July 27, 2023
The Sound Of Freedom – Part 1
By: James Wilson
When The Passion of the Christ hit theatres in 2004 I well remember telling God I could not bear to watch the scourging scene. I recall even more vividly His answer, “He had to do it; all I ask of you is that you watch.” I watched – and prayed – remembering Jesus asking if they would watch just one hour on the night He came to set us free. The film, Sound of Freedom, impacted me that same way.
Sound of Freedom shares the true story of former Homeland Security agent Tim Ballard’s crusade to rescue children who have been kidnapped and forced into the one hundred fifty billion dollar sex trade industry. It begins with impoverished single parent Roberto, who accepts an invitation for a photo shoot for his two young children that might lead to modeling careers for both of them. He takes them to the “studio” and is instructed to return for them at seven that evening. When he returns the studio has been dismantled and his children are gone.
Sound of Freedom is a snapshot of Agent Ballard, who resigned his position to devote full time to risking his life for other people’s children. After taking down a pedophile, he must examine the perp’s photo collection. His partner wonders out loud how many perps Ballard has taken down in twelve years. “Two hundred and eighty eight,” is the automatic answer. And how many kids rescued? “Two or three,” is just as automatic, but deeply subdued. That conversation changed Tim Ballard for life.
The next snap of the snapshot has Ballard locating and rescuing eight-year-old Miguel as he is being taken across the southern border, recognized from the photo Ballard’s earlier perp was viewing. That led to meeting Roberto, whose daughter was the other would-be model. By the end credits Ballard has made his first foray into Columbia, rescued more than fifty child sex slaves in one raid, and recovered Rocio, Miguel’s sister. Yet amid the good news of rescues at risk of death to children and rescuers alike there is so much that remains unsaid, save in narration.
Jim Caviezel, who portrays Ballard, tells the audience this utterly evil industry captures some two million children every year, lobbing them into hell for whatever is left of their now unspeakably cruel lives. It has surpassed the illegal arms trade and is fast closing in on the drug trade. Caviezel’s Ballard keeps it simple, “You can sell guns or drugs once; you can sell a child five to ten times a day.” He adds – more than once – “God’s kids are not for sale.” Unless this issue grips the Body of Christ in a vice of compassion those follow-on words will never come true.
Of course, if it is of God it will be viciously attacked by those who are not. Rolling Stone calls Sound “a superhero movie for dads with brainworms,” that is “designed to appeal to the conscience of a conspiracy addled boomer.” The stoners at Stone continue to decry the film for “fomenting moral panic for years of child sex trafficking, much of it drawing people into conspiracist rabbit holes.” UK’s The Guardian sounds the alarm using every leftist’s favorite boogeyman, “Sound of Freedom, the Q-Anon adjacent thriller seducing America.” Jezebel, a leftwing web site, dismisses it with, “Sound of Freedom is an anti-child trafficking fantasy fit for Q-Anon.” The stoners and jezebels appear to have forgotten – unless they never knew – it was drug addled Boomers who gave us the Jesus People and the Third Great Awakening.
That old reliable Washington Post claims Jim Caviezel “has openly embraced,” Q-Anon ideas, based – apparently – on some remarks the actor made some two years ago that parallel a couple of Q concepts. (Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Dare we give Q even that much cred?) Yet later in the same article the venue that broke the Pentagon Papers story half a century ago admits this film “doesn’t depict anything close to Q-Anon fantasies,” adding, “The film’s villains are common criminals, not the shadow cabal of occultists imagined by Q-Anoners.” All this is per The Blaze for July 8, 2023.
Film makers are laughing all the way to the bank, and to the church, to give thanks to the Banker. Their film raised much of its fourteen-point-five-million-dollar budget through crowd funding, yet is such a blockbuster hit it outgrossed its budget in two days. Meanwhile, the US State Department vindicates what the left debunks; State estimates there are about twenty-seven-point-six million children in this slave pit – far more than worked the plantations of the whole world when slavery was legal – at any given time.
Most important of all is God’s great promise to all His people, He makes all things good – all things – for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes. That doesn’t make anything good about human trafficking, or the human cockroaches who conduct it; yet it does remind us that God can and does transform all things into acolytes of His plan…even the necklace at the end.
When Miguel is rescued by Tim Ballard he produces a necklace given him by his sister, Rocio, with the name Timoteo – Tim in Spanish – inscribed on it. Ballard is mystified inasmuch as he has no idea how the boy would be wearing a medallion with the agent’s name on it. At the end Miguel returns the medallion to Rocio. Tim Ballard asked producers not to include the incident; he was certain no one would believe it. But it really did happen just as it was portrayed; it was God saying, “I got this.”
Even so, we are much further from fulfillment of this prophetic signpost than is the earth from Alpha Centauri. Stay tuned for Part II.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, Kingdom in Pursuit, and his first novel, Generation– available at Barnes and Nobles, Amazon, or at praynorthstate@gmail.com
