The angel with the seventh vial (Revelation 17:1), of whom we have learned is the last-days prophet, then showed John the future judgment to befall a religious system known as the great whore. Such a religious power is said to be seated upon many waters to show that it has a global influence upon the politics of the world (Revelation 17:15). But its influence is not restricted to just religion and politics, for we shall see in Revelation chapter eighteen that it is also indirectly involved with the commerce of the world as well.
As a whore uses her body for her own gain, so the woman John saw is called a great whore, because she is a big church body using its members to achieve her own agenda. She has entertainment members, financial members, media members and military members etcetera; all of these are parts of her body which she uses for her own purposes and for her own gain. Her being called a whore also shows that she is an unfaithful woman who has been corrupted by men’s ideas rather than obey the truth of what the Bible teaches.
Her influential sway and political clout over the kings of the earth (Revelation 17:2) is truly unmatched. She is a system that is consulted by world leaders who have committed fornication with her by receiving her doctrinal teachings and enacting her political goals. As modern parties are filled with drunkenness and fornication, so the leaders of the world have been made drunk on the wine of her fornication; in other words, they are unaware to the fact that they are but pawns in a global chess game, and are being used by her to their own destruction.
The use of the word “fornication” is of great importance, for it reveals to us that the whorish woman is not married, since fornication is sex between unmarried persons. If the woman was married and engaging in sexual affairs with other men, then the Bible would have called it adultery. So the great church system in question is not at all married to Christ, no matter how much she would claim to be so. Christ would in no ways join himself to such a polluted system, for He will only espouse Himself to a chaste virgin (2 Corinthians 11:2).
When his eyes finally settled upon her, John saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of blasphemous names, and having seven heads and ten horns (Revelation 17:3). The beast is the last days Roman world power, but this colossal power has a church (represented by a woman) sitting on it, in control of it. When John first saw the Roman beast in Revelation 13:1, it was not called scarlet-coloured; but when the pagan Roman Empire collapsed, the only institution to survive the collapse was the Roman Catholic Church. This enabled the pope to pick up all the power that the emperors of Rome lost, and he came up in the Vatican as the head of a worldwide Roman Catholic church power. The entire beast is described as scarlet-coloured in Revelation chapter 17 because it is the scarlet-robed cardinals who run the Catholic Church, and the false church in turn controls the revived Roman power (beast) of the last days.
The seven heads of the beast are the hills upon which the city of Rome was first built: Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Palatine, Quirinal, Viminal. The ten horns are the barbarian tribes over which the revived Roman Empire would establish itself (the Alemanni, Anglo-Saxons, Burgundians, Franks, Heruli, Lombards, Ostrogoths, Suevi, Vandals, Visigoths). The barbarian tribes that destroyed the Roman Empire inadvertently ended up helping the pope rise to power on the ruins of it, by exalting him over the barbarians in Europe. The ten horns and their crowns also look forward to ten military dictators (uncrowned kings), who will elevate the last pope (the Man of Sin) during the Great Tribulation.
The blasphemous names upon the beast have to do with the modern church getting away from the scriptures and refusing to accept that God’s revealed name is the Lord Jesus Christ; instead, they became all caught up in the false teaching of the trinity. Because the churches willfully refuse to receive the truth, then whatever name they have called themselves by (Baptist, Pentecostal, Jehovah Witness etcetera) is blasphemy in the sight of God, for the spiritual children they are bringing forth are bastard-born, and are evidence that the seed of the spiritual union which produced them was not Christ’s seed, for His seed is the Word.
Not only is the beast scarlet in colour, but the woman also is clothed in purple and scarlet (Revelation 17:4), and adorned with gold, precious stones and pearls, which are representative of the vast wealth that the Catholic Church has acquired over the centuries. But also, purple and scarlet are among the prominent colours worn by the pope, who also has a vest covered with pearls, and a mitre adorned with gold and precious stones when he is installed into office.
It is true that the pope does hold a golden cup in the performing of mass, but there is a much deeper meaning behind the golden cup in the woman’s hands, for it is full of abominations and filthiness. That is how God views the teachings and doctrines of the false church. Because they are not based on the scriptures, they are abominable filth in His sight. And she is offering the hand of fellowship by extending the cup for all to drink of her errors. Lastly, the golden cup from which the world has been made drunk is also representative of the news media and its propaganda to bend the will of the people to the will of the false church and her diabolical agenda.
