The Year of the Dragon

We've just finished celebrating Chinese New Year here in Taiwan, and I'll tell you guys a dirty little secret: A number of Taiwanese people are not all that crazy about this lengthy holiday that is typically about seven or eight days long, sees many business establishments closed for much of that, and occurs in January or February when the weather tends to be chilly and drizzly.

But worst of all, no matter where you go in Taiwan during Chinese New Year, it is absolutely guaranteed to be packed to overflowing with people who are just as desperate as you are to get out of the house and go somewhere and do something. As it is sometimes sarcastically opined in Taiwan in regard to this traditional holiday of holidays, which for people here is Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the regular New Year's celebration all rolled into one:

"Taiwan is a small island nation with about 23 million people and about 23 good places to visit. Do the math."

They're joking, but just barely. It was always worse for me personally in the years before I got married, since I lived alone and all my friends were students in my classes who went to their homes for the duration. As I used to whine in class after it was over:

"There's nothing to do and nobody to do it with!"

Forgive me for yammering on about Chinese New Year, but the topic I want to discuss in this article is intimately associated with that holiday and with end-time prophecy in ways that I found as intriguing as I did stunning. And not so much with the holiday itself, but rather the menagerie of 12 animals associated with what is commonly referred to as the Chinese zodiac.

At least with one particularly serpentine member of that menagerie:

The dragon.

As you may know, God's Word is replete with references to dragons, the great majority of which are connected to Satan.

Now, just to be clear, I'm not heavy into any kind of zodiac-related stuff (Western or Chinese) or anything pertaining to any species of astrology. On the contrary—I normally eschew that sort of thing as far as viewing it as a means of prognostication (as should all believers, not to put too fine a point on it).

As it happens, however, just out of idle curiosity I was fooling around with the numbers a bit and I stumbled across something about the Chinese zodiac that raised the little prophetic hairs on the back of my neck, and it got me digging deeper because I knew the Holy Spirit had more to show me.

Don't you love it when that happens?

And so here we are. What I want to do in this article is (a) go over a mercifully brief bit of history behind the dragon and the worship and glorification thereof in Chinese culture. Then I want to discuss (b) the dragon's potential connection with Satan's attempt to outplay God by having the Messiah crucified two thousand years ago, and (c) its potential connection with Satan's attempt to outplay God a second time by launching his effort to establish his kingdom and put Christ's kingdom on ice.

And how all this relates to the current year, 2024.

Now, let me put this out there, right from the get-go: Some of what I will discuss in this article is speculative. But as speculative as it is, I see nothing in God's Word that precludes any of the things I am going to say, and I honestly think these things are compelling, to say the least.

And I hope you agree.

A few historical notes

The dragon has a very long and colorful history—not only in Chinese culture, but also in European culture. That said, one of the first things I want to clear up is the fact that there is a distinct difference between the European dragon and the Chinese dragon.

The European dragon, a popular image in medieval mythology, is more of a fire-breathing, dinosaur-like creature, rather squat and with large, stout hind legs and wings so it could fly like a pot-bellied lizard. It is often depicted in medieval art as either being slain in battle by an intrepid knight, or possibly being flown by such an intrepid knight as his fire-breathing steed.

On the other hand, the Chinese dragon is noticeably different. Depictions vary, but the Chinese dragon is most commonly represented as a long, sinuous, snake-like creature with four very short, useless legs and a large, hoary, demonic head and face. And for what it's worth, unlike the European dragon, I have never seen the Chinese dragon depicted as being ridden.

Although carved dragon relics have been discovered in China that date back to at least 3000 BC, much of the Chinese mythology concerning dragons is considered by many to have started with Huang Di (or Huangdi), the Yellow Emperor, somewhere around 2700–2600 BC (and I have to play it rather fast and loose with some of the time frames because various sources report different historical dates and other information).

