Oct. 17, 2024

Free Speech Under Fire: Shawn Bolz Shares Prophetic Insights on the Cultural Censorship Crisis

Free Speech Under Fire: Shawn Bolz Shares Prophetic Insights on the Cultural Censorship Crisis
Free Speech Under Fire: Shawn Bolz Shares Prophetic Insights on the Cultural Censorship Crisis
Charisma News
Free Speech Under Fire: Shawn Bolz Shares Prophetic Insights on the Cultural Censorship Crisis

This episode was released on October 8, 2024.

In this captivating conversation, prophetic voice Shawn Bolz joins host John Matarazzo to provide a unique, redemptive perspective on the pressing cultural and political issues of our time.

Delving into the critical battle over free speech, Bolz shares eye-opening insights into the challenges faced by Christians on social media platforms, where certain topics are systematically marginalized. He explores the spiritual dynamics at play and offers a hopeful vision for reclaiming the narrative through bold, authoritative voices.

Bolz also shares his prophetic call to work in media and entertainment, shedding light on the power of long-form content to foster deeper connections and understanding. Drawing parallels to past spiritual revivals, he unveils prophetic insights into the election cycle and the potential for a new move of God to sweep across the nation.

This thought-provoking discussion is a must-watch for anyone seeking a prophetic lens on the culture wars and a renewed sense of hope in challenging times. Discover the redemptive perspective that can transform frustration into breakthrough and unlock the transformative power of the gospel in the public square.

@shawnbolzofficial

0:00 We're angry because it's like a seed of contention inside of us. It's a way we pray that we don't know we're praying. Okay, but what is God doing? And that's the question we ask all the time. Like, where's God in this? There's a spiritual battle over freedom of speech because then it creates fear that you're gonna lose something if you do speak. God is raising up the voice to be able to tell a different narrative. In this day and age, the words that we say are under attack. And with me today is Sean Bulls, who is a well-known prophetic voice. And we're gonna talk about the things you can't say. So Sean, welcome to Charisma. I'm always glad to be here. This is awesome. Yeah, so Sean, right now in the news, which is actually something that you do a lot, you comment about what is happening in our world, but you bring a prophetic perspective, you kind of focus in on discernment and help people break down what is really going on spiritually behind the headlines.

0:57 And one of the things that's really under attack right now is free speech and the things that people say. Help us kind of understand what is going on. And you actually fled California where the biggest culvert of all is happening. So tell us about what's been going on with free speech. Well, the good thing is our ministry is still based in California. We still love California. But yeah, free speech is one of the constitutional rights we have in it. It's something that as a Christian, it's one of the strongest ways that God anoints us or uses us to be able to spread his love, to be able to connect to people. It's the connecting devices are the way we talk to each other, the way we spend time with each other. And when you take that issue and you basically side swipe it or side rail it or put it into a place where it just shouldn't be and you put rules and regulations on it that we shouldn't have, it takes the power and authority out of our whole Christian experience.

1:51 So right now we're dealing with big tech, social media networks other than Twitter that you can't say things about abortion. You can't talk about Christianity in a way that may be progressive in the sense, not progressive Christianity, but progressive in the sense of like saying, my ideas that are that there should be a way of us relating or Christianity to influence the world around us. And as soon as you start talking about transformation or influence, you get marginalized. Or if you talk about how it can affect gender identity or any other thing, you're in trouble. You're in trouble with the big tech. You also can't advertise to anybody. You used to be able to advertise and tell people of your local church within five miles around you if they're interested or doing searches about God. You can be one of the places that they search for, but they took all advertisement that's specific to conservatism, politics that are right-leaning and Christianity or any faith except for extreme faiths.

2:37 You can still do Islam and you can still do Buddhism and that kind of thing, but you can't do any kind of Christianity or Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons which we understand. They think they're similar, but they're not. But you can't do any of that. And so that took a way of us reaching our audience away because they're shadow banning or they're minimizing where our voice will go. If you say the word transgender once and you're a channel that they know is Christian and they know that is conservative, they'll immediately take you out of the algorithm. Like at one time we had Instagram tell us, like we're only showing you to 1% of your audience right now because you're basically in trouble. You're in our penalty box. Wait, is that what Instagram told you that? They put it in the notes.

