⁷And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, ⁸but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. ⁹The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, 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.

¹⁰Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming, “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah, for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. ¹¹But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death. ¹²Rejoice then, you heavens and those who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, for the devil has come down to you with great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

¹³So when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. ¹⁴But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to her place where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. ¹⁵Then from his mouth the serpent poured water like a river after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. ¹⁶But the earth came to the help of the woman; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. ¹⁷Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her children, those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus.

When interpreting scripture, you have to pay attention to what you are reading. Poetry includes metaphor. And hyperbole. This is a apocalypse: the use of symbolic language is part of the system, and metaphor rules. Under the metaphor there is truth.  My approach is to abstract some simple stuff from this.

• War is sometimes good. War is not confined to middle earth, but occurred throughout the heavens. It is the nature of rebellion that it will lead to war. Since all of creation is fallen, war will exist. If the angels defended heaven, so shall we defend our homes and hearth.
• The victory is inevitable. And I do not mean for Islam. Or socialism. The victory occurred when the rebels were removed from heaven. It occurred when the church was formed. (The woman may have many meanings, but the last verse makes it plain: her children are believers. The woman here is the church… and the church was almost destroyed from persecution at the beginning.
• We will not get an easy ride. At all. The devil himself is making war on us. The perverse alliance of Islamists and secular post-moderns should not surprise us: they are united in their hatred of Christ and the Church. We should expect persecutions, Periods of peace are good, but they are not usual.