STORY=POWER 1a - The Dragon Story

One night as I was putting my children to bed, the three of them gathered on the boys' beds and said, "Dad, tell us a bedtime story." I said, "Okay, what kind of bedtime story would you like tonight?" And Mikey, my middle child, who was about 5 years old, said, "A Bible story." And Cyrus, who was about 6, folded his arms across his chest and said, "Not a Bible story. The Bible's boring." And I'd never heard any of my children say the Bible was boring before, and it kind of took me back, and I didn't know what to say, so I said, "Well, okay Cyrus, what kind of story would you like tonight?" And he said, "I don't know, something cool." And I said, "Well, what would make it cool?" "Well, you know, something about dragons and swords and something like that." So I started trying to think of stories about dragons and swords, and then this idea came into my head. And I said, "Hey, what if there was a Bible story about a dragon and a sword? Would that be cool?" And Cyrus said, "Yeah, that'd be really cool, but there can't be, Dad." I said, "Why not?" He said, "Because the Bible's true and dragons aren't real, Dad." And I said, "Oh, but there is a story in the Bible about a dragon." And he said, "How can that be?" And I said, "Well, You know, when Jesus was here and he was walking along on the earth and he was telling stories to people, and sometimes he would say, "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure in a field," or, "The treasure of heaven is like a pearl." Now, was the treasure of— was the kingdom of heaven really a pearl? And my kids said, "No." And I said, "So what were those kind of stories called?" And they knew, they said, "Parables." I said, "Very good." So before Jesus came to earth and after he left and went back to heaven, he still was telling parables to his people. To us on earth, but he was telling them through his prophets, and those parables were called prophecies. And they told us much the same thing, things about the kingdom of heaven, things about the way God wanted us to live, and sometimes things that were going to happen in the future. And so this dragon story is one of those parables, one of those prophecies, and it's in the book of Revelation, which is after Jesus went back to heaven, and he sent a message through John, um, about this dragon. And Cyrus sat back and folded his arms across his chest and said, "Tell it." And I said, "Okay, let me think about it. Okay, it all starts..." And I hadn't told it as a story before, and so I was thinking about it, trying to remember how does it go together. I'd used it all the time in prophecy seminars and sermons, but never just told the narrative of Revelation 12. And so I thought about it, I said, "Okay, look, it starts with a woman and she's really pregnant and she's standing on the moon." And the kids go, "Dad, you can't stand on the moon." I said, "No, that's what it says in the Bible. She's standing on the moon. Remember, it's a prophecy." So she's standing on the moon and she's just about to have her baby. And so she starts to feel, the Bible says she cried out in pain. She starts to do breathing. And she starts to push. And when she cried out in pain, the Bible says she cried out in the pain of childbirth. And so it's like, "Ahh!" And she cried out. And when she cried out, the dragon heard her on earth. And the dragon crawled out from the underside of the earth and he leapt up and he started flying towards the moon. And the dragon was flying towards the moon and the woman was pushing and screaming! The dragon was flying and the woman was pushing! And the dragon was flying and the woman was pushing! And then the baby started to come out of— the woman reached down to catch the baby and the dragon landed on the moon and his head— no, 7 heads swooped in to try to catch the baby and 14 rows of razor-sharp teeth open up to catch the baby. And the woman's hands reach down to catch the baby and the dragon sliding toward the woman and the woman reaching down towards it and everyone says about to be huge collision just to get the baby. And just as all of them about reach the baby, a hand comes out of nowhere and swoops down and picks up the baby and takes it up, up, up to heaven. Well, this makes the dragon very angry. And so the dragon starts to run and he claws at the moon until he gets up enough momentum and he jumps and he leaps off the moon and he starts flying after the hand. And he's chasing the hand as fast as he can, but he can't catch up with the hand and the hand just stays a little ways ahead of him. And somehow between the time that the hand leaves the moon and the hand gets all the way up to heaven, and somehow between In that time, when the hand left the moon and got to heaven, the baby grew up. And when the dragon lands on the shores of heaven, the baby isn't a baby anymore. He's a man, and he's standing there holding a sword, and his name is Michael, and he is the dragon slayer. And the dragon and his angels fought against Michael and his angels, and there was war in heaven. And each of the dragon's angels slowly fell, one by one, as Michael's angels pushed them back. And the dragon fought against Michael, and Michael waited till his opportune moment, and each step took them closer and closer to the edge of heaven until the dragon was standing right on the edge, and he lifted up his 7 heads and he lunged towards Michael, but just as he made the lunge, Michael drove his sword into the chestplate of the dragon, and the dragon stumbled backwards and clawed at the edge of heaven and fell down, down, down to the earth where he landed with a thud, and he stood up and straightened out his wings, put them back into the sockets, And