In an interview, Charlie Kirk said, “Before I go on a college campus, my prayer is very simple: ‘God use me for your will…’ So what is God’s plan when I go onto college campuses? I will only tell the truth. I will not compromise and I love on the lost… Jesus called us to tell the truth and Jesus called us to contest in the public square for his purposes. I am far more interested in what God wants of me than what I want from God and what God wants for me is a life fighting for the truth.”

Observing the opposition fighting against him, Kirk said, “They will use the sword if they have one. They are very violent. They can’t debate. They can’t have conversation, so they’ll resort to these tactics. They’re going to do everything they possibly can to try to murder this movement because they can’t beat us.”

His angry opposition could not out-reason, out-think, out-debate, out-smart, out-wit, certainly not-polite or even out-humor him, like on a campus when accused of being anti-trans, Kirk replied, “No, I’m pro-reality.”

Unable to out-do him, an assassin’s bullet took him out. In the aftermath, a local pastor posted, “You can silence a voice, but you can’t silence the truth.”

Truth is what Kirk had, not some cockamamied post-modern concept of “my truth – your truth” nonsense popularized in godless Marxist academia, but truth as objective reality ultimately revealed in the person of Jesus whom Charlie boldly believed and proclaimed.

“It’s all about Jesus,” he said. “We need Jesus Christ. This nation needs a Savior. Jesus is the only way. We need to come back to God as a nation.”

A father thought Charlie Kirk was a “political animal,” but discovered how his daughter saw him as a “faith leader.”

How do politics and faith mix? Charlie’s pastor, Rob McCoy, answered it, saying, “Charlie looked at politics as an on-ramp to Jesus. He knew if he could get all of you rowing in the streams of liberty, you’d come to its source. And that’s the Lord.”

It is the Lord, for Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Charlie wore T-shirts saying, “Freedom” and “Live Free,” but my favorite was “Unmute Yourself.”

John the Baptist unmuted himself when he “got political” and confronted the adultery of King Herod. He was martyred for it. Charlie unmuted himself when he spoke on college campuses defending God’s order of creation against the fraud of transgenderism. He was martyred too.

Still the unrelenting assaults kept flying at Charlie. Even during his death, the Left refused to put down their guns of vitriol, firing off rounds of verbal bullets labeled with “racist, bigot, homophobe, Islamophobe, fascist, Nazi, and hater… ” At Dow Park in Jamestown during the recognition of 9-11 and Charlie Kirk, a spiteful driver passing by shouted, “He got what he deserved.”

Not a joke by a late-night tasteless comedian, a meme by a former Chautauqua County resident posted a picture of the memorial service for Charlie with a caption in all-caps saying, “THE LARGEST KKK RALLY IN RECENT YEARS.” She ironically called Trump “stark raving mad.” After seeing a post that said, “A role model for girls should be Erika Kirk, not Taylor Swift,” the same former resident wrote, “Absolutely not. ”

Not to be outdone by her, a pastor who also is a Democrat city legislator in another state likened Charlie to an imperial wizard of the KKK. If you can’t see the ugly hateful demented darkness of the left, you are blind to common decency and truth.

Watching in disgust people “dancing” on Kirk’s grave even before he was buried, I never thought I would see the day of witnessing even a smidgeon of teachers and professors celebrating a school shooting.

Yet, I found humor from a seminary friend posting, “I pray the demons rejoice when I die too.” What’s more, the devil may indeed have overplayed his hand. There may be an army of Charlie Kirks rising up following his counsel when he said, “Christ wants us to be salt and light. There are two characteristics of salt and light. They change the environment they come in contact with. They do not affirm . They do not conform. They change for the better. We as Christians are called to change the environment we come in touch with.”

Charlie was a consummate change agent, but the world could not change him even in death. Though lying dead in the hospital, Erika insisted on seeing him. Seeing him with eyes half-opened, she saw a “Mona Lisa-like half-smile. Like he’d died happy. Like Jesus rescued him. The bullet came, he blinked, and he was in heaven.” He died, like he lived, a happy warrior for Jesus.

The Rev. Mel McGinnis is a Frewsburg resident.