For example, one article states the following concerning dragon artifacts:

The basic story that is related in most sources is that a powerful pre-dynastic leader named Yandi was allegedly born from a dragon, and he joined forces with Emperor Huang Di in about the twenty-seventh century BC. Together, these two powerful leaders conquered their enemies, unified China, and launched what we recognize today as Chinese culture:

OK, I promised this would be mercifully brief, so I'm not going to get too bogged down in the tangled underbrush of ancient history concerning the dragon in Chinese culture and get neck-deep in all the related mythology. That's not the primary point of this article anyway. My point is simply this:

It is beyond dispute that the ancient Chinese people were worshiping what is essentially a snake with short, stubby legs as a wise, powerful, auspicious symbol at the very least as far back as the dispersion of people from Babel under Nimrod (Gen. 11), which occurred about 2200–2300 BC according to most Old Testament timelines. And according to most sources, such dragon worship goes back a number of centuries earlier.

That's what I want to clearly establish for the purposes of this article.

So with this bit of historical background firmly in hand, let's take a little stroll back in time and check in with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Back to the Garden

You're no doubt familiar with the scene in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve had dominion over all the earth and only one rule to obey:

Don't eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

And I'm sure you know what happened when a strange creature showed up and struck up a fateful conversation with Eve:

At the climax of the scene, God confronts Adam, Eve, and the serpent and pronounces curses on them all, in addition to announcing the original promise of a coming Redeemer (i.e. the protoevangelium) in verse 15:

I'm not going to give in to the temptation right now to dive more deeply into what is easily one of the most important chapters in the entire Bible, however, because all I want to do here is point out a couple of facts that come from a straightforward interpretation of the plain text of Scripture:

Satan took control of an animal and spoke to Eve through it. The animal Satan took control of was a snake, and at the time that species of snake, whatever it may have been, had legs (if it hadn't, God wouldn't have wasted His time cursing it to crawl on its belly). And this snake with legs possessed great cunning and guile, slyly deceiving Eve into breaking the one command God had given them by slyly misinterpreting God's rationale for forbidding them from eating the fruit of the tree.

Lies, half-truths, and deception: Sounds like Satan's man the Antichrist is going to turn out to be a top-drawer political leader, dontcha think?

Now, this is some of what we get from Scripture. But how does this jive with what we get from secular history?

The Chinese have been worshiping a long, demonic-looking snake with four short, stubby legs and honoring and venerating this creature as a wise, powerful, god-like leader at least since the days of the dispersion of people from Babel in the twenty-third century BC, and probably several centuries earlier...possibly not long after the Fall.

Nod if any of this is starting to get a few of your neurons buzzing.

Before we go any further, however, there is an important point that needs to be addressed. Although I am by no means an expert in this sort of thing, I will address it as best I can:

When God cursed the serpent and said it would crawl on its belly in Genesis 3:14, I see nothing in Scripture that would require this to mean that the legs of the species of snake in question immediately vanished into thin air. I believe the legs of that particular species of snake began to shrink and finally stopped growing due to a natural process that took time. Why? Simple: One thing God very rarely does in Scripture is say "abracadabra" and wave a magic wand. Why? Because He's God. He doesn't have to. After the miracle of Creation, God tends to use the natural physical forces and processes that He created to accomplish His will.

And while we're at it, let's get a little vocabulary issue cleared up. The Hebrew word translated "serpent" in the book of Genesis is nachash, and this word is normally translated "serpent" or "snake" in English translations (and these two words are synonyms). It doesn't mean "lizard" (Hebrew: semamith). And anytime the word "dragon" appears in any English translation, the Hebrew is usually tannin and the Greek is usually drakón, which appears a total of 13 times in the New Testament, all of which are found in the book of Revelation and are invariably connected to Satan.

Now, I am well aware that many scientifically minded people will insist that the disappearance of such a physical trait would have taken millions of years, not a few thousand years, and this is precisely the kind of argument that brings us up close and personal with the age-old conundrum of Science vs the Bible.

