volume of the Studies in the Scriptures, first entitled “The Day of Vengeance” and later given a change of title to “The Battle of Armageddon.” In chapter eleven this book set forth that the nation of Israel restored to the land of Palestine would be the object of Gog’s attack, and, on page 554, it said: “Israel will finally be besieged by hosts of merciless plunderers, designated by the prophet as the hosts of Gog and Magog (Ezek. 38), and great will be the distress of defenceless Israel.” Over thirty years later the Bible prophecies were examined further in the light of events since A.D. 1914, to reveal that, not the Israelites according to the flesh, but the Christians who are Israelites inwardly, spiritual Israelites, are the people destined to be the target of Gog’s attack from the far north. In 1932 the Watch Tower Society published Book Two of a series entitled “Vindication.” This book took up part of Ezekiel’s prophecy and, without wanting to be dogmatic on Gog’s identity, page 311 set forth this conclusion about him: “Gog is one of the princes in Satan’s organization, invisible, of course, to human eyes, with a possibility of the power to materialize in human form. The land of Magog pictures the spiritual or invisible realm of Satan, and includes Gog and all the wicked angels within his division of Satan’s organization, and which ‘bear rule over all the earth’.” Since then twenty-one years have passed and much prophecy clarifying the Holy Scriptures has been fulfilled meantime; and is our conclusion today the same as the above? For a factual and Scriptural answer the following article should be read.

The Attack by Gog of Magog

1. What does the Bible disclose concerning Satan’s invisible organization, and how is Satan symbolized in Revelation to harmonize with that disclosure?

THE Holy Bible reveals many marvelous things to us about the invisible realm of spirit persons. It discloses that Satan the Devil has an invisible organization of demons and that there are spirit princes in it. Daniel’s prophecy reveals that there was one such spirit prince in unseen charge of the Persian empire, when it dominated the world, and also that there was a spirit prince in charge of the rising power of Greece, which was to overthrow Persia and succeed it as the dominant world power. (Daniel, chapter 10) The Bible’s last book, Revelation, indicates that up to a certain date there would be seven such world powers having to do with Jehovah’s witnesses, these, in the order of their rise to dominance, being (1) Egypt, (2) Assyria, (3) Babylon, (4) Medo-Persia, (5) Greece, (6) Rome, and (7) the Anglo-American world power of today. According to what Daniel’s prophecy suggests, each of these seven world powers has had a spirit prince in secret charge of it. In Revelation Satan the Devil, their ruler, is pictured as a great fiery-red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns and upon its heads seven diadems. Thus the fact that Satan the Devil has headship over the seven princes of the seven world powers is pictured in that the great dragon in heaven has seven diademed heads. According to the facts of history, headship over Gog is not pictured in any of the dragon’s seven heads.

2. When did a change in the position of the Dragon and his spirit princes come, and how?

² Of course, that was while the symbolic Dragon was still up in heaven. Then came A.D. 1914, a year of war not only for the earth but also for the invisible heavens, because that year Jehovah God enthroned the newborn kingdom of his Son Jesus Christ and “war broke out in heaven.” The Dragon and its angels fought against the Kingdom but did not hold onto even a bridgehead in heaven. “So down the great dragon was hurled, the original serpent, the one called Devil and Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth; he was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him.” (Rev. 12:7-9, NW) Thus the seven spirit princes were cast down, the Dragon’s headship over whom was indicated by its seven diademed heads.

3, 4. (a) How is Satan’s organization symbolized, and how its latest dominant member? (b) How is the League of Nations pictured, and do the Dragon and the wild beast develop each an eighth head because of it?

³ The Dragon has a visible organization, of which the seven world powers have been dominant members. This entire visible organization is pictured as a wild beast, it too having seven heads, to correspond with those dominant world powers. This wild beast came up out of the sea. But upon the scene another wild beast appears, rising out of the earth. Its one head has two horns like a lamb’s. After performing great signs it recommends making an image of the seven-headed wild beast for mankind’s worship.

⁴ Briefly, the two-horned beast out of the earth pictures the two-membered world power of one speech today, the Anglo-American world power. The image that this Anglo-American world power took the lead in recommending was the League of Nations, today the United Nations. In Revelation, chapter seventeen, this League of Nations or United Nations is itself pictured as a wild beast of scarlet color and with seven heads, upon which the prostitute woman Babylon the Great sits as rider. That seven-headed wild beast really results from the preceding seven world powers, but it acts like an eighth king or world power. It is so spoken of in these words: “And the wild beast that was [before World War II] but is not [during World War II], it is also itself an eighth king, but owes its existence to the seven, and it goes off into destruction.” (Rev. 17:8, 11, NW) In view of this eighth world power, the question now is, Did the seven-headed wild beast from the sea grow another head and become eight-headed? Did Satan the Devil then appoint an eighth spirit prince to supervise the League of Nations (now the United Nations) and thus did the great Dragon add another head to its seven? The Divine Record does not say so. When the Dragon is finally cast into the abyss at Armageddon and the wild beast from the sea is cast into destruction in the lake of fire, they are still understood as having each the same number of heads as before, just seven.—Rev. 19:19, 20.

5. In the relations between the seventh world power and the League beast, what fact does away with any need of an eighth demon prince? And so who still dominates?

⁵ One fact we must remember: The League beast or eighth world power is really under the seventh world power, for it was this Anglo-American combine that designed and then put breath of life into the League beast. Hence this eighth world-power beast is actually under the unseen control of the spirit prince of the seventh world power. This fact would do away with any need of an eighth demon prince. Despite