Where there is no vision, the people perish.
—Proverbs 29:18 KJV
SO YOU WANT to be a great champion for God? A warrior? Sun Tzu, one of the greatest military strategists in history, believed that “victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”1 He meant that real warriors envision victory before going into battle. They plan to win. They train to win. They win!
We are not talking about the current trends in self-help or positive confession, but what we must do in these last days to envision and become the kinds of warriors God intends us to be. We need this mentality: “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). But if we continue to live as if nothing is going to change and nothing is going to happen, then we will reap what we have sown. No, we must live life on the cutting edge, preparing for the last days before the coming of the Lord.
Most people will balk at this, but the truth is, things are changing and will change dramatically over the next few years. We must have vision and understand the multi-domain battle space around us.
Multi-Domain Battle Space
The U.S. Army calls itself the “most lethal and capable ground combat force in history” and has a vision for the future:
The Army of 2028 will be ready to deploy, fight, and win decisively against any adversary, anytime and anywhere, in a joint, multi-domain, high-intensity conflict, while simultaneously deterring others and maintaining its ability to conduct irregular warfare. The Army will do this through the deployment of modern manned and unmanned ground combat vehicles, aircraft, sustainment systems, and weapons, coupled with robust combined arms formations and tactics based on a modern warfighting doctrine and centered on exceptional Leaders and Soldiers of unmatched lethality.2
The “multi-domain” battle space mentioned above refers to the many environments, or spheres (air, sea, land, space and cyberspace), in which the military must be able to fight. The Army’s vision accounts for the developing technologies, strategies and tactics of its adversaries, including near-peer competitors like China and Russia. It can no longer count on advanced technologies such as cruise missiles and unmanned drones to dominate its adversaries as in the past. The Army has discovered that if you are satisfied with the status quo, you will soon fall behind and be at the losing end of warfare.
Likewise, we as believers must be able to fight in multiple dimensions as well: physical, spiritual, financial and emotional. Note well the following message from David G. Perkins, a four-star general and retired commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command:
The world is changing rapidly, and the operating environment is becoming more contested, more lethal, and more complex. Additionally, our peer adversaries are challenging the ability of the U.S. and our allies to deter aggressive actions. These changes are not new endeavors, but how we wage war, the speed and violence of armed conflict, and its global impacts are beyond anything we have seen in the past.3
In World War II, armies fought on the battlefield, so the battle space was generally the ground around them. Sometimes the threat came from the air in the form of Luftwaffe (German air force) bombers and fighters, and at other times by sea during naval battles.
Today the battlefield is multidimensional. Instead of the clear battles lines soldiers fought over in World War II, the enemy is all around, as I experienced in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When you are at war, you must focus your vision on what the battle space looks like. You will not achieve victory if you do not see the battlefield in all its dimensions. As Sun Tzu taught, victorious warriors see the full battlefield and know what must be done. That is why they are winners—because they know ahead of time what it takes to defeat the enemy.
Warriors with Vision
Spiritual warfare requires understanding. We do not just wake up, take a shower, put our clothes on, eat breakfast and go blithely about our day without envisioning and understanding the real battle space—the spiritual battlefield roiling all around us. If we do not understand the tactics, techniques and procedures of the enemy, we will stay defeated.
We must also understand the magnitude of the powerful spiritual forces we are up against. If we have a weakness, a besetting sin, an addiction; if we are not reading the Word of God, praying and fasting regularly; if we are not connected to God all day in prayer—we will lose the spiritual battle. That is why we must look to Scripture for examples of warriors with vision to model our spiritual lives after.
David
David defeated Goliath as a young man, even before he put that stone into his sling and cast it at the giant. He had the battle skills. He had practiced most of his life. He understood the battle space and ran, not walked, to the line of battle. He knew what he was going up against. And he had vision. He knew in his heart he could defeat Goliath. How did he know? Because he had confidence in his God.
“David was a perfect model of a believer,” says Dr. Robert Jeffress, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas.
He’s what I’d call a velvet-covered brick. He had the right combination of toughness and tenderness. David was a musician. But he was tough as nails when it came to doing battle. He had some memorable failures in his life. Yet he prayed to God to wash him and to make him clean again. I think that’s probably the most important characteristic of a warrior for Christ—to be forgiven and to want to live a godly life.4
Vision changed everything for a first-century Pharisee named Saul, who was traveling to Damascus to imprison believers in Jesus.
As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”
Acts 9:3–6
And Saul, temporarily blinded, went.
How did a persecutor of the Church have an instantaneous and complete turnaround? Because he had encountered Jesus, and that vision changed his life. Saul, who became Paul, went from a hyper-religious murderous zealot to arguably the greatest apostle, who wrote almost half the books in the New Testament.
He had vision. He knew there would be both physical and spiritual battles, battles on land and sea, in the spirit and in the flesh, with other believers, and with those opposed to the Gospel. But he said this just before he left this earth:
I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, and I have kept the faith. From now on a crown of righteousness is laid up for me, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved His appearing.
