Dear friend,
I want to show you something this week that almost nobody is connecting to Scripture.
Not because it is hidden. Because everyone is looking somewhere else.
For months now the news has been consumed by Iran. The strikes. The Strait of Hormuz. The ceasefire that keeps collapsing. The negotiations that keep starting and stopping. I have written to you about much of it because I believe it matters and because Scripture has a great deal to say about what is happening in the Middle East.
But while everyone has been watching the Middle East, something else has been happening.
And I believe it may matter just as much. Perhaps more.
Before I show you what I mean, I want to place something in your hands.
I wrote a guide called They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump. It traces the Biblical pattern of opposition, survival, and vindication that I believe is unfolding right now in America. Many of you have told me it gave you language for something you already felt but could not fully say. You can find it by clicking on the image below:
Alternatively, you may find it here: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
Now let me show you what I have been watching.
While America has been at war, China has been moving.
Right now, according to reports coming out this week, Beijing is pulling ahead of America in artificial intelligence. In semiconductors. In the foundational technology that will determine which nation shapes the next century of human civilization.
Not dramatically. Not with an announcement. Quietly. Deliberately. The way a river changes course — slowly at first, then all at once.
Beijing may be benefiting from the war in Iran and Trump's tariffs and has an edge in the competition for tech supremacy. While America's attention and resources have been consumed by a war in the Middle East, China has been investing, building, and positioning itself in the spaces America has been too distracted to defend.
I want to be careful here because I am not a political analyst and that is not my role. But I am a man who has read this Book every morning for fifty years. And what I am watching has a shape I recognize.
The kings of the East.
In Revelation chapter 16 verse 12 John described something specific. He wrote about the kings of the East. A power or powers rising from the eastern part of the world with a strength and a momentum that the western world had not prepared for.
I am not telling you that this verse is a direct prophecy about China specifically. The Bible is not a newspaper and I will not treat it as one. Anyone who gives you exact names and exact dates is telling you more than Scripture actually says.
But I am telling you that the pattern of a great eastern power rising while the western world is distracted and divided is not a new story. It is a story that has repeated itself across human history. And Scripture describes the shape of how that story moves more clearly than most people realize.
Daniel's statue.
In Daniel chapter 2 God gave King Nebuchadnezzar a vision of the great empires of human history. He saw a statue. A head of gold. Chest of silver. Belly of bronze. Legs of iron. And feet made of iron mixed with clay.
Iron mixed with clay. Partially strong and partially brittle. Divided against itself. Unable to hold together the way it once could.
I look at the Western world right now — America consumed by a war in the Middle East, Europe uncertain and divided, alliances strained, the unity that once seemed permanent now visibly fragile — and I think about those feet.
Iron mixed with clay.
And then I think about what Daniel said happens next. A stone not cut by human hands that strikes the statue and fills the whole earth. A kingdom not built by human power that rises when the kingdoms of men have reached the end of what they can sustain on their own.
I am not telling you we are there. I am telling you the shape is familiar.
What this means for you.
I want to say something plainly that I think the Church has been too hesitant to say.
The signs of the times are not meant to frighten you. They are meant to orient you. To help you understand what you are looking at so that you are not caught off guard when the pattern accelerates.
Jesus said this in Matthew chapter 16 verse 3. You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.
He was not complimenting them. He was pointing out that the people who prided themselves on reading the world were missing the most important thing happening right in front of them.
I do not want that to be true of the people reading this letter.
The war in the Middle East matters. What is happening with China matters. The fracturing of western alliances matters. The specific man standing at the centre of all of it, being opposed from every direction while trying to navigate a world that is moving faster than anyone can fully process — that matters.
All of it is part of a pattern that Scripture described long before any of us were born. And the people who understand the pattern are the ones who do not lose their faith when the pattern intensifies.
What I want you to hold onto this week.
In Psalm 2 verse 1 David wrote — why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed.
The nations conspiring. The rulers banding together. Powers moving against what God has established.
And then verse 4. The One enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them.
Not panics. Not scrambles. Laughs.
Because He has already seen how this ends. Because the conspiring of nations has never once altered the outcome He decided before the foundations of the world were laid. Because the kings of the East and the kings of the West and every power that has ever risen and fallen in the history of human civilization has done so on a timeline that belongs entirely to Him.
That is not naivety. That is the testimony of every prophet who ever looked at a world in chaos and chose to trust the God who sits outside of it.
Hold onto that this week, friend. Keep watching. Keep praying. Keep paying attention.
God bless you. He is not surprised by anything you are reading in the news this morning.
With you in prayer,
Father Thomas
This week I want you to do three things:
One. Read Daniel chapter 2 this week. The whole chapter. Pay attention to the statue and what each section represents. Pay attention to what happens at the end. Let it give you a framework for reading the news that is bigger than any single headline.
Two. Read Psalm 2 out loud this week. All twelve verses. Pay particular attention to verse 4. The One enthroned in heaven laughs. Let that verse do what it is designed to do — put the conspiring of nations in their proper proportion against the God who sits above them.
Three. Read They Tried To Stop Him this week: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
The pattern I described this morning — forces moving in the background, opposition from every direction, a specific man standing at the centre of it all — is the whole thesis of that guide. This week's news is another chapter of the same story.