War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty. A sensitive and discriminating judgment is called for; a skilled intelligence to scent out the truth.
—Carl von Clausewitz, Prussian general
For now we see through a glass, darkly.
—1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV
TWILIGHT, EARLY 1990S, Hohenfels, Germany.A long, grueling day of training today. Armor battling armor throughout the day since early morning. I direct my assistant to drive us in our Humvee (“high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles,” a sophisticated upgrade to the old Army Jeep) back to our Tactical Operations Center (TOC), where we will spend the night.
Fog descends, night with it. These are before the days of GPS or other forms of digital communications and mapping. The fog gets so thick I direct my assistant to stop driving. We will rest in place until morning.
Knock, knock, knock. It is early morning, the fog is gone, and light is just coming over the peaks. I barely hear the tapping on the side of my Humvee. It is an “observer controller”—the referee of the training.
“Sir, if I were you, I would get out of here in a hurry,” he says.
“What’s up?”
“Look in back of you.”
I look back with a start. “Holy moly.” There, about one hundred fifty yards behind us, is a whole row of tanks getting ready to head our way in a hurry.
“Yeah,” he says, “and they’re about to leave the LD [Line of Departure] in about twenty minutes. If you’re still here, you’ll be flattened like a pancake.”
“No need to tell me twice, OC. We’re gone.”
Interesting that when my assistant and I were in the fog, nothing was clear, so I decided to stay put until further light. When the fog lifted, everything became clear. I learned where we were and what was about to happen.
Sometimes the best thing to do is wait until things start to clear up.
End-Times Fog of War
Make no mistake about it. We are at war and at times it can be unclear and confusing. You have heard of many prophets and prognosticators talking about how they have all the answers. They don’t. Nobody does.
Jesus predicted the following about the end times:
“At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you ahead of time.”
Matthew 24:23–25
We interpret this passage to mean that chaos and confusion will abound in the end times, that there will be a spirit of delusion on this planet unlike anything before—and in many ways it is already here.
The fog of war is defined as the chaos often found on the battlefield. The U.S. Army uses the acronym VUCA, which stands for “volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.” The U.S. Army War College introduced the concept of VUCA, according to General Maxwell P. Thurman, to describe the volatile, uncertain, complex and multilateral world that emerged out of the Cold War.1
War is a complex equation. Life-and-death decisions are made in moments. The world has teetered on the brink of nuclear disaster on many occasions because of the fog of war—for example, in the uncertainty and confusion surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear war.
In the decades since the development of atomic weapons, the world has come close to world war and nuclear Armageddon on many occasions. Currently the greatest threats to world stability are Iran and North Korea, along with the dominance of Russia and China. The world at any given time can be a moment away from nuclear holocaust, especially amid the fog of fear and uncertainty. It is only the Lord who prevents it from happening until the appointed time(s).
New technologies are coming of age in the end times that add a layer of seriousness in military and civilian affairs that, up until now, has been unknown. One of the military’s recent “secret weapons” is the LRAD sound cannon, which was used for crowd control during the Ferguson, Missouri, protests in 2014:
Capable of projecting voice commands over a distance of 9 kilometers (5.5 mi), a Long-Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) inflicts grievous bodily pain upon anyone within 100 meters (330 ft) of its sound path.2
The same technology was presumed to be used in an incident at the U.S. embassy in Cuba in 2015:
Diplomats deployed to the newly reopened US embassy on this Caribbean island nation started reporting a sudden and permanent loss of hearing. US investigators concluded that the diplomats had been hit with an advanced and unnamed acoustic device that doesn’t make any audible sound but causes irreparable damage to the ears and brain of anyone in its path.3
Life can be very much like a battlefield when you find yourself in the fog and do not understand what to do next. We firmly believe that in the end times, the fog of war will increase, life will become increasingly difficult, and decisions will be hard to make without the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Scripture and Fog of War
Even though about a third of the Bible is prophetic, the Scriptures are not explicit as far as dates and times. In fact, the Lord Himself told us while on earth that even He did not know the day or time of His return: “Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only” (Matthew 24:36 NKJV). And Paul wrote, “Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12 NKJV).