2 Timothy 4:7–8 MEV
Vision can change your life, but it must come from the Lord. Some say you can become whatever you want to be. Sorry, not true, especially for the believer warrior. The apostle James offers believers this admonition:
You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
James 4:14–15
The Lord promises to guide you if you trust fully in Him. He instills vision over the course of time. It will not always happen in the same way, but God is faithful and will lead you in the way you should go. He promises, “Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known” (Jeremiah 33:3 ESV).
My Call
In August 1985 I was in line to register for my first semester’s tuition at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in the Bay Area—although I did not have a dime to my name.
A few months prior I had been sitting at a U.S. Marine Corps boot camp graduation at Camp Pendleton in Southern California to watch my brother-in-law graduate with honors. As I watched with intensity the rigor, discipline, precision and esprit de corps of these Marines, I was in awe. It dawned on me that they had mastered the fundamentals of their discipline. I was hooked.
As I watched, a voice out of the blue told me that I was to join the military. I looked around, right in the graduation, to see who was talking to me, but no one was there. I knew this voice, the still, small voice that many times we miss because we are too busy with all the noise in our lives. It was a turning point in my life. A new vision was coming. (I am not given to hearing voices, so don’t draw any conclusions just yet! You can do that later.)
What was I to do with this new information? Tell my wife, Esther, sitting next to me, or keep it to myself? I decided the latter was the better part of valor.
The next week I went to the Army recruiter’s station near our apartment in Sacramento, California, and asked some basic questions. The recruiter asked me some basic questions as well: What are your interests, education, etc.? I told him I was a college graduate with a degree in music. There are musicians in the Army, he told me, but mostly enlisted soldiers, not officers. I also told him I was a licensed minister. Then he said, “Sir, that’s a no-brainer. Why don’t you become a chaplain?”
“What’s a chaplain?”
“They minister to our military. Here’s the phone number to our regional chaplain recruiter in San Francisco.”
The rest is history.
Well, at least it is my history, but getting from here to there was a long process in fulfilling the vision of becoming a chaplain in the U.S. Army: four years in college, three years in seminary, several years in preparation to be ordained as a minister, and then the basic chaplain course. Thirty-two years later, I am a full colonel senior chaplain. But this was not the end, only the beginning.
Shortly before my retirement in June 2018, Esther and I drove to one of our favorite spots to pray—The Coming King Sculpture Prayer Garden in Kerrville, Texas—where I had an experience unlike any I have had in my life.
Up in the air, several thousand feet above me in a clear, blue Texas sky, I saw a cloud, and it was the Lion of the tribe of Judah. I mean, the mane, the hair, the eyes, the nose, everything, looking straight at me. The Lord spoke through the cloud and said to me, “I am the Lion from the tribe of Judah. I’m about to return. Prepare the Church and warn the world this is going to happen.”
I returned to the car where I had left Esther praying and waiting for me. I was visibly shaken and related to her what happened. We rejoiced in the fact that the Lord would show us what He wanted us to do.
This awe-inspiring, life-changing spiritual encounter occurred exactly when it needed to happen, shortly before my retirement from the Army, to launch me into the next phase of my life. I responded to Jesus’ call to go out and wake up the Church and the world to what is about to happen on this planet.
End-Times Vision
During the years of my service as a chaplain, God was preparing me to be a literal warrior in the Army for the Kingdom of God. It was there that I learned and lived the principles I am now sharing with you. And the vision in Kerrville, Texas, persuaded me that things on this planet are about to change drastically, and that we need to prepare for coming earth-shattering events. This book you are reading is one of the results.
Satan and his dark lords and authorities (see Ephesians 6:12), along with those who have rejected Christ as Savior, also have a vision for this world in these last days. The vision of the evil one is spelled out in Revelation 13:1–4:
The dragon stood on the shore of the sea. And I saw a beast coming out of the sea. It had ten horns and seven heads, with ten crowns on its horns, and on each head a blasphemous name. The beast I saw resembled a leopard, but had feet like those of a bear and a mouth like that of a lion. The dragon gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority. One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast. People worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast, and they also worshiped the beast and asked, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?”
The end-times vision of Satan, who tries to mimic everything Christ has done for mankind, is to indwell a human being and rule the earth through this person, aptly named the Antichrist. This parallels God sending Jesus as the Messiah who, in the fullness of time, will rule the world from Jerusalem.
The Bible is filled with prophecy about the Antichrist, and for good reason: He will dominate the world. People will be so enthralled with this person that they will worship him and brag about his powers and authority.
Much as Hitler rose out of the chaos of economic hyperinflation in Germany during the Great Depression, when people were literally carting around wheelbarrows full of German marks to buy groceries,5 the Antichrist will rise up out of economic, religious, social and governmental upheaval—“out of the sea” (Revelation 13:1)—to provide answers to unsolvable problems.
Our world is being prepared in many ways for the coming of this man. Notice the proliferation of vastly popular films about superheroes, including movies like The Avengers and many others based on characters from Marvel Comics, as well as films about alien invasions, end-of-the-world scenarios and zombies. Why? We are being conditioned and led down a path for the revelation of the man with superpowers—the Antichrist.
