Hopefully, Sound of Freedom will help encourage people to speak out. However, the exploitation of children is not just about Epstein and secret Hollywood parties. The film will shock ordinary people and show them how nefarious worldwide networks operate and what it takes to battle them. When Ballard thought of quitting his job and going it alone in the fight against child trafficking, he feared for his family and was wracked by doubts. But his wife Katherine – played in the film by Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino – dispelled them, saying, “You have no choice. You have been called to do this. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

Last week, JPMorgan accused Cecile de Jongh, wife of the former governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), of working for Jeffrey Epstein and facilitating his underage sex ring.
Meanwhile, JPMorgan itself reached a $290 million settlement with some of Epstein’s victims.
The two incidents do not just highlight Epstein’s vast network; they remind us of the horrific crime of child trafficking, believed to yield annual profits of $32 billion in the U.S. and $150 billion worldwide. It is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world, in competition with drug running and the arms trade.
One man, Tim Ballard, has made it his life’s mission to fight this evil and rescue as many of its innocent victims as he can. A former undercover operative for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Ballard worked on its anti-child-trafficking teams but felt frustrated by the limitations of a government agency. In 2013, he and some colleagues quit to set up Operation Underground Railroad (OUR), which now has 150 employees, 80 contractors, and 70 trained dogs. Ballard and other staffers, who pose as customers to infiltrate child sex rings, have so far been involved in 7,000 direct rescues, resulting in 5,000 arrests. They also provide therapeutic aftercare to rescued children and train law enforcement agencies in five regions worldwide.
His valiant story is the subject of Mexican producer Eduardo Verastegui’s film Sound of Freedom, available for viewing nationwide beginning July 4.
Indeed, there’s an Epstein connection: Jim Caviezel, who plays Ballard, says the film features an Epstein island allegory, and wonders how the “three-letter agencies” could not be aware of the extent of the child-trafficking problem. He hopes the film will motivate more witnesses and whistle-blowers into speaking up.
In the film’s dramatized storyline, a boy whom Ballard has rescued while a government agent tells him to also rescue his sister, handing over a necklace to help identify the girl. Unable to do much in his official capacity, but not having the heart to ignore the boy’s request, Ballard quits his job, teams up with some other agents, and against great odds rescues the girl from Colombia.
While there is no denying that multiple factors encourage the sexual exploitation of children, the real-life Ballard believes that one major contributor in our times is the woke political atmosphere in the country. The irony, he says, is that 20 years ago, people could be arrested for giving pornography to minors, but today, teachers supply what is essentially pornography as part of the curriculum. He warns of the harm teachers and school authorities inflict by manipulating children into gender confusion and gender transition treatment without parental approval. “If you can consent to genital mutilation, you can consent to sex with a 50-year-old,” he says, adding that there are attempts to normalize pedophilia by portraying it as “child liberation” rather than abuse and viewing parents as the enemy for limiting access to their children.
In a parallel development, pedophiles are insinuating themselves into the LGBTQ movement, reinventing themselves as an alternative orientation – Minor Attracted Persons (MAPs).
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The prayer is Psalm 72 was unanswered for centuries, until the birth of “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1). Jesus fulfills Adam’s mission, is right now blessing the nations through His death and resurrection, has applied the law to our hearts through His new covenant, and has already begun a heavenly reign which will one day meet no opposition and no end.

The Bible is one story, a single plot that unfolds through a series of covenants God made with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David—all of which point towards, and are fulfilled in, the New Covenant in Christ.
There are many passages of Scripture that we could draw on in order to demonstrate this key idea, but recently I’ve been struck at how Psalm 72 pulls everything together so well.
The Psalm’s title is “Of Solomon,” and the opening request is “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son!” (Psalm 72:1). These words recall God’s promise to David that “I will raise up your offspring after you… and I will establish his kingdom” (2 Samuel 7:12). In fact, much of the Psalm could be described as a prayer from David’s heir that God would keep the promises of the Davidic covenant (found in 2 Samuel 7).
But that’s not all. The Psalm also envisions Israel’s king as an inheriting the charge given to Adam and Eve to “have dominion” over the earth. “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Genesis 1:28).
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In following the developments over the past four years, one thing has been clear: The name United Methodist is not enough to hold together groups that no longer see one another as united. For a movement which once boasted of a church in every county in America, the splintering of this denomination is a time to mourn. Time to mourn the loss of biblical fidelity within the liberal strains of the movement. Time to mourn that conservatives must come out of the church rather than be party to the hypocrisy that says one thing about sexuality while ignoring flagrant violations.

There is no longer a First United Methodist Church in my hometown. The day after the vote taken to leave the denomination, the church pastor was outside scraping the flame from behind the cross logo painted on the glass doors and covering the church sign with a garbage bag. As of yet, there is no word on what the new name of the church will be.
The picture of black plastic covering church signs, logos scaped off, and contested debates about whether the church or denomination gets to keep the hymnals is one I imagine is fairly common across the country now. According to estimates, one-fourth of the churches within the United Methodist Church—the nation’s second largest Protestant body—have chosen to disaffiliate because the denomination has failed to be faithful to Christian teaching on sexuality and marriage.
The past four years have seen a flurry of attempts by Methodists to reckon with their own inconsistency on the topic of sexuality and biblical fidelity. The 2019 General Conference (the gathering of representatives from the United Methodist Church) passed the Traditional Plan, which would have affirmed the Book of Discipline’s statement that no “self-avowed practicing homosexual” could be ordained to the clergy and that homosexuality was incompatible with the Christian life. It also created a process for bringing charges against churches, individuals, and conferences that were breaking the rules. There was also a provision included that allowed churches to leave the denomination with their property, provided they did so by the end of 2023. Initially this would have allowed liberal denominations to leave, but following the announcement that some groups would refuse to enforce the Traditional Plan, it was conservatives who began to exit.
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