48. In the year 1926 the international organization for world peace and security was identified as being what, and on what occasion?

⁴⁸ Although being based upon a literal application of Matthew 24:15, and Mark 13:14 (Authorized Version), the conclusion proved to be correct, that the “abomination of desolation” (or, “the disgusting thing that causes desolation”) was at that time the League of Nations. Years afterward, that international organization for world peace and security was identified as being the Eighth World Power of Bible prophecy. This identification came on Sunday night, May 30, 1926, in the public address delivered in the Royal Albert Hall, London, England, and entitled “Why World Powers Are Tottering​—The Remedy.” When dealing with the theme “League Foretold,” the speaker, President J. F. Rutherford of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, said:

God foretold the seven world powers, to wit, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome and the British Empire, and also foretold that out of the seven would grow the eighth. The latter is also symbolized as a “beast”, because its purpose is to rule and control the peoples of the earth. The Lord foretold its birth, its short existence, and its everlasting end.​—Revelation 17:10, 11; Isaiah 8:9, 10.​—See The Watch Tower as of July 15, 1926, page 215.

The Eighth World Power, under the form of the League of Nations, took a fall into the “abyss” of deathlike impotency with the outbreak of World War II in 1939, and it came up out of the “abyss” in 1945, but under the form of the United Nations. (Revelation 17:8, 11, 12)