17:16 shall hate the whore. The great whore is Mystery Babylon, the erstwhile ally of political Babylon. She has incorporated all the anti-Christian and pseudo-Christian religions under her control, and probably all educational and cultural and sociological systems as well, in a vast syncretistic pseudo-religion designed to promote worship of the beast and Satan as the god of this world. Once that is accomplished, however, the political powers will have no further use for her and will appropriate all her vast holdings for themselves, destroying everything they cannot use.