The Woman named Mystery, Babylon the Great, in Revelation 17 and 18, is identified as the great harlot, representing Jerusalem and all Israel. She is depicted as sitting on many waters, a scarlet Beast full of blasphemous names with seven heads and ten horns, and seven mountains, symbolizing her authority and wide-ranging influence over peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues. This harlot's power is immense, holding the Beast in check and making it do her bidding until God's appointed time for Israel to be humbled. Despite her political, economic, and military greatness, controlling a significant portion of the world's wealth, her power is tainted by whoredoms, religious confusion, and deviance from her responsibility to God. God acknowledges her as great, but her faithlessness and departure from Him are unparalleled, marking her as the preeminent harlot of the Bible. Unlike the Beast, which is composed of diverse peoples unable to unite fully, the Woman is seen as one powerful and influential entity, capable of guiding and persuading on a global scale through the misuse of God's gifts.

The title "Mother of Harlots" in Revelation 17:5 does not mean that Protestant churches are daughters who revolted from the Catholic Church. The Bible uses mother, daughters, sons, children, and harlots collectively, for all the people who share a city's or nation's character, men and women alike. Hosea shows Israel as a wife who turned to harlotry and bore children of harlotry, and he says the whole nation, men and women, was given over to it. Ezekiel 16 speaks of Jerusalem and her daughters in the same way, and Lamentations 3:51 calls all the inhabitants of Jerusalem daughters. The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery explains the idiom: a capital city is personified as a woman, and its inhabitants collectively as her daughters. In Revelation 17 the Woman is the city Babylon, which verse 18 calls "that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth." Her harlot offspring are therefore the inhabitants of that city and nation, male and female, who share her character. The term is not limited to church denominations. Revelation 18 describes the same Woman as a nation engaged in worldwide commerce, manufacturing, and entertainment, not as a church. The Catholic Church belongs to the Beast and influences it from within. The Woman is a separate city and nation that rides and controls the Beast from outside.

The vision on Patmos presents the Mother of Harlots as a vile woman seated on a scarlet beast, arrayed in royal purple and scarlet garments and decked with gold, precious stones, and pearls while holding a golden cup of filthiness and abominations. She is drunk with the blood of the saints and bears the title Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth. This figure encapsulates the entire history of the great false church, standing in direct contrast to the pure woman of Revelation 12 who represents the true church of God. The biblical symbolism of a woman consistently depicts a religious system or church, yet this particular woman is defined by her dominant characteristic of fornication, which the prophets equate with idolatry and alliances with foreign powers. Her religion consists of a syncretistic blend of Christianity and paganism that produces an intoxicating mixture drawing the nations into spiritual harlotry. This description identifies her as the Roman Catholic Church, the only organization that has so thoroughly incorporated heathen elements such as crosses, steeples, saint veneration, Easter sunrise services, and Christmas observances into its worship. The elevation of Mary to near-divine status further confirms the identification, as she receives titles and functions belonging only to God the Father and His Son, including the role of Queen of Heaven and the attributes of the Holy Spirit. The purple and scarlet colors worn by her clergy on official occasions match the royal garments of pagan and Christian Rome, underscoring the continuity of idolatrous practice from ancient times into the present ecclesiastical structure.