I was raised in a borderline fanatical religious setting and despite abandoning faith for reason, I can see a lot in the bible that should be considered regarding the beast and all that, as I think it really refers to commerce, business, and how greed perpetuates the two such that they lose functionality as tools for the betterment of humanity and become beasts that eat us all.

I think your decades (centuries?) point may actually stretch back to just after the dawn of agriculture and the birth of organized entities that stood as place holders for people but were endowed with more power than people can be trusted with and used that power to further empower themselves just as we see in government, religion, and business today.

I don't know if we're approaching the end of an age astrologically or not, but there's definitely a new age dawning. I hope we do better with this one...