Over the past few years, Pastor Samuel Rodriguez has been involved in the production of two successful movies, Breakthrough and Flamin Hot.
But it wasn’t always like that.
In fact, in his early years, Rodriguez stated in an interview with Billy Hallowell on his podcast Higher Ground, that he preached against Hollywood and its excesses.
Rodriquez, 54, was born in Puerto Rico and today pastors New Season Church, a mega-church based in Sacramento, California. He also heads the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, which has over 40,000 Hispanic churches as part of its network.
It all changed for Rodriguez about ten years ago, when a woman went to an open mic and delivered what was essentially a prophetic word, .“Samuel, God says ‘Hollywood.”
Sometime after that, a door to Hollywood cracked open, when the producers at Paramount asked Samuel to prescreen a movie entitled Noah to see if it would appeal to evangelicals.
After watching the movie, he accurately told the producers that Evangelical Christians would not find the movie appealing.
That prophetic word continued to be fulfilled when he was then approached by Pureflix and asked to serve as a consultant on their movie projects.
This led to him producing, Breakthrough, based on the true story of a boy who died after falling through ice and was brought back to life by his mother’s prayers.
He then produced Flamin Hot, a movie based on the life of a Christian janitor who worked for Frito-Lay and came up with the idea for Flamin Hot Cheetos.
The two movies were a financial success and this has opened the doors for several other movie projects.
Rodriquez is using this to influence our modern culture through movies.
“That’s my assignment,” Rodriquez said. “We are here … for such a time as this.”
In 2008, Newsweek listed Rodriguez as one of the ‘Top 12 People to Look For” and in 2013, Time Magazine included him as one of its “Top 100 Most Influential People.”
