I Read Charlie Kirk’s Book. Here’s What I Thought

Disclaimer: This review focuses on the content of the book, not the conduct of the author. I wrote a separate piece about that here. 

Note: If you are not a Seventh-day Adventist, as I am, you may not understand all my jargon. I’m happy to give clarification.

It has been eight months since the fatal shooting of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk. His book has made me wish he’d lived. Who knows? He may have more fully embraced the biblical Sabbath and freedom of religion; or he may have led the charge into full-blown Christian Nationalism and the persecution of Sabbath keepers. (By the way, I would have welcomed either, the first because truth would have been preached, the second because Jesus’ coming would have been hastened.)

But he’s gone, and he left behind the most eloquent, well-researched, and yet at times confusing and ridiculous book on the Sabbath I’ve ever read. One moment it felt like reading Mark Finley, and the next, the Catholic Answers website. 

Excellent, comprehensive reviews have already been offered by the Adventist Review here and Mark Finley here.  Take those in and get the book for yourself. Kirk’s clear, energetic writing makes the 265 pages a fast read.

I’ll divide my review into “On a Roll” and “Eye Roll,” because both happened.

On a Roll 

Most of the time, Kirk was on a roll. I couldn’t agree more with the premise of the book, which is neatly summed up in the title—Stop. Stop, for your soul’s sake, stop for your culture’s sake, stop for your health’s sake, stop for your sleep’s sake. Stop, for God’s sake! We need a day of rest. He says this over and over with supporting science, history, and logic.

Most of the book champions this need for “a” Sabbath. When, after his very tortured wrestling with the question of “the” Sabbath, and whether the seventh day was binding, he returned to this theme again. This felt to me like overkill, as if he wanted to distract us from the confusing muddle he’d just dragged us through. (I’ll return to that muddle in the Eye Roll section.) But it is true, we need a day of rest. He supports that truth beautifully.

I can’t do justice to the whole book, so I’ll focus on one chapter, my favorite: “Melachah, Eved, and Your Dog.” If the normally plain-spoken Kirk had gone for a less obscure title, he might have called it “The Best Explanation of Biblical Justice, Ever.” Seriously, it rocked. In it, he traced social justice back to its scriptural origins, and specifically to the fourth commandment. Seventh-day Adventists can afford to learn from the author on this point. We’ve not said enough about the Sabbath and biblical justice.

In a beefy ;) section on animal welfare, he pointed out that God commanded rest for animals on the Sabbath. Musing about vegans, he said,

While I strongly disagree with much of their ethical framework—especially the idea that snails, cows, or chickens are morally equal to human beings—I do think they’re tapping into something worth acknowledging. Many modern industrial farming practices, particularly those involving animal cruelty, are inconsistent with biblical values.

Thank you, Charlie Kirk! Oh, and this gem:

It is not secular humanism, nor paganism, nor Eastern philosophy that gave rise to a society in which the ethical treatment of animals is a shared moral concern. It is the Judeo-Christian worldview that laid that foundation.

He traced organizations preventing animal cruelty to people like William Wilberforce, known primarily for his crusade to abolish the British slave trade. In scholarly fashion, Kirk showed that the Sabbath instills compassion toward God’s wordless friends, and that great Christians throughout history have rallied to that cause. 

Then he went on to the treatment of humans. In gorgeous language celebrating and supporting the U.S. constitution’s “All men are created equal,” this book does something I wish every Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath book would do—it traces equality back to scripture and the Sabbath. How did we miss the point that the fourth commandment enlists rest for servants, the lower class of that day? Speaking of Israelite law, he said:

The system was structured not to benefit the master, but to protect the vulnerable in a fallen world. In that light, the Sabbath was not merely a day of worship, it was a rebuke of tyranny. It told every Israelite: You are not God, and no one else is your beast of burden.

He helpfully breaks down the differences between modern slavery and Old Testament servitude but then goes on to explain how God deals with aberrant cultural practices. 

The Old Testament does not morally endorse slavery—it regulates it. God gave laws to ancient Israel within a fallen world, just as He regulated polygamy and divorce without declaring them ideal. These laws restrained abuse, elevated the status of the servant, and pointed toward a more humane ethic. . . God worked within historical realities while planting moral seeds that would ultimately flourish into the ideals of freedom and equality.

Summing it all up, he wrote: 

The Sabbath command is not peripheral to justice; it is its heartbeat. It taught a weary world to stop and see—not just God, but one another. And this is why we rest: to remember. To remember who we are, who our neighbor is, and who made us both.

He sounds like the most avid social justice warrior, except that he consistently grounds justice in scripture rather than secular ideology. I love this. Without the biblical grounding, justice movements quickly become self-contradictory and self-defeating. With it, they result in things like the abolition of the slave trade. 