Godless atheists vs Bible-thumping bozos: Since we're on the subject of science, I just have to say this concerning the endless sniping that goes on between what many Christians call godless atheists and what many scientists call Bible-thumping bozos: Whenever it appears that what the Bible clearly states and what scientists think they know seem to contradict, I go with what the Bible clearly states and graciously give science a chance to catch up. Sadly, this will never happen as long as its ranks are filled with people who actually take professional pride in refusing to believe in a Creator God and who go to great lengths to disparage and dismiss anything that even appears to lend support to any biblical account. And to make matters worse, there are Christians who clumsily misinterpret the Bible in ways that contradict known and established scientific facts (and I mean real facts, not gussied-up theories that are arrogantly passed off as facts).

Or, as I like to put it:

When that glorious day finally comes when we have a full, correct understanding of everything the Bible says and means, and also a full, correct understanding of everything in science, we will discover something that would cause the brains of most of today's scientists to explode:

Science and the Bible are in
perfect, 100 percent agreement!

No? Well, it's literally impossible for it to be otherwise. To see why this absolutely must be the case, I invite you to ponder the following pop quiz:

Q. Who authored the Bible?

A. A Creator God who created all things.

Q. Who created science?

A. That same Creator God, who cannot contradict Himself.

Quod erat demonstrandum. So this whole "Science vs the Bible" dust-up is a foolish game that does nothing but perpetuate inane arguments and venomous hostility between two groups of sincere, intelligent people, neither of which knows quite as much as they fancy they do.

That said, however, one thing that did catch my attention not long ago is an article about recent research that has been done on certain snake species. Scientists are just beginning to learn about a genetic mechanism in the DNA of these species that is capable of switching the growth of limbs on and off.

Now, does that mean it's possible that a certain species of snake could have stopped growing legs much more rapidly than might normally be the case with other physical traits found in other species? Does this "switching on and off" genetic mechanism make this a different kettle of fish? I don't know. And I'm not going to pretend to understand the science behind this or how it all meshes together. But what I do know with 100 percent certainty is this:

God's Word clearly indicates the snake in the
Garden of Eden had legs, and today they don't.

Get there any way you want, and deal with it any way you wish.

Evolutionary misstep: People love to mock and attack the Bible and the idea that Adam was the first man in the Garden of Eden roughly 6,000 years ago with archaeological evidence that humans have been around for a couple of hundred thousand years. Oh yeah? Read it again:

God breathed a spirit into Adam, and only then did that man become a human being with a spiritual nature, with an awareness of a Creator and of spiritual things—this was a crucial part of the creation process. This is the part science misses because it can't deal with such things. There had been lots of (nonspiritual) humans around for a couple hundred thousand years (a fact indirectly supported in Scripture), but Adam was the first human with a spiritual nature. And that's when human civilization really started to take off. One day we were hunting animals, making stone tools, and carving pictures on cave walls, and the next we were building cities, writing poetry, and seeking to know the Creator we instinctively knew existed.

In other words, in a sense the name of our species is a misnomer. In "Homo sapiens," the word "sapiens" is Latin for "wise." But you might say that the "sapiens" bit didn't actually kick in until God breathed a spirit into Adam.

In reality, we should probably mark the introduction of a new species with Adam: Homo spiritualis. But since you can't put it in a test tube or describe it with equations, scientists will continue ignoring it.

The point is that we need to follow the apostle Paul's admonition in Romans 3:4 to "let God be true, but every man a liar." And keep one thing in mind:

What is passed off and widely accepted as unassailable
scientific fact today cannot trump the Word of God.

As usual, the world has it backwards.

Now, I won't be dogmatic about it, but considering what the Bible tells us and what we see from ancient Chinese culture, it is not impossible for me to believe that Satan pulled his talking-snake shtick again at some point after Adam and Eve's expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and that he pulled it on the ancient people who would give rise to Chinese culture. And when he did so, I am inclined to assume he did so by talking through the same type of snake he used in the Garden of Eden, whose legs may have already become the useless, stubby little appendages that we see in paintings and statues of the dragon throughout China and Taiwan as a result of the curse God placed on that species of snake in the Garden of Eden.

