War & Peace Quote by Walter Martin

Martin frames discipleship as a kind of metaphysical draft notice: sign up, and the shooting starts. The line is built to do two things at once. First, it flatters the believer with significance. You are not merely trying to be decent or pious; you are valuable enough to be hunted. Second, it preemptively explains suffering. If life gets harder after conversion, that friction isn’t random or self-inflicted - it’s proof the “powers of darkness” have noticed you. That’s a neat psychological loop: adversity becomes confirmation rather than contradiction.

The rhetoric is overtly martial, and that’s the point. “Enlist,” “army,” “target,” “aligned against you” converts private faith into battlefield posture. It pushes the listener toward vigilance, loyalty, and a willingness to endure. It also narrows the interpretive frame around everyday conflicts. Critics, doubts, temptations, even social consequences can be recoded as enemy action. That move strengthens group cohesion, because disagreement doesn’t stay disagreement; it becomes spiritual warfare.

Context matters. Martin was a prominent evangelical apologist in Cold War-era American Christianity, a moment when existential threats (nuclear anxiety, atheistic communism, “cults,” moral decline) were often narrated as cosmic struggle. His language echoes that climate: the world isn’t complicated; it’s contested. The subtext is pastoral and strategic: don’t be surprised, don’t be seduced, don’t defect. If you feel besieged, you’re probably on the right side.