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Slain Boulder Shooting Victim Officer Eric Talley ‘He was a devout Christian’

(The Denver Channel) The Boulder Police Department confirmed 10 people are dead, including one Boulder Police officer, in a shooting at the King Soopers on Table Mesa Drive.

Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold confirmed Officer Eric Talley, 51, was the first to respond to the King Soopers minutes after initial 911 calls around 2:30 p.m. He was shot and killed. Talley had been with the department since 2010.

“I’m grateful for the police officers that responded, and I am so sorry about the loss of Officer Talley,” Herold said.

Homer Talley, Eric Talley’s father, provided the following statement to ABC:

“He took his job as a police officer very seriously. He had seven children. The youngest is 7 years old. He loved his kids and his family more than anything. He joined the police force when he was 40 years old. He was looking for a job to keep himself off of the front lines and was learning to be a drone operator. He didn’t want to put his family through something like this and he believed in Jesus Christ.”

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Editor’s note. Jeremy Herko, who described himself as one of Talley’s best friends, said in a Facebook post.

I cannot describe my level of devastation I feel right now. My heart is heavy. So many things I would do differently. The person I was calling and messaging earlier, one of my best friends, died today in Boulder. He was the police officer killed. Eric Talley is his name, and he was a devout Christian, he had to buy a 15-passenger van to haul all his kids around, and he was the nicest guy in the world. I’ve known him since we went to the academy together, and we talked all the time. Please keep his wife and kids in your thoughts.

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Rush Limbaugh Friend ‘He Gave His Life Completely to the Lord Jesus Christ in 2019’

Following the famed radio hosts death, Christian Author Joel C. Rosenberg, a friend of Limbaugh’s, wrote an article declaring that “Rather late in his life, in his final few years, Rush gave his life fully and completely to Jesus Christ. Though he had been raised in a Christian family, this was different. Something specific had happened in his life. He had made a very personal and profound decision. And it changed everything.”

Explaining that he had spoken to Limbaugh about his faith over the years, sharing stories and beliefs, and that he was concerned that he was a false convert and that his faith wasn’t genuine. This was compounded by some of the bad fruit from Rush he observed over the years. “I believed he was struggling spiritually…I worried that Rush was resisting a personal relationship with Jesus Christ…Or perhaps too busy and too successful to focus on such a relationship.”

Rosenberg recounts:

That’s why I worried about him – and a specific Bible verse kept echoing in my heart.

Jesus once said, “What profits a man to gain the whole world, but to lose his soul?” That’s what I feared for Rush.  Maybe that seems presumptuous. Maybe it was. But it came out of my love for him. No other reason.

So, I would talk with him about the Lord when I could. We would email about lots of things, and occasionally I’d share a Bible verse with him. But mostly I prayed for him – for the past 28 years, I asked the Lord to bless him and draw Rush into the kingdom of heaven.

Though the two hadn’t seen each other in a long time, Rush invited him to visit him in February 2020, right after the initial cancer diagnosis. But the week he went down to visit, he stayed in a hotel because Rush was physically broken and too weak to host him. Rosenberg never was able to see him again in person and eventually had to abort the visit.

I worried that he was going to pass away without knowing for absolute certain that he was going to heaven. That grieved me. But something happened on that trip that changed everything.

I learned the greatest possible news – that just the year before, in 2019, Rush had given his life wholly and completely to the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Maybe he had made a decision to receive Christ by faith when he was much younger and had, like many of us, struggled to walk closely with Christ after that decision. That, I cannot say.

But I now knew that he was studying the Bible like he had never done before.  He was praying like he’d never done before. He was growing spiritually and it was transforming him. And it wasn’t out of desperation. It wasn’t simply because he was contemplating his own death. 

It was because he had truly wrestled through the claims of Jesus for himself, and come to the conclusion that Jesus really did die on the cross, rise again, and was the Messiah, the Savior and the King of the universe.

And having placed his faith in Christ’s love and forgiveness, he now had a certain, definitive hope that he was going to heaven when he died, and peace for every day before that.

I was overjoyed! 

Joel joyfully references some comments Rush made after diagnosis of cancer, where things shifted and Rush began speaking of his faith in more personal, more specific terms, specifically:

I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is of immense value, strength, confidence, and that’s why I’m able to remain fully committed to the idea of what is supposed to happen will happen when it’s meant to. There’s some comfort in knowing that some things are not in our hands.  There’s a lot of fear associated with that too, but there is some comfort.  It’s helpful to be able to trust and to believe in a higher plan.

Rosenberg closes with this:

I didn’t feel at liberty to say any of this publicly, so I didn’t.

I told my wife, Lynn, and my sons and we rejoiced, because we had been praying for him and his family for decades. 

But then another wonderful thing happened.

I began to hear him share about his faith in Christ and newfound hope with the radio audience he loved so dearly, and who so loved him.

For such a public person, Rush was also intensely private.

But he began talking about his faith in Christ, and I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt it was real. 

We pray that it was so.

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Rush Limbaugh Dead at 70, cites ‘Personal Relationship with Jesus Christ’ Before Passing

Legendary Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh passed away Wednesday, with his death being announced on-air by his wife Kathryn, who said:

I, like you, very much wish Rush was behind this golden microphone now, welcoming you to another exceptional 3 hours of broadcasting. It is with profound sadness I must share with you directly that our beloved Rush, my wonderful husband, passed away this morning due to complications from lung cancer.

Describing himself as a “lover of mankind,” the “doctor of democracy,” a “harmless, lovable little fuzz ball,” and an “all-around good guy,” he was notable for his constant assertion that he had “talent on loan from God,” a gift he will ostensibly now have to give back.

Rush took to the air several months ago and cited his faith as a comfort to him as his health began to decline, explaining:

I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is of immense value, strength, confidence. That’s why I’m able to remain fully committed to the idea that what is supposed to happen will happen when it’s meant to.

The 70-year old political commentator shared last February that he has been diagnosed with Stage-4 lung cancer, a sickness which had a grim prognosis and which treatment focuses on slowing the progression of the disease, seeking to maintain quality of life, and minimizing symptoms wherever possible rather than curing it. [Editor’s note: This is known as “palliative care.”]

Limbaugh said back in October, speaking to 20 million listeners:

I feel more and more blessed hearing from you, knowing that you’re out there praying and everything else you’re doing. That is a blessing. It’s just a series of blessings. And I’m grateful to be able to come here to the studio and tell you about it and really maintain as much normalcy as I can…the only thing that any of us are certain of is right now, today.  That’s why I thank God every morning when I wake up. I thank God that I did. I try to make it the best day that I can…I try to remain as committed to the idea that what’s supposed to happen will happen when it’s meant to.

I mentioned at the outset of this, on the first day I told you, that I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. It is of immense value, strength, confidence, and that’s why I’m able to remain fully committed to the idea of what is supposed to happen will happen when it’s meant to. There’s some comfort in knowing that some things are not in our hands.  There’s a lot of fear associated with that too, but there is some comfort.  It’s helpful to be able to trust and to believe in a higher plan.

While Rush had long spoken of his belief in God, it had always been in more generic types of reference, eschewing talk of repentance and faith in Christ with more broad terms and phrases such as, “This country needs to understand the importance of religion,” and “I believe in God.”

Even during the initial cancer revelation back in February, he said, “I told the staff today that I have a deeply personal relationship with God that I do not proselytize about, but I do, and I have been working that relationship tremendously.”

The fact that Rush was giving specific reference to Jesus and having a “personal relationship” with Christ was a new development for Limbaugh, and a sign that ought to give hope that we will see him in heaven one day.

Rush’s Brother, David, a well-known political commentator in his own right, is a professing evangelical Christian, and we can only pray that he ministered to Rush as the end grew near, helping him truly understand the gift of faith and everlasting life. David has so far not indicated any comments as to Rush’s spiritual state when he passed, writing only that “I’m not ready to speak yet but I’m so proud of my amazing, loving brother. Thousands of you have shared how much he meant to you. My brother was the real deal. I can’t describe how sad I am but also how proud I am of my big brother. I love and adore you Rush. Thank you all.”

Editor’s note. Portions of this article were previously published.