The woman is Mystery Babylon the Great, and she is the mother of many harlot daughters (Revelation 17:5). She is Mystery Babylon because she has shrouded herself in mysterious beliefs, ceremonies, and doctrines etcetera; and she is a mother, having birthed all organized religion in the world. Her daughters are the Protestant churches that originally came out from Catholicism in order to embrace solid biblical truths. As every girl is born a virgin, so the Protestant churches were originally true to the Word of God under the reformers, but much later embraced the false teachings/wrong seed of men, and have become unclean harlots (the modern denominational churches), whose spiritual wombs have been filled with the seed of all kinds of wrong doctrines.
The woman is a bloodthirsty vampire, drunken with the blood of the saints (Revelation 17:6) whom she has martyred in the most shocking of ways. So beautiful and cruel is this woman that John was horrified and in awe that such a church with its beautiful buildings, immense wealth and global influence could be so cold-blooded and merciless. A cruel and murderous woman she is, yet it is the beast or the political powers under the influence of the ancient Roman spirit that carry the woman (Revelation 17:7), allowing her to have her evil way upon the inhabitants of the earth.
The Roman beast is said to live, then die, and then live again (Revelation 17:8). The use of this language aptly expresses how the Roman Empire was strong and powerful in the time when John recorded the Book of Revelation, but then it collapsed in its being overrun by the barbarians; but it lived again in its resurrection as a revived Roman Empire now in papal form. And how did it come back into power and prominence? Because of devils loosed from the bottomless pit of Hell. They are Roman spirits bringing the world back into the same condition that existed when the Caesars and emperors of Rome once ruled. And what is the end of this revived Roman power? It is perdition, destruction, for it shall surely be wiped off the face of the earth when Christ returns to set up His Kingdom. And the succession of popes follows the same pattern of living, dying and living again, for one pope reigns, then dies, and another is elected in his place, all the way to the end, when the last pope is cast alive into the Lake of Fire (Revelation 19:20).
We have already examined the seven mountains on which the false church sits (Revelation 17:9), but the seven kings (Revelation 17:10) we shall refresh ourselves on, having looked at them in our study of Revelation chapter 12. Five of the kings had fallen or died already when John recorded Revelation; they began with Julius Caesar who was pontiff of the Babylonian mysteries, and destroyed the Roman Republic, after which he set himself up as dictator for life. Five members of his family followed him as emperors to establish the pagan Roman Empire as well as assume the role of pontiff, thus uniting politics and religion in one man. They were Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. Nero was the current emperor (“and one is”) when John was recording his visions. The seventh king was Galba, a military general who usurped the position of emperor for seven months before being killed.
The beast who is the eighth, and is of the seven (Revelation 17:11) looks forward to the long succession of popes belonging to the cruel system of the false church that replaced the first family of cruel pagan Roman emperors. Such a succession of popes terminates with the Man of Sin (the pope whom Satan incarnates) who is cast alive into the Lake of Fire. The popes are the longest line of rulers in the western world. They have always ruled with the same dictatorial one-man domination and rulership that the Roman emperors had. The Pope is the only dictator in Europe. As the number seven signifies completion, so the number eight represents the start of a new system; hence the beast is called the eighth, because it is the papal system and its popes that came to life after the Roman emperors ceased under the collapse of the old empire.
The ten horns (Revelation 17: 12) are in one aspect the same as the ten toes of the image described in Daniel chapter two (please read The ten toes). Although the ten toes of iron and clay have a fulfilment in the time of Eisenhower and Khrushchev, yet they have another manifestation or fulfillment as ten dictators in allegiance with the last days world power.
With America declining from superpower status, Rome will rule the world during the Tribulation with the allegiance of ten powerful world leaders who give their economies and militaries (their power and strength [Revelation 17:13]) to Rome to carry out the will of Rome. These ten world leaders will rule with dictatorial power (a dictator is an uncrowned king) for the space of an hour (three-and-a-half years), and their combined military strength will be used by Rome to invade Israel during the Tribulation and to destroy two-thirds of the Jewish population (Zechariah 13:8).
As the Tribulation rolls into Armageddon, Christ will return to the earth with His Bride to set up His kingdom on the earth, touching down in the land of Israel (Revelation 17:14). These armies of Rome will attempt to face-off in battle with the glorified Christ and His glorified Bride, but will be destroyed by the power of the Spoken Word (Revelation 19:19-21). Jerusalem will at this time have become the new headquarters of the Catholic Church (Daniel 11:45; 2 Thessalonians 2:2-3), but the city will collapse when it is split into three parts under the great earthquake of the seventh vial at the physical return of Christ to the earth (Zechariah 14:1-4; Revelation 16:18-19).
The destruction of Rome’s armies in the land of Israel will greatly infuriate the ten kings who have been deceived into making a pact with the whorish woman. And so, in their anger, they will turn against Rome and use their nuclear weapons to obliterate the former residence of the pope (the Vatican City State), thus ending the wicked reign of the whorish woman once and for all (Revelation 17:16).