Revelation 17:3

"So he carried me away into the wilderness;" sometimes he was carried away into heaven to see visions; but the thing he was about to see now had no affinity with heaven, he could not see such a scene as this in heaven,

SO he was taken to a wilderness as a more appropriate place, and one more in congruity with what he was about to see. "And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns." This is evidently the same beast that we saw in chapter thirteen, there it had seven heads and ten horns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy, and he spoke blasphemies against God. This is the same beast, he is scarlet now, perhaps in allusion to the blood he had shed; and this beast, as we have seen, was the empire of Rome.

And the woman that sat upon the beast as we shall see was the city of Rome.