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3 Another sign was seen in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven crowns. 4 His tail drew one third of the stars of the sky, and threw them to the earth.
Another sign... a great red dragon
This is clearly in juxtaposition to verse 1 that announces the first great sign as a pregnant woman. This next sign is quite the opposite from the first one we have covered at length. This dragon is subsequently identified specifically as Satan and as the ancient serpent referring to his presence in Eden. These two signs constitute the clear differentiation between the nature of the two warring sides. The first symbolizes beauty, vulnerability and true value while the second is all about power and intimidation and force.
The great dragon was thrown down, the old serpent, he who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Revelation 12:9)
Why is this dragon identified as being red? What are implications of this color?
At the end of this document I have included excerpts from a few sources that shed light on this topic and association of the color red to ancient gods in myths that strikingly parallel the facts in this war.
Another came forth, a red horse. To him who sat on it was given power to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another. There was given to him a great sword. (Revelation 6:4)
Thus I saw the horses in the vision, and those who sat on them, having breastplates of fiery red, hyacinth blue, and sulfur yellow; and the heads of lions. Out of their mouths proceed fire, smoke, and sulfur. (Revelation 9:17)
The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of the sexual immorality of the earth. (Revelation 17:4)
His eyes will be red with wine, his teeth white with milk. (Genesis 49:12)
Don't look at the wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly. In the end, it bites like a snake, and poisons like a viper. (Proverbs 23:31-32)
"Come now, and let us reason together," says Yahweh: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. (Isaiah 1:18)
The shield of his mighty men is made red. The valiant men are in scarlet. The chariots flash with steel in the day of his preparation, and the pine spears are brandished. (Nahum 2:3)
Summarizing these implications for red: Peace is eliminated; fiery breastplates for self-protection; the dress on a prostitute who is full of abominations and impurities; effects of drunkenness; the symbol of sin; bloody effects of violence.
seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven crowns
Then I stood on the sand of the sea. I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads. On his horns were ten crowns, and on his heads, blasphemous names. (Revelation 13:1)
He carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet-colored animal, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns.
Here is the mind that has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits. They are seven kings. Five have fallen, the one is, the other has not yet come. When he comes, he must continue a little while. (Revelation 17:3, 9-10)
The elder and the honorable man is the head, and the prophet who teaches lies is the tail. For those who lead this people lead them astray; and those who are led by them are destroyed. (Isaiah 9:15-16)
After this I saw in the night visions, and, behold, a fourth animal, awesome and powerful, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet: and it was diverse from all the animals that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots: and behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things. (Daniel 7:7-8)
and concerning the ten horns that were on its head, and the other horn which came up, and before which three fell, even that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spoke great things, whose look was more stout than its fellows. I saw, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; until the ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High, and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom. Thus he said, The fourth animal shall be a fourth kingdom on earth, which shall be diverse from all the kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom shall ten kings arise: and another shall arise after them; and he shall be diverse from the former, and he shall put down three kings. He shall speak words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High; and he shall think to change the times and the law; and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and half a time. (Daniel 7:20-25)
Horns generally represent raw power and usually indicate secular and political entities such as kings or rulers. But now I want to turn our attention to the meaning of crowns.
The Greek word used for these crowns on the heads of the dragon come from the word diadema. This word is a compound of two words, the first indicating the channel through which something happens, and the second meaning to bind or put into bondage, to tie or wind around. This infers a very different and even opposite meaning to the kind of crown seen on the woman in verse one. This is reflective of the kind of authority and power exercised by rulers of this world who rely on compulsion and violence to maintain control to stay in power. Staying in power is the highest priority in this world's system of governing, while in heaven's system the highest priority is to remain in love and harmony with the principles of creation design that reflects God's true nature.
Who has planned this against Tyre, the giver of crowns, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honorable of the earth? (Isaiah 23:8)
Here the Hebrew word translated crowns mean to encircle, either for the purpose of attacking or for protection. This conveys enormous potential of meaning in all sorts of ways depending on the nature of the circumstances and the disposition of those involved. It also helps to explain why the word diadema can be seen as relating to the dragon and yet later used to describe Jesus as having many crowns of diadema nature. When the dragon wears such a crown it is for the purpose of attacking while Jesus wearing such a crown would implicate His encircling presence around those who choose to trust in Him for their eternal protection. This is another example of an important truth being counterfeited by the enemy in ways that bring confusion.
And behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow. A crown was given to him, and he came forth conquering, and to conquer. (Revelation 6:2)
Significantly the Greek word for this crown is stephanos, the same victory crown word used for the one seen on the woman. But words can also be hijacked at times which is the nature of how a counterfeit functions, so we need to take into account all the clues in the context to discern whether something is true or designed to distort the truth. What this passage seems to indicate is that victory was handed to this rider, but it does not necessarily portray accurately the true nature of the character of the rider.
The shapes of the locusts were like horses prepared for war. On their heads were something like golden crowns, and their faces were like people's faces. (Revelation 9:7)
These crowns are also from the word stephanos, but likewise clearly do not reflect the nature or methods of the Lamb. Rather it means that they are temporarily victorious. Note also how these crowns are identified as something like rather than genuinely authentic. That is counterfeit language.
Something to note is that these crowns are on the heads of the dragon while in Revelation 13:1 the crowns are located on the horns. There is a very important meaning in this progression and has to do with the meaning of the symbols of both crowns and the difference between heads and horns.
Son of man, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and tell him, Thus says the Lord Yahweh: You seal up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. (Ezekiel 28:12)
It is no coincidence that Tyre is referenced in Isaiah as the giver of crowns and that Lucifer turned Satan is also referenced as the king of Tyre in Ezekiel who used to be perfect and harmless. In Isaiah, Tyre the giver of crowns is linked with merchant traffickers and princes which both result from the counterfeit system invented by Lucifer. Ezekiel 27 and 28 describes the development of trading and commerce that I am convinced explains how Satan's power became so influential. It was through use of distorted subtle logic by which Lucifer infected and confused many, far beyond those who joined him in open revolt against God's government. In Ezekiel chapter 28 we see summaries of this progression from innocence and purity that morphed into dissonance caused by internal violence until it resulted in outright open sin. This began with Lucifer's experimental alternative ways of thinking that led others to make choices outside of God's design. Lucifer chose to resist turning away from this [ring of] power until his character became shaped permanently into what he finally became – the great Satan accuser, the archenemy of all that God stands for, the ultimate abuser and exploiter and the father of all lies and murder.
The symbol of head in prophecy represents intelligence and knowledge. This same dragon was previously Lucifer in heaven who was created perfect in wisdom and knowledge. The number 7 represents perfection or completeness. It was through misuse of his enormous superior capacity for wisdom and knowledge that he abused to leverage his advantage of position and credibility to deceive others into imagining that God was not fully trustworthy, and they didn't need to rely on Him for everything. Thus at the very outset of the great rebellion against heaven and God's ways of governing, knowledge was the first channel relied on by which bonds became established as Satan attracted to himself the allegiance of all who eventually came to join him in his revolt against heaven.
The same tactic of reliance on cunning manipulation of knowledge is what the ancient serpent used to trick our first mother into participating in his system symbolized as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Notice that the serpent did not try to use any threats or violence to gain Eve's submission to his enticements, for that would have most likely been ineffective. Rather he relied entirely on manipulation of information, even inferring that it was God who was the one relying on threats of force and punishment by death in contrast to his own offer to help Eve elevate herself to a higher sphere of existence than God was willing to allow her to have. The serpent offered Eve an escape from God's presumed threat of death by participating with him in eating the forbidden fruit that supposedly had already accomplished wonderful and magical benefits for the serpent.
Now the serpent was more subtle than any animal of the field which Yahweh God had made. He said to the woman, "Has God really said, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?'"
The serpent said to the woman, "You won't surely die, for God knows that in the day you eat it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." (Genesis 3:1,4-5)
This could be the meaning why the dragon seen as having crowns on his heads. The rebellion began with subtlety, not coercive force by which Lucifer gained access to control minds. After achieving some of his goal through rationalization, we see this dragon again described in the next chapter with these crowns on his horns rather than his heads. This indicates that his strategy shifted to threats, intimidation, violence and such means as the channel by which to compel and intimidate others into compliance to his demands or face death if they resisted. He began with perfect wisdom (the symbol 7) misused to gain his goals in the beginning, but shifts to threats and force to achieve his goals in the end (again symbolized by the number 7), indicating abuse of every kind of power available.
In Revelation 19 we see Jesus wearing many diadem crowns. What is significant about this later appearance of Jesus is that at that time He is recapturing hijacked symbols the enemy perverted for evil. In chapter 19 Jesus is also seen riding a white horse, while previously the rider of a white horse may well be a counterfeit of Jesus. In chapter 19 Jesus is announced as waging war and executing judgment – but only in righteousness. I believe the symbols used in this appearance of Jesus indicates He is taking back authority over those symbols such as diadem crowns to restore their meanings to again reflect God's motives, methods and disposition to accurately reveal the real truth about God's heart. Under His rule, all lording over and dominating of others, all abusive headship mentality, all hierarchy relationships, every vestige of Satan's relative value system and artificial rewards and punishments are eradicated. In Christ's kingdom everyone is family and equal in the ways of heaven's original design.
