The murder of Charlie Kirk at age 31 is another in a long line of God-fearing men who died young. Consider the impact of just a dozen or so of these heroes of the faith, in the past 6,000 years.
The first death was of the first martyr: Abel, killed by his angry, jealous brother Cain (Genesis 4:1-8). We have no idea of his age, but he already was old enough to be a rancher, but seems to not have left any children. The Bible notes that Abel’s offering was more pleasing to God because of his genuine faith (Hebrews 11:4).
John the Baptist (literally, the Baptizer) was in his 30’s when he was decapitated by a ruler who disliked John’s commentary on Herod’s adulterous marriage to his brother’s wife, nearly two thousand years ago. Herod didn’t like being publicly reprimanded for his sexual immorality.
Stephen, one of the first deacons and the first Christian martyr (Acts chapter 6), was stoned to death at about age 30, with a young Saul (later known as the Apostle Paul) holding the cloaks of those who were killing him for telling Jewish leaders truths they did not want spoken about the divinity of Jesus. Those leaders were unable to rebut Stephen’s wise statements, so they invented lies about him.
Completely burned out in the service of God as His ambassador to Native Americans on the east coast of North America, David Brainerd died of tuberculosis at Northampton, Massachusetts in 1747 at the age of 29, in the home of the brilliant and devotedly godly preacher Jonathan Edwards, whose own daughter Jerusha died of the same disease a few months later at 18, after caring for the dying young man during his final year. Edwards himself died in 1758 at age 54, after having taken an experimental smallpox vaccination shot.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne, an evangelistic Scottish minister whose Memoirs have inspired many, died at 29 in 1843. As Bill Muehlenberg has written, “He was keen on missionary activity to Jews in Palestine, and … had a remarkable impact for the Kingdom, even though he died so young. He left behind plenty of memorable quotes, such as: `It is not great talents God blesses so much as great likenesses to Jesus. A holy minister is an awful weapon in the hand of God.’ ”
Oswald Chambers, best known for the continuously world-famous daily devotional My Utmost for His Highest and his love of the Savior, died in Egypt in 1917 at age 43, soon after having had appendicitis; he balked at going to a hospital because he felt that the beds would be needed by men wounded in the long-expected Third Battle of Gaza.
Eric Liddell, famous for his speed (as immortalized in the 1981 movie, Chariots of Fire) as an Olympic runner (“God made me … fast”) and for his choosing to keep the 4th Commandment rather than to compete on what he regarded as the Lord’s Day, died of a brain tumor on February 21, 1945 at age 43, in China. Two years before, the Japanese invaders had placed him and many others in a squalid prison camp. All the children in the camp loved him deeply and called him “Uncle Eric.” During his years there he poured himself out in care and encouragement for the most vulnerable. Randy Alcorn’s tribute to Liddell is very much worth reading and sharing with your family.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned to Nazi Germany from the safety of the US to pastor members of the true church there, and was arrested and hanged, naked, at age 39 on April 9, 1945, weeks before the Allies freed Germany, along with six other men who had conspired to attempt to remove Hitler. His life and death embodied the essence of the famous book he wrote, The Cost of Discipleship.
Jim Elliot was speared to death at age 28 along with four others in Ecuador on January 8, 1956, by Auca Indians whom these young men were trying to reach with the news of the merciful love of Jesus (the same motivation as Charlie Kirk, whose life mission was “to make Heaven crowded”). He wrote this in his diary: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” You can read and hear about his story here, and in Through Gates of Splendor, the book his widow Elisabeth Elliott wrote in 1957 after she and another of the widows and their children moved in to live with the Aucas who had done that. As the son of one of the other young men remarked decades later, “There’s an old saying, hurt people hurt people; maybe it’s also true that forgiven people learn to forgive people.”
Dawson Trotman, founder of The Navigators scripture-based discipleship ministry to World War II soldiers, drowned on June 18, 1956 in Schroon Lake in upstate New York at age 50 while saving a drowning little girl camper who had also been thrown out of their motorboat. (Incidentally, he brought Renée to the US from her Paris birthplace to rejoin her family when she was 3, in 1954—but that’s a separate story—we look forward to thanking him for that one day!)
Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, died at Entebbe Airport in Uganda at age 30 in 1976 while leading his team that freed more than a hundred Jewish or Israeli hostages from the evil regime of Idi Amin.
Inimitable contemporary Christian songwriter Keith Green died at age 28 along with two of his young children when their overloaded, under-piloted Cessna airplane crashed in Texas in 1982. His music still challenges listeners today.
As Seth Meyers has written, “Such a surprising number of very gifted and godly men died young, that we should not think highly of ourselves or much of our own lives, but rather be very content if only our King is obeyed, and [His]… essence of sweetness and beauty is adored.”
The surname Kirk translates as Church. Even so, may the living body that is the Church of God—the body of Christ—remain faithful to the Lord until He comes for His bride. Amen.
