I’ve been watching the preliminary hearing of the Charlie Kirk murder case this week, via Joshua Carr’s livestream of the courtroom. You can view the replay streams here, though YouTube has already removed his Day 1 stream just hours after it went live, citing copyright concerns. (I’ll update the link if needed.)
As I’ve watched the proceedings and sat with what I’ve seen, the entire situation weighs heavily on my mind: Charlie’s relentless work leading up to that day, the shocking murder itself (which I saw live, via stream), the raw public reaction, the spiritual revival it seemed to ignite, and the swirl of drama and competing narratives unleashed by podcasters/influencers — even the trial of Tyler Robinson, still to come — has left so much swirling in my spirit.
I suspect I’m not alone. These are the thoughts I feel led to share…
The Grief That Made No Sense
The death of Charlie Kirk shook something loose in people not just politically, not just culturally, but spiritually. Many who felt it couldn’t quite explain why, because the grief didn’t follow normal rules. You don’t sob for weeks over someone you never met, even if you admired them and followed their work, unless something beyond the natural is at work.
Many believers who were familiar with Charlie’s work and character experienced exactly this kind of mourning at his death, and Scripture actually accounts for it. Paul writes in Romans 12:15:
Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.
This is not merely a suggestion about emotional etiquette. It is a description of how a Spirit-knit body functions. When one member suffers, the others feel it, sometimes before they even understand why. The mourning that swept through Christian and patriot spaces in the wake of Charlie’s assassination wasn’t fandom. It was the body of Christ doing what it was designed to do.
But what happens when that body turns on itself?
The Deception That Divides
In the months since the assassination, a different kind of assault has emerged. It has come not from the expected outside enemies, but from within. Voices that once moved in the same circles, like those of Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, Steve Bannon, Ian Carroll, and others have poured fuel on theories that range from the improbable to the outright grotesque. These include claims that Tyler Robinson was a patsy, that Erika Kirk or Turning Point insiders orchestrated the murder, that Israel or shadowy billionaires ordered the hit, or that the whole thing was some elaborate psy-op.
What began as “just asking questions” has hardened into a cottage industry of suspicion, accusation, and character assassination aimed squarely at a grieving widow and those carrying forward the work. This is not discernment. It is not courageous truth-telling. It is the very intoxication Peter warned against, the loss of sober-mindedness that leaves the body vulnerable to devouring from within (1 Peter 5:8).
These narratives do not strengthen the church. They do not honor the dead or comfort the widow. They distract from the real spiritual battle. They sow distrust among brethren, and they give the enemy exactly what he wants: a fractured Body too busy devouring its own to resist the darkness. We are watching a vivid illustration of how the elect can be deceived in the last days (Matthew 24:24), when grief is hijacked, when conspiracy becomes an idol, and when “speaking out” becomes a cloak for cruelty and self-promotion.
The Glee That Revealed Everything
Again, I find myself asking that core question: But what happens when that body turns on itself? That is the question many discerning voices have long raised, and it is the core question that moved me to write this morning.
In the weeks following Charlie Kirk’s death, as the mourning period began to wane, something else surfaced. There was glee. There was open celebration. There was dancing. There was grotesque joy for many, and it was not just from expected corners of cultural opposition, but from people who claimed to occupy Christian or conservative spaces.
The commentary directed at Erika Kirk, a grieving widow carrying forward her husband’s legacy while raising their children, has been disgraceful in ways that go well beyond political disagreement. In fact, this is not political disagreement. It is demonic.
Many commentators, even those who are candid about not being an influencer and not aspiring to become one, have increasingly called on believers to stand with Erika, to pray for her fervently, and to refuse complicity through either participation or silence. “God is watching,” Melanie Nicole said, “and we will be held accountable.” She is not wrong. That is not overstatement. That is the word.
Peter writes in 1 Peter 5:8:
Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
The Greek word translated “sober-minded” here is nēphō, meaning to be free from the intoxication of passion, confusion, or crowd momentum. In other words, don’t get swept up. Don’t join the pile-on. Don’t mistake cruelty dressed in political language for justified opinion.
The enemy is not above using our platforms, our comment sections, and our silence as instruments. Peter says, in so many words, “stay clear-headed, because something is hunting.”
(At the time of this posting, it appears that Melanie Nicole’s statement has been removed or made private following significant backlash and threats after she shared these thoughts. I have experienced similar backlash myself. When credible threats begin rolling in, it is wise — even prudent — to pull back for a season or remove content that is drawing fire. Yet this tension only underscores the weight of her original call: standing up is costly, and the battle is real.)