Then the end comes, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. (1 Corinthians 15:24-25)
His tail drew/swept away one third of the stars of the sky
The dragon's tail is possibly the most potent weapon he relies on to intimidate, manipulate and retain his power. What does a tail represent? It is reflective of the primary means by which he is able to wield his power over all who dwell on the earth. It was how he achieved power to manipulate the minds of the angels who were swept out of heaven and thrown to the earth with him as we shall study soon. And it was the same way he gained access to humanity in the Garden of Eden.
They have tails like those of scorpions, and stings. In their tails they have power to harm men for five months. (Revelation 9:10)
For the power of the horses is in their mouths, and in their tails. For their tails are like serpents, and have heads, and with them they harm. (Revelation 9:19)
The elder and the honorable man is the head, and the prophet who teaches lies is the tail. For those who lead this people lead them astray; and those who are led by them are destroyed. (Isaiah 9:15-16)
..."See now, behemoth, which I made as well as you. He eats grass as an ox. Look now, his strength is in his thighs. His force is in the muscles of his belly. He moves his tail like a cedar. The sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are like tubes of brass. His limbs are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of God. He who made him gives him his sword. (Job 40:14-19)
I believe that in God's exposé of the backstory to Job, both Behemoth and Leviathan represent the supernatural power and existence of the great Satan. The reason two creatures are used to represent him is because one lived on the land and the other in the sea. Yet both of them contain key descriptions that allude to being representative of the highest created being in the universe. Here is a passage that infers the power of the tail or body of Leviathan.
His undersides are like sharp potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing sledge. He makes the deep to boil like a pot. He makes the sea like a pot of ointment. He makes a path shine after him. One would think the deep had white hair. On earth there is not his equal, that is made without fear. He sees everything that is high. He is king over all the sons of pride. (Job 41:30-34)
The symbol of a tail is linked to deception, lies and misrepresentation. The power of Satan's lies is the fear they generate. This is why the only way to defeat his power is not by force that produces more fear, but through the revelation of the simple truth found only the agape love of God. This alone has effective power to neutralize the lies have swept away so many angels and humans.
Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Hebrews 2:14-15)
This bondage is directly related to the meaning of the word diadema which involves a channel through which something is accomplished, combined with the idea of binding around , tying up and implies keeping under bondage. Thus Jesus alone has what it takes to neutralize the power of the main channel who through fear of death has kept us tied up in bondage to him by his kind of of crown all our lives. It is impossible to overcome him by might or force or power, because those are the things he uses to keep us in subjugation to his ways of thinking and living. Only by the Spirit of truth and love and freedom that comes alone through the Lamb hero of Revelation can we escape his power.
Then he answered and spoke to me, saying, "This is the word of Yahweh to Zerubbabel, saying, 'Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit,' says Yahweh of Armies. (Zechariah 4:6)
For God didn't give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:7)
one third of the stars of the sky
and lest you lift up your eyes to the sky, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the army of the sky, you are drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which Yahweh your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole sky. (Deuteronomy 4:19)
Whereupon were the foundations of it fastened? Or who laid its cornerstone, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:6-7)
You said in your heart, "I will ascend into heaven! I will exalt my throne above the stars of God! I will sit on the mountain of assembly, in the far north! (Isaiah 14:13)
Angels who didn't keep their first domain, but deserted their own dwelling place, he has kept in everlasting bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day. (Jude 1:6)
wild waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, for whom the blackness of darkness has been reserved forever. (Jude 1:13)
Recall from our previous studies that in Revelation the term one third indicates that whatever is being involved is connected with Satan. One third is like his logo, his brand mark, his identity signature. Here in the hub of this book we find this link spelled out. Lucifer uses his deceptive insinuations and distortions of truth to infect the thinking of possibly all the angels. But when push came to shove in heaven and the war compelled everyone to make a choice as to which side they would align with, around one third of the angels chose to commit fully in joining Satan to carry out his grand and exciting experimental new ideas about government based on his glowing promises that they could acquire advantage and power and honor far beyond what they had received from God.
Today we see the same pattern being repeated again and again in how social revolutions are launched. Promise of equality, wealth and power seduce the masses to align with socialist theories that end in disaster after it is too late to turn back. This is the history of the rebellion from its very inception.
