The dragon

The Hebrews’ dragon was called Leviathon or Behemoth whereas the Greeks’ was called Python.

In Greek mythology, Zeus and a woman named Leto have a baby and his wife sends a python-dragon to kill the baby at birth. Zeus intervenes and rescues the baby and woman.

There are several versions of the same story and some with greater detail than my 2 sentences!

Back to the Bible …

“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 sceptre.” 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. (Revelation 12 v 3-6)

This is not a real dragon, it is another sign, just like the woman.

It has 7 heads, 10 horns and 7 crowns and we will look into this later on. But the numbers seven and ten are symbols for completeness. The dragon has complete authority, complete power and complete wealth. But we will soon learn that completeness is held under the Almighty God’s ultimate power! The dragon will be confirmed from hereon is the epiphany of the worst evil of evils. The dragon is the devil.

A third of the stars fall, is this a great apostasy of the righteous, is that possible? Are these angels the ones swept from heaven in the great fall of satan from heaven?

The dragon stands in front of the birth of the son who we now know is not a sign but the real thing, Jesus the Son of God. He is snatched to heaven by God. He is safe. But the woman escapes like Israel from Pharaoh into the desert, it’s akin to another exodus. She remains for a symbolic figure, again half a year, it is not complete, but she is taken care of by God. But we will see how the woman is chased in the desert, this is a great tribulation for her. The woman symbolic of us in this tribulation now. It happened after the birth of the son.

So the woman remains and will do so for much of the rest of the vision though another woman will emerge and a horrible one at that. The dragon is also here, for a time.

Can you feel the tension?

We need more detail and it will come. John sees more.

For the first century followers of Jesus suffering for their faith and struggling with the temptations and trials of their Roman Greek oppressed world they are understanding another world behind this. A world of an enormous red dragon who is playing havoc and causing chaos and who needs to be brought down.

They are introduced to spiritual warfare. What they are seeing is also what we must see. How they must adapt to what they see is also what we must do. For this not Greek mythology. This is real.