Revelation 12:1-9
1 A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. 4 His 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 he might devour her child the moment it was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the desert to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.7 And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 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 is written in a style of symbolism and metaphor; it’s difficult to tell whether the author is writing about the thing itself or something that it represents. So I have lots of questions about this material.
“A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven“. In heaven, you say? The woman and the dragon are not on the earth? Yes, because in the next paragraph there’s a war between the angels and the dragon, and it takes place in heaven, and the dragon is thrown out of heaven. So heaven means a place other than the earth.
So what’s the meaning of the woman and the dragon appearing in heaven? “her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.” Sounds like this is still in heaven, except for the part about the desert – although that could be somewhere other than heaven, which the woman flees to.
I guess I’d never really thought about the story of the woman and the dragon in any terms other than it happening on the earth, even in a metaphorical sense. But this seems to suggest that instead the action is occurring in heaven.