Revelation 12: The Gospel of the Woman & the Red Dragon
Dissidents Guide to Revelation, Part 35
We are approaching Revelation from a different angle today. But first, I want to talk about the story(s) in the bible.
The Story of Gods People
There is a story that plays on repeat in the Bible. It echoes from many different characters and is played out in many different ways. The story is simple, and it goes like this:
There was chaos and purposelessness.
God entered and worked to create freedom, meaning, new life, and a new path —a “promised land,” a garden, a temple, a tabernacle, the kingdom of God, a new way that God will dwell among them.
The people fell into temptation and idolatry, they turned from their King, and they lost the good and promised thing that God wanted for them in pursuit of the idol.
We see this overarching story in Adam and Eve, who were placed in a world ordered by God from utter darkness and useless chaos, given a garden with all that they needed, but being exiled after taking the one thing they could not have —the idol, the forbidden fruit.
We see it in the exodus story as well. The Israelites were enslaved to a useless existence. They were set free for a new way of existence and set off through the wilderness, only to be led astray by idols and false allegiances.
We see it in the exiles of Israel, where they had their land and King but lost it all to exile because of idolatry, only to call out to God to rescue them again and again.
The writers of the Hebrew Scriptures want the people to understand this story because it is how they saw their history: Idolatry and false allegiances take from us every good thing that God has planned for human flourishing. This was the story of God’s people on repeat, and the telling of that story was intended to inspire the next generation to remain faithful to God's goodness.
A Changed Story of Gods People
In the Gospel, we see the story take a turn as it is reshaped by Jesus and becomes a new story of God's people. The life of Jesus, as retold by the Apostles, looks an awful lot like the story of Israel: Jesus moves to Egypt, like Joseph, he survives the killing of the little boys, like the Prophet Moses, Jesus is led by God into the wilderness for 40 days, like Israels 40 years. The gospel writers emphasized Jesus as a representation of Israel taking a new path, remaining faithful and allegiant in the face of the temptations of other nations.
Jesus, for the early church, represented a new story to live into. One where faithfulness is possible because Jesus was faithful. He faithfully followed the Spirit of God into the wilderness, where he resisted every temptation that had led Israel astray. It was a faithfulness that even led to a cross, but it was the cross that revealed how God's power enters into this world through cross-shaped acts, difficulty, and sacrificial love that forgives even as it is crucified. That is what releases the power of resurrection, new life, and the new world that God is bringing.
The early church was committed to living out this story. It would become the new narrative of their lives. They were not failures, and they were not lost. They were the faithful body of Christ, and they were living out the story of the cross in their sufferings, which they believed would bring about new life, resurrection, a new world, and a new that God would once again dwell with his people.
This brings us to Revelation 12 and the story of The Woman and The Dragon.
A Retelling of the Retelling
Revelation 12:1–6
A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” d And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.
This is a retelling of the Gospel story in a way that the Jewish Christians would recognize because they would have been familiar with stories like "The Animal Apocalypse," which was part of the Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 83-90) where various animals were used to retell the history of Israel —like using sheep and donkeys instead of the various characters of the Old Testament.
Like Enoch, John seems to be playing with similitudes here. The woman is Israel, the baby she gives birth to is Christ, and the Dragon is the tempter and accuser himself. There is a dramatic battle as the dragon tries to destroy the new life that God is bringing into the world; the woman escapes as a new king is born, and all of creation joins in singing about the triumph of the woman and the baby over the dragon. A good public speaker could have done wonders with this chapter. John is a creative writer, and the image he depicts for us is the same one given to us in the Gospels.
The Church: Reliving the Story.
John wants the seven churches to hear the story of the gospel of Jesus again, but this time through the story of the Woman and the Dragon. He wants to remind them of the gospel story that they are a part of. They are suffering at the moment, but these are the labor pains of the world that God is birthing through his people as they follow his Spirit. The dragons of Babylon will try to kill the baby in the cradle and attempt to put a stop to God’s new work, as Pharaoh did to Moses and Herod did to Jesus. References to floods, serpents, and the wilderness remind them of all of the ways the enemy has tried to thwart God’s work. But this time, the dragon does not succeed.
Revelation 12:13-17
When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. 15 Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. 16 But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.
The Story of Us
For me, the important thing to see in Revelation 12 is that John always brings them back to the story of Jesus as their source of strength and hope. The Gospel writers didn’t give us a book of rules to obey, they gave us a story.
It is the story of Jesus.
When the story is told, it changes people. Something happens in the heart of the person who hears it. Some seed is planted and begins to grow. The story is powerful because it doesn’t belong to any one person or group; it belongs to everyone. There is no elite version of it; it meets all of us right where we are. It shows us things that we all know to be true and invites us beyond a self-serving life.
The story of Jesus gives hope to the poor, comfort to the miserable, humility to the powerful, and encouragement to those seeking goodness in the world.
It is a story to tell and a story to hear. Telling the story is the most important work in God's plan because it lays before us all of life — both human depravity and human flourishing — and shows us the path to the Kingdom that God has for us. It is the story of the body of Christ, broken and poured out in an act of love for the world. In this way, salvation, resurrection, and eternal life are given.
The role of both the church and the Christian is to make this story known and visible.