God's Storytellers - part 1 - The Dragon Story

I said to them, "What kind of story do you want tonight?" And Mikey said, "A Bible story!" And Cyrus said something— Cyrus is the oldest and Rachel is the youngest. Mikey said, "A Bible story!" And Cyrus said something that he had never said before. He said, "No, not a Bible story. The Bible is boring." And I thought, "Oh, what do I do with that?" Do I argue with him? Do I say, "The Bible is not boring, son. The Bible is God's book." I didn't know what to do, and so I just said, "Well, Cyrus, what kind of story would you like then?" And he said, "Oh, I don't know, something cool." I said, "Like?" He said, "Oh, something about dragons and swords and stuff like that." Oh, my mind's ticking away, and I thought, "There's a story." I said, "What if I told you a Bible story about a dragon?" He said, "Dad, there's no dragons in the Bible because dragons aren't real and the Bible only tells the truth." And I said, "Ah, but there is one parable or prophecy in the New Testament, in the last book of the Bible. It's a prophecy that Jesus gave to John, and it's about a dragon." And my kids all looked at me a little bit skeptically because, I have to be honest with you, I've been known to fib to my children. And so they looked at me and said, "Really, Dad?" I said, "Yeah, yeah, really." And so Cyrus said, "Fine, tell the story." And he thought he'd caught me out. I said, "Okay." I had never told the story before as a narrative. And I thought, "Okay, how does it start? Oh yeah." So, okay, there's this woman and she's standing, she's pregnant, and she's really, really pregnant. And I can actually do this part quite well. She's really, really pregnant and she's standing on the moon. "Dad." I said, "No, no, it's true. That's what the Bible says. She's standing on the moon and she's really, really pregnant." She's just about to have the baby. And I've seen moms give birth to all 3 of you, and it sounds like this. Ah! And so the woman's on the moon and she's pushing and she's screaming, and the Bible says that. It says that. It says she screamed in agony. And so she's going, ah! She's pushing and she's doing the breathing. And she's screaming and pushing, and as she's screaming and as she's breathing and as she's pushing, the dragon hears her. And he flies out from underneath the earth and he starts to fly up towards the moon. And he gets closer and closer, and as the dragon gets closer and the woman's pushing and the dragon's flying, and the woman's pushing and the dragon's flying, and the dragon's just about to get to the moon, and he sees the woman just about to give birth. And so he swings his head, not one head side, 7 heads in and 7 huge red heads on red long necks and red leathery wings. And this huge red dragon swings these 7 heads in and 14 rows of razor-sharp teeth open up to catch the baby. Because the dragon wants to kill the baby. And just as the dragon lands on the moon and starts to skid towards the woman, the baby comes out. And the woman reaches down to catch the baby and the dragon's heads swing in to catch the baby. Low gravity, bounce, bounces off the moon, boop. And just as the woman's reaching to grab the baby and the 7 heads are coming in to grab the baby, a hand comes out of heaven, vroom, and grabs the baby and vroom, takes it up into heaven. Well, this makes the dragon very angry and he starts to run as fast as he can until he's got enough speed and he leaps off the moon and he starts flying after the hand. And he flies as fast as he can, but he can't catch up with that hand. And the hand goes all the way to heaven. And somehow, by the time the hand goes from the moon to heaven, the baby has grown up. And when the dragon gets to heaven, and he lands on the shore of heaven, there's the baby, but he's not a baby anymore. He's a full-grown man, and his name's Michael, and he's holding a sword, and he's the dragon slayer. And he waits for the dragon, and he lands on the shore of heaven, and the dragon's angels land on the shores of heaven with him as well. And Michael's angels step forward, and there was war in heaven, and Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, the dragon and his angels. And it was a horrible, long, ferocious battle. And slowly, one by one, the devil's angels were knocked out of heaven until just the dragon and Michael stood facing each other right near the edge of heaven. And the dragon lifted up his 7 heads, and Michael lunged in and pushed against the chestplate of the dragon with his sword, and it pushed the dragon backwards, and he started to slip. And he clawed at the edge of heaven, but he couldn't hold on to heaven, and he tumbled backwards, and the dragon went