The Eighth King

(Re 17:11) 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.

Where the eighth king comes from

The seven heads of the wild beast are seven sovereign world powers. The eighth king is not an additional head. It "springs from the seven," which means it comes out of them and carries the character of all of them. Revelation 13:3 shows the mechanism: one of the heads is slaughtered to death and its death-stroke is healed. Revelation 17:8 describes the same moment as the beast that "was, but is not, and yet is about to ascend out of the abyss." The healed head is the eighth king.

Scripture does not describe an internal change in the revived power, only a change in role. The studies on this site identify the United States as the dominant head of the beast at present. When that head receives its mortal wound and recovers, the same power emerges as the eighth king and the whole earth follows it with admiration.

Why it cannot be the United Nations

Every head of the beast has been a nation with its own people, borders, language and currency. The United Nations has none of these. It is an international body, and forcing it into the role of the eighth king breaks the pattern the text itself established. It also produces contradictions: an eighth king that exists from 1920, ceases to exist in 1939, and rises again in 1945, before the seventh head had even finished forming. The United Nations fits a different pattern entirely, that of the image made to the beast.

What the eighth king does

Once it ascends, the eighth king does not go away until Jehovah destroys it. It makes war with the two witnesses and kills them (Revelation 11:7). The ten kings give their power and authority to it (Revelation 17:12, 13). It receives an image, breathes life into that image, and through it enforces the mark of the beast on all mankind. Then it and its kings gather to Armageddon and go off into destruction.