by Alan Langstaff

There is no doubt that the assassination of Charlie Kirk had a special influence on people here in America. If you watched the memorial Service on that Sunday afternoon, with 100,000 people present, you could feel the presence of God, and you could not help but be moved by it all. To hear politicians speak with such clarity about faith and to declare in simple terms the Gospel of Jesus Christ. To see the testimony of Marco Rubio was extraordinary as he proclaimed the Gospel in a powerful way.

As I have observed all that has happened since the assassination. I have been impacted as to how one person can have such an impact on his world. 

Charlie was only 31 when he died, but he accomplished more in those 31 years than most people accomplish in a lifetime. Tyler Bowyer of Turning Point USA wrote, “There was no doubt in my mind that with Charlie’s indomitable spirit and vision, Turning Point would transform the conservative movement and the country as a whole.”

He was a remarkable young man who, at a very young age, became the driving force for a new organization called Turning Point USA. He started when he was only 18 years old, and yet over the following years, he built an organization that some people feel enabled Donald Trump to win the 2024 Presidency, as he reached the young people of a new generation.

Now, one person can’t do it all, and so he had to build a team and multiply the vision so as to spread. And this he did. He built an organization that spread out through America.

As I have reflected on all this, I realized how often in history God chooses one person and, through that person, changes the world.

BIBLICAL EXAMPLES

It is amazing to look at Scripture and see how God chose one person to start with, and that person had a major impact on his world. Look at a few examples:

Noah
God called Noah to build an Ark. It seemed a strange thing to do, and I am sure the people of his day thought he was crazy. I am sure too his family was involved as well. But he spent 120 years building the ark before the floods came. So Noah obeyed God. He was just one person.

Abraham
Abraham, the father of faith, followed the direction of the Lord. He eventually arrived in what today is the Holy Land. He is one who first believed, and he became not only the Patriarch for the Jewish Nation but the beginning of faith for Christians. Just one person.

Moses
When God wanted to set the Israelites free from bondage in Egypt, He chose a man, Moses, to be the one who would do it. Moses was reluctant at first, but finally he submitted himself to the call of God. Just one person.

David
The nation of Israel was faced with an enemy and especially in a fighter named Goliath. No one was prepared to take him on, but only a young lad by the name of David. We all know the results of that fight, and David became a hero. Just one person.

And so we could go on and include women as well, women like Esther.

MODERN DAY EXAMPLES

As it was in biblical days, so it is often in modern days. Let us look at a few of them.

Loren Cunningham
You can read his story in his book “Is That Really You God,” and you will see how God gave a vision of calling and using young people in world evangelism. Out of that call, there came forth the ministry Youth With A Mission…YWAM. Just one person.

Yonggi Cho
In post-war Korea, Yonggi Cho had a vision of establishing a church. He started with only a handful of people, including his family. It eventually grew and grew until at one stage it numbered 800,000 people, and in the course of which he emphasized home cell groups. It all started with just one person.

Paul Crouch
In the early days of Christian television back in the 1970s, Paul (and his wife) developed a TV station which eventually grew to a worldwide ministry with Christian TV reaching out to the world. Just one person.

THE POLITICAL WORLD

The same has happened in the political world. Let me give you two examples.

Trump
There is no doubt that ever since he came down the escalator in 2015, he has had an ever-increasing effect on America and the world. Now, some people would believe it is only a negative effect, but time will show what an effect this one man has had on society at large. Just one person.

Netanyahu
Over the last three decades, Netanyahu has profoundly changed both Israel and the Middle East. First elected Prime Minister in 1996, he has since won five elections, making him the longest-serving Prime Minister that Israel has had. He, too, is not popular with all the people, but he has been at the helm to guide and protect the nation. Just one person.

DEVELOPING A TEAM

Although a ministry or organization may start with or center on an individual, it usually involves two things.

a) A wife or spouse

Most of the successful ministries I have known involved a loving, committed wife who may not be known as well as the person is.

b) A team

Any leader knows you can’t do it all yourself, and very soon God brings others into the team. This was the case with Billy Graham as God added key people to his team, including Cliff Barrows, George Beverly Shea, and the Wilson brothers.

The same with Jesus, who chose 12 disciples to be his new Apostles.

THE FUTURE

We should be praying that God will raise up modern heroes who will lead the Church into a new era of ministry and the nation into His will and purpose.

Now, not everyone is called to be the next Billy Graham, but God can give a call to people to be leaders wherever they are and lead the church forward. Pray to God that He will challenge people like He did with Moses and the burning bush and like Paul on the road to Damascus. 

Circumstances can also do that, and I, for one, believe Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk that we started talking about at the beginning of this letter, will be a modern-day Esther. That God will so anoint her that she will rise up to be a great woman of God.

A MODERN “JUST ONE PERSON”

I came across a story in the Billy Graham Decision magazine about an Australian, Aileen Coleman, who is described as “God’s Gutsy Evangelist” (1930-2025). She is on the front cover of the Decision magazine for September of this year.

“Seventy years ago, the Lord called Aileen Coleman from Australia to become His ambassador in the Middle East. Courageously defying cultural norms in a male-dominated culture…

Aileen’s father back in Australia had wanted her to become a teacher, but she followed the bigger plans of her Heavenly Father, moving thousands of miles away to a different continent to become a missionary nurse in Mafraq, Jordan. There she dedicated her life to one of the world’s most challenging mission fields—the nomadic, tent-dwelling Bedouin tribes east of the Jordan River, who trace their lineage to Abraham’s son Ishmael….

Aileen spent the last 70 years of her life serving in the Middle East, until she died July 9, just weeks before her 95th birthday….“Heaven will be fuller because of Aileen,” Franklin Graham said at her 89th birthday party in 2019….[She] never shied away from the challenges of serving as a Christian woman in a culture dominated by men.

Aileen was the youngest of seven children of an accountant in Bundaberg, on the northeast coast of Australia. While she was completing her training as a nurse, a classmate dared her to go to a tent revival. Not only did she go, but she surrendered her life to Christ that night and eventually attended Bible college. Then while researching a paper on mission work in the Muslim world, she met a doctor who asked her to pray for more Christian obstetric nurses to go to the Middle East.

The Lord used Aileen to answer her own prayer, as she was called to hospitals in what is now the United Arab Emirates (then a British colony), and in Bethlehem, which then was part of Jordan. That’s where she met Eleanor, began to specialize in TB treatment, and earned a master’s degree in Arabic—an expressive language she adored….

When a house fire took the life of Eleanor 28 years ago, Aileen continued to lead the Mafraq ministry. The Bedouins called Aileen “Raisa,” which means leader, and is sometimes interpreted as “Angel of the Desert.””

(by Tom Layton, Decision Magazine)

The story of Aileen Coleman is an inspiring example of how God can use “just one person” who is submitted to Jesus.

CLOSING WORD

Pray that God will raise up new leaders. They may be, at this moment, a “nobody” in the eyes of other people, such as Gideon in the wine press, afraid of the Midianites.

Maybe God has shown you such a person, and He is calling you to pray for them. Pray that they will sense the call of God on their lives and that they will respond to that call.