spiraling down until he went All the way down and boom, landed in the earth. Dust cloud. When the dust cleared and the dragon stood up, popped his wings back into place, krrr, ahh. And he looked up. He couldn't get the baby. He couldn't get heaven. What was he going to do? And the dust settled and there, to his amazement, standing in the desert was the woman that had given birth to the baby. He was so mad he just started charging at the woman, and the woman saw him coming, and the woman started running, and the dragon's clawing and running towards her, and the woman's running as fast as she can, and the dragon jumps up in the air and starts to fly, and the woman jumps up in the air and sprouts wings like an eagle and says, "Dad!" It's true, it's in the Bible. And so she sprouts wings and she starts to fly, but she's no match for the dragon. He's way bigger than she is, and he's getting closer and closer and closer, and then the dragon takes in a huge breath, 7 huge breaths, and shoots out My kids go, "Fire?" No, water. A huge tidal wave of water. And the woman looks, and now she can't see over the top of this huge wall of water, and she can't see around it that way, and she can't see around it that way. And then she wonders, "What's going to happen to me? I'm going to be swallowed up by this water." And just as the water is about to get to her, the ground opens up and swallows the water. And when the dragon can see again because the water's out of the way, he looks and the woman's gone. She's just— she's been hidden. She's somewhere hiding. And the dragon can't get the baby, he can't get heaven, and he can't get the woman. And so he turns and he begins to look around, and he makes his mind up that he will find the other children of that woman and he will attack them. Okay kids, that's the end of the story. It's time for bed now. And Rachel, she was only about 5 at the time, she said, but what about the children? I said, I don't know, that's where the story ends. It's prophecy, that's just how it ends. But no, what about the children? There's a dragon and the children. And I said, oh, you know what, prophecies mean something different than just the story. And what do you think it means? Who do you think the dragon is? And the kids go, "The devil? Satan?" I say, "Yeah, very good. Who do you think Michael is? The baby?" "Jesus?" "Yeah, good. Who do you think the woman is?" And Rachel, she said, "Mary? Jesus' mommy?" I said, "Well, that makes sense, doesn't it? Because she had baby Jesus, and then the evil Herod, who was controlled by the devil, tried to kill the baby, and then they ran and fled into the desert." So there is that mirroring, but you know, it's bigger than just one family and one baby and one mom. It's about where did Jesus come from way back into history. He came out of a people that were God's church. And those people continue on into the future. Does God still have a people? And the kids said, "Yeah." So who would the woman's other children be? If the woman was the church, who would the other children be? Their eyes get big. They say, "Us?" Yeah. So the dragon is trying to get us? I said, "Yeah." How do you think if the dragon wants— remember what he really wanted to do was kill Jesus, but he couldn't. Then he wanted to take heaven, but he couldn't. Then he wanted to destroy the church, but he couldn't. And so his real goal is to hurt God. What do you think he could do to us to hurt God? And you know, they came up with a whole collection of things. He could make us sad, he could make people hurt, he could make people sick, he could make people die. And I said, "Yes, he's doing all those kinds of things, and it's not really about us. He's just trying to hurt God." And after the bedtime story, putting the kids in bed, and I'm sitting on the couch, and I thought, "How come? I mean, I tell Bible stories all the time, and I'm always going through the Bible again. I've got to find another good story." I say, how come I've never ever ever seen prophecy as narrative? Nearly all prophecies are stories. How come I've never, when I've read even the story of Daniel with the statue, how come I've never just told that as a story? Or the dragon, I mean, that's an awesome story. If you wonder where Tolkien and Harry Potter and all those, where did they get their ideas for fantasy? It's been around for thousands of years. God knew that that imagery would be powerful and he used it. And you know, I think the reason why Revelation is about a dragon is because God knew what the people at the end time, what kind of narrative fiction would be big in our society. Fantasy is huge right now. And the Revelation 12 story is— it fits in. It really speaks to today's people.