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The NY Times reported that when Erika Kirk arrived at the hospital, the sheriff gently warned her against viewing Charlie’s body.He told her the bullet had ravaged his neck.But Erika’s response was as courageous as it was faithful: “With all due respect, I want to see what they did to my husband.”She braced herself for the worst.And yet, what she saw stunned her.Charlie’s eyes were half-open, and on his face rested what she described as a “Mona Lisa-like half-smile. Like he’d died happy. Like Jesus rescued him. The bullet came, he blinked, and he was in heaven.”A man hated and struck down for boldly defending truth and liberty left this world with a smile that testified to eternity.Erika said plainly, “It was like Jesus rescued him.”Scripture tells us this is no mystery.“We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:8)In that hospital room, Erika saw the living reality of that verse.Charlie did not die defeated.He was carried instantly into the arms of his Savior.And we remember what Jesus Himself promised:“I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in Me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in Me will never die.” (John 11:25–26)This is why Charlie could leave this earth with peace on his face.Because even though the enemies of truth may strike, they cannot touch the soul redeemed by Christ.Paul warned us of this very battle:“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Ephesians 6:12)Charlie’s assassination was not only an act of violence in the natural world.It was part of a spiritual war that stretches back to Eden.Yet even in that war, the smile on his face declared victory.Erika did what so many of us long to do in moments of unimaginable loss: she kissed her husband goodbye.She hadn’t been able to that morning when he left the house.She did so then, not as a farewell, but as a declaration of love that even death cannot sever.The assassin’s bullet ended a life here, but it could not touch Charlie’s soul.That belongs to Christ.His smile was a final sermon, without words, proclaiming Philippians 1:21:“For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”Friends, let us grieve, but let us not despair.Let us honor Erika’s strength, and Charlie’s testimony of faith even in death.And let us recommit ourselves to the mission Charlie lived for: to speak truth, to defend liberty, and to point a broken world toward the eternal hope found only in Jesus Christ.Charlie’s last smile is now his greatest witness.Ken Blackwell