The lack of a definitive timetable is part of the fog of war. It is advisable, then, that we not state conjecture dogmatically, throwing out times, dates and theories as if they were fact.
A great biblical story on the fog of war is found in the life of Moses as he was leading Israel out of Egypt after they had been captives in the land for more than four hundred years. Pharaoh and all of Egypt finally wanted the Hebrews to leave their land after ten devastating plagues sent by the Lord through Moses. But the Lord led them into a dead-end—or so they thought. Exodus 14 tells the story:
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites to turn back and encamp near Pi Hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea. . . . Pharaoh will think, ‘The Israelites are wandering around the land in confusion, hemmed in by the desert.’ And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them. But I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD.” So the Israelites did this.
verses 1–4
Here we see a perfect biblical example of the fog of war well over three thousand years ago. The Hebrews following Moses were understandably upset that he had led them into a trap with nowhere to go—the Red Sea in front of them, the entire Egyptian army behind them and closing in fast.
They were terrified and cried out to the LORD. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!”
verses 10–12
Put yourself in the Hebrews’ place. You are now camped by the Red Sea with the strongest army on earth marching angrily toward you. Might you have fear, confusion and anger toward the leadership? You are now in the fog of war. What do you do? Your only hope is complete dependence on the Lord, so you wait for His direction through Moses.
Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”
verses 13–14
Now the tables turned. Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, the waters divided, and the people walked through on dry ground. God was fighting for His people, and He threw the Egyptians, literally and figuratively, into the fog of war:
The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. During the last watch of the night the LORD looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, “Let’s get away from the Israelites! The LORD is fighting for them against Egypt.”
verses 23–25
In the end of days there will be times when confusion reigns and we do not have answers. Our dependence must always be on God through the power of the Holy Spirit. He will see us through.
Micah and the Fog of War
My son, David Micah Giammona, can testify to the fog of war. During the spring of 2003, when he was a private first class (assigned to Company H, 121st Infantry Regiment, Long-Range Surveillance Detachment out of the Georgia Army National Guard), he was on a force protection mission just north of Baghdad, Iraq, for a military intelligence battalion. Their mission was to search for weapons of mass destruction.
My son was manning the M60 machine gun (nicknamed the “pig”) atop their Humvee, with five other soldiers inside. As they barreled down the road at 55 or 60 miles per hour and came to an overpass, an explosion from an IED (improvised explosive device) rocked their world. The Humvee lurched to the left up on two wheels, and things for Micah went into slow motion. Shrapnel flew into the front of the vehicle, NCOs (non-commissioned officers) shouted commands, and the rear gunner opened up on the enemy combatants, as they took fire from them as well. The noise was deafening.
Fortunately and miraculously, the Humvee did not roll over, and the driver was able to ram through the ambush and keep going. My son received facial burns and others got hit with shrapnel, but there were no fatalities. Later Micah and other soldiers and NCOs in the vehicle at the time of the attack received the Purple Heart for wounds sustained in combat.
In a subsequent conversation, Micah told me that he understood the fog of war as “confusion, smoke and noise” for those few brief moments that plunged them into chaos. He said all their training kicked in, so that everything he did during and after the ambush was the result of the time spent in preparation for combat. “It was all muscle memory,” he said, “since there was no time to think.”
May we, too, have such “muscle memory” in days to come.
MILITARY PRINCIPLES FOR THE FOG OF WAR
The U.S. military uses four fundamental principles to guarantee effective operations in the middle of uncertainty:4
BELIEVER’S PRINCIPLES FOR THE FOG OF WAR
God has given us the requisite power and authority to operate in uncertainty. Following the biblical principles will help you not only to overcome the fog of war in the end times but to walk in the supernatural blessings that God promises us:
Here are some practical takeaways for living in times of uncertainty: