Dear friend,
I want to say something this Wednesday that I have been sitting with for a long time.
Not because it is comfortable. It is not comfortable. Not because it will make you feel better. It will not make you feel better. At least not immediately.
I am saying it because I believe you deserve to know what I actually see when I read this Book every morning and then look at the world outside my window.
And what I see is this.
We are closer to the end than most Christians are allowing themselves to believe.
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. I wrote it because I believe the man at the centre of this moment was placed there specifically for this moment. And understanding why that matters requires understanding how close we are to the things Scripture said would define the final chapter of human history. 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 am seeing.
Sign one. The falling away.
In Second Thessalonians chapter 2 verse 3 Paul described something he called the great apostasy. A falling away from faith that would precede the final events of history. Not a gradual drift. A departure. Something visible and measurable and undeniable.
For the first time in the recorded history of this nation less than half of Americans belong to a church. The country that put In God We Trust on its currency and opened its Congress with prayer and built its entire legal and moral framework on the assumption that God exists and that His Word matters — that country is now majority unchurched for the first time in its existence.
That is not a cultural shift. That is the specific sign Paul described two thousand years before it happened.
Sign two. The wars and the rumours of wars.
In Matthew chapter 24 verse 6 Jesus said you will hear of wars and rumours of wars. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom.
Right now the United States is engaged in active military conflict in the Middle East. Russia and Ukraine have been at war for years. China circles Taiwan with an aggression that grows more open every month. The Strait of Hormuz has been a battlefield. Kuwait intercepted ballistic missiles. Iran has threatened nuclear retaliation.
I have been with the Church for fifty years. I have never seen this many wars threatening simultaneously in my lifetime. Not during the Cold War. Not during Vietnam. Not during any of the conflicts I have watched come and go across five decades.
Jesus said this would be one of the signs. It is not a rumour of war anymore. It is wars. Plural. Simultaneous. Accelerating.
Sign three. The economic signs.
In Revelation chapter 6 verse 6 John described a time when a day's wages would barely buy enough food for one person. A time of economic pressure so severe that ordinary people would feel it in the most basic transactions of their daily lives.
Your grocery bill goes up every month. The cost of housing has put homeownership out of reach for an entire generation. The national debt has reached numbers that have no historical precedent in the entire history of this nation. The dollar buys less every year. The economic stability that your parents and grandparents built their lives around is no longer available to the generation that comes after you.
I am not saying this is the fulfilment of Revelation chapter 6. I am saying the shape is familiar. And the direction is unmistakable.
Sign four. The persecution of the faithful.
In Matthew chapter 24 verse 9 Jesus said then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death and you will be hated by all nations because of me.
I want to be careful here because what is happening in America is not yet what Jesus described in its fullest form. Christians in America are not being put to death for their faith.
But something is happening that has not happened before in this country.
Faithful Christians are losing jobs for their beliefs. They are being removed from platforms. They are being told that their convictions about marriage and family and the sanctity of life are not just wrong but dangerous. Their children are being taught in schools that the faith they were raised in is a form of bigotry. Their pastors are being pressured to stay silent on the things Scripture speaks most clearly about.
That is not fulfilment. That is the beginning of a direction. And directions matter. Because every persecution that ever reached its full form began exactly the way this one is beginning. Quietly. With the language of tolerance and inclusion and safety. And then less quietly. And then not quietly at all.
Sign five. The signs in the heavens and on the earth.
In Luke chapter 21 verse 25 Jesus described signs in the sun, moon, and stars. Nations in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea.
Nations in anguish and perplexity.
I want you to think about that phrase for a moment. Not nations in conflict. Not nations at war. Nations in anguish and perplexity. The specific combination of pain and confusion. The feeling of watching something happen that you cannot understand and cannot stop and cannot explain.
Is there a better description of what the leaders of the western world look like right now? Standing at podiums trying to explain a world that is moving faster than any of their frameworks can accommodate. Visibly uncertain. Visibly afraid. Visibly unable to project the confidence that leadership requires because the confidence is no longer there.
Nations in anguish and perplexity.
That is not a metaphor for what you are watching. That is a description of it.
Now I want to tell you something important.
I am not writing this to frighten you into despair. I am writing this to frighten you into attention.
There is a difference between the fear that paralyzes and the fear that clarifies. The fear that makes you pull the curtains and wait for it to be over and the fear that makes you stand up straighter and pray harder and pay closer attention to what God is doing in the middle of what looks like chaos.
I am asking for the second kind of fear tonight.
Because the same Jesus who described every sign I just named also said this in Luke chapter 21 verse 28.
When these things begin to take place stand up and lift up your heads. Because your redemption is drawing near.
Stand up. Lift up your heads.
Not pull the curtains. Not give up. Not decide that the darkness has won and retreat into whatever private comfort is still available.
Stand up. Because what you are watching is not the end of the story. It is the sign that the end of the story is closer than it has ever been. And the end of the story is not darkness. It is the return of the One who promised to come back.
I want to leave you with one more thing before I close.
In the middle of all of this — the falling away and the wars and the economic pressure and the persecution and the anguish of nations — there is one man standing at the centre of the most consequential moment in a generation. Being opposed from every direction. Surviving things that should have ended him. Still there. Still making decisions. Still standing between this country and something significantly worse.
I believe that man was placed there for this moment. I believe the pattern of his survival is not political. I believe Scripture describes it clearly for anyone willing to look.
I wrote all of it down in They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump. Read it this week. Not to feel better. To understand what you are watching. Because understanding what you are watching is the thing that turns the paralysing kind of fear into the clarifying kind: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump
Stand up, friend. Lift up your head.
Your redemption is drawing near.
God bless you. I mean that more than usual tonight.
With you in prayer,
Father Thomas
This week I want you to do three things:
One. Read Luke chapter 21 verses 25 through 28 today. Read it slowly. Pay attention to the specific instruction Jesus gives after describing the signs. Not fear. Not retreat. Stand up and lift up your heads. Let that be your posture this week regardless of what the news brings.
Two. Read Second Thessalonians chapter 2 verses 1 through 4 this week. The description of the falling away. Read it against what you are watching happen to faith in America right now. Let the precision of the description do what it is designed to do — replace confusion with recognition.
Three. Read They Tried To Stop Him this week: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products. I wrote it for exactly this moment. The signs I described tonight are the context. The man I wrote about is the response. Read both together and see if the picture becomes clearer than it has ever been.
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.