he was so angry, and he looked around. What can I do? I can't get the baby. I can't get heaven. And then he saw the woman just standing there in the middle of the desert. And so the dragon started to run after the woman, and the woman was walking through the desert, and she heard something, footsteps really loud, and she looked over her shoulder. The dragon! And so she starts to run as fast as she can, and the dragon's running behind her, clawing at the ground, and the woman's running, and the dragon's running, and then the dragon leaps up in the air. Woof! And starts to fly. And the woman looks back, "I'm never gonna get away if I keep running." So she leaps up in the air and she sprouts wings like an eagle and she starts to fly. "Dad, you can't sprout wings." I said, "It's in the Bible." And so the woman's flying and the dragon's getting closer and closer. And then the dragon takes in a huge breath, no, 7 huge breaths, and he shoots out, and the kids go, "Fire." No, not fire, he shoots out water. And when the woman looks back, there's this huge wall of water and it's so high that she can't see around it. And it's so wide that she can't see around it or over it. And she just realizes, "I'm gonna drown in the middle of the desert." And so she's flying as fast as she can and the water gets to her toes and to her ankles and starts working its way up her legs. And then something amazing happens. The ground just tears open, "Grrr," and swallows the water. Gwoop! And the dragon couldn't see the woman while the wall of water was there. And when the wall of water suddenly disappeared, the woman was gone too. What the dragon didn't know was that the same hand that had protected the baby had taken the woman and hid her somewhere to protect her. The dragon was so angry now, he said to himself, "I can't get that baby. I can't get heaven. I can't get the woman. What am I going to do? I know, I will go and get the other children that the woman has had." Okay kids, that's the end of the story. It's time to hop in bed. And Rachel, my 4-year-old, she said, "But what about the children?" And I said, "Sorry, that's the end of the story. What do you mean?" "Dad, what about the children?" I said, "What do you mean, Rachel?" She said, "You said the dragon's gonna get the children. What children? Where are the children? When's the dragon gonna get the children? What about the children?" And I said, "Oh, well look, everything in prophecy means something. So who do you think the dragon represents?" And the kids all go, "Satan!" I said, "Very good. And who do you think the baby represents?" "Uh, baby Jesus and Jesus when he grew up. Michael's Jesus." "Very good. And who do you think the woman represented?" And they said, "Um, Mary, Jesus's mommy." I said, "Well, that's a pretty good answer because they ran into the desert and hid from somebody who tried to kill baby Jesus. But it's even bigger than that. There was a whole group of people who were waiting for the Messiah, waiting for Jesus to come. Do you know who they were?" And they said, "Um, the church?" "That's it. That's right. The woman represents the church. So if the woman has had other children, who would they be?" The kids said, "People who go to church?" I said, "Yeah, so who would that be?" And they said, "Um, us?" I said, "Yep, that's right, you got it." And Rachel goes, "The dragon's trying to get us?" And I said, "Oh honey, honey, there's not a dragon waiting outside the house or something trying to get you. It's— remember, it's a parable, it's a prophecy, and it's trying to teach us something. And what it's trying to teach us is that The devil has tried everything. He tried to get heaven and he got kicked out. He tried to kill Jesus when he was a baby and he couldn't stop the plan of salvation, and Jesus lived and Jesus gave his life for us on purpose, and the devil couldn't stop him from doing that either. And he even tried after Jesus went back to heaven and a new church started, the Christian church started, the devil tried everything to stop the church, but he couldn't stop it. And so the devil, the devil's gone a little bit crazy, and now he knows, I can't actually stop God's plan. But I know something. I know God loves his people, and so if I hurt them, then I will hurt God. And I said to the kids, so what kind of things do you think hurt God because they hurt us? What kind of things do you think the devil's doing that cause people to get hurt? And they said, doing bad things. And I said, yep, doing bad things. Um, being like starving to death. I said, yeah, starving to death. Um, be having bad accidents. I said, "Yeah." And they went through a whole bunch of things, all the things that people tend to say, "Well, if there was a loving God, then why does this and this and this happen?" And it's right there in that story. There is a loving God, but these things happen because there's also an enemy, and he's doing everything to hurt that loving God. So I put the kids in bed, and I went down and I sat on the couch, and I said to my wife, "Wow, Revelation, Revelation 12, that is quite a story." And I opened it up, and I discovered something amazing in that story. I discovered that there's two places where it says something about you and me. It says in 12:17, "These are they who obey the commandments and have the testimony of Jesus," the story of Jesus. Keeping the commandments, telling the story of Jesus. And in 12:11, it says this is how they're saved. They're saved by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. Jesus's blood on the cross does everything for us to save us, but if you've truly been saved, you can't help telling your story. And that's how Jesus knows who belongs to him.