United States President Donald Trump, Erika Kirk and more than a dozen others gave speeches to honour the late Charlie Kirk at a memorial service, highlighting his efforts to promote conservative values to young people and promote the Gospel on campus. Source: CNA.
Some 90,000 people gathered for the memorial service at State Farm Stadium and an adjacent venue in Glendale, Arizona, yesterday. Word on Fire Media apostolate founder Bishop Robert Barron, who had scheduled Mr Kirk to come on his show, was among those in attendance.
Mr Kirk, an evangelical Christian, was assassinated on September 10 during an event at Utah Valley University while debating students on campus.
“What was even more important to Charlie than politics and service was the choice he made in the fifth grade — which he called the most important decision of his life — to become a Christian and a follower of his Saviour Jesus Christ,” said Mr Trump, a self-identified nondenominational Christian.
Mr Kirk’s wife, Erika, said her husband’s devotion to Christ has influenced many Americans in the aftermath of the assassination.
“This past week, we saw people open a Bible for the first time in a decade, we saw people pray for the first time since they were children, we saw people go to a church service for the first time in their entire lives,” she said.
“Pray again, read the Bible again, go to church next Sunday and the Sunday after that, and break free from the temptations and shackles of this world,” she urged the audience.
Appealing to the Gospel message, Erika Kirk also extended forgiveness to the man who shot her husband.
“On the cross our Saviour said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do,’” she said. “That man, that young man, I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer, we know from the Gospel, is love and always love. Love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”
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Trump, Vance among those honouring Charlie Kirk’s Christian legacy (By Tyler Arnold, CNA)