3:18 Like you're only being shown in a small, like up to 1% of your audience because it's something you're talking about. And so we had to earn our way back in by not talking about some of the hot topics there. And that's why you see so many conservatives. It's not that they don't want to be bold on YouTube or Instagram, but they can't say even the word transgender, even in a positive context, any context at all because of their whole channel, what it's about. They can't say the word abortion. They can't say the word pornography. You can't talk badly about pornography. You can't say human trafficking. If you talk about human trafficking and pornography and it's linked together, you're immediately that will be banned or it will be marginalized in their algorithm. And so these systems are built by a humanistic mindset that doesn't really have God in the equation and it doesn't really have people in real spiritual social justice in the equation.

4:05 So we're watching people who are getting raised up to speak in culture. And then that, of course, if it's in the algorithm, it's in a whole people group who are specifically all over the world, but in America who are trying to silence those voices on mainstream media. It's in the local town hall and when you go to school boards, you get the same algorithm in those places. It's just, it's amongst humans. And so I feel like it's, we have a lot at stake right now with freedom of speech because we have to be bold, but then you're afraid that if you're too bold, you're gonna lose your voice. You're gonna lose your authority at your school board. You're gonna be looked at a certain way. And it's just a wild battle. Well, we have already said a bunch of different words that as we're putting this up on YouTube or social media, they're probably going to limit some of this.

4:50 So I just want to encourage people that if you're watching this and you've made it this far in the video, let us know in the comments that you have seen this for yourselves and you are experiencing this or the fact that you agree with what we're talking about. Just let us know and then hopefully that will kind of override the censorship there. But, you know, because we haven't, we've just addressed it. We haven't actually said whether we're for or against any of that stuff, but really free speech is an important thing because I know that Jesus' great command for us was to go into all the world and to make disciples. And we need to use our words to be able to do that. And one of the things that I always find really interesting as you're reading through the Acts, the Acts of the Apostles is that Paul was a Roman citizen and he had rights that were different than the other apostles.

5:45 And so he actually used the rights that he had effectively to be able to take the gospel further. And I feel like oftentimes we don't understand the rights that we do have and therefore we're just abdicating that voice to somebody else. I'd like to get your thoughts on that. I love that, because I use that example a lot because Paul used until the day he died and he understood his rights. And I think as an American, I've gone all over the world, I've gone to war zones and places that you have a natural entitlement when you're American to be able to get certain rights, to be able to give food away or to be able to get into certain IDP camps or whatever else. It's amazing when you understand that your rights of whatever you have, whether it's from the industry you work in or whether it's from whatever and how you can use that for the kingdom.

6:30 I think, I think Christians, what we don't understand is how much, how much love is a currency and how much love is a power that people are looking for because love resolves so much, love helps so much, it does so many things. And I feel like speech along with love because faith comes by hearing speech is so important. So when you're looking at like what the homosexual communities on an overpropagating marginalized for this again, but they were feeling underserved and they were feeling marginalized. And so they went after a media and entertainment kind of collaborative through the arts and they said, let's tell our stories. And let's get a homosexual in every single show or somebody else you can put us on every show. And just as a sub character in the background just so that it feels familiar and then let's start telling their stories.

7:14 So people get a sense of empathy and compassion and they can relate to them. Well, the problem with that is that they only told very happy ending stories for all this time till now. It's still, it's like, this is great, this is grand, this is wonderful. Christians owe the world to tell the stories. The Christians who've come out of that community, the Christians who've come alongside that community, we've had kids in that community have the obligation to come out of love to show what Jesus did in the midst of those stories when there's a turnaround. And if Christians would, it's the same thing about, again, we're using when women have the right to choose, when they go through that entire experience, we rarely, Juno did a really good job. We rarely show the story up until like the actual woman who's having this experience.

7:57 And when you tell that story, the thousands of testimonies of what God did through media, through the arts, through television, through film, through podcasting, through music, then all of a sudden you create a narrative that's more powerful than the news media. It's more powerful than the anti, it's more powerful than the protest. But we have not used these vehicles enough. And I feel like God, one of the things that Woods Freedom Species is that God's deploying people to be a great voice. And there's this big war against it on the front end, spiritually, I feel like there's a spiritual battle over freedom of speech because then it creates fear that you're gonna lose something if you do speak. But man, if these people, I've watched on TikTok, there's a couple of people who've come, who've detransitioned and they're telling their stories. And them telling their stories is worth a thousand sermons on it.

