Revelation 17 contains one of the most curious and intriguing prophecies in the entire Bible. In this vision, an angel carries John to the wilderness and shows him a strange woman named Mystery Babylon. The first six verses of the chapter illustrate John’s account in remarkable detail. After describing what he saw, John admits the experience left him perplexed. Fortunately, the rest of the chapter contains the angel’s interpretation of the prophecy.

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Be sure to keep an open mind and allow the facts to shape your opinion about the message God is attempting to convey to us through Revelation 17. The prophecy of Mystery Babylon may be uncomfortable for those who have never studied it honestly. Still, it must be understood if we are to avoid the religious deceptions added over the centuries to disguise her identity. Only then can we know the truth of what God is showing us through John’s vision of Mystery Babylon.

 

Revelation 17:1-2

1 And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters:

2 With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.

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An allegory of a woman is common in Biblical symbolism and is regularly used in prophecy as a metaphor for the church. If the woman is a virgin or has no defined sexual history—including in II Corinthians 11, Ephesians 5, and Revelation 12—she represents the true church. But in the prophecy in Revelation 17, the woman is a prostitute. Since a virgin represents God’s true church, in contrast, a prostitute must be a false church. And Mystery Babylon is not just any prostitute—she is a “great whore.”

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When inviting John to go see Mystery Babylon, the angel tells him this woman “sitteth upon many waters.” According to the angel’s explanation in verse fifteen, the water represents people, multitudes, nations, and languages. The sensible inference is that Mystery Babylon signifies a false church with an international reach, comprised of people from around the world.

 

Revelation 17:15

15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

 

The angel also informs John that “the kings of the earth have committed fornication” with Mystery Babylon and that “the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.” Here, the angel provides background information about Mystery Babylon before John sees her. This evidence is enormously important to interpret the prophecy accurately and provides insight that cannot be gleaned from the visual cues within the vision itself. The angel informed John that world leaders would collaborate with this false church and contribute to her innumerable sins, suggesting that Mystery Babylon significantly influences geopolitical issues.

 

Revelation 17:3-5

3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

5 And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth.

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Once John finds himself in the wilderness, he sees the prostitute sitting on top of a seven-headed, ten-horned, scarlet beast. The woman is dressed in purple and scarlet clothing, adorned with gold, precious stones, and pearls, and holding a gold cup. The colors of her clothing, description of her jewelry, and her gold cup are all important clues that will help determine what she represents, so keep verse four in mind as you form your opinions.

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The beast Mystery Babylon sat upon is described similarly to the seven-headed dragon in Revelation 12, which John explicitly identifies as Satan.[i] The parallels in the imagery between the two visions strongly imply that the two beasts are closely related. This correlation indicates the false church of Mystery Babylon is erected upon the back of Satan and his false religion of pagan idolatry.

 

Revelation 17:6

6 And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

 

Mystery Babylon’s malicious character becomes even more troubling in verse six, which warns that the woman would be “drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” The implication is that this prostitute represents not only a Satanic false church, but one that would violently murder Christians. Mystery Babylon even enjoys slaughtering Christians to the point of drunkenness as if murder were a festivity.

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Descriptive imagery like this makes it clear that Mystery Babylon is not a friend of Christianity. As a false church, she disguises herself as Christian—attempting to deceive believers through false teaching—while simultaneously using violence against true Christians for their beliefs.

 

Revelation 17:7-8

7 And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.

8 The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.

 

After the angel sees John staring at the prostitute and the beast on which she sat, he asks John, “Wherefore didst thou marvel?” He then proceeds to tell John the meaning of the vision in detail. First, he describes three stages of the beast: “was,” “is not,” and “yet is.” Initially, the angel only lists the first two stages—“was” in the past tense and “is not” in the present tense. This implies the beast was in the “is not” stage when John experienced this vision in the first century. Later in verse eight, the angel looks to the future and adds the “yet is” stage.

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Next, we learn the beast would arise out of Hell at some point but will eventually go into perdition—the final state of God’s judgment and eternal damnation. The angel also tells John that anyone whose name was not written in the Book of Life—the list of all those who will receive eternal life—will admire the beast.

 

Revelation 17:9-10

9 And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.

10 And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.

 

Verse nine provides the angel’s explanation for the meaning behind the beast’s seven heads and ten horns. The phrase, “here is the mind which hath wisdom,” at the start of verse nine means that anyone relatively perceptive can understand where this false church is located. The Contemporary English Version is even more direct in its translation, plainly declaring, “Anyone with wisdom can figure this out.”

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The seven heads are a clue to the location of the false church of Mystery Babylon. The angel tells John that the church is sitting on seven mountains. Although the King James translators chose “mountains” for the Greek word όρος, the Good News Translation, New Living Translation, Amplified Bible, Weymouth New Testament, New American Bible, and the New International Version all chose to translate it as “hills.” The identity of the seven-hilled city would have been evident to anyone alive when John wrote Revelation in the late first century. At the time, as is still the case today, the “city of seven hills” was a common epithet for Rome.[ii]

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The angel then reveals a second meaning behind the beast’s seven heads. He tells John they also represent seven kings, of which five had fallen, one was in power in John’s time, and the seventh had yet to arrive. He also reveals that this future king would only hold his power for a “short space” of time. Since the seven heads indicate the location of Mystery Babylon, it would be logical to expect these seven kings to do so as well. Because the false church sits in the seven-hilled city of Rome, the kings should also be Roman.

