Who Is Charlie Kirk?

My VIP for this week is Charlie Kirk, conservative activist who was assassinated on September 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. One month prior to his assassination, Kirk finished drafting his book, “Stop, in the Name of God: Why Honoring the Sabbath Will Transform Your Life.”

Eva Terry at the Deseret News reported on the release of Kirk’s final project. The book was released last Tuesday and “sold out in every Barnes & Noble across Utah and is still sold out on Amazon. “Kirk’s book asks the question, ‘Are we still bound to observe the Sabbath?’ His answer draws from the Bible, his own quest to keep the Sabbath day holy, and centuries of Christian and Jewish theology.” Terry’s report continued as follows. 

The book begins with a preview by his wife, Erika Kirk, written after her husband was killed.

“These pages are not theory for him, they are testimony. The words you hold in your hands were the convictions he lived that were written on his heart,” she wrote.

Then Charlie Kirk’s words begin: “I desire to bring all humanity back to God’s design to rest for an entire day. To cease working, to STOP, in the name of GOD.”

Terry explained that the book originated in the spring of 2020 because Charlie Kirk “was becoming progressively more fatigued, tired and spiritually confused.” He spoke to David Engelhardt, by that summer. “‘I told him I was hitting a wall, I had more obligations than time, and I was drinking eight cups of coffee a day just to stay afloat,’ Kirk wrote. Engelhardt responded simply, ‘Are you honoring the Sabbath?’”

Kirk replied that he did not have time to take one day off work a week and explained why he was so busy. That night he searched through a Bible for every single verse about the Sabbath. “‘The more I started to appreciate the Sabbath, the more I realized the great need to share its wondrous beauty with the world,’ he wrote. ‘I hold this belief very clearly: If the Sabbath can change my life, it can change everyone’s life.’”

Across the book’s 13 chapters, Kirk argues the case for Christianity and keeping the Sabbath day holy. While attitudes about the Sabbath have loosened among Christians, Kirk said a return to full observance will help counter society’s ills.

To explain why, Kirk went back to the beginning. He asked, why did God rest on the seventh day of Creation, and why has he commanded us to do the same?

“This rest is due not to fatigue, but to fullness,” Kirk reasoned. “It is not the withdrawal of power, but the crowning of meaning. It is the divine punctuation mark at the end of the most magnificent sentence ever spoken. It is the declaration that the created world imbued with divine speech and radiant with order, is not merely functional but good – and that its goodness is worthy of joy.”

The Creator’s “commands are not arbitrary,” he wrote. “They are rooted in His goodness and designed for human flourishing…. Obedience to God is not servility to a cosmic despot but alignment with the moral fabric of reality itself.”

To fully observe the Sabbath, you must fully commit yourself to the rest of the week, Kirk wrote.

“The lazy heart isn’t just inefficient – it’s disobedient,” he said. “We are witnessing a crisis – not of job, but of purpose. What happens to a culture when men stop building, stop protecting, stop leading? When instead of planting gardens or shaping the world, they retreat into virtual realities and chemical sedation? The Bible doesn’t describe that as rest – it calls it sloth. And sloth isn’t just laziness. It’s a refusal to become what God made you to be.”

Kirk connected surging depression, anxiety and suicide rates with the declining belief in meaningful work.

“Work is not punishment; it is participation in divine order,” he wrote. “God is not idle, and those made in His image are not meant to be either. Labor is a way of mirroring the creativity and faithfulness of the Creator, and when we detach from it, we not only weaken ourselves materially, but unravel something essential in our souls.”

Though the book is largely philosophical, there are several moments where Kirk gets personal with his reader, and they are heart-wrenching to read after his death.

“I thank God every day for the work I’ve been given. I leap out of bed without caffeine, energized not by adrenaline, but by gratitude. I get to speak truth. I get to reach people. I get to labor in a cause that matters,” he wrote.

This book by Charlie Kirk just weeks prior to his death is a true testimonial. His testimony about the Sabbath Day was sealed by his death. I have read and heard many testimonials about keeping the Sabbath Day holy, but I have not read or heard any better.

I can also testify that it is important to keep the Sabbath Day holy. One essential reason for keeping the Sabbath Day holy is because obedience to God’s commandments brings His blessings. A second important reason is that our minds and bodies need to rest. This is the reason for the commandment!

I learned this important principle many years ago. I usually “rested” on Sunday, but there were a few Sundays when I was out of town and could not observe the Sabbath on Sunday. I learned that I could not make it through the week without a “Sabbath.” When I could not “rest” on Sunday, then I had to devote another day during the week to being my Sabbath, or I would be too exhausted to function properly.