Revelation 17 takes us to a more philosophical view of Revelation. This message is given to John by one of the seven angels who had the bowls of wrath. One of the archangels.
Until now, the only picture John is given of Babylon is in Rev. 14, where there is just “fallen fallen is Babylon the Great,” and in Rev. 16, ‘God remembered Babylon the Great’. Not much for John to go on. The angel's description of the woman who rides on the beast is interesting. The angel says, I will show you the judgement of the great prostitute. Who the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality. Whose sexual immorality has caused the dwellers of the earth have become drunk? Of all the immoralities, why the emphasis on sexual ones? He carried John into the wilderness, and now he sees “And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns”. In Revelation 6, an angel has a censer full of the prayers of the saints. This woman has a cup. ‘Holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality’. An opposite of holiness.

Do we see this woman anywhere else? We see her beginnings in Zechariah. The woman in the basket in Zechariah is taken to Babylon. This woman is wicked, and she is the first picture of the Great Harlot in Rev. 17. It is often speculated that she is the picture of false religion, and it is true to a certain extent. But she is more than that; she is a picture of wickedness itself. Seventeen is a picture of wickedness through the ages. She is not only called Babylon the Great but also the Great Whore.