12. What kind of organization is pictured by the scarlet-colored beast that has seven heads and ten horns?

¹² What though, is pictured by the scarlet-colored wild beast that has seven heads and ten horns and on which Babylon the Great rides? Like other wild beasts that are used as symbols in Revelation and in Daniel’s prophecy, that disgusting, abominable kind of wild beast stands for a political organization. It is a composite organization, for its seven heads symbolize the seven world powers of human history, namely, ancient Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome and the Anglo-American dual world power. As the angel explained the seven heads to the Christian apostle John: “There are seven kings: five have fallen, one is [namely, imperial Rome], the other [the Anglo-American World Power] has not yet arrived, but when he does arrive he must remain a short while. And the wild beast that was but is not, it is also itself an eighth king, but springs from the seven, and it goes off into destruction.”​—Rev. 17:9-11.

13. What did the Watch Tower issue of July 15, 1926, explain the scarlet-colored wild beast to be, and how is it an “eighth king”?

¹³ Exactly so, the international organization for world peace and security springs from the preceding seven world powers or surviving relics of them, and it is in itself an eighth world power. Long ago The Watch Tower in its issue of July 15, 1926, page 215, explained that under the heading “League Foretold.” At that time the peace-and-security organization still was; it had not ceased to be, as it did during World War II. (Rev. 17:7, 8) After World War II it came out of the abyss as the United Nations, the “eighth king” or world power.

In the coming “great tribulation” as it affects the antitypical unfaithful Jerusalem (Christendom), it is the members of the Eighth World Power that carry out the work of the “disgusting thing that is causing desolation.” And are these members of the Eighth World Power armed? All of them are armed, more heavily and destructively so than has been the case of the nations in all previous history. Yet, despite this, Christendom has been more forward than all the rest of her partners in Babylon the Great in riding the mightily armed Eighth World Power (The League of Nations and the United Nations), to have a kingdom over it, if possible.