Week 52 Revelation 12
This chapter is called The Woman and The Dragon (I checked a couple of bible versions and they both add that title).
The verse that jumped out at me said: the dragon became angry with the woman, and he declared war against the rest of her children – all who keep God’s commandments and confess that they belong to Jesus.
A starting-point Question & Answer here is:
Q#1: who is the dragon angry with?
A#1: the woman
Unfortunately (from the dragon’s perspective) the woman escaped and he missed his chance to murder her son. So…Question #2:
Q#2: now that the woman has escaped who does the dragon transfer his rage against?
A#2: the woman’s children (i.e. people who a) keep the commandments of God and b) stay loyal to the Lord).
The bible doesn’t exactly say so but I think negativizing Q2 & A2 is accurate too:
Q#3: who is the dragon not angry with?
A#3: people who a) don’t obey the Lord and b) don’t have any loyalty to Jesus.
Chapter 12 is complicated in some ways but the basic idea isn’t too difficult: if I don’t have any loyalty to Jesus and I don’t make any effort to follow his ways then the dragon won’t be angry with me and won’t give me a hard time. And one way of looking at it is that there’s a certain appeal to not making a serious enemy of a really bad guy.
Note: quote from Revelation 12:17 (NLT)