“Charlie Kirk” Exposes the Protestant Reformed Churches

Christ is coming, and there are certain times throughout history when his footsteps fall with such clarity that they can almost be heard. Such was the case with the murder of Charlie Kirk and its aftermath in late 2025. Charlie Kirk was a fascinating figure who made dramatic waves in the nominal church world. Kirk’s impact rivals that of Billy Graham and his global ecumenical movement. Kirk did not merely replicate Billy Graham’s ecumenical movement; Kirk took it further. Kirk used that ecumenical movement to drive massive political change, and he was beginning to show success. His unexpected death demonstrated that God is not ready to bring the church world together in support of the antichrist. Charlie Kirk is a warning to the church: She ought to be looking for one to come who is like him.

However, my primary interest is not Charlie Kirk nor his work of bringing Christian nationalism to the modern ecumenical movement. My interest is especially in how Rev. Jacob Maatman judged Charlie Kirk and how through Maatman the Protestant Reformed Churches (PRC) judged Charlie Kirk. Even more, my interest is in demonstrating a subtle but significant shift in the Protestant Reformed apologetic. This shift can be seen by making a comparison between Charlie Kirk and Billy Graham, against whom the ministers of the PRC were bold and unapologetic in their stand against the lie.

Billy Graham was a massive personality in the United States starting in the 1950s, and his influence lasted for decades. He was known mostly for the crusades that he conducted throughout the United States and the world, where hundreds of thousands of people would gather to hear Graham speak. His message was consistent: Confront the people with their sins; tell them that now is the time for them to decide to be saved; and if one makes a decision to accept Christ as his savior, then God will save him. Graham’s crusades vaulted him into influence, which carried through to radio, television, movies, magazines, and printed media. He was known as “America’s Pastor” and a “Pastor to the Presidents” till his death in 2018.

As such, Graham was well known to the ministers of the Protestant Reformed Churches. The Protestant Reformed Churches roundly condemned Billy Graham in The Standard Bearer. To explain how the “phenomenal Billy Graham” could have such influence and command such large audiences, the PRC’s spiritual father Rev. Herman Hoeksema wrote:

Before Billy Graham goes anywhere “to preach the gospel” or to conduct a “crusade,” the field is prepared for him by several ministers as well as laymen, weeks and even months in advance. Without this preparation, Billy probably would have no audience to speak of. In fact, Billy will not go anywhere to preach without this thorough preparation of the field. Weeks before his evangelistic campaign in Chicago, I received letters requesting that I would also help to prepare the field and to pray with my congregation for the “success” of the crusade in Chicago. I did nothing of the kind, of course. Personally, I do not believe in such an utterly mechanical and false preparation in order to gather large crowds of hearers for the preaching of the gospel.¹

Reverend Hoeksema further explained this “success” and popularity of Billy Graham:

Billy does not preach the truth!

I know what I am talking about, for I have heard Billy speak over the radio rather often. He preaches an Arminian gospel and that is no gospel. He preaches a gospel for all men, a free-will gospel and that is not the gospel of God; it is not the gospel which Christ preached. It is not the gospel which the apostles preached.²

This is representative of the long history of The Standard Bearer’s treatment of Graham. A few years later, Reverend Harbach explained the rapidly expanding movement around Graham in connection with Nimrod, who also was able to organize men to build great things.³ Prof. Homer Hoeksema battled against Graham by proxy when a Reformed minister attacked Hoeksema for exposing Billy Graham’s doctrine of regeneration as being Arminian and Pelagian.⁴ The PRC of the 1950s and 1960s knew how to deal with false teachers; her ministers did not hold back.

Charlie Kirk was a modern-day Billy Graham; spiritually they were almost identical.

Like Graham, Kirk operated outside the church and set himself above the church. God calls all men to put themselves under the authority of Christ and his gospel. Not only did these men not obey, not only did they set up parachurch organizations with themselves at the helm, but they also used their organizations to effect a massive ecumenical movement between theological liberals, conservatives, Catholics, and every other brand of Christianity. Ecclesiastical will-worship in the extreme!

Like Graham, Kirk was Arminian in his theology. Graham was overt in his Arminian theology, naming his radio show The Hour of Decision and focusing his crusades on calling his listeners to take charge of their salvation and to make a “decision for Christ.” Kirk similarly told the members of his audiences to “repent and ask Christ to come in as your Lord and Savior.”

