• Peace, Security, and the ‘Image of the Beast’
    The Watchtower—1985 | October 1

    • 9. How is our identification of the beast confirmed?

      9 Our identification of this beast is confirmed by some further details given by the angel: “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) This has already been fulfilled in part. The second world war effectively killed the League of Nations. In 1942, when Jehovah’s Witnesses came to understand this prophecy clearly, it could be said of the League-beast: “It ‘is not.’”b But in 1945 it ‘ascended out of the abyss’ as the United Nations organization. Will it succeed in its mission to bring peace and security? The prophecy says no. Rather, it is “to go off into destruction.”

  • Peace, Security, and the ‘Image of the Beast’
    The Watchtower—1985 | October 1

    • b While World War II was escalating in all its fury, the president of the Watch Tower Society, on September 20, 1942, delivered to the New World Theocratic Convention of Jehovah’s Witnesses the speech “Peace​—Can It Last?” Therein, he showed from Revelation chapter 17 that, contrary to the expectation of many, World War II would not culminate in Armageddon. First the ‘peace beast’ must rise again from the abyss of inactivity to rule for a figurative “one hour” with the political powers.