Dear friend,
I want to tell you something about America that I have never heard anyone say quite this way.
Not a politician. Not a historian. Not a pastor giving a Fourth of July sermon about freedom and founding fathers and the greatest nation on earth.
Something more specific than any of those things. Something I have been sitting with for fifty years of watching nations from the outside. Something that I believe is the key to understanding everything that is happening to this country right now.
America was not just founded. It was covenanted.
And there is a difference between those two things that changes everything.
Before I show you what I mean let me place something in your hands.
I wrote a guide called They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump. I want to tell you why it connects to what I am about to describe. Because the covenant I am going to show you tonight is not just history. It is the context for everything happening in America right now. Including the man at the centre of it. 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 mean by covenanted.
What a covenant is.
Most nations are founded on ideas. On documents. On the agreement of powerful men to organise themselves in a particular way.
France was founded on liberty, equality, fraternity. Britain on parliamentary tradition and common law. Rome on military power and civic virtue. China on dynastic succession and Confucian order.
These are founding ideas. They are powerful. Some of them have lasted for centuries.
But a covenant is different from a founding idea.
A covenant in the Biblical sense is not an agreement between men. It is an agreement between men and God. It is the specific act of a people placing themselves under divine authority and divine accountability. Saying not just we will govern ourselves this way but we will answer to God for how we govern ourselves.
The Bible is full of covenants. Noah. Abraham. Moses. David. Each one a moment when God and a people entered into a specific relationship with specific terms and specific consequences for keeping or breaking it.
America entered one of those moments. And most Americans have forgotten it happened.
The covenant that most people have forgotten.
On November 11 1620 the passengers of the Mayflower signed a document before they ever set foot on American soil.
You know it as the Mayflower Compact. But I want you to read the opening words carefully because most people have only ever seen the sanitized version.
They wrote — In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia...
For the glory of God. And the advancement of the Christian faith.
That is not the language of men organizing a political entity. That is the language of men placing a nation under divine purpose before it was even a nation. Before there was a constitution or a congress or a flag or a border.
The first act of what would become America was a covenant with God.
What happened next.
In 1630 John Winthrop stood on the deck of the Arabella before landing in Massachusetts and preached a sermon that has shaped America more than most Americans realize.
He said — we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.
A city upon a hill. You know where that language comes from. Matthew chapter 5 verse 14. Jesus speaking to His disciples about their role in the world.
Winthrop was not using it as a metaphor for political greatness. He was using it as a statement of covenantal responsibility. He was saying that this new community would be watched by God and by the world. That its faithfulness or its failure would be visible to everyone. That it could not hide in mediocrity or drift quietly into compromise.
The eyes of all people are upon us.
That is not the language of a nation. That is the language of a people who believe they have been given something by God and will be held accountable for what they do with it.
What a covenant means in practice.
In Deuteronomy chapter 28 God laid out what a covenant relationship with Him produces.
If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all His commands I give you today the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come on you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God.
The blessings that follow are extraordinary. Military victory. Economic prosperity. Favor among nations. Influence beyond what the size of the people would naturally produce.
Does that description fit the first two hundred years of American history? A small colonial outpost becoming the most powerful nation in human history in roughly two centuries?
I think it does.
But Deuteronomy chapter 28 does not stop with the blessings. It continues with the consequences of breaking the covenant. And they are specific. And they are severe. And some of them sound uncomfortably familiar.
Confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to. Defeat before your enemies. Your sons and daughters given to another nation. The alien who lives among you will rise higher and higher and you will sink lower and lower.
I am not saying America is under the curse of Deuteronomy 28. I am saying the covenant is real. And covenants have terms. And the terms have not changed simply because the nation forgot it made one.
The thing no other nation has ever had.
What makes America unique is not its military. Other nations have had larger armies. It is not its economy. Other nations have had greater wealth relative to their time. It is not its geography or its natural resources or its system of government.
What makes America unique is that it was the first nation in the modern world to be explicitly founded as a covenant with God. To place itself under divine accountability before it was even a political entity. To say from its first breath that its purpose was the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.
No other nation in the modern world did that. Not Britain. Not France. Not Germany. Not any of the great powers that have shaped the last five centuries of human history.
Only America.
And that specific thing — that covenant — is what I believe is at the centre of everything happening right now. The forces that are working against this country are not just working against a political system or a cultural tradition. They are working against a covenant. And God takes His covenants seriously in ways that the people working against this one do not fully understand.
What this means for today.
In Second Chronicles chapter 7 verse 14 God spoke directly to a people in a covenant relationship with Him.
If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways then I will hear from heaven and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Heal their land.
That promise was made to a covenanted people. Not to any nation that decides to pray. To the specific people who had entered into a specific relationship with God and were being called back to it.
I believe that promise is still available to America. Not because America deserves it. Because the covenant was real. And God does not abandon His covenants simply because the people in them forget they made one.
The question is not whether God is willing to heal this land. The question is whether the people who remember the covenant are willing to do what Second Chronicles 7 verse 14 describes.
Humble themselves. Pray. Seek His face. Turn.
That is the path. It has always been the path. And it is still available tonight.
I want to leave you with one more thing.
The man at the centre of what is happening in America right now has said more than once that he believes God spared his life for a reason. I believe he is right. Not because I think he is a perfect man. Because I believe the covenant America made before it was a nation is still in effect. And the God who honors His covenants is still honoring this one. Working through imperfect people toward purposes that the people opposing Him cannot see and would not choose if they could.
I wrote about that pattern in They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump. The covenant I described tonight is the context. The pattern in that guide is the evidence. Read them together and see if America makes more sense than it did before. You can find it here: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
God bless you, friend. You are part of something older and more serious than you know.
With you in prayer always,
Father Thomas
This week I want you to do three things:
One. Read the Mayflower Compact this week. The full text is short. Read the opening words carefully. Let the language of covenant land the way it was designed to land. Then ask yourself what it means that this is how America began.
Two. Read Deuteronomy chapter 28 verses 1 through 14 this week. The blessings of the covenant. Then read verses 15 through 20. The consequences of breaking it. Read both honestly. Ask yourself which column America is currently in and what that means.
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 covenant I described tonight is the context for everything that guide describes. Read it and see if the picture becomes clearer than it has ever been.
P.S. If you want to go deeper on anything I have written, everything is available at fatherthomasletters.com/products — including The Signs Are Here, which maps today's headlines directly against the specific passages that described them, and the Father Thomas Prayer Card Collection, which many of you have told me you return to every morning. Take a look when you have a moment.