Apocalypse Revealed # 722
722. 17:3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness. This symbolizes John's being carried away in a spiritual state to people in whom everything of the church had been destroyed.
A wilderness symbolizes a church in which there is no longer any truth, thus where everything in it has been destroyed (no. 546). And to be in the spirit means, symbolically, to be in a spiritual state as a result of Divine influx, as said in no. 36 above. Consequently, John's being carried away in the spirit into the wilderness means symbolically that he was carried away in a spiritual state to people in whom everything having to do with the church was destroyed.
Jeremiah 23:9-10
9
Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome, because of the LORD, and because of the words of his holiness.
10
For the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourneth; the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil, and their force is not right.