8:40 It's like they tell their stories of this is what happened to me as a teenager, this is how it changes, this is what Jesus did in my life. And it's a before and after. You now have them as the measure or the weight of how you look at the issue, just like when you watch certain TV shows and movies and you really don't understand certain issues and you watch it and you go, oh, I have sympathy for that now, but it's not a right reality-based sympathy. And so I think like part of the freedom of speech issue is that we are being raised up to tell our stories on the biggest town hall stages in the world. And the enemy's trying to resist us before we can get there. And that's why Christian films have been in the box office for the last 24 months. I think we're at 17 months now. We've been at the top five films in the box office on the weekends that they come out.

9:21 So every month there's been one Christian film that's never happened in history, John. I mean, it's never happened. And it's because God is raising up the voice to be able to tell a different narrative, even that chosen, how it's showing a different version, an artistic representation of what it could have been like in the gospels. And it's the most watched show on television. I mean, it's like by far, and 50% of the people who watch it aren't Christians. That's huge, but there's a whole group of people who would like to get that off television. There's people who when Amazon was, internally, when Amazon was trying to bring it on, that were trying to say it doesn't have DEI, doesn't have enough representation in it. And we don't want that on our streaming service this way. We don't want to partner to them in any direct way because we don't have that.

10:02 We don't have enough representation that there's no queer or LGBTQ plus people in it. And it's like, but that's not even faithful to the story. We're telling our artistic representation of a real story. And that created a new dialogue in Amazon that actually created a new way for them to make films without DEI. It was the first time because of the chosen and they weren't even a direct show. So we have to be a voice and God's raising up people to do things differently. And it is scary because the whole world's saying, you can't win an Oscar if you don't have this. And then someone's gonna make a movie or a project that we'll have, will be different and it will win an Oscar and it's gonna confuse everybody. Yeah. You know, Sean, you brought up a couple of things that I kind of wanted to go a little bit deeper in our discussion about this because you've brought up about TikTok and we've talked about podcasts and we've talked about all different types of media as well.

10:50 But the concept of sound bites versus long form discourse is something that I'm paying a lot of attention to right now. And we're in a political season and I'm noticing that one candidate won't even talk and another candidate is going on long form podcasts and willing to just talk and really get things out there. I'm starting to see that there is more growth and development with long form content because people want that real. They don't want, they want the reality. They don't want just a TikTok thing. They want to go deeper. Can we talk about going deeper versus the headlines or the quick quotes and the gotcha phrases?

11:37 What are you sensing about that? Well, I think we're in a generation that for a long time substituted information for connection. And so if I know it, then I feel connected to it and that's enough, but now they're wanting real connection to heart of something. So you have Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson and these guys who have the biggest podcasts in the world, the conservatives. And so as Joe, we're gonna have a three hour conversation with somebody. And when they hear the person, whether it's about aliens or someone's faith, he's a lot of people faith on in the last couple years. He's had a lot of conservatives on the last couple years and you get to hear somebody who comes from a different mindset and I've listened to a couple of the alien guys where I'm like, that's intriguing. I've never thought of that. I've never heard that. Now I have to think about that. It's in me because I actually like this person I'm listening to and feel connection to Joe Rogan in this person's conversation.

12:21 It's touched me somewhere on the inside in my heart and my soul. So now I'm thinking about aliens differently because this person was in the CIA and they declassified this and whatever. So I think like there's this long form piece that builds connection and where the world is no longer hungry to just be informed, but they want to be included. They want to be connected. They want to be part of the conversation. So I think these long form, especially young men, I think men are so hungry for, they're getting out of the mode of like, I can check off my list all the things I need to know about. Like here's the box. I need to buy aliens. I need to buy God. I need to buy, you know, whatever it's politics. And as long as I hear about it, I feel good. I feel strong. I don't think men are in the same condition they were before. I think they're like, I want to hear a father.

13:01 I want to hear a brother. I want to feel connected. And I think the podcast, obviously the men are higher demographic than women for the first time in history on a media server. And it's because of that. Whereas Fox News or CNN News is cyclical news and it's just information with a lot of rhetoric. And I'm not saying there's no good in Fox News because there is and there's no good CNN News because there is, but as far as maybe on this news cycle there's not, but there is at times. But it really is just informative and it's not including you at all. It's just telling you what you need to believe. And I think people are done with that. Yeah. People don't want to be told what to believe because that's what they've been told their whole lives. They really, I mean, I kind of always go back to this.