A tad on the far-fetched side? OK, well...failing that, it's also possible that (true) stories about the snake with legs in the Garden of Eden were passed on within the people groups that grew and developed following Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden, and over time these stories became viewed as myths in the absence of any remaining snake species that possessed legs.

So, a snake with legs became inextricably linked with Satan starting in the Garden of Eden, and this creature, which later acquired the moniker of "dragon," went on to become intimately connected with Chinese culture. This connection to Chinese culture leads to another piece of our puzzle, and that involves the Chinese zodiac and a special group of 12 animals.

One of which is that elusive snake with legs.

Satan's first Big Day

Like virtually everything else in Chinese culture, there are different stories about the creation of the Chinese zodiac and its collection of 12 animals that follow a 12-year cycle. One source has this to say:

So some say it goes all the way back to Huang Di in the twenty-seventh century BC, while some say it it was officially introduced in the fifth or even the third century BC. Actually this doesn't matter for the purposes of this article, because as you will see in a moment, I am only going to focus on a point in time two thousand years ago—and the 12-year Chinese zodiac cycle with its collection of 12 animals was certainly well established and in common use in Chinese culture long before then.

The 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac are as follows, and they appear in the following order:

Notice that the idea of a snake with legs lived on and remained distinct from the reality of what snakes became as we know them today, since the eminently legless snake still appears on the list of animals at no. 6, right after what most have traditionally presumed is the mythical dragon at no. 5. And I say "presumed" because according to Scripture, the dragon (i.e. a snake with legs), may not be quite as "mythical" as most people have been led to believe.

Speaking of the dragon, as you can see it's fifth in the 12-year cycle. If a person was born after Chinese New Year (which generally falls in late January or early February) of the year associated with a certain animal, then we say they were born in the Year of the (Whatever). For example, I was born on March 7, 1956, so I was born in the Year of the Monkey. If you're curious about your Chinese zodiac animal or the animal associated with any particular year for whatever reason, here is an online calculator that will help you out.

Based on what we have discussed so far, however, it's easy to imagine that Satan's favorite year of this 12-year Chinese zodiac cycle would be linked to the animal he has always been most closely identified with: the dragon, or a long snake with legs that he manipulated to effectively steal dominion over the earth from Adam and Eve. In other words, it's easy to assume Satan's year of choice has long been the Year of the Dragon.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, I was just idly fiddling around with the numbers pertaining to the 12-year cycle of the Chinese zodiac, and I accidentally stumbled across something about the Year of the Dragon that made the little prophetic hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.

As you probably know, no one is 100 percent certain what year Christ was crucified. We are virtually certain it was somewhere between AD 30–34, but within that range, AD 32 and AD 33 seem to be by far the most common picks by those who study this. For many years I was dead set on AD 32, but a couple of years ago I read some things that made me view AD 33 more favorably than I had previously—although I admit that I still tend to lean toward AD 32.

But what I stumbled across is something that—as a Westerner—I had never even so much as wondered about before, and that's the Chinese zodiac animals associated with the years in this time frame of Christ's death.

Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle:

AD 32 was the Year of the Dragon.

Before God: When I saw this, I just froze. Suddenly something just went CLICK and fell into place. And after the Holy Spirit put His joy buzzer away, I was off and running with this article.

Understand that when Christ was crucified on a cross at Calvary, Satan thought he had won. This was a momentous victory for the devil—a victory he had ardently dreamed of and carefully planned for ever since he had usurped dominion over the earth from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by manipulating a long snake with legs before getting slapped with the promise of a Redeemer who would come to crush his head someday.

So when that Head-Crusher died on the cross, for a brief period of time Satan believed he had emerged victorious—that he had roundly defeated this Redeemer that God had sent. And as a result, Satan believed he would get to keep the dominion over the earth that he had snookered Adam and Eve out of, and our world would end up being his little corner of the universe where he could strut around with his Most-High hat on for the rest of eternity.

This was Satan's Big Day.

His first of two such Big Days.

Only two?! In reality, you could say Satan has several Big Days, such as the day he sweet-talked Adam and Eve out of dominon over the earth, the day he is released at the end of the Millennial Kingdom to mount one last rebellion, etc. But for the purposes of this article, I'm just going with these two.

