The reasons for uncertainty are easy to list. The abomination of desolation will be the image of the beast that will defile the sanctuary in the temple of Jerusalem. Read Document. This is mysterious and interpretations vary. 11:31, Dan. This is an abomination because it is idolatry, and it brings desolation because it defiles the holy place at the heart of Israel. Other candidates have included the Zealots who occupied the temple and slaughtered the priests in 67/68, the Roman armies, the eagle standards to which they offered sacrifices, and others. April 16, 2020, 7:13pm #2. This is an abomination because it is idolatry, and it brings desolation because it defiles the holy place at the heart of Israel. flee to the mountains” (Luke 21:10-24). ‘—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.”. Indeed, the parallel account in Luke 21 makes this point explicit: “when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies . He has authored a number of books, including Work: Its Purpose, Dignity, and Transformation. These verses come in the context of the Olivet Discourse, which begins with Jesus telling his disciples that the temple will be destroyed (24:1-2). Holy Golgotha's empty tomb, was substituted for a sepulchre of doom. In What Really Happened At Christmas you say “Antiochus captured the Temple, sacrificed a pig on the altar, and erected a statue of the Greek god Zeus in the Holy Place requiring everyone to worship it on pain of death. The Al-Aqsa Mosque was built first, but the Al-Qibli Mosque—where they train imams—was finished in A.D. 705. [26], Chapter 13 of Mark's gospel is a speech of Jesus concerning the return of the Son of Man and the advent of the Kingdom of God, which will be signaled by the appearance of the "abomination of desolation. We begin with the key phrase, “abomination of desolation.”, The term “abomination” (Hebrew toevah and siqqus) appears more than 100 times in the Old Testament and just a few times in the New Testament. Jesus mentioned, "the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel." And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate” (11:31). In His great discourse on the end time, Christ points to “the abomination of desolation” (Matt. Larger Structure [15] Both proposals have been criticized on the basis that they are too speculative, or dependent on flawed analysis, or not well-suited to the relevant context in the Book of Daniel;[15][16] and more recent scholarship tends to see the "abomination" as a reference to either the pagan offerings that replaced the forbidden twice-daily Jewish offering (cf. The ‘abomination of desolation’ appears in the context of the reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (2nd century BCE), and is therefore not likely to be the same ‘abomination of desolation’ of which Jesus speaks in the New Testament, since Jesus was referring to an ‘abomination of desolation’ which was still future. [9] In Daniel 8 one angel asks another how long "the transgression that makes desolate" will last; Daniel 9 tells of "the prince who is to come" who "shall make sacrifice and offering cease, and in their place shall be an abomination that desolates"; Daniel 11 tells the history of the arrogant foreign king who sets up the "abomination that makes desolate"; and in Daniel 12 the prophet is told how many days will pass "from the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that desolates is set up..."[10], One of the more popular older views was to see in the "abomination" a contemptuous deformation (or dysphemism) of the Phoenician deity Baal Shamin, the "Lord of Heaven";[11] Philo of Byblos identified Baal Shamin with the Greek sky god Zeus,[11] and as the temple in Jerusalem was rededicated in honor of Zeus according to 2 Maccabees 6:2, older commentators tended to follow Porphyry in seeing the "abomination" in terms of a statue of the Greek sky-god.