13:44 I was taught how to think, not just what to think. And if I was told what to think, I was given the reasons why we came to that conclusion. And that helped me in my formative years, but for so long people have just taken what has been said and they haven't been Bereans and they haven't dug in deeper and they haven't done that. Well, let's talk about some discernment. And you do a lot of work commenting about our news, society, the culture at large, media, but from a prophetic angle, from a prophetic perspective and discernment. Tell me about your call in that arena.

14:25 Well, I'm still figuring it out. A couple of years ago, I felt like I was supposed to, I knew I was supposed to work in media and entertainment more. It's a bigger focus than what I was doing in ministry. And so I literally, during coronavirus, left the pulpit type ministry. And I felt like God was kind of a prophetic act because I felt God was deploying a lot of people from church-centric ministry to mainstream industries, whether it's business or media or whatever, politics. So when I moved into it, Matt Crouch was like, I need you to come on alongside TBN. I want you to come once a month and do commentary, be on some of our news shows, and then your YouTube channel. Why don't you go after news commentary for a while and then we'll do a show? He wanted me to do a broadcast show right away, but I wasn't ready for it.

15:07 Because I was like, I don't even know. I don't even know how to. I always do this, even in my church sermons, a lot of times I would start out with like, well, here's what's going on in society and we would talk about it. And then I would get into a message. So it's very normal for me, like in my strengths binders, input's my number one. So it's very normal for me to give input. And I think that God, a lot of the news commentators, I think they have a discerning edge where they're looking at culture through a certain lens that causes them to be a contributor to the conversation. And the other thing that they're doing is they're raising up and creating conversations that no one else is having. And so when I looked at that, I was like, we'd already had Explore in a prophetic podcast here on the Chisma podcast network, which we also turned into Chisma, or Explore in the Marketplace, and having a conversation with a business person who's sharing their breakdowns and their breakthroughs and our highs and their lows was like, if a picture's worth a thousand words, I mean, their life story's a thousand sermons.

15:59 So when I transitioned into like the Shambles show, we called it, the first week we were like in the top 10 of all news, and then the top one or two in news commentary in the world. And I'm like, I mean, I just started, I don't even know what I'm doing, like this is weird. And we've stayed in the top 150, usually in the top 40, the day it comes out every week. And we stay in the top 100 to 150 all week long, even if we only have one episode, which most shows need daily content to stay there. And we've had like, now we have a little bit more, but I was just like, wow, people are this hungry to have somebody who doesn't point out the wrong. Like one of the things we do on our show is that we don't focus on the enemy and we don't focus on what man's doing wrong.

16:39 And we don't do church controversy because I feel like a lot of church controversies be handled apistologically by pastors and leaders and accountability. And it doesn't need to go through like a public scrutiny, the same way that somebody in politics, we can talk about them with integrity or we can talk about something in entertainment because there's no process for restoration, there's no process for healing, there's no process that society can bring around them, versus a pastor who fails. It's not something that I feel called to talk about. So I began to look at what's happening in entertainment, look at what's happening with freedom of speech, look at what's happening. Elon Musk was a big story for us when he started to buy Twitter and move into that direction and people were like, oh my gosh, someone's saying that there's something we're done through about this. I'm gonna hear what he says.

17:20 I'm saying, I think this is God. God's using this man as a Cyrus. Like we need a freedom of speech vehicle. I can say whatever I want on Twitter for the first time in years, we're not gonna be silenced. You know, like this is crazy. And a whole audience was like, oh my God, that's how I feel. I feel like I need to, I need to not be disabled in my voice right now. So some of the things that we talked about with even like Jesus revolution coming out at the same time as Asbury revival and how it was a sign of the times of what God's preparing the world for is another worldwide revival. And you have these incredible vehicles like where Kelsey Grammar comes back to Lord doing a film. And then you have the Asbury revival, which breaks out with, there's no major celebrity leader doing it. And that was gonna be a sign of what's to come.

18:00 And then, you know, even over the summer having the most baptisms, there's ever been anywhere. And it all happened in the state of California, which a lot of Christians have discounted or said, or thrown to the enemy already, because Gavin Newsom, who's just a man? I mean, God is a destiny in that state. So I feel like I've been able to come in and help people look at things, maybe that they're angry at. Because a lot of times we're angry because it's like a seed of contention inside of us. It's a way we pray that we don't know we're praying. We get frustrated at something until we get a redemptive lens for it. And I've had that happen so many times in my life where I'm just like, I'm aggravated in my soul over something or someone. And then as I'm aggravated, for me, John, I was aggravated at like a young Christian celebrity or young celebrity who became a Christian back when I first started church in LA.

18:48 And I was aggravated, because he kept dating all the girls on my church and he was a womanizer and all these issues. And I just didn't like him. And then all of a sudden he came to my church. And he's like, I need mentoring, I need help. And he's like this worldwide celebrity, you know? And I'm like, I don't wanna, and then I fell in love with the kid. And like it totally mentored him and like spent time with him. I was like, okay, you're actually an amazing young man, but you just need some dad time. You just need some fathering and stuff. So it's like a lot of the things that we're aggravated by in society, it's like God's gonna give us authority if we can make it through and see what he's doing and not stay where the enemy's at in it or where man's he manages failures at. So I feel like the show has been a redemptive tool to help people, even if they don't agree with my biases, to help people to go, okay, but what is God doing?

19:29 And that's the question we ask all the time. Like, where is God in this? Like behind the scenes, my team's like, okay, this is a lot to look at, but I'm not hearing where God's at yet. We haven't gotten there yet. We're not gonna talk about this yet. We're not just gonna be responsive because we wanna make a response to get clicks. We have to have authority on what we're talking about or it's not worth talking about it. And it's been really profound. You know, Sean, you said something that I just wrote down this phrase, the redemptive lens and how you were frustrated until you had a redemptive lens for that. There's just something in my spirit that just caught on fire whenever you said that. How do we help people use that redemptive lens and use that frustration to get them to a place where they can see through that redemptive lens?

20:16 Because I think that's a missing element in our society right now. Well, I mean, the Bible is so filled with it, right? Whatever is pure, whatever is right, whatever is noble, fixture of mind and affections on those things. So whatever you're seeing hell, don't focus on hell. What is God doing in the midst of hell? Like Jesus, you know, like, you know, if he was in the garden and alls he looked at was Satan the whole time in the temptation, he would have failed. But he saw the Father. He knew the Father. He remembered the Father. He, you know, we tell our kids when I go to school, when you miss us, because they're little, you know, they're nine and 11, when you miss us, carry the affection at this moment, like I'm hugging you, sitting with you on the couch, loving on you, just remember that, rehearse that in your heart. That's your life. That's your reality. Even if you don't feel it at school, you can practice this. You can practice this being together.

20:56 And I feel like for Christians, we have to like not look at hell. We have to look at heaven in the midst of hell. We have to look at God in the midst of hell. So we have to ask ourselves in the midst of, you know, transgender homosexual LGBTQ plus, you know, which I shouldn't say again, this is my fourth time saying it on the show. Well, issues. One of the greatest redemptive words we've ever had was from the latter rain prophet, the movie Jesus Revolution was made off of Lonnie Frisbee, or was it the last, not a lot of rain problem, but the last, you know, Jesus Revolution prophet, who said in his deathbed, what hippiest word to the Jesus people movement, the LGBTQ plus people will be to the next great move of God. We misunderstand them. You don't know how to have authority or connection to them, but God is going to use them.

21:36 And so I look at it and go, oh, you know, my daughters were in a gym, a transgender came in, in the women's locker room, why they're taking a shower, went to the shower, you know, they're closed showers, but next to them, and my wife got them out of there and we're like in Texas, and we're like, this is bizarre. Like this, we're in a part of Texas, it's very conservative, and we're just frustrated. Just going, that's, you know, of course we try and turn on compassion or heal this man or whatever. But then there's this other part of it that's like, you're going to raise up some people that are so confused right now, and they're going to be the voice of the next great revolution, like Paul, and they're going to be like, a lot of people won't want to accept him because you're going to raise up Barnabas as God, but you just got to practice like, not just, oh, I guess I'll think the best thing, and that could be the antidote for the worst thing. It's not that, it's what is God saying and doing historically, and how is he moving us towards Jesus returning, and how do we start to have faith in the midst of a world of confusion, he has a sound mind and we can have a sound mind.

22:27 And that's where I look at it. And I just don't get, I don't stay in discouragement because there's so much to be encouraged in it. If you're not encouraged, that means you're not looking at God, you're looking at everything else. That's so good, Sean, that is so good. And you said earlier, before we hit record, that when all hell is breaking loose, all heaven is breaking loose too. Absolutely. Let's talk about that a little bit more because I feel like we're, you are scratching the surface on hope right now, and there's this glimmer of hope that's coming out of this conversation for everybody that's watching that. If you're feeling hope, put hope in the comments and let us know how God is using this conversation to help you see things differently and have that redemptive lens.

