Revelation 17:3, commentary and pictures

The vision shows an unfaithful church enthroned upon a blasphemous persecuting power, with Rome as its fulfillment, while churches that share her idolatry and worldly practices share her doom. The beast she rides is the union of church and state turned into a crushing power against all who oppose it. Beneath deep inward corruption she makes a gorgeous scarlet display to seduce and deceive all nations into receiving her mark. The scene belongs to the closing prophecies of Revelation 12 to 18, given as God's last-days warning to divide the world between those who keep His commandments and those who war against His law. Her cup of wine is false doctrine that leads nations into spiritual unfaithfulness by trampling God's law, above all in setting Sunday above the Sabbath.

Symbols and Identity

In Revelation 17:3 Babylon appears as a woman, and the woman is a symbol of a church. A virtuous woman stands for a pure church, while a vile woman stands for an apostate church. The unfaithfulness pictured is a church turning its love and trust away from Christ toward worldly things and breaking covenant loyalty to him. The vile woman seated on the beast is Rome, the apostate and papal power that persecuted Christ's followers. Her daughters are churches that follow Rome's corrupt doctrines, traditions and worldly practices, corrupting themselves by idolatrous devotion to the service of the papacy and drinking the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and they share in the foretold destruction.

The beast embodies the union of church and state, and that union becomes a deadly power that tears down and crushes those who oppose it. The woman and the beast together portray in symbolic images the detestable works of the ruling powers of the world. Those powers bind themselves into secret societies and confederacies that do not honor God's law.

The power that has the deepest inward corruption makes the greatest display and clothes itself with the most elaborate signs of power. It covers a corrupt and deceiving wickedness with outside attraction and gorgeous display, clothing itself in scarlet and making an increasing outward parade before the cities of the world. In that display it exercises the wicked character and seductive influence of those distinguished for persecuting God's people. With all deceivableness of unrighteousness it deceives all nations, promising all good to those who receive its mark and all harm to those who oppose its fallacies.

Prophetic Warning Fulfilled

The vision belongs with the prophecies of Revelation 12 to 18 that are being fulfilled as the last message of warning that all are to hear, a message now to be given before the final call of chapter 18 and the destruction pictured in chapter 19. It is God's warning about the perils lying before His people in the last days. What John beheld was what would be in the last days: a deceived company working counter to God, against whom He warns His people.

The vision belongs to the close of time and the winding up of earth's history, uncovering the mystery of iniquity. It divides the world into two parties, those who keep God's commandments and those who war against His holy law, so that those who have the light of truth will keep clear of these evils. It shows a vast multitude bowing before Satan under his miracle-working power worked through every object in earth, air, and water to confirm his claim to be as God. They form a restless, surging procession united in intense activity, with eagerness and rage in religious enthusiasm and defiant rebellion written on their countenances. They are determined to exalt Satan's kingdom and to take and occupy the place of the throne of God in warfare against their Creator and Redeemer, thinking themselves mighty in their countless numbers, while unseen above them hangs a cloud of judicial wrath containing the elements that destroyed Sodom.

It portrays a Gospel-age, last-days confederacy in which Protestant churches unite with Catholic power against God's law and those who keep His commandments. The intoxication belonging to this confederacy is the Christian world's acceptance of Satan's falsehoods, especially the claimed change of the fourth commandment and the elevation of Sunday over the Sabbath, a falsehood that makes the law seem changeable and weakens its authority.

Error, Law and Loyalty

Babylon is seen holding in her hand a cup of the wine of her fornication and making all nations and the kings of the earth drink from it. That wine is doctrines of error dealt out to the kings of the earth. Against it stands the cup full of the precious truths of redemption, upheld by a people who remain true to their allegiance to Jehovah.

To drink her wine is to commit spiritual fornication by divorcing from God and trampling upon His commandments. The intoxication is the Christian world's acceptance of Satan's falsehoods that make the law seem changeable and weaken its authority. Chief among these is the claimed change of the fourth commandment and the elevation of Sunday above the Sabbath. Infant baptism is reckoned as an error of the same scarlet woman, parallel to keeping the first day of the week as the Sabbath.