Has JW's always taught this that the UN is the 8th king? I just happen to stumble across the June study Watchtower at my Aunt's home and glanced throught the mag and saw this teaching. I don't remember the JW's teaching this back when I was in. The mag list all 7 kings and what world powers fit them. 1st king is Egypt, 2nd king is assyria, 3rd king is medo-persia, 4th king is Babylon, 5th king is Rome, 6th king is Greece and the 7th king is Britian/America world power and they finish by saying the 8th king is the UN. I was blown away by this because I never remember this teaching when I was in the 1990's. I remember an elder saw me on the street and said the UN was the eight king about a year ago and I laughed because I thought he was just joking or guessing. I did not know it is an official teaching. I always thought they believed the UN was the beast of Revelation. Can anybody explain this one to me.
I am so confused by the JW's saying the UN is the 8th king
by booker-t 29 Replies latest jw friends
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Inisc
Yeah I don't get it either, when I was in few years ago the 7th king was uk/USA and that number 8 they weren't sure of. But at the district convention last year I think it was, they said number 7 will be the last one and didn't seem to mention an 8th king. Go figure.
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Inisc
Also I think they just slipped in this idea about the un, cos they didn't mention at the DC. And if you believe the conspiracy theories it'll be a UN backed one world government or new world order.
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I Want to Believe
Revelation says the Beast is itself an 8th king. (Rev 17:11) The've been teaching that it's the UN for a while.
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edmond dantes
Yes it's straight forward really . It can be made into anything you want it to be .
All you need is a vivid imagination we have in the UK a Queen but before that we had a King and before that we had a King and before that we had a KIng who didn't want want to be KIng of the UK so he stepped down so he could marry an American lady who was not really interested in being Queen.
All the above is true but the the prophesy in the Watchtower is hocum and best taken with a pinch of salt.
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factfinder
I remember them always saying the UN was the 8th king.
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Leolaia
This reminds me of when I suddenly realized that the Society taught that the first resurrection started in 1918 and I was like WHATTTT? I thought it had been going on since the first century. What! Where in the Bible does it say that? I was kinda shaken up by that realization and surprised I had missed that teaching before.
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lilbluekitty
They've been teaching it at least since the mid-90s, it's in the Revelation Climax book, I remember studying it several times as a kid and then a young adult. This is nothing new.
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heathen
it's in their video as well , I think it's called, bible accurate prophesy, or something like that. In revelation it does say that the kings of the earth give their authority to the scarlet beast which is owned by satan , so maybe we're actually talking about satan as the 8th king .
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blondie
1988
*** re chap. 35 pp. 253-254 Executing Babylon the Great ***
Why Called an Eighth King?
8 The angel further explains to John: “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.” (Revelation 17:11) The symbolic scarlet-colored wild beast “springs from” the seven heads; that is, it is born from, or owes its existence to, those heads of the original “wild beast . . . out of the sea,” of which the scarlet-colored wild beast is an image. In what way? Well, in 1919 the Anglo-American power was the ascendant head. The previous six heads had fallen, and the position of dominant world power had passed to this dual head and was now centered in it. This seventh head, as the current representative of the line of world powers, was the moving force in establishing the League of Nations and is still the major promoter and financial support of the United Nations. Thus, in symbol, the scarlet-colored wild beast—the eighth king—“springs from” the original seven heads. Viewed in this way, the statement that it sprang from the seven harmonizes well with the earlier revelation that the wild beast with two horns like a lamb (the Anglo-American World Power, the seventh head of that original wild beast) urged the making of the image and gave it life.—Revelation 13:1, 11, 14, 15.
9 Additionally, original members of the League of Nations included, along with Great Britain, governments that ruled in the seats of some of the previous heads, namely Greece, Iran (Persia), and Italy (Rome). Eventually, governments ruling the territory controlled by the previous six world powers came to be supportive members of the image of the wild beast. In this sense, too, it could be said that this scarlet-colored wild beast sprang from the seven world powers.
10 Notice that the scarlet-colored wild beast “is also itself an eighth king.” Thus, the United Nations today is designed to look like a world government. At times it has even acted like one, sending armies into the field to resolve international disputes, as in Korea, the Sinai Peninsula, some African countries, and Lebanon. But it is only the image of a king. Like a religious image, it has no real influence or power apart from what is invested in it by those who brought it into existence and worship it. On occasion, this symbolic wild beast looks weak; but it has never experienced the kind of wholesale abandonment by dictator-oriented members that sent the League of Nations reeling into the abyss. (Revelation 17:8) Though holding radically different opinions in other areas, a prominent leader of the former Soviet Union in 1987 joined the popes of Rome in expressing support for the UN. He even called for “a comprehensive system of international security” based on the UN. As John soon learns, the time will come when the UN will act with considerable authority. Then it, in its turn, “goes off into destruction.”
*** w88 6/1 p. 27 Part 8—The Long March of the World Powers Nears Its End ***
It Returns!
Regarding this eighth king, the inspired prophecy said: “The wild beast that you saw was, but is not, and yet is about to ascend out of the abyss, and it is to go off into destruction.”—Revelation 17:8.
From the mid-war year of 1942, Jehovah’s Witnesses realized that the then dormant peace and security organization would ascend out of its abyss of inactivity. That year the president of the Watch Tower Society told an audience in 52 cities: “Though forty members still profess to adhere to the League, the League is in effect in a state of suspended animation . . . It ‘is not.’” But would it “ascend out of the abyss”? Basing his words on this Bible prophecy, he declared: “The association of worldly nations will rise again.”
As the prophecy had stated, this eighth king “was” from 1920 until 1939. It ‘was not’ from 1939 until World War II ended in 1945. Then it ascended “out of the abyss,” reactivated as the League’s successor, the United Nations.
*** kj(1971) chap. 19 p. 364 par. 36 Defeat Awaits Attack by Nations under Gog ***
Revelation, chapter seventeen, portrays prophetically the order of events: before the political “image” that is now the United Nations (the Eighth World Power) “goes off into destruction,” member nations of it destroy the great religious “harlot,” Babylon the Great. All the political rulers are pictured by the ten horns of this beastly “image,” and regarding these Revelation 17:12-14 predicts: