• Abel was the first martyr in history. There is no evading this. Jesus pairs him with a murdered prophet (Matthew 23:35; 2 Chronicles 24:20-22).
  

• Abel’s blood was heard by God (Genesis 4:10), and God responded to the cry by driving out Cain, Abel’s killer, from the eastern borderland near Eden out further east (Genesis 4:16).
  

• As a result, Seth, the replacement for Abel, was protected and led people to worship the true God without being killed (4:25-26).
  

• In other words, Abel’s death was an effective prayer that provoked God to respond. Thus we read in Hebrews that, in Christian worship, we have come “to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24 ESV).
  

• In Matthew’s Gospel, we are told that Jesus assured his followers that many of them would be killed. Matthew 10:16-42 is a gruesome description of mass violence.
  

• Yet that violence would provoke God’s judgment on the entire Old Covenant order (or Old Creation) going all the way back to Abel. “Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation” (Matthew 23:34–36 ESV).
  

• This was the same persecution he predicted his followers must suffer, “When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes” (Matthew 10:23 ESV). Compare to 23:34: “some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town.”
  

• John had predicted a global judgment was about to happen accompanying the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 3:1-12). Jesus declared the same message, the Gospel (Matthew 4:17, 23). But this was the “mechanism,” that would bring it all about: believers willing to die for the testimony (witness, “martyrdom”) of Christ.
  

• This was not as explicit in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus was cryptic about it. But he preached that God’s sons and daughters needed to be glad to be treated like the prophets (Matthew 5:11, 12). That entailed a willingness to be murdered. If anyone thought about the background, they would have remembered that the blood of the prophets had provoked judgment on the old Jerusalem and destruction of Solomon’s Temple leading to the exile and the re-creation of God’s people. As the Jews who returned from exile confessed in prayer: “Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies. Therefore you gave them into the hand of their enemies, who made them suffer” (Nehemiah 9:26, 27a). Likewise we read in 2 Kings 24:2-4, “And the LORD sent against him bands of the Chaldeans and bands of the Syrians and bands of the Moabites and bands of the Ammonites, and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the LORD that he spoke by his servants the prophets. Surely this came upon Judah at the command of the LORD, to remove them out of his sight, for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had done, and also for the innocent blood that he had shed. For he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the LORD would not pardon” (ESV). Thus, blood provokes God to bring the kingdom to an end and start a new kingdom, especially the blood of the prophets.
  

• Jesus shows the Apostle John that this is how the saints pray for, and receive, victory over the Devil: “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.” (Revelation 12:10b, 11 ESV).
  

• The destruction of the wicked is portrayed as bowls of wrath filled with blood poured from heaven: “And I heard the angel in charge of the waters say, ‘Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve!” (Revelation 16:5–6 ESV).
  

• This is probably why Paul spoke of his possible martyrdom as a sacrifice – “poured out like a drink offering” (Philippians 2:17; 2 Timothy 4:6).
  

• So we should expect new progress in the Kingdom after Charlie Kirk’s martyrdom.
  

• But we cannot expect it to necessarily follow, so to speak, an “America First” pattern. The martyrdom of Stephen provoked God to spread his Church elsewhere, though it also continued to grow in Judea (Acts 7:54-8:4).
  

• Nor can we assume that Kirk’s “voice” will be alone sufficient. Maybe more will have to respond to the call to pray with their blood. Remember the example we have in Revelation 6 “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been” (vv 9–11 ESV).
  

• On the other hand, maybe we shouldn’t view Kirk as a pioneer so much as one called to join a throng of martyrs already enthroned in the heavens from all over the globe.
  

• Whatever may be the case, we are called to be patient and faithful in tribulation, and follow Kirk’s example if we are so called by our Lord. God will soon crush Satan under our feet, if we do so.
  

• A final word, “Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (Acts 5:41 ESV).

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Mark Horne is a member of the Civitas group, and holds an M.Div from Covenant Theological Seminary. He is assistant pastor at Providence Reformed Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, and is the executive director of Logo Sapiens Communications. He writes at www.SolomonSays.net, and is the author, most recently, of “Solomon Says: Directives for Young Men” from Athanasius Press.