It's not too difficult for me to believe, however, that God allowed Satan to have his short-lived victory in his favorite year, the Year of the Dragon. It's not hard for me to imagine that God was perfectly happy to let Satan have his Big Day in his favorite year before raining on his parade. I think God was content to let Satan have his brief moment in the sun, and let him believe he had vanquished the promised Redeemer and thwarted the divine plan.

No? Consider: By allowing Satan to briefly savor his victory in his own special Year of the Dragon, Christ's resounding response in the spiritual realm during the three days He was in the tomb would have been that much more powerfully poetic. Think of it: Jesus suddenly shows up in Hades and crashes Satan's big victory party, does a little preaching, and then empties Paradise and leads all the righteous Old Testament saints with Him to heaven because their sins had been eternally removed by His precious blood, not just temporarily covered by the blood of sheep and goats.

And imagine Jesus doing this—spoiling Satan's efforts to keep the dominion over the earth he had won in the Garden of Eden, and also spoiling Satan's efforts to permanently rob Him of the chance to return to establish His promised kingdom on earth—in the year that was (and still is) so near and dear to Satan's heart:

The Year of the Dragon.

Sweet, wouldn't you agree? After all, God and Satan have had their fair share of tête-à-têtes, just as we read about in Job 1:6–12 where Satan approaches God and engages Him in a bit of gamesmanship, for lack of a better word. Satan challenges Job's faithfulness, and in response God allows Satan to test Job (with the limitation set in place that Satan couldn't take his life). God puts His money on Job remaining faithful.

And God wins.

Or how about during the Tribulation, when God sends a strong delusion onto the hardened, unbelieving portion of His people Israel around its midpoint to make sure they all believe the lie that Satan's man is the promised Redeemer. Now, understand that by doing this, God is actually making Satan's job a little easier—in a sense He is helping to clear the way for Satan to establish his pathetic little excuse of a kingdom. Why? So His righteous judgment on Satan and all his followers will be even more fully, gloriously justified when God crushes Satan's kingdom out of existence.

And God wins.

Anyway, so much for Satan's first Big Day two thousand years ago, in which Christ played the role of the party pooper, to put it mildly. But with that said...

Stand by: The second of Satan's two
Big Days is drawing excitingly close.

Satan's second Big Day

Although Satan's first Big Day two thousand years ago turned out to be a Big Dud, never fear: He has another Big Day to look forward to. His next Big Day will be the day he is finally turned loose to establish his kingdom, during the latter part of which he will make a supreme effort to pull the plug on the Second Coming by completely wiping out the Jewish people so they cannot implore Jesus to return to save them at the climax of the Great Tribulation, as per Hosea 5:15.

And by "turned loose," I mean "unrestrained." OK, time for one last pop quiz:

Q. When does Satan become unrestrained?

A. When the Restrainer is removed...duh.

Q. And when is the Restrainer removed?

A. When His temple is removed from earth and relocated to heaven.

Q. And when does that happen?

A. At the Rapture, when His temple is caught up to be with the Lord.

So Satan's first Big Day may very well have occurred in Satan's special year—the Year of the Dragon—in AD 32, and anyone who is watching the unfolding of end-time prophecy knows that Satan's second Big Day is looming and could literally occur at any time.

But if Satan's first Big Day really did occur in AD 32 during Satan's special year (and it's a safe bet that it did according to the work of a lot of pretty sharp people whose opinions I respect), it would make scary sense if his second Big Day was likewise set to occur in his special year—the Year of the Dragon.

And that would be (drum roll, please): 2024.

T-h-a-t-'s right, boys and girls. If you've seen or heard anything at all about the Chinese New Year on TV or on the Internet or wherever, then you probably already know this:

2024 is in fact the Year of the Dragon.

 * * * (brief pause to let that sink in) * * * 

Note that 2024 completes the 166th of these 12-year cycles since AD 32:

32 + (166 x 12) = 32 + 1992 = 2024.

