Revelation 17:7-8

I will tell you the secret meaning. The woman sits on the red beast (Revelation 17:3), and they are one in purpose and intent. Worldly people drink the wine of her immorality and experience her pleasures; and the world as a center of persecution works in close cooperation with the world as the center of luxury, anti-christian culture and pleasure. Both Babylon and the beast are "past, present, and future." Their form changes; their substance stays the same. Babylon will be destroyed and the beast will go off to be destroyed, but not until both have fooled all who do not have their name written in the book-of the living. See Revelation 13:8.