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As was the case in Daniel 7:24, “kings” does not mean individual rulers but the leadership positions of kingdoms over time. These seven leaders are directly tied to Rome, but exactly which roles they signify is not as apparent. Many Bible commentators agree that the five fallen kings represent the first types of Roman leaders—kings, consuls, tribunes, decemvirs, and dictators—but there is some debate among scholars on which forms of government the sixth and seventh kings represent. Some commentators, including Matthew Poole, believed the sixth king—the king who “is” during John’s time—was the pagan emperors, while the seventh king was the Christian emperors.[iii] The problem with this interpretation is that it ignores the fact that both the pagan and Christian emperors were all emperors.

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The emperors ruling Rome in the first century when John’s Revelation was written were pagans. They held power for 338 years—from Augustus’ ascension as the first Roman emperor in 27 BC until Constantine’s 312 AD conversion to Christianity. The Christian emperors ruled for 164 years until the fall of Rome in 476 AD. For Rome’s Christian emperors to be the seventh king, 164 years would need to be interpreted as a “short space.” A more likely assertion is that the sixth king represented all Roman emperors, both pagan and Christian. So, which leadership position followed the emperors and only ruled in Rome for a short time?

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The reign of the emperors ended with the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD. The conquering general, Odoacer, took the title “Rex Italiae,” or “King of Italy,” until his assassination seventeen years later, in 493. Including the Ostrogothic leaders who took the same title from 493 until the end of their occupation of Rome in 538 would only constitute a sixty-two-year reign. Compared to the emperors’ five centuries of power, sixty-two years would easily be labeled a “short space.” This would also be significantly shorter than the 164-year reign of Christian emperors in Matthew Poole’s interpretation.

After interpreting the beast’s seven heads as seven kings, the angel makes an astonishing proclamation about what this creature represents.

 

Revelation 17:11-13

11 And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.

12 And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast.

13 These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast.

 

The angel tells John that the beast “is the eighth, and is of the seven.” If the seven heads represent the hills and kings of Rome, the beast will also. This means the Antichrist who leads this false church would be the eighth type of king of Rome, becoming the city’s leader after the Kings of Italy.

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The beast is a reference to the idolatrous religion of the Antichrist. If the beast is a false religion and Mystery Babylon is this religion’s false church, the reason the prostitute is sitting on the beast again becomes clear. While the seven heads indicate Rome as the site of Mystery Babylon, the Antichrist’s idolatry would support the false church. Mystery Babylon sat on the beast, just as the church she represents was built upon Satan’s religious doctrine.

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The ten horns mentioned in verse twelve refer to the same ten horns of the fourth beast in Daniel 7. In Revelation 17:3, the ten horns are on the beast’s seven heads, so their corresponding kings should come from Rome, just as Daniel’s ten kings did. The angel also told John that these kings had not yet come to power by 95 AD. Like Daniel’s ten kings, they received their dominions after the Roman Empire collapsed into ten smaller kingdoms.

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John also learns that the Antichrist would receive his power from these kingdoms, which would “share one mind” with him. This indicates that the Antichrist would think similarly to the kingdoms, including sharing the same religion. After the fall of Rome, these ten kingdoms covered most of the geographical region of early organized Christendom, so the Antichrist should have similar beliefs. In verse fourteen, we learn that the ten kingdoms would also “make war with”—or persecute—Christ and his faithful followers. If these kingdoms must persecute Christians and share the same mind with the pseudo-Christian Antichrist, they must also mistakenly believe themselves to be Christians.

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Revelation 17:14

14 These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.

 

The chapter’s final verse offers one of the last clues to Mystery Babylon’s identity. The angel concludes his interpretation of the vision by telling John that the false church is also a city that “reigneth over the kings of the earth,” which suggests that she would have some level of control over the world’s political leaders.

 

Revelation 17:18

18 And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.

 

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Summary

Mystery Babylon

• Mystery Babylon is described in Revelation 17 as a “great whore,” which in prophecy means a significant false church (Revelation 17:1)

• It is comprised of many different types of people, languages, and nations from around the world (Revelation 17:15)

• It holds influence over world leaders, committing sins, or “fornication,” with the “kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:2, 17:18)

• It is located on seven hills—the city of Rome (Revelation 17:9)

• Her beast would be the eighth king of Rome (Revelation 17:10)

• The eighth hill and eighth king are “of the seven” (Revelation 17:11)

  • This means Mystery Babylon would be associated with an eighth hill of Rome, and the Antichrist would reign as the eighth king of Rome after the Kings of Italy left the city in 538 AD

• It would receive its power from the ten kingdoms that arose from the fallen Roman Empire (Revelation 17:12-13, 17:17)

• It would be “drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17:6)

• “Arrayed in purple and scarlet color and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand” (Revelation 17:4)

• Written on her forehead was “Mystery Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth” (Revelation 17:5)

• Anyone whose names are not written in the Book of Life and will not receive eternal life shall look upon her with wonder (Revelation 17:8)

• The beast that Mystery Babylon sat upon “was, and is not, and yet is” (Revelation 17:8)

• Mystery Babylon is also a city that “reigneth over the kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:18)

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​[i] Rev. 12:3-9 (KJV).

[ii] Italy Magazine. n.d. The Seven Hills of Rome. Accessed April 11, 2023. https://www.italymagazine.com/dual-language/seven-hills-rome.

[iii] Poole, Matthew. 1852. “Revelation XVII.” In Annotations Upon the Holy Bible, Vol. III, 995. New York: Robert Carter and Brothers.