Revelation 17:3-5

³ And [the angel] bore me away [rapt] in the Spirit into a desert (wilderness), and I saw a woman seated on a scarlet beast that was all covered with blasphemous titles (names), and he had seven heads and ten horns.

• Once again we are shown satan’s relationships with several different nations and their leaders during the Great Tribulation. We are shown its in the desert. It's dry and harsh, there isn't refreshment in the desert. It is a harsh and brutal place.
• Blasphemy is taking credit for the things that our Father does. This is anti-christ. 
• The seven heads are the seven leaders of the ten kingdoms that the anti-christ has rule over. 
• They will look religious, just as the leaders were when Jesus was here, yet their hearts will be far from the Truth. 
• Remember Revelation keeps building in itself, so we are just being shown the relationship that the anti-christ and the false rulers have with money and worldly religions.
• Things must be prospering during the last days, worldly speaking, for us to be shown this. 
• The angel, the message of Truth, protected John as he was shown the whore, or the money, as it will protect us from the lie of Babylon. This is why we are told that he was wrapped in the Spirit.

⁴ The woman was robed in purple and scarlet and bedecked with gold, precious stones, and pearls, [and she was] holding in her hand a golden cup full of the accursed offenses and the filth of her lewdness and vice.

• Purple is the color of Priests.
• Scarlet is blood, death
• Gold, precious stones, and pearls these are the things that money buys.
• The worlds economy and money is the leader of many people, thus it is the priest of many people. The love of it causes death, it curses people, it's a dry desert. It never lives up to what people expect of it. Money is a religion to many, many people, this is why we are shown a woman. Money and worldly wealth is a church to many. 
• The Bible calls money filthy, Titus 1:7.  

⁵ And on her forehead there was inscribed a name of mystery [with a secret symbolic meaning]: Babylon the great, the mother of prostitutes (idolatresses) and of the filth and atrocities and abominations of the earth.

• Her forehead means it will be plain to see who she is.
• Think of what a prostitute is willing to do for money.
• This prostitute is the corruption of the world’s economic systems.
• Nations go to war for money. They kill for money, destroy for money, and allow corruption for money. This Babylon is the mother of all corruption. The love of money is the root of all evil. Many believe this to be America, but all nations seek out wealth and all have deceived and killed to get it, not just America.