A Vision of Confirmation
I hesitate to even share this portion of my thoughts, because it stands in such sharp contradiction to what others have claimed. This is where discernment is important. Candace Owens has publicly asserted that she had a premonition dream involving bees and a school setting days before the murder. Afterward, she has said Charlie himself came to her in vivid dreams, telling her he was betrayed and pointing toward Israel (and insiders connected to Turning Point) as responsible for the plot.
Dreams and visions from the Lord are very real. Scripture is full of them. God still speaks this way to His people. But there are also those who invoke dreams and visions for personal benefit and financial gain, and I believe wholeheartedly that is what we are seeing in the case of Candace Owens. Her fruit — not just recently, but from as far back as her high school days — speaks for itself and makes the need for discernment, not fleshly judgment, very clear. The contradiction is loud. Yet precisely because it is loud, we cannot shrink back from the truth.
That said, around the same time Melanie Nicole was sounding her alarm, Lecrae, a man known for being careful with his words and more careful still with anything touching the prophetic, shared something that unsettled him deeply and, I’ll be honest, unsettled me when I saw it (view his video here).
“Waking from sleep, not in a dream but in a waking vision, the room turned purple. I saw Charlie Kirk being assassinated. And then I heard laughter. Demonic laughter.
It was not mourning. Not silence.
It was laughter.
In an instant the curtain closed, the room returned to normal color, and I was left shaken.”
He was explicit: he hates, condemns, and despises the murder of any human being for their difference of perspective. But he also understood what he had been shown. The enemy was celebrating. The silencing of a bold voice had brought darkness joy.
This is precisely what Paul describes in Ephesians 6:12:
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
The word “wrestle” in the Greek is palē, a term drawn from hand-to-hand combat, implying close, grinding, personal struggle. Paul is not describing a distant theological abstraction. He is describing the immediate, intimate nature of spiritual opposition.
What Lecrae saw, and what Melanie named, and what so many believers have felt in their gut since Charlie’s death, is exactly that. Up close, personal, and very real: the darkness was laughing because it believed it had won something.
What the Church Does Next
The two voices I’ve echoed in this post, one weeping in intercession for a widow and one shaken by a waking vision of demonic laughter, are not outliers or alarmists. They are people reading the moment accurately, because they are reading it through the lens of Scripture rather than through the lens of political tribalism or social media momentum.
The hatred born from Charlie Kirk’s murder, nor the cruelty directed at Erika Kirk, are simply bad manners. Both are a coordinated assault from a kingdom that hates what Erika represents: a woman carrying forward the work of a man who named darkness by name, refused to be silent about it, and was murdered for it.
Jezebel spirits do not take days off because someone is grieving. Antichrist forces do not pause out of respect for widowhood. None of this is hyperbole. It is the consistent testimony of people who looked at the same moment and saw the same war underneath it, and what the church does right now matters more than most of us realize.
We are called to weep with those who weep. We are called to stand in the gap, to pray without ceasing, and to refuse the comfortable silence that allows evil to advance unchallenged. The call from voices like Melanie Nicole is not a social media campaign. It is the call of Scripture itself: humble yourselves, repent where repentance is due, and fight the real enemy instead of devouring your own.
Lecrae saw the curtain pulled back for only a moment. But a moment was enough. The darkness was laughing. The question now is whether the church will give it anything else to laugh about, or whether we will finally, soberly, wake up to the war we are actually in and act accordingly.
Pray for Erika Kirk and her children. Stand with her. Do not be deceived about what is really happening here.
Closing Thoughts
When I sat down to write this post, I turned this topic over in my mind several times trying to decide where it belonged here at Twin Tree. It could have lived inside Authenticity Unveiled, because what we are watching is a mass failure to see through a deception, the deception that cruelty toward the grieving is either justified or neutral.
It could have fit within a spiritual warfare framework, anchored entirely in Ephesians 6 and the very real invisible battle these voices are describing. It touches on church culture, on prophetic discernment, on what it means to be the body of Christ in a moment of collective grief and collective testing. But I kept coming back to the same thing.
At its core, this is an opinion piece. It is my read on a moment, informed by Scripture, shaped by what I believe to be true about the nature of spiritual warfare and the responsibility of the church. I decided that framing it as opinion was the most honest and most accessible angle, because it opens the door widest for the broadest range of readers to walk through it without feeling preached at from a category they weren’t expecting.
That said, calling this an opinion does not mean the evidence is thin. The testimony of multiple credible voices, the consistency of Scripture on every point raised here, and the plainly observable behavior of people celebrating a widow’s grief all point in the same direction.
This is one of those cases where the opinion and the evidence are not really in tension. They simply agree.
Make of that what you will.