In most important things, Scripture gives us more than one opportunity to see, and understand, and be ready, for what will be. In prophecy, if something is very important, quite often times God gives us more than one opportunity to understand.

Ahab has a kingdom that is united
around false religion.

Subversion of God’s Holy religions began with the first king of the northern kingdom of Israel. It was all about subverting true religion to serve the political purposes of government. Many rulers, as perhaps mini-types of the beast, fall guilty to such temptations. Ahab then increased the turn to evil religion.

He did “evil in the sight of Yahweh above all that were before him,” 1Kgs 16:30.

Ahab toke as a wife a Sidonian worshipper of Baal: Jezebel. She soon organized the extermination of the prophets of God, 1Kgs 18:4; and Ahab began in Israel the worship of the Mother Earth “goddess” Asherah, the covert passion of the modern ecology movement. It was a fertility cult involving religious prostitution and infanticide.

Elijah responded,

“… As Yahweh, the God of Israel, lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word. ”
1Kgs 17:1 WEB

James tells us,

“Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain, and it didn’t rain on the earth for three years and six months.”
Jas 5:17 WEB

That is exactly the amount of time that the beast rules in Revelation. This amount of time is variously expressed as “three years and six months, 1,260 days, forty-two months, or as “time, times, and half a time.”

Also the two witnesses in Revelation 11,
for 1,260 days, Rev 11:3

“have the power to shut up the sky, that it may not rain during the days of their prophecy.” Rev 11:6 WEB. Indeed, the two witnesses seem a little like Moses, and a little like Elijah.

Elijah even proved to Ahab that Yahweh, the Lord our God, was superior to Baal at the dramatic confrontation on Mont Carmel in 2Kings 18.

And Ahab, multiple times, was close
to true and lasting repentance.

When his conscience afflicted him over the murder of Naboth in 1Kings 21, it says,

“… when Ahab heard those words, that he tore his clothes, and put sackcloth on his flesh, and fasted, and lay in sackcloth, and went softly.”
1Kgs 21:27 WEB

His repentance was sincere enough to touch God’s heart, 1Kgs 21:29;

but Ahab never let his repentance last.

So in the end he had to be lured to his death, as is clearly depicted in 1Kings 22. In the end, the dogs of Samaria licked up his blood, 1Kgs 22:38.

Of the beast himself, he is destroyed in the great battle against God at the Second coming of Christ, Revelation 19 and many other passages, and is thrown alive into hell, Rev 19:20, where the worms will eternally eat on them.

“… for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring to all flesh.”
Isa 66:24 WEB

WEB is the World English Bible, a copyright free revision
of the original ASV American Standard Version 1901