Dear friend,
I need to tell you something I have not told anyone.
I have been keeping it back for months. Every time I sat down to write to you I told myself it was not the right moment. That I would say it next time. That perhaps it did not need to be said at all.
But it is Friday and I am an old man and I have learned, slowly and at some cost, that the things we keep telling ourselves we will say next time are often the most important things of all.
So I am saying it.
I am afraid I have not said enough.
Not about Scripture. Not about God. Not about the things that matter eternally. Those things I have given everything I have to say, for fifty years, without holding back.
I am afraid I have not said enough about what I believe is happening right now. In this country. In this moment. While there is still time to say it.
Let me explain what I mean.
I have sat with enough dying people to know what silence costs. I have held the hand of a man in his final hours who wept not because he was afraid of what came next but because he had never told his son he was proud of him. I have sat with a woman who spent her last days trying to write a letter she had put off for thirty years. I have watched people leave this world carrying things they should have put down decades earlier.
And I promised myself, a long time ago, that I would not do that. That I would say the things that needed saying while I still had breath to say them.
But I am not sure I have kept that promise.
Here is the specific fear.
I look at what is happening in this country right now and I see something that I believe Scripture describes very clearly. A pattern. A specific, unmistakable pattern that runs through the whole Bible and that I believe is unfolding right in front of all of us at this exact moment in history.
And my fear is this.
Most people cannot see it. Not because they are not faithful. Not because they do not love God or love this country. But because nobody has sat down and shown it to them clearly, from Scripture, without flinching or softening it or wrapping it in so many careful words that the real meaning gets lost.
I am afraid that I have been one of those people. That I have written around the edges of what I actually believe instead of walking straight into the centre of it and saying it plainly.
So let me walk straight into the centre of it tonight.
I want to tell you what I actually believe about this moment in history. Not carefully. Not with all the qualifications I usually wrap around things to make them easier to hear. Just plainly.
I believe God is still at work in America. Not despite what you are seeing. Through it.
I have read this Book every single morning for fifty years. And one of the things I have learned — slowly, and sometimes painfully — is that God does not tend to work the way we expect Him to. He does not show up in the wind or the earthquake or the fire. He shows up in the still small voice, the way He showed up for Elijah in First Kings chapter 19. He does not rescue His people before the lion's den. He meets them inside it, the way He met Daniel in chapter 6. He does not prevent the pit. He is present in it, the way He was present with Joseph in Genesis chapter 37 before any of the promises came true.
This means something important for how you read what is happening right now.
The chaos is not evidence that God has left. It is actually consistent with every major moment in Scripture when God was about to do something significant. The darkness before the dawn is not a metaphor. It is a pattern. And the people who understood that pattern — who could look at the chaos and say I have seen this before in the pages of this Book — were the ones who did not lose hope when everyone around them did.
That is what I want for you.
Not blind optimism. Not the kind of hope that ignores what is real. But the kind of hope that comes from having read the whole story and knowing how it ends. The kind of steady, grounded, unshakeable confidence that comes not from circumstances but from the Word of God, which has never once been wrong about anything it described in advance.
That is what I have been afraid of not saying clearly enough. That the pattern is real. That God is in it. And that you do not have to be afraid of what you are watching.
That fear is what made me write They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump.
I did not write it because I wanted to write a political book. I wrote it because I was sitting with this exact fear one night, not unlike tonight, and I decided I was done writing around the edges. I was going to say the thing I actually believed, in plain language, grounded in Scripture, and let the reader decide what to do with it.
It is the most direct thing I have ever written. It names the pattern. It shows you where we are inside it. And it does not soften the conclusion.
If you have not read it yet I want you to read it this weekend. Not because I am trying to sell you something. But because I wrote it for exactly the reason I just described — to say clearly, while I still can, what I believe God is doing in this country right now. You can find it here: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
I want to close with something that has been sitting with me all week.
In Ezekiel chapter 33, God spoke about the responsibility of a watchman. He said if the watchman sees danger coming and does not sound the warning, the blood of the people is on his hands. But if he sounds the warning and the people do not listen, he has done what he was called to do.
I think about that passage more than almost any other right now.
I do not know how many Fridays I have left to write to you. I do not say that to be dramatic. I say it because it is simply true, and because the truth of it has a way of clarifying what actually matters when you sit down to write.
What matters is that I say the things that need saying. Clearly. Plainly. While there is still time.
Tonight I have tried to do that. I hope it reached you.
God bless you, friend. I am glad you are still here. I am glad I am too.
With you in prayer,
Father Thomas
This weekend I want you to do two things:
One. Think of one thing you have been meaning to say to someone and have kept putting off. A word of forgiveness. A word of love. A word of truth spoken in kindness. Say it this weekend. Do not put it off until next time. There may not be a next time and you already know that.
Two. Read They Tried To Stop Him this weekend. https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
I wrote it because I was afraid of staying silent. Read it because I believe it will give you the language for something you already feel but have not been able to fully say.