Latest / The Living Waters Podcast / Sound of Freedom. Hidden Modern Slavery. Defending the Oppressed. - Highlight Episode 331

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Sound of Freedom. Hidden Modern Slavery. Defending the Oppressed. - Highlight Episode 331 · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  Speaker 1: All right, friends.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Today we're talking about the church's role in the fight against human trafficking.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Guys, very few things make me as sick as this.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: What was the movie Mark that was out the big?
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: movie Sound of Freedom.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Sound of Freedom.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Look, Ray's prepared.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: You encouraged me to go and see it, so I went by myself in the afternoon and watched it.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: You bawled your eyes out right Very moving movie.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a new one.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: They put out same director.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I think City of Dreams Is that in the theaters.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so pretty soon.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: A lot of celebrities endorsed it, lots and lots of celebrities, and I thought, as I was watching it wouldn't it be great if they could endorse a movie against abortion?
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: Human trafficking, that gets their sympathy, but abortion doesn't.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: That's so true.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Why do we call it human trafficking when it's just slavery?
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: What's the reason for changing it?
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: And it's probably because we like to think as human beings.
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: We have dealt with slavery.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: That's a thing of the past.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: But it's not.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: It's here, and it's because man's heart's wicked and evil.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Definitely, and I think another reason potentially is that slavery today looks a lot different, and so if we labeled it slavery, people would go well, wait a minute, no one's in change.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: It's not like outwardly open, it's hidden.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: We walk by potentially people who are being trafficked every day.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: We don't know, rather than, like in transatlantic slave trade, it was very clear who the slaves were, and so there's more slaves today than in any other point in human history, which goes against the narrative that, like, somehow we're moving past it.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: There's 21, potentially 21 million people who are being human trafficked, who are basically slaves.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: There was a big bust, like five years ago in Irvine.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: They were, they had prostitutes trafficked, prostitutes from Japan, and they were in a really nice apartment complex.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: They had like eight or nine different apartments that the traffickers were renting out and it was basically a brothel in the middle of a middle upper class community.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, you guys know Irvine it's a nice community.
• 3:15
  Speaker 4: There was a big bus this past week in Los Angeles where hundreds of people went down.
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: But to your point, ray Tim Keller.
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: He had said if you're helping suffering people but not calling out the forces that caused the suffering, you're not fully doing justice.
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: Right, so you're right.
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: Right, we have to take it a step further.
• 3:34
  Speaker 4: Why is this happening?
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: Where is this happening?
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: What can I do to kind of be involved in this?
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: Right, we're talking about the church's role in the fight against human trafficking and I think that we have to start with.
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: There's a responsibility to defend the oppressed.
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: Do we recognize that?
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: All right, now we can have a conversation where to move forward.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Mark, I'm so glad you highlighted that because you know we've talked about the pendulum, right, it's constantly swinging to either extreme and I think that because of the whole social justice movement and connection with wokeness, we just kind of act like we, as Christians, don't get involved in that stuff.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: That disgusts me.
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: It really does, yeah.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: It's like someone hijacks something, twists it and then we just throw it overboard.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: That's insanity.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: We are the light of the world, we are the salt of the earth.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I mean we can't abdicate that and recognize our ability to have impact and effect, you know, and so yeah.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: So I think first of all we need to recognize like this goes way back, because whether it's sex trafficking and that's kind of a part of you know, our focus today but whether it's that or human trafficking in general, people taking human beings this goes far back Exodus 21, 16,.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: He who kidnaps a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: That stops it, doesn't it?
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: That's it, that's right.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, and I mean, look in the law there are a lot of different prohibitions and many of them didn't include the death penalty.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: But those that did, you knew they were severe in the sight of God.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: And so there is an abomination in Scripture that deals with kidnapping someone, taking someone.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, and you think of the horrors of that, you know, I remember one time we were at a fair and I thought I had lost my daughters, Summer and Julia, when they were little girls.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, you guys are dads, you understand, like that moment in time, and to me, the horror of a parent having had a child abducted for years and not knowing what's happened to them.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: I mean the daily nightmare of just not even being able to sleep, like thinking your child is out there and what's happened to them.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: I mean the daily nightmare of just not even being able to sleep, like thinking your child's out there and what's happening to them.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: And you know those cases you hear about, like someone 20 years later is found and escapes, like this lady.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: It's just, it's madness.
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: I remember sitting my girls down when they were younger and it wasn't just a one-time event where I said, listen, trafficking is very real.
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: I had to explain it at a very early time and then what to do in the midst of it.
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: Because what do you do?
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: Right, in a spiritual sense, you raise your fist at God.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: Where is God?
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: Why didn't God prevent this from happening?
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: If God is loving and all-powerful, why do the innocent suffer?
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: And I remember walking through with my girls, even recently, on how to even worship God in the midst of this and not to accuse God of wrongdoing.
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: And I believe that my girls got to a place—they haven't arrived, they haven't attained—but it's the realization that this is a fallen world and there are dark people out there wanting to do some dark things.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: Didn't you almost lose your daughter in Paris to human trafficking?
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I don't know that it was indeed human trafficking, but it did seem like that to me, absolutely.
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: We were right by the pier, at the raised foundation, where a lot of people take pictures there.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: You mean of the Eiffel Tower.
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: Eiffel Tower, excuse me, yeah, and this guy and another guy just honed in on my daughter and they were following us to different places and, to make a long story short, it definitely scared us enough to where we ran back to the hotel and we took the first flight out of there to come home.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah and Ray.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's not a a novel concept.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Someone came up with justice, maybe the term social justice, but there is such a thing as biblical justice and and god loves it.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: How do we, as christians, tap into?
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: That yeah a mic uh six, eight, yeah, flavorful.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: he's showing the man what is good and what the lord requires of you.
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: Sing it Do justice, love, mercy.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: You're stuttering Mark Sing it.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: What a terrible thing.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Rap it right?
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's that balance of salt and light.
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: Let me just share something here Every human being is a victim of human trafficking.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: According to scripture, certain the Lord must not strive but be gentle to all men and meet us, instructing those that oppose themselves If God pervention would give them repentance, the acknowledging of the truth that they might recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who has taken them captive to do his will.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: And so we've got the gospel that sets people free.
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: So, on one hand, we stand for justice and social issues.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: On the other hand, we take for justice and social issues.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: On the other hand, we take that glorious gospel that takes people out of the hands of the devil and makes them free.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: You know you guys are reminding me of another chapter in Generous Justice which talks exactly about this.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: It's like he points out there's three areas in which we need to be involved in help.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: He says the first area is relief.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: Relief is the idea that you see someone.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: It's like the good Samaritan you see somebody in pain.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: You see somebody in pain in some sort of turmoil, and we do something to rescue that individual person.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Then he talks about restoration, which is not just that you get those people back up on their feet, but you preach the gospel to them.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: They might come to a saving faith and you help them in a restorative way so that one day not only are they living a healthy, beautiful life, but they can give back towards the problem.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: But the other thing he talks about is reform, and that's exactly what you're talking about.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: And reform could be laws, but it could also be.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: It is also recognizing the cultural precedence that gives way to make these things okay.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: And I always imagine, hearing this podcast through the lens of a non-believer, them thinking themselves well, wait a minute, it's nobody's fault, but the trafficker's fault For sure.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: The trafficker is primarily responsible, but because of the porn industry, because of the over sexualization of women.
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: Our culture has created the environment that makes these horrific things possible.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: And in order to change the problem, sure, we need to provide relief, restoration, but we also need to talk about reform.
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: And what can you do individually to answer your question yeah, you can raise awareness.
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: Christine Kane, she's the founder of A21.
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: She deals with modern anti-trafficking.
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: She's a modern anti-trafficking leader and she said the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference, and indifference is the enemy of justice, that we need to be able to speak up.
• 10:33
  Speaker 4: We need to open up our mouth, as Proverbs 31 says, for the mute and for the rights of all who are destitute.
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: Open up your mouth, judge righteously and defend the rights of the poor and the needy.
• 10:43
  Speaker 4: Mother Teresa said you may not be able to feed a thousand, but you can feed one.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: That's where we stand up and we say no, I'm not going to contribute to this.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: And this brings up a good point, ray, heading this stuff off in terms of what we can do at its source, of what causes that right, like you climb up and put a blanket on a billboard or something.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: No one would ever do that.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: No one would do that.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: I did not put a blanket on a billboard.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: I put it on a lady's naked body.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: On a billboard On a billboard.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, make sure to clarify on a billboard.
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry it was a billboard it was a billboard.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought I was going to die because of some law, of something.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: I hit the staple gun and it not be backwards when I hit it.
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: Oh no, and I thought I was going gonna end up at the bottom of the billboard with a red blanket over me.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: I could just see Ray rolling up the windows we have a picture of that don't we yes we do.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah well, friends, let me wrap up with this.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Look, I think we all need to reevaluate two things that we often say I can't afford it and I don't have time.
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: May we reevaluate those and really ask ourselves is that true when it comes to standing up for things?
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: We were talking specifically about sex trafficking, but this applies to so many more things.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in to this week's highlights from the Living Waters podcast.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Friends, we value your time, so we've created a bite-sized version of our podcast for listeners who want to get equipped without the jokes and fellowship.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Be sure to check out the full episode every Thursday, where we dive deeper into the topic.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Until then, you can watch the full podcast episode available now on livingwaterstv.