If this years surprise hit movie, “Sound of Freedom,” had been released 10 years ago, the mainstream media would probably have praised it and Hollywood would have given it an Oscar. But times have changed and now in our upside down world of good being called evil and evil called good, a movie that exposes the evil of child sex trafficking has been viciously attacked by the woke left.
The movie was inspired by the real-life experiences of Tim Ballard—a former Special Agent for the Department of Homeland Security’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force—and portrays Ballard’s efforts to save children trapped and exploited by human trafficking. The movie stars Jim Caviezel (who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ) as Ballard.
This anti-pedophila movie was actually made 5 years ago and was in the possession of Disney following a buyout. Disney tried it’s best to bury the film but it was rescued by Angel Studios and released this year.
When the “Sound of Freedom” first came out, I had mixed feelings about going to see it. I had read enough about the film to know that it dealt with a number of uncomfortable subjects, such as child abuse, and that it would be hard to watch.
But after talking to some friends that had gone to the opening and feeling their excitement about the film I knew that I must go. My wife and I went and were shocked, not only by the unconscionable evil portrayed in the movie, but by the number of people in attendance on a weekday afternoon in a small theater in Jonesville, NC. The movie was well into it’s second week which is when attendance for movies usually drops off significantly. But when the lights came on I found the theater to be over 50% full of people who were standing and clapping their approval…on a Thursday afternoon!
Across the country, “Sound of Freedom” had a remarkable 37% increase in attendance from it’s opening weekend. Amazingly this was the first time that a movie with a wide release (2,500-plus theaters) during the crowded summer movie season had gained at the box office in the second weekend, according to data at BoxOfficeMojo.com.
Major hits such as this year’s top-grossing film, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, fell 37 percent in its second weekend. The 2019 blockbuster Avengers: Endgame dropped 58.7 percent in week two.
It was not as if the opening week attendance was bad either. On its first day in theaters, “Sound of Freedom” outperformed Disney’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” Completed with a budget of $14.5 million, “Sound of Freedom” earned nearly its entire budget back at $14.2 million on opening day, while “Indiana Jones” brought in $11.7 million and cost nearly $300 million to make.
The reason for the huge success of this film is simple. While watching the movie you felt like God was speaking directly to you on a subject that was terribly important to Him. His message was that child sex trafficking is a heinous crime and we should not tolerate it. People left the movie so moved that they told others about it and those people told even more people and it just snowballed from there.
The attendance figures are even more amazing considering the movie faced fierce opposition from the mainstream media and from Hollywood trying to discredit it. Bloomberg, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, the Guardian, CNN, MSMBC and many others attacked the film as “a superhero movie for dads with brainworms,” and a “QAnon conspiracy flick.”
Many claimed that child sex trafficking is not really a big issue and this movie wasn’t about anything important. But statistics disprove that and everyone should be outraged about this appalling situation regardless of their political affiliation. Consider: More people are enslaved today than any time in history. Each year more than 500,000 children go missing in the U.S., with at least half being from 12 to 15 years old. More than 250,000 websites contain images or videos of children being sexually abused. Human trafficking is a $150 billion-dollar-a year business and growing fast. The United States is one of the top destinations for human trafficking and one of the largest consumers of child sex.
Ballard told Jesse Waters on Fox News that the whole problem of human trafficking shines an unforgiving light on the Biden administration’s border policy.
“They don’t want to have a discussion that this film is going to compel,” he argued. “[And that’s] a discussion about why 350,000 unaccompanied minors entered across our borders in the last two years and 85,000 of those got released into the interior of a country and have completely disappeared into dark corners.”
The ultra-liberal New York Times confirmed those numbers and reported that our government has no idea where these children are.
Jessica Vaughn, director for policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies told CBN News the traffickers have been enabled by the Biden administration’s border policies.
“It is really astonishing how much the Biden administration is willing to look the other way at this insidious practice all to justify its mass immigration policy,” Vaughn explained. “It can be stopped if there is a will on the part of the federal government and its partners to do so. This administration seems to care more about men dressed as women than about all the little, innocent children that are being trafficked into our country.”
One of the memorable lines from “Sound of Freedom” comes when the former law enforcement agent Ballard says, “God’s children are not for sale.”
Jesus warned of the consequences to those that hurt His little children. “And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.” (Mark 9:24)
“Sound of Freedom” could become the necessary catalyst for the next great abolition movement in the same way William Wilberforce used shackles from slave ships to spur the abolition of slave trade in the 1800s or how Uncle Tom’s Cabin laid the emotional groundwork that ignited the fight for emancipation. But this will happen only if we are moved enough by this injustice to not remain silent no matter the discomfort or backlash.
In this battle for the soul of America – whether to concede to evil that tacitly supports sex with children, or to fight to protect “the little ones” whom the Lord Jesus cares so much about – two critical questions emerge for the Christian community: how much longer can Christians do nothing and stay silent about child sex slavery and what will every born again Bible believing Christian do to help right this horrific wrong?
Showtime is over. The sound of freedom has now been heard. The anti-human trafficking and child sex slavery has been exposed. If we truly want to end sex trafficking, we must demand that our politicians finally close our southern border. We must also pressure our politicians to pass strict legislation with severe penalties on those who are engaged in this crime, those who have permitted it, and those who have benefited from it. Then it should become one of the defining issues of the 2024 Presidential election. But most importantly it should drive us to our knees in prayer.
I challenge everyone reading this to prayerfully discern your role in combating the brutalities against God’s children. It’s not enough to simply be moved by this film. We must allow it to change and motivate us into action.
As Caviezel said in his message at the film’s conclusion, “Living in fear isn’t how we solve this problem. It’s living in hope. It’s believing that we can make a difference—because we can.”