Holding to Christ and Forsaking Our Idols
The [scenes] throughout [Revelation] not only have a judicial effect on the unbelieving but are meant also to shock believers caught up in the church’s compromising complacency by revealing to them the horrific, beastly nature of the idolatrous institutions they are being tempted to identify with and trust in. Use of the various pictures and images throughout Revelation — beasts, dragons, harlots, horsemen, strange creatures, plagues, and so on — is meant to shock believers out of their complacency and the danger of compromising with the idolatrous culture in which they live.
— G. K. Beale & David Campbell