Like Graham, Kirk was entirely uninterested in theological distinctives. Both men’s approaches were overtly and unapologetically ecumenical. Their purpose was not to “let God be true, but every man a liar” (Rom. 3:4). Rather, their goal was to use the church to get something done in the culture. Like the Christian Reformed Church in 1924, what these men wanted to see was action from the church to drive cultural change.

The similarities keep coming. Like Graham, Kirk was close to theological liberals and Roman Catholics. Like Graham, Kirk focused on influencing the youth. Like Graham, Kirk used carefully orchestrated events to build a movement. Like Graham, Kirk tied his faith to a national identity. With all these similarities, it would seem that the ministers of the PRC naturally would respond to Charlie Kirk the way that they did to Billy Graham.

But did they? What is the evaluation that the PRC makes of Charlie Kirk? In November 2025 an article written by Rev. Jacob Maatman showed up in the All Around Us rubric of The Standard Bearer. Titled “Charlie Kirk: 1993–2025,” this article is very different from the long history of Standard Bearer articles written about Billy Graham.⁵ It is decidedly not a condemnation of Charlie Kirk, his movement, or what he taught.

Maatman signals his changing of the banner that flies over the magazine by highlight­ing Charlie Kirk’s success in fighting for “conservatives” and “the conservative cause.” This raises the question of which cause Maatman will embrace: the cause of God’s truth in the world or the “conservative cause.”

In his article Reverend Maatman gives a stirring eulogy to Charlie Kirk. Glossing over Kirk’s political activism and ignoring his theology, what Maatman really thinks is important is that “Charlie Kirk was a Christian.”⁶ Charlie Kirk’s Arminian and ecumenical brand of Christianity does not seem to bother Reverend Maatman. The uncomfortable fact that Charlie embraced and taught a false gospel does not seem to find its way into Reverend Maatman’s consideration. Neither does the fact that Charlie was at home with Catholicism, prosperity-gospel preachers, and every other brand of false teacher from Doug Wilson to John MacArthur.

What does matter to Reverend Maatman is that Kirk “confessed with his mouth that Jesus is Lord and believed in his heart that God raised Him from the dead.”⁷ Now, this is a fine quotation of Romans 10:9, and perhaps Reverend Maatman attempts to take at face value that Charlie Kirk actually did say the words, even frequently, that “Jesus is Lord.” There is no excuse, however, for Reverend Maatman to make the claim that Kirk believed anything “with his heart.” Since when is Reverend Maatman the judge of hearts? Much less the heart of a complete stranger? No man knows the things of a man, save the spirit of a man that is in him.

Reverend Maatman in his article needed to do one thing: Judge the life of a man. Sure, Charlie Kirk said “Jesus is Lord” on perhaps every stage. Can that be explained in light of his blatantly Arminian gospel and ecumenical behavior? It can. Christ said,

20. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

21. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

22. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

23. And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. (Matt 7:20–23)

Reverend Maatman boldly proclaims that he knows that Charlie Kirk is in heaven, and in doing so Maatman shows that his conception of heaven is similar to that of C. S. Lewis. Maatman’s heaven is not the place where God dwells in perfect holiness. I am sure Maatman will preach boldly from his pulpit against an unnamed or distant Arminianism and common grace, but neither of these are salvation issues to him because he puts Charlie Kirk and those like him in heaven. Charismatics, Catholics, prosperity-gospel preachers, and Arminians all have their places in heaven, if Charlie Kirk does. About the path that Reverend Maatman is on, Reverend Hoeksema wrote:

We dare not contemplate the strange medley of what calls itself church in the world and proceed from the supposition that all churches—whatever creed, superstition, or human philosophy they may embrace—are still part of the true body of Christ.⁸

However, there is more that is out of place in Maatman’s strange, short eulogy. The article as a whole does not fit in the entire history and context of the magazine. It is not just that Reverend Maatman takes a different approach in eulogizing a false teacher where his forebears condemned one. But it is also that he entirely loses the purpose of The Standard Bearer and its founding mission and instead takes up another narrative. Formerly, the avowed purpose of the magazine was to champion the standard of God’s truth against common grace and the conditional covenant. With Maatman’s article The Standard Bearer quietly lowers this ill-used and ragged flag that has been waved over its prow since the 1920s and proudly raises the standard of the “conservative cause.”⁹ This article represents a paradigm shift for The Standard Bearer.