23:09 Put that in the comments, we'd love to hear about that. But Sean, how do we cultivate this hope even more when all hell is breaking loose, all heaven is breaking loose? Well, you know, if I was in discipleship mode, I'd say just like practically like, you wake up in a day and something hard happens and then you use that to remind yourself of God. That's why we have to strengthen ourselves in the Word too. We have to have scriptures. Like when you live in the land of hope, you're never disappointed, but you have to remember the first part of James one. You know, consider pure joy whenever you face trials and tribulations of any kind for a developed perseverance and perseverance develops character and character develops hope. When you live in the land of hope. So a lot of times people just want hope, but they don't realize that it comes from trials and it comes from persevering through hardship.

23:53 So when we wake up and we're facing our own battles and we're facing our own demons, so to speak, are we strengthening ourselves in God? Are we looking for what he's doing in our own life? And can we come to agreement? Even it's the simplest thing of like, man, I want to live today. Man, I like my family and just grounding yourself in the hope of that and the goodness of that. And most people aren't granting themselves in the goodness of God. So I hear a lot of prophets are saying if Trump doesn't get elected, America's gonna fail forever. You know, it's never gonna be able to turn around. And they're putting their hope in Republican government being the answer for a God equation that is bigger than the Republicans aren't bigger than the God equation over America. I don't want calm out of it.

24:34 I don't want the progressive liberalism to win right now. But we've just had it, whether it hasn't destroyed America. It's made it hard, but we're still like, we're still the greatest country on the earth right now. Like still, and there's, I could give you 25 reasons why. And so it's, when people make those extreme statements and they're living out of that extremity of like, I need this to solve this. I need to, and they're not living with like, today's a good day. Today, this is what God's doing in my life. Today, this is what God's doing in my family. Today, God, this is what God's doing in my church. Today, this is what, if you don't live out of that place of seeing who God is and what he's doing, you won't look for him to multiply that. You'll look for him to answer all the deficits. So you live in a victim mentality. And I think for me, what we've been doing with our show is like showing like in the midst of, you know, Kanye West, I hate this turnaround.

25:19 I hate that he doesn't believe in Jesus and he believes he's God now. And I still hope for him. But somehow, somehow like a lot of Christians will say, well, see, you were wrong about Kanye and I'm not wrong about Kanye. He gave his life to Jesus legitimately behind the scenes, tried to walk with him and mental illness and Satan won. You know, like, but that doesn't discount what God's doing in Hollywood with others like, you know, people like Chris Pratt or Mark Wahlberg or whoever. You know, there's so many of them. It doesn't discount what's happening with Kevin Sorbo, whoever, and we could say, you know, well, Kanye and be so focused on it that we don't see Mark Wahlberg. We can be so focused on what's not happening that we can't see what is happening. And it really is that parable that Jesus said, those who have not, everything will be taken away.

25:59 Those who have everything will be given. It starts with your mind and your lens. If you feel like everything's going to hell, then you're looking for hell to take more. If you feel like God's on the move and he's actually here with us, you're looking for him to add to that. Yeah. And if we take a step back, and you just said something that was really powerful, that we are currently, this is 2024 in September as we're recording this for anybody that's watching this years down the road, but we are currently under the administration of President Joe Biden, who is not a, he was left leaning and the country is going through hardships, but it hasn't fallen apart yet.

26:43 But you just also mentioned the Asbury revival. We've started seeing moves of God that are coming out of this hardship, that if we take a step back, we can actually see those things. But if we're so myopic and only paying attention to what's right in front of our faces, we won't see any of those things there. From a prophetic standpoint though, what are you feeling right now? What are you seeing heading into this election cycle? I know you said earlier that God hasn't spoken to you about the winner of the outcome of that, but just prophetically, what are you seeing and sensing in the news right now? Yeah, I mean, I'm seeing that the battleground is actually helping people to define what they want because things are so contrasted right now.

