Revelation 17:3: So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

During John's vision of the Great Whore in Revelation chapter 17,¹ his physical body was literally carried away in the spirit² from Patmos island.³ Other prophets have had similar experiences.⁴ Nephi, for example, was taken by the spirit to a high mountain to see his vision of the great and abominable church recorded in 1 Nephi 13 to 14.⁵ Nephi's vision overlaps and mirrors much of John's vision of the Great Whore in Revelation chapter 17.⁶

The wilderness⁷ in Revelation 17:3 is a place of desolation where the Great Whore symbolically dwells.⁸ Her barren desert is opposite the wilderness often associated with the saints of God,⁹ who enter their wilderness as a place of spiritual refuge.¹⁰

The timeframe for John's vision in Revelation 17:3 begins in 96 AD, when John wrote the Revelation and the Romans were persecuting and killing Christians.¹¹ The Great Whore of false religion¹² that sits upon many waters today¹³ was then symbolized as a woman ... on a scarlet coloured beast.¹⁴ The scarlet (red)¹⁵ beast represents the Roman empire stained red in the blood of Christian martyrs.¹⁶ This scarlet colored beast has the same symbolic meaning as the First Beast described by John in Revelation 13:1-7.¹⁷ Their matching identity is confirmed by the seven heads and ten horns on the scarlet coloured beast in Revelation 17:3 that correspond exactly with the seven heads and ten horns of the First Beast in Revelation 13:1.¹⁸ Revelation 17:9 also confirms their shared identity because Rome was built on seven hills¹⁹ and verse 9 explains that the seven heads on the scarlet beast are "seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth."²⁰

Revelation chapter 17 describes a series of kingdoms to explain how the woman of false religion on the scarlet coloured beast from ancient Rome matures and evolves into the Great Whore of false religion in the latter days.²¹ Anciently, the woman of false religion sat on the scarlet coloured beast because her dominion‒where she sat‒was limited to the geographical boundaries of the Roman Empire.²² Since that time, the dominion of the woman's false religion has matured into the Great Whore of the latter days where she now sits with worldwide power and dominion upon many waters.²³

The woman initially sat on the scarlet coloured beast to symbolically show that the ancient Roman Empire supported the woman of false religion.²⁴ In general, the Roman Empire generally accepted and supported false and pagan religions of all kinds.²⁵ However, early in the fourth century AD, the Roman Empire overwhelmingly supported this symbolic woman of false religion and she evolved significantly when Constantine made apostate Christianity the state religion of the empire as described in Revelation 17:4.²⁶

Revelation 17:3 states that the scarlet coloured beast was full of names of blasphemy. This imagery exists because the Roman Empire historically supported false and blasphemous religions of all kinds.²⁷ The imagery is consistent with Revelation 13:1, where John saw the name of blasphemy on the seven heads of the First Beast.²⁸ After the woman of false religion matures into the Great Whore of the latter days, her blasphemous religions dominate and manipulate the kings of the earth on a worldwide scale.²⁹