Some in the PRC are putting up a meager fight against taking down the original banner that has been waving over The Standard Bearer; they think that it is the unique place of the PRC to fight against error in the modern church world. Among these is Reverend Maatman’s grandfather, Prof. David Engelsma. In a recent article published in the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, Professor Engelsma wrote that the Protestant Reformed Churches

are not merely another “conservative” Reformed denomination of churches. They are rather the one denomination in North America, if not in the world, that stands up today against the massive, malignant movement of theological and spiritual modernism. They deny that Christ and the world are one in grace. They confess that church and world are radically separated, are in fact at war.¹⁰

Some, like the professor, may be making a halfhearted attempt to fight, but nobody is listening. Least of all is Reverend Maatman.

Early in his article, Maatman signals his changing of the banner that flies over the magazine by highlighting Charlie Kirk’s success in fighting for “conservatives” and “the conservative cause.”¹¹ This raises the question of which cause Maatman will embrace: the cause of God’s truth in the world or the “conservative cause.” This question Maatman answers with clarity later in his article; Maatman spends a large part of his article arguing a generically Christian case against nihilism and godlessness in support of this “conservative cause.” Maatman’s ideas would have been warmly received onstage at the Charlie Kirk Memorial.

Let there be no mistake. The “conservative cause” is not the cause of Christ and his kingdom. The “conservative cause” is nothing other than the cause of man, which is the cause of antichrist. It is the cause of making man’s place comfortable and prosperous on this earth, where man rules by man’s political will and wisdom. As enshrined in the mission statement of one prominent think tank that is leading this movement, man is “building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish.”¹² This is consistent with the purpose of Charlie Kirk and his organizations to drive the Christian religion into every nook and cranny of American life so that by Christianity America can flourish more. This is a very different flag than the one that was raised over The Standard Bearer by Rev. H. Danhof in the magazine’s first issue 102 years ago, which was “the cause of the Son of God.”¹³

We have a little glimpse of what it will look like when a man comes and with signs and wonders shows us that if only we follow him, we can have freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and a flourishing society. And now, in Reverend Maatman and the PRC, we also see a little glimpse of how easy it is to be deceived.

It has been clear for almost a decade that The Standard Bearer no longer champions the cause of Christ’s truth in the world. In the most serious doctrinal dispute in the PRC since the 1950s, the magazine stayed silent and silenced the cause of the truth. It has been almost painful to watch the magazine flounder on the waves without purpose, without boldness, and without a clear direction. Now the magazine has a clear direction and a movement to get behind: the “conservative cause.” It fits The Standard Bearer and cracks open the door a little wider to the PRC’s decades-long effort to join the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council (NAPARC). Why stop at NAPARC? Are there not much greater battles in which the PRC can fight and in which she even can be more effective, if she joins forces with a greater body of churches who use the name of Christ, even if the churches differ from the PRC in some so-called unimportant distinctives?

Reverend Maatman closes his article by praising the memorial service held for Charlie Kirk: “The most remarkable thing about it was the witness that was given of Jesus Christ.”¹⁴ I am not sure why Reverend Maatman thinks it is remarkable for an Arminian to use the name of God in vain in a stadium. Billy Graham’s crusades show that this has a long pedigree in our nation; it is not so remarkable. What is remarkable is how a Protestant Reformed minister can find anything to praise in an event that both desecrated the sabbath day and may have been the most overt display of Christian nationalism this world has ever seen. What is remarkable is how cheaply a Protestant Reformed minister can sell out the entire Reformed faith that he has vowed to defend.

To borrow a word from Reverend Hoeksema, Charlie Kirk was “phenomenal.” Just seeing the impact that one young man had in his death makes one wonder what he could have accomplished if God had kept him alive for another forty years. After a little over a decade of effort, Charlie Kirk had behind him the support of a large swath of the church world, now including the PRC, along with the entire leadership of the United States. Seeing this, we can understand a little more clearly how the antichrist will arise. We have a little glimpse of what it will look like when a man comes and with signs and wonders shows us that if only we follow him, we can have freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and a flourishing society. And now, in Reverend Maatman and the PRC, we also see a little glimpse of how easy it is to be deceived.

“For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” (Matt. 24:24).