Dear friend,
I want to start with something unusual this week.
I am not going to talk about politics first. I am going to talk about what I am seeing. Because what I am seeing this week is unlike anything I have witnessed in fifty years of studying Scripture and watching the world.
And I believe God is speaking. Loudly. To anyone paying attention.
Let me show you what I mean.
What Is Happening Right Now
This week the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over a growing Ebola outbreak in central Africa. Hundreds infected. Dozens dead. Spreading.
At the same time a war between America and Iran continues in the Middle East. Israel is striking Lebanon. Russia has launched one of its largest drone attacks on Ukraine in months — over five hundred drones in a single night. Fighting is happening in Sudan. The oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz — one of the most critical shipping lanes in the entire world — has dropped by thirty percent in just three months.
I want you to sit with that for a moment.
Wars in multiple places simultaneously. A plague declared by the world's leading health organisation. Global supply chains being disrupted. Nations moving toward positions that look increasingly like the kind of alignments the Bible describes in its most prophetic books.
All of this. In the same week.
What Scripture Says
In the book of Luke chapter 21 a disciple asks Jesus a simple question. What will be the sign that these things are about to happen?
And Jesus gives a very specific answer.
He says there will be wars and rumours of wars. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes and famines and plagues in various places. There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars and on the earth nations will be in anguish.
Then He says something that I want you to read very carefully.
When these things begin to happen stand up and lift up your heads. Because your redemption is drawing near.
Notice what He does not say. He does not say panic. He does not say despair. He does not say give up.
He says stand up. Lift your head. Because this means something.
The signs are not meant to frighten the people of God. They are meant to wake them up.
The Pattern Scripture Keeps Showing Us
I want to be honest with you. I have been watching the world for a very long time. And I have seen difficult moments before.
But there is something different about this particular moment. Something I cannot fully articulate but feel deeply in my spirit after fifty years of studying these ancient texts.
The convergence is unusual. It is not one crisis. It is not two. It is wars and disease and economic disruption and political upheaval all happening at the same time in ways that are connecting to each other in ways that feel significant.
The prophet Daniel described a time when knowledge would increase and people would rush back and forth across the earth. We live in that time. Information moves at the speed of light. People cross oceans in hours. And yet with all of that knowledge and all of that movement the world cannot find peace.
That is not an accident. That is a pattern Scripture identified thousands of years ago.
What This Means For You
I want to be very careful here because I am not a prophet and I do not claim to know exactly what God is doing or when He is going to do it.
But I do know this.
The people of God are not supposed to respond to these moments the way the rest of the world responds. The rest of the world responds with fear, with panic, with desperate grasping for human solutions to spiritual problems.
The people of God are supposed to respond differently.
In the book of Isaiah God says do not fear for I am with you. Do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.
That was written to a people surrounded by enemies on every side. A people whose world felt like it was falling apart. A people who could not see how any of this was going to end well.
Sound familiar?
The promise was not that the storm would not come. The promise was that God would be present in it. That He would strengthen the people who trusted Him through it. That He would uphold them when everything around them was shaking.
That promise is for you. Right now. This week. In the middle of everything the news is telling you to be afraid of.
Three Things I Want You To Do This Weekend
First — pray for the people suffering in these conflicts right now. Not just Americans. The families in Lebanon and Ukraine and Sudan and Congo who are caught in the middle of things they did not start and cannot stop. They are made in God's image too. Pray for them.
Second — do not consume news for more than thirty minutes today. I mean this seriously. The news is designed to keep you in a state of continuous low level fear. That fear is not from God. Take back your peace deliberately.
Third — read Luke 21 this weekend. The whole chapter. Read what Jesus actually said about moments like this one. Not what the media says. Not what the politicians say. What Jesus said. And pay attention to the instruction He gives His people when these signs appear.
Stand up. Lift your head.
Not because everything is fine. But because the God who predicted all of this is the same God who promised to be with His people through all of it.
That is not a small promise. That is the only promise that actually matters right now.
The world is speaking this week. God has been speaking longer.
I know which voice I trust.
God bless you and everyone you love. Have a peaceful weekend.
— Father Thomas