27:30 People are looking at, under Joe Biden, we've had religious intolerance. I mean, Christians have been put in jail for being Christians who are advocating for rights that we should all be able to advocate for. The Supreme Court is being threatened with a filibuster where they're trying to stack the Supreme Court because they don't like a conservative Supreme Court. So you're watching people who want to change the law to violate our rights that are in office right now. And you're watching it in a number of different ways. I feel like whether Kamala wins or Trump wins, we're gonna start to have an emerging generation who's fighting for rights again. And we won't be, the passivity, there's no time to be passive anymore. The passivity is we're seeing champions being raised up and like whether it's the Charlie Kirk's and kind of social commentary or whether it's actual politicians or so many politicians who God's raising up right now locally on a local level and then also on a national level.

28:17 There's so many pastors, right? It's the most pastors who've ever run for offices in America in the last four years. I mean, that just shows you that there's, and in all kinds of offices, it shows you that the passivity is kind of ending. And in the midst of that too, you have this undercurrent of movement, like the stories that'll come out for colleges of how they're gonna liberalize your children. Well, some of the colleges are having the biggest moves of God they've ever had on their campus. And like there's football teams, baptizing kids, that I think you would discover that story the other day. There's, it's just crazy how many baptisms are happening and how much of the move of God is happening on local public colleges or Oklahoma University and Auburn University. Different colleges are having things happen that have never happened before.

28:59 So I look at it and go, we're coming in an election cycle and the elections don't determine how much or how little God will move at all. They do determine how much freedom we'll have within the move, but they don't determine the move of God itself. And I think that, you know, just like, right, I think that Jesus people revolution was a signpost and that movie coming out was a signpost of what's to come because government was breaking down. There was a war over Vietnam internally, almost like a civil war. There was people who were so sick of not being real at home that they became hippies because they felt like everyone's trying to be like Jim Cleaver and for those of you who are old enough to know that the Cleaver family, they were trying to, it was like, there was no vulnerability in families. People were experiencing horrendous things at home and they had no process of therapy or counseling or biblical discipleship to help them over it.

29:45 And so people were like, home's not real, I'm leaving home. And the most hippies were abused people who left home because home wasn't good. And the next move of God is gonna make home real good. Family and marriage is gonna be on display. People are gonna look at how people are doing family, mom and dad, kids at home. And I feel like we're about to come into a cycle of a season where so many people are gonna get saved based on the fact that felt needs are so felt. And they're so obvious, just like it was in the Jesus revolution time where Jesus people move at time. And I'm encouraged by the the obviousness of it, the obvious gaps that are there because only God can feel some of the gaps that are there. There's no politician, Trump or other or Kamala who could fill these gaps in America or elsewhere, but over Israel, over what's happening in the Middle East, over what's happening anywhere, but God can.

30:32 And I think we're, he's gonna save us again. He's gonna save us again. Sean, I've really enjoyed talking with you because hope is rising up within me and I know hope is rising up within everybody that's watching this. If you're feeling that things are dark and depressive and there's no hope, I pray that this conversation has made you feel hope. And Sean, as we're wrapping up here, would you just pray for everybody that's been watching that they would have that encounter with the Lord? We're sure, and yeah, it's my privilege. It's my privilege to be on the Charisma Podcast and I work with the Sean Bolsho and just be with you guys and with Explore the Marketplace. I think it's so fun to know that people can follow this conversation. Maybe they gotta wake into something. We keep having this conversation every week.

31:13 You can come with us, but Holy Spirit for everyone watching. Thank you for John and the Charisma team and what they're bringing you, how they're staying in a gap. That's so obvious right now. And I pray everyone watching, I speak over your faith and your hope and even maybe you're fatigued to the point of exhaustion from all the drama and the trauma around the world. The Bible is very clear. Jesus himself says, cast your cares upon me. And I pray you'll be able to cast those cares on him and let him carry you through this season. Let him carry the issues that you don't know how to resolve in your heart, whether it's Israel or national politics, or whether it's something very real locally in your marriage or your family, that God would allow you to just walk with him in a way where he would carry the heaviness and he would carry the heavy burden.

31:54 And I pray that God will give you resolutions and resolution points when it comes to some of the heaviness you experience. He is a spirit who lives inside of you and he will speak to you and he'll bring your life and make it more than it could ever be without him. And I pray that you would feel hope today that's not just in messaging, but hope based on the spiritual rootedness of what he's doing in your heart right now. And I pray that he would bring more alive the word and through his spirit, the word and just the promise that's over your life as we've been having this conversation that you would feel the promise of what's to come that your life has a John 10, 10, like God's abundance, his goodness is promised to you if you'll just look for it in Jesus' name.

32:37 And then Sean Bowles, thank you so much for joining us today on Charisma. Oh, thanks for having me.