Hmm...166 cycles, eh? Interesting. And as I said, I'm sure that it wouldn't bother God one little bit to accommodate Satan by allowing him kick off his efforts to establish his kingdom in his pet year, the Year of the Dragon. God would essentially be toying with him, in effect saying to him:

"You're on, Dragon Dude! It's your big Year of the D-R-A-G-O-N! Show us whatcha got...before I drop judgment on you!"

The day or the hour: I am 100 percent certain that Satan does NOT know the day of the Rapture. However, I can live with the idea of God allowing him to know the year it will fall in—and I suspect Satan already knows it's going to fall in his special year, as was probably the case for the Crucifixion.

Of course, Satan's second Big Day is also going to turn out to be a Big Dud just like the first, because in spite of the best efforts of Satan and his man the Antichrist—efforts that will be formally launched the day of the Rapture when Satan becomes unrestrained—God is ultimately going to protect the believing Jewish remnant in the wilderness until He returns at the Second Coming. And a believing Jewish remnant that survives until the end of the Tribulation so they can call upon the name of the LORD to save them from certain annihilation spells doom for Dragon Dude and his fledgling kingdom.

So, just like Satan's grand plan to take out the Messiah two thousand years ago failed, so will his grand plan to completely wipe out the Jews in the Tribulation during his kingdom and as a result cancel Christ's return to establish His kingdom. And make no mistake: *That's precisely why wiping out the Jews is an absolutely essential part of Satan's plan:

He's got everything riding on it.

*Note: Try explaining this to people who are sashaying through cities with their Palestinian flags and their "From the river to the sea" signs, and spewing venomous, anti-Semitic vitriol at pro-Hamas demonstrations—and watch it bounce off their heads and their hearts. May a merciful God get through to at least a few of them before it's too late.

One clear, compelling picture

Again, let me emphasize that some of what I have discussed in this article is Greg's personal brand of home-brewed, grade A speculation. And that's how I want you to take it. If you are inclined to agree with what I have written, that's fine. If not, that's fine, too. It's in the job description.

I'm literally groaning as I write this, however, because even though I personally have eyed 2024 as a compelling year for the Rapture for several years now, a couple of months ago I actually swore to myself that I wouldn't write anything that smacked of YouToobery in regard to a 2024 Rapture for the rest of the year—you know, like "RAPTURE IN 2024!!! IT'S A BIBLE LOCK!!!," ad infinitum, ad deridiculum. I was planning to do my best to abstain from writing anything sensational about the Rapture possibly being in 2024 until I woke up on the morning of January 2, 2025 (you know, the International Dateline and all that). That was sort of my New Year's Resolution, more or less. And I have to say it lasted longer than most I've made in the past.

Which explains why I so seldom make New Year's Resolutions anymore.

But here's the thing, and there's really no way around it. There's no easy way to just toss this all off or summarily dismiss it all with a wave of the hand. It's difficult to casually write it all off as coincidence, because...

The dragon really is a snake with legs, and it really is a creature closely linked with Satan. And the Chinese really have worshiped and venerated a wise, powerful creature remarkably similar to the one that deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden since well before the dispersion of people from Babel. And AD 32 really was the Year of the Dragon. And there's an excellent chance that Christ really was crucified in AD 32. And so that particular Year of the Dragon really may have been the year in which Satan helped arrange to have the Redeemer crucified, wrongly assuming he had outplayed God. And so it would be extremely fitting if it were also in the Year of the Dragon when Satan finally became unrestrained and was able to launch his efforts to establish his kingdom and ultimately try to outplay God a second time as soon as the Restrainer is lifted at the Rapture—which really could occur in the current year of 2024.

Yes, some of these items qualify as speculation—but taken all together I believe they paint one clear, compelling picture.

Oh, I forgot to add one final item to the above list:

...and the current year of 2024 really is the Year of the Dragon.

So, as a result of everything we have discussed, it is with a profound sense of end-time excitement and active anticipation that I say to you all:

Greg Lauer — FEB '24

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