John sees heaven open (in Rev. 11:19) to symbolise that what comes next is an unveiling of a perspective that's normally hidden to us. We're being taken behind the scenes of cosmic history, as it were, to gain a better insight into God's victory over the forces that oppose him.
Except this insight comes within a vision of a seven-headed red dragon who pursues a pregnant mother across heaven and earth in order to "devour her child as soon as it was born" (12:4 NRSV). This may cause the weirdness meter to shoot up for us, but for John's original audience it's a reimagining of a pop-culture tale from Greek mythology where a serpentine monster called Python pursues the goddess Leto to stop her giving birth to Zeus' children Apollo and Artemis.
John’s version clearly intends the child to be Jesus. Not only is he going to "rule all the nations" (12:5) in a callback to Psalm 2, he ascends "up to God and to his throne" (also 12:5 NIV) where the angels then praise "the authority of [God's] Messiah" (see 12:10 NIV).
Which makes his mother in the story Mary, right? Well, you would naturally think so, but John's apocalyptic imagery makes this woman an amalgamation of Eve, the people of Israel, Daughter Zion, and even the Church. Revelation 12 begins with her giving birth to a male son in heaven, before the dragon forces her to flee down to earth. In the second half of the chapter, she becomes a communal representation of Israel (in wilderness scenes reminiscent of the Exodus) and the mother of all Jesus' followers.
When the seven-headed red dragon cannot devour the mother's child, he starts a war in heaven (see 12:7) before waging war on earth (see 12:17). We're twelve chapters into Revelation and John suddenly reveals this dragon's war as the source of all the previous plagues.
Thankfully, the dragon is much easier to identify than the mother, as John spells it out for us after the war in heaven ends in his defeat.
The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
— Revelation 12:9 NIV
War
Talk of war in Revelation 12 hinders us from reading Revelation with A Nonviolent God in mind. Instead, we end up imagining an army of angels led by Jesus clashing with a horde of demons led by a seven-headed red dragon, fighting a spiritual war behind the scenes in the ultimate cosmic battle of good versus evil.
War risks us swapping the nonviolent Jesus of the Gospels for Mark Driscoll's pride fighter Jesus who has "a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed." [Source: Relevant Magazine, in an interview in issue 24].
It's therefore essential we take to heart the following two observations about this cosmic war:
- God just wins.
- This war involves fighting without weapons.
