlie Kirk. It's because they are crying out to say, we want out of death cult. We want to find life. And you and I believe that life is found in Jesus Christ. And many of those people either believe that or are coming to believe that. But there is an awakening here to say enough of the death, the annihilation of hope and ideas. We'll be right back, folks. talking to Mike Wilkerson, you can find him at Stormwall.com. I'm talking to Mike Wilkerson.

You can find him at stormwall.com. I want to remind everybody, I forgot to mention it earlier, the annual Socrates in the city gala, our Christmas gala, Black Tie Gala here in New York City, is December 2nd. It's a Tuesday night in New York City at the Union League Club. Last year was an absolutely magical event, an amazing event.

And we've opened up, tickets are on sale now. It will sell out, I promise you, because it's not a huge room. So December 2nd, Socratesandcityn's City.com, if you want to visit that. We also have a matching grant right now at Socratesandesitie.com. We can use your help to promote. remote good ideas. People are hungry for good ideas. We've been talking about that.

And they come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. And Socrates and City is a little bit more cerebral. And, you know, it's, I've had the greatest guests, including Mike Wilkerson, talking about the big ideas and stuff. And it's always a joy. So, Mike, you write a lot. You think a lot. You've written a number of books.

What else can we say about where we are at this moment right now? First of all, just a quick plug. I've been around Socrates in the city for years and years. And just to underscore what you said as a third party that what Socrates in the city is doing is a worthwhile endeavor, folks in your audience to know that you need to get behind, Eric, you need to get behind Socrates in the City, because this is carrying the light here from, from one generation to another and keeping alive the ability to have public debate,

to understand and explore ideas in the pursuit of truth. And go to the annual gala if you can. If not, make sure you're getting behind Socrates in the city and supporting the work that they're doing. It is. I mean, it's funny because I don't talk about it too much, you know, but I have to say, like, just the other day I was in Washington, D.C., and a young woman came up to me and said she'd met her husband, her young husband at a TPSA thing.

whatever the Conservatives, whatever, she says, he was not a Christian believer. And through watching Socrates in the city, he came to faith. And now they're this happy, married couple who both believe in Jesus. And I thought, that's the greatest thing I could ever hear. And so it's just something that, you know, I think it's, I think it's important for us to say, we believe that searching for the truth, asking honest questions is, is central. It's central to why we're here. And that that's part of what Socrates and City exists to do is to say, this is a place where we have, we always say, you know, Sogody said the unexamined life is not worth living. Let's examine our lives. Let's examine what it means to be alive. What does it mean to be a person? Is there a God?

What can we know about God? You talk about all these things. And it's, it's wonderful, wonderful conversations I've had so many. And of course, with you as well, people can find that at Socrates and the city on our YouTube channel of the website, Socrates and City.com. What else can we say about Charlie and where we are as a nation right now? It's so, it's challenging suddenly to be living in this moment where you said it's a watershed moment. It is. There's just no doubt about it. And I honestly feel like normally you can feel like something goes away kind of quickly.

I just feel like this is like the highest mountain. Like this is huge. We don't know how huge. I think it's going to take us a long, long, long time to see the impact of this. Like, it's about as big as it gets. Yeah, I do believe it's the equivalent of something like the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, in that it's inspiring a nation. I mean, those were very, very serious moments.

But we have a choice to make. Every American now has to decide, am I going to cower in fear? am I going to be intimidated, or am I going to be part of the solution? Am I going to rise up? Am I going to take my part, whatever that means, in speaking truth, in some small way, filling Charlie's shoes in your own life, in your own community? And that, I think, is the watershed moment, that for millions of people who are otherwise sitting back, trusting in voices like Charlie or whomever to do it for them to say no,

and we've seen this in social media recently, this I am Charlie Kirk, young men and women is saying, I am going to stand up and fill his shoes and carry forward a voice and a message and be a voice of truth and a voice of free speech and supporting the First Amendment, the right to be able to debate and to argue publicly. In some ways, I don't know, we'll see, but in some ways I feel like this is bigger than the murder of JFK or RFK Martin Luther King Jr., why don't you?

do I say that? Two reasons. Number one, those murders, I think, led many people to despair. What do I do now? Where do I go now? It's over. I was hopeful. He was leading us someplace, and now that's over. And I feel differently here. I feel like Charlie, in his life and his death, he empowered people to say, no, we will now pick up that torch and we will fight and we will be, the voices or whatever. And I don't, I think that wasn't so much the case with JFK or

RFK or MLK that there was a kind of a hopelessness that crept in like our heroes have been murdered and it's sad and it kind of leads to despair, the despair of Watergate, the despair of Vietnam, like everybody, you know, just interject and say one thing. I totally agree with you,

especially after JFK and even Martin Luther, the culture was exhausted. had a civil rights movement had run a long course, very bloody course, very difficult, Vietnam. But I want to remind you, Eric, if you look at the longer arc of history, we then had in the early 70s the beginning of the Jesus people movement. And the rise up of, say, the hippie culture, people who were worn out, drugged out, totally despairing of the hope that they had put in humanism and other things in the 60s, coming back to faith in Christ, coming back into the church.

