The Age of Spiritual Warfare Is Here. Will You Rise or Fall? | The American Spectator

The bullet that killed Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University did not only strike down a man. It announced something deeper, something darker — the arrival of open spiritual warfare in America. For years, the signs were there: classrooms colonized by ideology, churches emptied by apathy, communities corroded by contempt. But Kirk’s assassination and the celebrations that followed crushed the last illusions. The age of debate has ended. The age of spiritual battle has begun. (RELATED: Charlie Kirk: The Last Debater)

Charlie was 31. A husband, a father, a leader who built Turning Point USA into a force for young conservatives. He was gunned down for daring to defend the faith and the family. Yet the greater shock came after the trigger was pulled. Academics mocked his death. Students sniggered. City councilors joked about it. Online mobs raised their glasses as if assassination were a sport. Apparel companies cashed in with t-shirts glorifying the crime. They delighted in his destruction. They rejoiced in widowhood. They chuckled at fatherless children. That response was downright demonic. (RELATED: Demons and Demonization)

This is what spiritual war looks like when it pierces the surface of politics. One side clings to eternal truths, to the God who gives life meaning, to the dignity of the human soul. The other side has surrendered to nihilism. They deny transcendence, they scorn faith, they sanctify power. In their world, opponents are not individuals but problems. And problems, once identified, must be eliminated. (RELATED: Charlie Kirk Is a Casualty of the Cultural Counterrevolution)

The Bible warns that our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers of darkness. That warning is no longer distant. It is here. We see it on our streets in the rise of senseless violence. We hear it in classrooms where faith is mocked and vice excused. We witness it online where cruelty is condoned and death becomes a punchline. When a young father’s murder is met with laughter, we are staring into the pit of evil Scripture foretold. (RELATED: The Blood of the Martyrs: Charlie Kirk’s Witness and Movement)

The psychology of the modern left reveals a sickness that is both personal and political. Studies confirm what functioning eyeballs and brains make plain: heightened anxiety, emotional volatility, and a hypersensitivity to offense. Social science surveys show left-leaning young people consistently scoring higher on measures of fragility and neuroticism. Their identity is fragile, their worldview brittle. Challenge them, and they feel annihilated. Disagree with them, and they feel violated. And so they lash out, not with argument but with rage. That rage metastasizes into violence, first on campuses, then in city streets. And when the violence is done, they do not mourn it. They cheer. (RELATED: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Exposes a Generation in Crisis)

Charlie Kirk became intolerable because he embodied what they could not stand. He was rooted when they were rootless. He was faithful when they were faithless. He was effective where they were impotent. He represented the things they had abandoned. His life was proof that another way was possible, and that proof was unbearable. So they purged the proof.

History shows what happens when societies slip into the abyss. Revolutionary France turned ideals into guillotines. Bolshevik Russia turned promises of genuine equality into gulags. Each time the old order was obliterated, the old faith cast aside, and brutality rushed in to fill the void. America now stands at a similar precipice. We have crossed the threshold where culture does not recoil from violence but actively rewards it.

We must be clear. The days of negotiation are over. The left has made it abundantly clear that it does not want compromise. It doesn’t want debate. It wants domination. It wants silence. It wants death. This is not hyperbole.

But we must be equally clear. This is not a call to arms. Our task is unity, clarity, and courage. The right must wake up to the scale of the threat. We are not facing policy disagreements. We are facing an existential struggle between heaven and hell, light and darkness, facts and fiction. Until that is recognized, we will remain disorganized and divided while our enemies grow bold.

The answer is not to beg for crumbs from institutions that despise us. They cannot be reformed. They laughed at Charlie’s passing. Their corruption is complete. Our task is to build anew. Churches that preach truth without fear. Schools that teach wisdom instead of propaganda. Businesses that honor the worker instead of worshiping ideology. We cannot borrow broken tools. We must build our own.

Charlie Kirk’s death is a piercing wound. It is also a profound revelation. The malice has unmasked itself. It has shown us what it is, what it craves, what it crowns. We cannot unsee it. We cannot pretend it is otherwise. We cannot bargain with it. We can only resist it together, united, steadfast, without fear. (RELATED: An Immense Ray of Light Pierces the Heart of the West)

Civilization hangs by a few threads. Those threads are faith, family, and freedom. When they are severed, ruin comes swiftly. Yet hope endures. That is the promise we cling to, the promise that must animate us now. Our answer must be solidarity and love stronger than death. Only then can we weather the storm. Only then can we rise and rebuild. One needn’t believe in heaven to believe in hell. Millions of Americans already dwell in it, revel in their place there, and are desperate to drag the rest of us down with them.

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