This same tactic was used with our first parents when he enticed them with his lies, only to immediately exploit their vulnerability to bring them under his bondage of fear to reflect his dark views of God. He attempted this with Jesus when he enticed Him to embrace Satan's definition of identity in place of trust in God alone. This is our temptation, and we choose which system we will embrace, whose government we will trust, who defines our identity – the dragon or the Lamb.
threw them to the earth
There was war in the sky. Michael and his angels made war on the dragon. The dragon and his angels made war. They didn't prevail, neither was a place found for him any more in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, the old serpent, he who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Revelation 12:7-9)
The stars of the sky fell to the earth, like a fig tree dropping its unripe figs when it is shaken by a great wind. (Revelation 6:13)
It grew great, even to the army of the sky; and some of the army and of the stars it cast down to the ground, and trampled on them. (Daniel 8:10)
I believe it is safe to assume that from these prophetic writings, stars usually refer to angels, both fallen and unfallen. As has been noted previously, Revelation 12 begins the central hub of this revelation of the backstory that grants us access to see more clearly the context in which we find ourselves and allows us to perceive why things happen as they do that defy explanation otherwise. The war has been going on long before we came on the scene and even long before the terraforming of our planet. Without this revelation of the backstory it is impossible to arrive at plausible explanations for everything that is going on around us. This is why we must not ignore the gift of insights given to us by God in revealing this context that opens our eyes to the supernatural war raging all around and inside of us, for these revelations are designed to empower us to know how to make choices that will align us with the winning side rather than be swept away into darkness and despair like what happened to the angels seduced by Satan in heaven.
Supplemental links
Here are some links for connections to ancient myths that resonate with this subject.
https://claudemariottini.com/2010/03/22/moses-and-his-crocodile/
Did you know that, when facing Pharaoh, it is not Moses that throws down his staff; it is his brother Aaron and, according to the original Hebrew, it did not turn into a snake but a crocodile? Since the Egyptians worshipped the crocodile god – Sobek, when Aaron’s crocodile swallowed up the Egyptian crocodiles, Pharaoh understood that the God of Israel was more powerful than his entire pantheon. All this is lost if the Hebrew word ‘tanin’ is mistranslated as ‘snake’ instead of ‘crocodile.
Many readers of the Bible do not realize that two different words are used in the book of Exodus to describe what happened to Moses’ rod. The first word appears in Exodus 4:2-3.
The word used for serpent in verse 3 is nāhāsh, a word that appears 41 times in the Hebrew Bible and is translated “serpent,” “snake,” or “viper.”
The second word is tannin and it is used three times in Exodus 7:9-12. ...the word tannin can be translated as “dragon,” “serpent,” “crocodile,” or “sea monster.”
The following reference is clearly biased against Christianity. Yet it provides important insights and material that can help us discern the major issues in this war and how the enemy seeks to continue to mask his true nature through deception to further his system of trading and the assertion that there must be balance maintained between good and evil as the only viable way to maintain order and suppress chaos.
https://www.worldhistory.org/Set_(Egyptian_God)/
[Set] is one of the first five gods created by the union of Geb (earth) and Nut (sky) after the creation of the world. His name is usually translated as "instigator of confusion" and "destroyer" and he was associated with disorder, foreign lands and people, and the color red.
To the Greeks, he was associated with Typhon, the god-monster who challenged the might of Zeus and was hurled into Tartarus.
Like many aspects of the Osiris myth, Set was incorporated into the early mythology of Christianity as the devil (the serpent Apophis has also been suggested as contributing to this figure's development). Set's relationship to darkness and wickedness, as well as the color red and the popular image of him as a red-haired beast, all leant themselves to the iconography of the Christian Satan. Like Satan, he brought about the end of paradise and was cast out of the land of the gods for rebelling against harmonious rule. His association with deceit, cunning, war, destruction and close connection with the serpent also worked well in fashioning the Christian concept of the great supernatural deceiver of human beings, who swore eternal enmity with God.
From this perspective, the symbols we are studying here would be viewed as counter-balancing opposing power figures that require each other in order to maintain order, when in fact this concept of peace, security and preventing chaos through balance is a denial of God's design from the beginning. I would even go so far as to say that this approach will always end in producing chaos itself, because those aligned with good and right within that system, sooner or later are seduced by the infection of evil which ends in death. The 'good' in Satan's system is a pseudo kind of good rooted in selfishness, not reflecting the agape kind of love that defines the Creator. This outcome of death resulting from either the good or the evil under this counterfeit system has been God's warning from the very outset of our existence, because it simply describes a fundamental principle of existence.
