The beast is the woman of Revelation. This is the fourth beast of Daniel 7:7, where it is also described as having 10 horns. She is called the great whore; thus a false religious system. She is identified as “Mystery Babylon.” The kings of the earth commit fornication with her; she is a government controlled “church.” She sits on many waters and sits on (rules) the population of the world, e.g.; she rules over the religious affairs of the word (one-world religious system). She is clothed in purple and scarlet (a popular color with bishops and cardinals). She has precious stones and pearls, signifying great wealth of the end-times church system. The golden cup, in verse 4, could very well represent the mass (Catholic or ecclesiastical). This end-time church will deceptively incorporate beliefs of Catholicism, liberal unsaved “Christians,” Muslims, and liberal Jews and sold as a coming together in “tolerance” of all mankind; one big apostate, idolatrous mess.
The god of the post-Rapture church will be the one-world church. Satan will have control of this end-time church according to Revelation 17.
Revelation 17:1-8
“Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication.”
So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written:
MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT,
THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS
OF THE EARTH.
I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.
But the angel said to me, “Why did you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.”