And all of that, coming back to families, all of that through the 70s, led to the Reagan Revolution, both politically and spiritually. So I agree with you. There was a lot of despair. Hopefully this time we can be more energizing and get people out of despairing to hope sooner. But over the longer arc, even then, Jesus wins. He did bring his children back into the family in the 70s. The other thing I was going to say, we can follow this after the break,

but the other weird thing is that JFK, RFK, and MLK, they were all adulterers. these were not saints. So they had some good qualities, some amazing qualities, but you couldn't look up to them in the way that you could look up to Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk was like a saint. He spoke boldly about his faith. I mean, it would be like if Billy Graham had been murdered, you know, 50 years ago, what would that be like? And Charlie was that kind of a figure. And so there's, I guess I'm more hopeful about what's going to follow. We'll be right back talking to Mike Wilkerson. you can find him at stormwall.com. Welcome back talking to Mike Wilkerson.

So Mike, I was just saying, like, what's interesting to me is that JFK, MLK, and RFK, they were, like, I said this when I interviewed RFK Jr. At Socrates in the city, you can watch it. Maybe they cut it out of the intro. They thought it was too harsh. But I said, like, listen, John F. Kennedy was bringing prostitutes into the White House regularly. That's not a joke. So, like, he was doing tremendously good things, but he was very flawed. So is his brother. So it seems was Martin Luther King Jr. So they represented some great things,

but they were really morally flawed. Charlie Kirk was a family man and really committed to his wife and family. And he was speaking that into the culture. And so I really am hopeful that a lot of people are going to say, you know what, I want to be like Charlie Kirk. I want to find a wife. I want to have a family. if young men would do that, wow, you're going to have a different culture. It's going to be a different culture. If young men would say, you know what, I want to stop being a boy. I want to be a man. I'm going to ask God to lead me to the woman he has for me to marry and stuff.

You talk about changing the world. That would change the world because we're stuck in this kind of adolescence that, you know, since you and I were kids, the whole culture has been stuck in this adolescence since the 60s of pleasure and whatever. So I think it's a watershed, as you said, in that as well. I think what Charlie would say, I believe, would be something like what Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. You know, he would never say, look at me, look at how good of a person I am. Yes, he exemplified a lot of values, but he was always pointing behind himself to Jesus Christ,

the one who had inspired him to live the way he did. And may I have, you know, I want a little bit of Charlie. I want to be like Charlie. I want to find in me the passion to stand up to pursue a life of meaning, pursue a life of purpose, to have a good life, but a good and honorable death as well. I want to be able to say, I live with meaning and purpose. And now, I think for all of us, may we resolve to live a life worthy of Charlie Kirk's sacrifice, and ultimately of Jesus Christ's sacrifice, both of whom gave their lives for the ones that they loved.

And we're all going to die, folks, in case he didn't get the memo. Who was it? The great poet, Jim Morrison, nobody here gets out alive. That's the point. It's like if you're a Christian, you understand, I am to be, Bonhofer said, when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. We're called to die to self, to die to self, and then to open myself up to serve God with my life. and to know that when I leave this world, I don't die.

I will live forever because of my faith in him. That is so beautiful. And Charlie talked about that a lot. He wasn't just talking about conservative stuff. It all came out of his faith in Jesus. Final minute, Mike. What else can we talk about? The last point that I would want to make is for those who are in the church and who are Christians,

I think we've gone to a point in church culture where we've wanted the resurrection, without the cross. We wanted to have the goodies, the good stuff, the blessings of life, but we haven't realized what it costs Jesus and what he says it will cost those who follow him. If they persecuted me, they'll persecute you also. If they hate you, they hated me before they hated you. There is a reminder that we are called to carry the cross. There is resurrection at the end. There is life. But he does bid us come and die. Lay down as a sacrifice. Walk with me on the road to Calvary. May we be willing to do that. There is nothing more beautiful than this, folks. This is why you came into this world.

Jesus is the meaning of your life. He has a plan for you in case I haven't mentioned it before. Most important thing. Mike Wilkerson, great to speak with you. Folks can find you at stormwall.com. Thank you, Mike.