The Action-Packed Revelation Rendition of the 'Nativity' Story That Most of Us Totally Overlook at Christmas

The Christmas story is all-at-once timeless, warm, inviting, enthralling — the list of beautiful descriptives is practically endless. The transformative birth of the Christ-child and the journeys that his mother, earthly father, the shepherds, wisemen and others embarked on both before and after his birth are collectively the greatest story ever told.

READ: Grab a Copy of “Playing With Fire: A Modern Investigation Into Demons, Exorcism & Ghosts

Revelation 12: Jesus and the Dragon

As Matthew recounts, Mary’s baby — the holy child she was to name Jesus — would go on to “save his people from their sins.”

But there’s another version of the Christmas story (sort of) that is often overlooked, and we find it in Revelation 12. It’s a chapter that speaks about evil (a topic I cover in my new book, “Playing With Fire”, and you can read other interpretations here).

There’s no mention of a guiding star, no journey of Magi toward Jesus and the holy family, and no shepherds watching over their flocks. The Revelation 12 story is a broader narrative that focuses on good, evil and the heavenly battles that should stir us to our core — yet we sometimes forget these essential elements at Christmastime.

Revelation 12 opens by proclaiming that “a great 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.”

We are told that the woman cried out in pain as she was preparing to give birth — and then a dragon emerges. This big, red dragon in Revelation 12 has seven heads, 10 horns and seven crowns, and sweeps with its tail “a third of the stars out of the sky,” flinging them to Earth.

Talk about intensely powerful imagery. And it doesn’t end there. Verses 4-5 proclaim:

“The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. 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.”

There are plenty of other details to dig through, but the big take-away is that a war broke out in heaven, with the angels fighting against the dragon and the dragon and “his angels” battling back, eventually losing their place in heaven.

These enemies were “hurled down” to the Earth, speaking to Satan’s expulsion from heaven (alongside his angels) and his efforts to “lead the whole world astray.”

Revelation 12: Understanding Evil

You can read Revelation 12 for yourself, but one of the most fascinating and convicting lines is in verse 17, which reads, “Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.”

This aligns with what we see in Ephesians 6 when Paul tells us that we must take a stand against the devil’s schemes by putting on the “full armor of God.” At Christmastime, we often whitewash the story, or accidentally overlook what’s really going on beneath the surface: good came to defeat evil.

Revelation 12 & Christmas

We appropriately focus on the awe and wonder of Jesus’ birth at Christmas, but we sometimes stop there amid all the cookie-eating and gift-giving.

We push aside the fact that Ephesians 6:12 speaks of a continuation of the battles we see in Revelation 12 — clashes we are warned to be wary of: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Jesus came to extinguish evil, to offer us salvation and to win the spiritual and eternal battles we see raging in Ephesians 6, Revelation 12, and throughout scripture. The nativity story offers us hope amid a weary world, but when we remember Jesus’ birth we should also remember the evil he came to defeat.

Read more about evil and what scripture has to say about it in “Playing with Fire: A Modern Investigation into Demons, Exorcism, and Ghosts.”