Eye Roll

Charlie Kirk built his platform on a heartfelt belief in Christian Nationalism. His support came largely from the evangelical community promoting CN. Arguably, Kirk helped Trump win the 2024 election by bringing an unprecedented number of young adults to conservatism and then to the voting booth. 

Of course, as a proponent of Christian Nationalism, Kirk blurs the separation between church and state. Kirk affirms blue laws—statues enforcing Sunday rest and worship—as a moral good for society. His section on the history of the Sabbath makes Constantine sound like a herald of heaven, when he was the door to the Dark Ages. He said of Christianity’s shift from Sabbath to Sunday:

The theology behind the shift was not without its tensions; many early Christians wrestled with the balance between continuity with Jewish sacred time and the radical newness of resurrection life.

Early Christians wrestled with the balance? Or did they drink the Constantinian Kool-Aid? The naked truth that God wrote the command to honor the seventh day with His own finger on stone as part of the eternal, unchanging, law of God keeps screaming out from the pages of this book, and the author sidesteps it for the most part.

Until the ninth and 10th chapters, “Are Christians Bound to the Sabbath?” and “Jesus Doesn’t Offer a Day—He Offers Himself.” In these chapters the author, who identifies as a Saturday Sabbath keeper, enumerates 10 “yes” answers and 10 “no” answers to the first question. The “yes” answers read like the newest Amazing Facts release, and the “no” answers like a consensus report from The Gospel Coalition.

Here’s a summary.

Kirk gives 10 great reasons God still requires His followers to keep the seventh day according to His commandment. They are:

1. The Sabbath was instituted at creation, not at Sinai.

2. The Sabbath is part of the Ten Commandments, written in stone by God.

3. The Sabbath was made for humanity, not just for Israel.

4. The Sabbath is a sign of covenant identity and sanctification.

5. Jesus practiced and defended the Sabbath without nullifying it.

6. The Sabbath appears in eschatological prophecy.

7. Hebrews teaches there “remains a Sabbath” for God’s people.

8. The moral law still applies under the New Covenant.

9. Revelation identifies God’s people as commandment keepers.

10. The Sabbath is a gift, not a burden.

Then he gives 10 reasons Christians shouldn’t feel bound to keep the Sabbath. 

1. Colossians declares the Sabbath a shadow fulfilled in Christ.

2. Romans 14 affirms liberty regarding sacred days.

3. Galatians warns against returning to calendar observance.

4. Jesus offers a deeper rest than the Sabbath could.

5. Hebrews teaches rest is spiritual, not ritual.

6. The Jerusalem Council did not require Sabbath observance.

7. Christians are not under law but under grace.

8. Jesus’ resurrection transformed the church’s rhythm.

9. The Sabbath law is part of a fulfilled covenant.

10. The gospel warns against legalism and bondage.

If you’re like me, you’re choking on your Frichik right now. How could this intellectual giant, so thorough and clear on so many issues, embrace the shallow reasoning of, for example, “God doesn’t require honoring the Sabbath because Christians are not under law but under grace”? Insert any command in the first half of that sentence. For example: “God doesn’t require being faithful to your spouse because Christians are not under law but under grace.” Surely the smart people saying these things know that a fourth grader could point out the flaws in their logic. But they carry on.

Conclusion 

Why? Why does the Christian world accept these weak arguments? I believe it boils down to human approval. As a Seventh-day Adventist in my faith community, I speak Sabbath truth with great ease. I receive mostly likes and “amen”s for it. But from the epicenter of the religious right movement, where Charlie Kirk planted himself, speaking the full Sabbath truth would have cost him every friend and supporter he had. Turning Point USA would have crashed to the ground with its millions of dollars and thousands of employees. It would take a miracle of grace for a person of that stature to cast his lot in with those who keep the commandments of God. Some will claim the book was changed posthumously. Perhaps. But knowing what I know about human nature, I wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote every word of it, down to the baffling chapters at the end. Listen to him struggle:

So here I am—still a bit raw. Still tender about it. I honor Saturday as my day of rest, not because I believe it earns me righteousness, but because it reminds me I’m not God.

These are the words of a man clinging to truth with one hand and friends with the other. Did emotions dull his mind, or did he know better? I don’t know, except to observe that the ringing certainty he brought to issues like prolife and biblical sexuality suddenly dulls to vacillation and doubt when he debates the unpopular aspects of the Sabbath truth. But let’s make up for his uncertainty with the willingness to stand though the heavens fall.

It’s a miracle Charlie Kirk said as much as he did, given the cost. Let’s pray for his followers, and let’s discuss. Please share your thoughts in the comments.

 Charlie Kirk, Stop, in the Name of God, p. 68, 173, 180-181, 186, 194, 195