Our filmmaker friend Joel Richardson believes that, although we are closer to the emergence of the Antichrist than at any time before, “there are still a few things that need to unfold first before he emerges.” He continues:
I think there will be some significant, regional Middle Eastern wars that will take place that will put Israel and many of the Middle Eastern nations in a peculiar and difficult position, in which they will be willing to engage in some type of regional security alliance—the “covenant with death” described in Isaiah 28:15, and also in Daniel 9, which talks about the “prince who is to come” entering into a covenant with “many.” I believe the Antichrist will enter into some sort of security alliance with Israel, which again is alluded to through some prophecies in Isaiah where Judah is warned not to enter into a security alliance with Egypt to protect themselves from the invasion of Nebuchadnezzar. That becomes the sort of historical shadow, or type or pattern, of what Israel will do in the last days with the Antichrist.6
Many people wonder if the Antichrist will control the whole world or just the region where he is located. We have studied and explored this question intently. One thing is for certain: The Antichrist will have a severe impact over the entire world.
Because of the signs [the second beast] was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
Revelation 13:14–17
Is John the Revelator telling us that these “inhabitants of the earth” are all people of one region (perhaps the Middle East), or the entire planet? Whether the Antichrist’s power is regional or global, he will undoubtedly affect the entire planet. All will experience his effects since it is Satan’s plan to rule the world through this human interface.
The mark of the Beast has been written about in many books and articles. For the first time in history, the technologies to create the mark of the Beast are in existence today and will only infiltrate our lives more as time goes on.
Today’s smartphones will be considered primitive in the next few years as microtechnology shrinks communication into what will be implanted in us. Tattoos will be melded with these technologies to be even more popular and fashionable. This article from Allure magazine suggests what is taking place:
Chris Harrison, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, has been working on a similar idea since 2009. “People want to do more sophisticated things on mobile phones. And the industrial answer seemed to be: Let’s put bigger and bigger screens on them,” he says. “That only works up to a point. Why don’t we just forget the screen entirely? Why not use the skin? Instead of the three-and-a-half-inch iPhone, why not have the 20-inch arm bone?” So, Harrison created OmniTouch (also in collaboration with Microsoft), a device worn on the shoulder that would project your phone interface onto your palm. A depth-sensitive camera picked up when and where you tapped on your skin, so the projection reacted with it. “The invention of smartphones enabled the creation of all these ideas and apps and services. Imagine what that will be like for the body,” Harrison says.7
These technologies are following us into the workplace. Consider the implications in your own life as revealed in this Wall Street Journal story:
For many employees, the workday starts by swiping a plastic ID card to enter the office. But employers can’t always be sure who’s holding the card. That humble ID badge is starting to be replaced by biometric identification systems, microchip implants and tools that monitor workers’ gaits or typing habits—technologies that might not only make workplaces more secure and easier to navigate but also generate personalized health and productivity data.8
Over the centuries many leaders have been identified as the Antichrist, including the Roman emperor Nero, various popes, Hitler, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin and many others. Some of these figures may have exhibited Antichrist tendencies, but 1 John 2:18 (NKJV) tells us that “many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.” Remember, too, the Bible is Middle East–centric, so he will most likely be from that part of the world.
The Bible tells us that the Beast, or Antichrist, will have miraculous powers, persuasive powers of speech, shrewdness beyond belief, and extraordinary negotiating skills. Satan will enter the Antichrist and become one with this human; that is the reason for his powers. The purpose behind all this: Satan’s rule of the world. Consider the words of theologian Arthur W. Pink:
“That day shall not come, except there come a falling away [the Apostasy] first, and that Man of Sin be revealed, the Son of Perdition” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). Nothing could be plainer than this. Here the Antichrist is expressly declared to be superhuman—“the Son of Perdition.” Just as the Christ is the Son of God, so Antichrist will be the son of Satan. Just as in the Christ dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and just as Christ could say, “He that hath seen Me, have seen the Father,” so the Antichrist will be the full and final embodiment of the Devil. He will not only be the incarnation of the Devil, but the consummation of his wickedness and power.9
We will talk more about the Beast, and his mark, in the next chapter.
A Vision for the End Times
How do you live a normal life given all the disconcerting things taking place in our world today? You must still go to school or work, pay your bills, clean your house, and perform a host of other everyday activities that make up life for the average person. Jesus said it would be so:
“As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”
Matthew 24:37–39
Some civilians think that, in the military, there is constant warfare, excitement and an adrenaline rush. But even during combat, nothing could be further from the truth. There are many days of boredom, cleaning weapons, routine maintenance, training, practice and just plain mundane stuff. All that “stuff,” however, helps prepare you for the moments when you find yourself in the thick of it. Without preparation and training, there is no victory. Success in the end times is all about preparation, steadfastness and patience.
Here are some insights into the Army vision for 2028 and the believer’s vision for the end times.
MILITARY FUTURE VISION
BELIEVER’S END-TIMES VISION
STRATEGIC SPIRITUAL EXERCISES
Here are some practical takeaways for creating a vision for the last days: