The Abomination of Desolation

What we're going to talk about today is a prophetic message on the abomination of desolation. This is mentioned in the Olivet Prophecy in Matthew 24 and 21. What a gloomy term! Abomination of desolation. It is the sound of it. It is frightening. The sound of it is like, oh, something terrible is going to happen. It is. It's a terrible message. But what exactly does it mean? Now, I've been going through a series of prophetic sermons over the last couple of years.

If you would go back through the sermons I've given, you'll see a lot of times what I've been doing is defining terms. We did a whole sermon on the image of Daniel 2, and we'll talk about that a little bit today. I gave a Bible study on Daniel 7 and 8. We'll talk about that some today. I went through the Day of the Lord and just gave that a couple months ago, and showed how the Day of the Lord has different meanings, depending on what time in history you're looking at.

On the beach of trumpets, I went through what is Armageddon? What does that term mean? To understand these terms, then we begin to understand the overview of prophecy. Sometimes we get into real trouble when we try to make up all the details of prophecy. But having an overview of prophecy is very important in helping us not only understand the Bible and its history and in the future that is told to us by God, it increases our faith.

One of the reasons for prophecy isn't so that we have all the inside information. So we know something everybody else doesn't know. To know prophecy and not be a Christian is meaningless. But to know prophecy helps us with our faith. And the abomination of desolation is one of those examples, just like the Day of the Lord, where we're able to show that the Day of the Lord happened in the past and it's going to happen twice in the future, at the return of Jesus Christ and what we call the Great White Throne Judgment.

What is the abomination of desolation is a prophecy about the future, but it also has a past fulfillment, which can help us understand it and help us have faith because we can see where the Bible's true. Some of what we're going to go through today, there are biblical scholars and commentators who say these passage were written after the events since they don't believe in predictive prophecy. And since they predict events that obviously happened, they just say, well, this was written afterwards. We believe they were written at the time when the Bible says they were, and therefore they are prophecies, and we can see where they have been fulfillments of these prophecies.

Let's go to Daniel 12. This is where we'll start. Daniel 12. Daniel 12 at the end of Daniel, and of course, Daniel's a fascinating book because it contains prophecy and history. People lived during a very important time of history. There were prophecies he gave that were fulfilled in his lifetime.

And once again, we're not going to stop and go through all the details. We're simply going to be able to define what is the abomination of desolation and what that means to us. What are we looking for? Because Jesus said to look for it.

Well, what am I supposed to look for? What is that? So we'll be able to define it so we'll know what we're looking for. So, Daniel 12. At that time, Michael shall stand up, the great prince, who stands watch over the sons of your people, and there shall be a time of trouble such as never was since there was a nation even to that time.

And at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone that is written in the book. And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall wake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt. And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. And then Daniel's told, now, you have no idea what this means, so just write it down and it'll be revealed in the future.

There's a number of places in the book of Daniel, and Daniel is just distressed. I mean, some of this was given to him by visions that he knew were from God. I mean, they were just normal dreams. Other times, angels talk to him. You think, wouldn't it be fun to have an angel talk to him? Daniel found it incredibly distressful.

They have an angel talk to him. Now, what do we know from this? Once again, what are the facts that we can pull from this?

What we have is a simple, this whole chapter is about the end times. But it concerns the time of the end, or the time when God intervenes in human history. The time of the end isn't the destruction of humanity. People dread, oh, the time of the end. The time of the end is actually a good thing.

Because the time of the end is when God sends Christ to intervene in human history.

We know that sacrifices will cease. And we think, where do we get that from?

Let's go down to verse 11. Because all through Daniel 12, it's about this time when this, these resurrections will take place. These things happen. Verse 11 says, And from that time that the daily sacrifice is taken away, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there shall be 1,290 days.

So we've just sort of cherry-picked some of this. But if you read through all of chapter 12, what you'll see is a prophecy about these events. And in these events, there's sacrifices. And the sacrifices stop. Also, there's the abomination of desolation will be set up. The abomination of desolation will last 1,290 days. Now, at this point, we want to say, okay, we want to know all the details of this. Well, this is all we're going to talk about today.

We know this is the time of the end. How do we know that? Because it's the time of the resurrection.

It's the time of the resurrection, right? There's a time when people are resurrected.

Now, Daniel combines the first and second resurrections together here. Now, that's not what we're going to talk about today. But that's all part of the time of the end. The first and second resurrections and the third resurrection, all part of the times of the end.

So this is what we know. We have this time of the end when people are resurrected after there's a great trouble, okay, after there's this great trouble. There's sacrifices that are seized, that cease. The abomination of desolation is set up. The abomination of desolation will last 1290 days. I'm not going to tell you what the 1290 days are today. That's a whole other subject. We're just explaining what that phrase means. So, it is important to understand, and remember when I went through the day of the Lord, I talked about how there are different ways prophecy is fulfilled. We talked about telescopic prophecy. We talked about prophecies that have already been fulfilled. They had one time, you know, this is going to happen, and it happened, and it was fulfilled. We also talked about how there are prophecies that are fulfilled two or even three times.

Each time, there's a prophecy that part of the prophecy is fulfilled, but it's not completed to another time, which is like the day of the Lord. It's not completed until the last day of the Lord.

And the last day of the Lord is when the earth, the surface of the earth, is destroyed by the lake of fire. So, if you remember that, we're dealing with the same thing, what is called former and latter fulfillments, partial fulfillments of prophecy that have already happened.

Now, this is what gives us an insight into Scripture, because we believe the chronology of the Scripture, which means that there are prophecies that happened, and there are prophecies that are partially fulfilled. In former and latter fulfillments, the former fulfillment is always small compared to the latter fulfillment. The latter fulfillment is always larger.

To understand the abomination of distillation, what we're going to have to do is understand that there were not one, but there's already been two fulfillments of that, partial fulfillments.

And in those partial fulfillments, we understand what's going to happen in the future.

So, we've got to go back to Daniel now. We've just skimmed over chapter 12. We didn't go through it in great detail. We skimmed through it, and what we've seen is, okay, this is a prophecy about at the time of the resurrection, and there's going to be an abomination of distillation, and it's going to be set up for 1290 days. That's all I know if this is all I have. You understand? That's all I know, and I don't have to guess at anything beyond that. So, what is it we can construct that we're not guessing at? Okay, that we're not guessing at? Well, let's go back and do it. Let's go back and do it. Now, we understand from the book of Daniel that Daniel was from an upper-class family. He was an Israelite society. It was probably a royal family. Now, you've seen this slide before in one of the presentations. I pulled it out of that presentation because we're going back and recovering a few things that we've covered before. So, a couple of these slides you're going to have seen because I pulled them out of other presentations. We also know that when the Babylonians invaded in 605, he and a lot of young people, a lot of young people, were taken from Babylon, or from Israel and taken to Babylon. And they were taken there because the Babylonian idea was if they invaded someplace, they took the brightest young people, took them to Babylon, and converted them into Babylonians and then sent them back. You're going to rule your nation someday, but we're going to train you how to do it. And so they would go back and rule and be very loyal to the Babylonian Empire. Well, obviously Daniel didn't do that. Daniel spent the rest of his life in Babylon. He never got sent back. But he did become a great advisor to numerous of the kings of Babylon because God was with it. And the first one, the first time he was brought before the king was actually King Nebuchadnezzar, which was the greatest king in the history of Babylon.

And it was because of the dream he had. And remember, he was going to... he brought all his advisors and he said, tell me what my dream was. And they said, well, no, we can tell you what it means. Just tell us what it was. And he says, I'm not going to tell you what it was, because then you'll make up something. Tell me what the dream was. We can't do that. Then I'm going to kill all of you. So he was going to kill all of his advisors. And what happens... what happened is... is that God told Daniel what the dream was and what the meaning was.

Now, we're not going to go through that in great detail, but it's important to set this stage when we talk about the abomination of distillation. What we have is... the dream was this statue. And the statue itself, if God doesn't tell us what it meant, I wouldn't know. You wouldn't know. The dream he had was a statue of a man, the head was of gold, the chest and arms of silver, the belly and thighs of bronze, the legs and feet of iron and clay, and then the stone comes out and crushes its feet and the whole thing falls down.

And of course, the Nebuchadnezzar says, that's it! That's my dream! I didn't tell anybody that, so your God had to tell you that. So what does it mean? And Daniel says, let me tell you what it means. It means there's going to be four great kingdoms. And the first one is yours. The first one is Babylon. And so this sets the template for understanding world history as far as the empires that interacted with Jerusalem. And so he tells them the first one is Babylon. The second one is Persia. The third one is Greece. The fourth one, he doesn't say what it is. But he does say that the stone is going to be, when God says the Messiah back, he crushes these kingdoms and sets up God's kingdom on this earth. So this prophecy starts with Nebuchadnezzar and goes all the way to the return of Jesus Christ.

Now, we do know this historically. Babylon was destroyed by Persia. It happened in one night. And we have one of those prophecies that only has one fulfillment. Remember the finger that wrote on the wall? And God was telling the king of Babylon, this is it. This is it. Your kingdom's going to end. They arrive at a big party because the Persian army's out there and they know, nobody's been able to breach the walls of Babylon. They can last forever. They have a river running through it. They have all the food they can need and they have a well-trained, well-stocked army. And it's like, we can outlast you. They were going to kill you.

Well, the Babylonians, I mean, the Persians simply rerouted upriver. They rerouted the Euphrates. And then went under the iron gates when the water went down. And when they woke up the next morning, after their drunken party, they were an occupied country.

So that prophecy only had one fulfillment. It happened. And so we know Persia did that. Now, your high school class of world history taught you that Persia was conquered by Greece.

And then Greece was conquered by the Roman Empire. What this means is, is the Roman Empire, even though we know that, you know, the western part fell in the 400s AD. The eastern part fell in the 1400s AD. That it continued in one form or another and will exist at the time of the Messiah's return to set up the kingdom on the earth. Once again, we're not going into that, because all we're doing is showing this is our starting point. This is our starting point. So if this is where we start, where do we go next? Well, let's go to Daniel 8.

Daniel 7 is a prophecy about these beasts. You know, it's a vision again. And I've talked to a lot of people that have problems with these visions. They don't make any sense to them. Well, they didn't make much sense to Daniel either. God had to reveal to him what they meant. And what we have in Daniel 7 is four beasts, which are actually these four empires. It gives us insight into who these four empires are. But in Daniel 8, Daniel has a vision of a ram and a goat. Now, once again, if I just read, and you, if we sat here and read the vision of the ram and the goat, we would have no idea what that means. And I've seen all kinds of explanations of what it means. The only reason we know what it means is because, well, God told him. Because he didn't know either. So it's a vision of a ram and a goat. And it's a really strange vision. I mean, you know, if you had this vision, you would say, I should never eat jalapenos before I go to bed again. Right? So in this vision, he stands on the bank of a canal in the city of Susa, and there's a ram with two horns. There's a big ram and he has two horns. One horn is higher than the other. So he notices that. This isn't a normal ram. One of the horns is actually lower than the other horn.

And it goes all over the place. It just charges. Wherever it goes, and it comes to another animal, it just knocks it down and tramples it. Okay. What's that mean? We don't know. Except we have to wait. It goes on, and then this male goat comes, and he has one giant horn. Well, that's a strange goat. I've never seen a goat with one big horn. But this one, he doesn't move like a normal animal. He's hovering above the ground and just moving around like he's, you know, hovering around.

What's that mean? The goat charges the ram, shatters the ram's horn, and tramples the ram. So here the ram is going around, beating up everybody else. This goat comes along with the big horn, and it knocks the ram down and, you know, tramples over and kills the ram. So the goat becomes great, but soon its horn is broken, and four other horns come up.

And a little horn arose from one of the four horns, and it grows, and it tramples the stars. Now once again, he wakes up. He has no idea from this vision. It's not like he has a dream. He knows this is from God, but he has no idea what it means. It doesn't make any sense.

Let's go to verse 9 here, of chapter 8. Talk about this little horn. One of them became a little horn and grew exceedingly great towards the south, towards the east, and towards the glorious land. This is very important. Towards the glorious land. That's the promised land. That's Jerusalem. So this goat goes to Jerusalem, and it grew up to the host of heaven. It cast down some of the hosts and some of the stars to the ground and trampled them. He even exalted himself as high as the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifices were taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. Because of transgression, an army was given over to the horn to oppose the daily sacrifices, and he cast truth down to the ground, and he did all this in prospering.

So here we have the removal of sacrifices. In this vision, something real is happening.

Just like in Daniel 12, there's a removal of sacrifices, but we're going to see that Daniel 12 and Daniel 8 are talking about two different happenings. Let's go on. He says, Then I heard a holy one speaking, another holy one, so another angel, said to that certain one who was speaking, how long would the vision be concerning the daily sacrifices, and the transgression of desolation, the giving of both, the sanctuary of the host to be trampled underfoot? And he says, 2300 days. Then the sanctuary shall be clean. Oh no, we have another time period.

Let's see, we had the stopping of the sacrifices for 1290 days, and now we have this 2300 days.

But what this tells us, for one thing, these are two different events, two different events. The one in Daniel 12 has yet to happen.

The one in Daniel 8 has already happened, as we'll see in a minute. So, what does it mean? What does this mean? Daniel doesn't know what it means. And so, God sends an angel to him to tell him what it means. Look what it says in verse 15. Well, let's go to verse 18, because he tells about how the angel comes, and this is what he tells him.

And now, as he was speaking with me, I was in a deep sleep with my face to the ground, but he touched me and stood me upright, and he said, Look, I am making known to you what shall happen in the latter time of the indignation, for the appointed time of the end shall be.

Now, he comes out of the vision, and he literally now is talking to an angel.

And the angel says, I'm going to tell you what this means, because he has no idea.

And this is about a time in the future. The ram which you saw having the two horns, they are the kings of Media and Persia. Oh, we now have a definition.

The ram is Persia, Media and Persia. Now, remember, the image of Daniel 2 is our template. Oh, yeah, Babylon is conquered by Persia, which actually had two kingdoms united as one. Now, we know that historically, and one was greater than the other, Persia was greater than Medeo. And the male goat is the kingdom of Greece. Remember Daniel chapter 2.

We know historically Persia is conquered by Greece. This is telling us long before that happened. This is telling us what's going to happen. This prophecy has been fulfilled. This was the great proofs of the Bible.

And the large horn is between its eyes is the first king, the first king of Greece. As for the broken horn and the four that stood up in its place, the four kingdoms shall rise out of that nation, but not with its power.

And in the latter time, well, let's stop there. Let's stop there, because let's look at what it says there. So we have Medeo and Persia, and they have already happened. Okay, this has already happened. So what do we know? What can we learn from this? The regular bird offerings was cancelled, and we talked about that, and this is called the transcription of desolation. We already read that. And then we get to 2300 days, whatever that means. So, what do we start to understand? The two horned go portrays the empire of Medes and Persia. Okay, it's very obvious.

We're spending a lot of time stating the obvious. That's right. I want you to see the obvious. We get trapped into sometimes details that take us away from the obvious.

Look at the obvious things of prophecy.

And that's why we've already gone through in a certain end of a Bible study, Daniel 2, Daniel 7 and 8, but we're now tearing it down a little bit more.

We have, under science, the great Persia became greater than the empire of the Medes, which this says would happen. Most of the military campaigns of this kingdom were to the west, north, and south. That's why this prophecy says, you know, come out of the west. The male goat rushing in from the west without touching the ground. Greece. The first great king of Greece was Alexander the Great. He was the first one to actually unite all the great city-states together. His father, Philip of Macedonia, had tried but not succeeded. He did. He conquered what was the known world. He didn't get too far into western Europe, but he conquered what is much now eastern Europe, Turkey, and clear into India with a very small army. It's amazing.

And some estimates he only had 30,000 men, but they had the phalanx, which is a new style of fighting, different kind of armor, and he conquered huge areas. But in very short-lived, in his early 30s, he suddenly died. And the four horns, that replaces the broken horns, he dies. He dies at the height of his power. What's interesting is, after his death, there is no ruler or priest to take over. It splits in the four. Four different kingdoms. Just like this prophecy says. So it splits in the four different kingdoms. Eventually, those kingdoms sort of come together into two. They come together into two. The Seleucids that are in now, what is Syria, Turkey, and the Ptolemies that took over Egypt. Now, remember when I gave the series of Bible studies on the early church? And we talked about Egypt. We talked about the influence of the Greeks on Egyptian development, because they were conquered by the Greeks. Alexandria, Egypt, at the time of Rome, was the greatest center of learning in the Western world. Greater than Rome, greater than Athens. And it was a Greek city. The reason why was it was still being ruled over by the Ptolemies. Cleopatra was Greek. She dressed like Egyptians, because she wanted to be worshipped as a god, because she wanted to be worshipped as a god, which the queen of Egypt was worshipped as a goddess. But she was Greek. So there was this enormous Greek influence. And so what you have are two Greek empires, four that end up in the two. And they never had the power. They never worked together to become what Alexander the Great was building. And so what we have here is, we now understand the four. What's that have to do with the abomination of desolation? Well, according to Daniel, these in Daniel 823, let's go and read it. 823. And in the latter time of their kingdom, so at the end of the Grecian Empire, and this was towards the end of the Grecian Empire, when the transgressors have reached their fullness, a king shall arise, having fierce features who understand sinister schemes. His power shall be mighty, but not by his own power, but shall destroy fearfully, and shall prosper and thrive, and he shall destroy the mighty and also the holy people. The holy people here would have been, of course, the people of Judah, who still had come back out of the Babylonian captivity and were living in Judea at the time. 924. Through his cunning he shall cause deceit to prosper under his rule, and he shall exalt himself in his heart. He shall destroy many in their prosperity. He shall even rise against the prince of princes, and he shall be broken without human means. 926. And then he says, the vision of the evenings and mornings, which was told is true, therefore seal up the vision, for it refers to many days in the future. Now, what happened, if you read the next verse, what happens? Daniel has this vision. Daniel's talked to by a angel who tells you what it means, and you think he'd be going, wow, this is great! It says he fainted and was sick. He physically became ill from this experience. He had, and this is in the future, so he doesn't even know how to interpret it beyond that. We know a whole lot more about that prophecy than he ever knew, because he didn't get to see these things happen. Although he did get to see some of the prophecies happen, he was there when the Persians conquered Babylon, and he became an advisor to the Persians. So he saw some of what was prophesied in Daniel 2 and in Daniel 7. He saw some of those prophecies he was given. Some of them start, but he never saw this happen. It was long after he died the Greeks took over Persia. So we've got a small horn, a small horn.

We have the Seleucis, who is the general who took over what is now Syria and what is Turkey in that area, and he had a Greek empire there. Who is this little horn? Now the important thing is we know who the little horn is because we can find he takes the glorious land and stops the sacrifice.

For many years, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids fought each other. Now if you can see a map in your mind and you think where Syria and Turkey is, and then you look down and you think where Egypt is and you're fighting, guess where you're going back and forth? There's a city that sits right in the middle of where you would have to go back and forth. Jerusalem. Jerusalem in the area of Judea where the Jews lived was a battleground between the two Greek empires for decades and decades. In fact, they continue to find in the archaeologists in Egypt or in Israel, they continue to find huge baskets full of coins from this time period, depending on who was who had conquered it at that moment as they went back and forth. And it's interesting because some of them have pictures of kings from the Ptolemy's and some of them have pictures of kings who were Seleucids. They just went back and forth and back and forth across Judea as they were trampled as these two groups of Greeks fought for domination. We do have this king from the north, the Seleucid, who comes through and actually invades and conquers and rules over Judea. Between 175 and 164, he ruled. His name is Antiochus Epiphanes. Antiochus Epiphanes, he was the fourth of the Antiochus group, but he's Antiochus Epiphanes. And he invades the glorious land. Just like he said, at the latter time before the Greeks fall, this is going to happen. So he invades and what he does is he forces the Jews to give up their religion. He stops the daily sacrifices, stops them entirely. He sets up in the temple an altar to and statues to pagan gods. He even sacrifices pigs in the temple. He then begins to kill anybody that actually tries to continue to follow God. Rabbis are killed.

If he finds any copies of the Bible, he burns them. There are cases of mothers who were caught with circumcised children. So he killed the children and made the mothers wear the dead baby. They tied them around their neck and they had to wear them as they went to, you know, up and down the street.

There was a bloodbath. As he came in and he set up an abomination of desolation or the abomination of transgressions, as it's called in this passage, he sets it up. It is something that's actually created and set up in the temple.

How long would this happen? Let's go back to Daniel 8, what we read here in verse 13 again, because I want to need to look at this a little closer.

Daniel 8 verse 14. Remember these two angels are talking. How long would this go on? This abomination of transgression? How long will the daily sacrifices be done? And he says, 2300 days, then the sanctuary shall be cleansed. In Hebrew it doesn't say 2300 days.

It says 2000 evenings and mornings.

These say, well, that's a day. That's why it's translated in English today, right? The evening of morning is a day. But evening of morning is very important. Remember, we already read that in verse 26, it says the vision of the evenings and mornings.

So, evenings and mornings is a more exact translation, and that changes the meaning of this.

Evenings and mornings was a reference to the daily sacrifices in the temple. How long will the sacrifices cease? Well, like 1150 evenings and mornings. Or, I mean, days, which is half of, you know, the evenings and mornings. That's important because when a Tychus epiphany set up this abomination, stopped the sacrifices. It was just about 1150 days later that what happened was the Maccabees, which were leaders in the Jewish community, formed an army and defeated the Tychus epiphytes and drove the Greeks out and set up an independent Jewish nation.

And in doing so, they cleansed out the temple. Remember, it says the temple will be cleansed. They brought in the Levites again. They started sacrificing to God. And for a period of time, there was a Jewish nation that returned to the worship of God under the Maccabees.

That's why we don't have to figure out why, what's the difference between the 1290 days and this 11, 150 days or, you know, evenings and mornings because they're two different events.

The first one has already happened. Historically, we know has happened. And you think, well, boy, this is interesting. You know, how did you come up with this? You know, there's not a lot of things that mainstream Protestants, some Catholics and evangelicals, Seventh-day Adventists and us agree on prophetically. And this is one. Because the history is all there. And this is why then there are commentators to say, oh, Daniel was written long after these events. They're too exact. They can't, that would mean God actually gave prophecies and we don't believe that. So this was written afterwards. No, these prophecies actually happen. And we have an understanding of the first abomination of desolation or abomination of transgressions, where terrible things happen. And in doing so, we begin to understand, let's pick out what we know happened. The big parts of this that we know that happened. We have a king who hates God and wants to destroy those who worship him. He's called a little horn, and little horn, but he's still part of the Greek empire, still part of the the goat, right? So we have this Greek king who was going to do this at the end of the kingdom, which actually happened. We know what kind of king he was. He has armies that invade Jerusalem, we know that, and there's a violent cessation of sacrifices through the God of Israel. Those three things happened. The setting up of a pagan god, a statue inside the temple, which was the rebel temple at the time. Because, you know, Solomon's temple had been destroyed and rebelled by Zerubbabel. And so what we have is we understand what happens here. This is the abomination of transgression. It involves a king who hates God's way, it involves armies invading Jerusalem, and it involves a violent cessation of sacrifices.

Now, there's a second time this happened. Let's look at the second time.

What we have is a three and a half year period that ends in 70 AD, where the Jews decided that they were going to overthrow the Roman Empire. They had no big, they had no idea how big and powerful the Roman Empire was. By Josephus, who fought, was actually a Jewish officer in the army, got captured, sent to Rome, and came back and tried to beg everybody, let's stop this. We have no idea how big Rome is.

But this ends with the destruction of Jerusalem. Not the total destruction, because it continued on as a city then until 130. But there was a lot of destruction. The main thing that's destroyed is the Temple. That's the main thing that's destroyed, it's the Temple. Now, the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple is actually one of the greatest battles in history in terms of number of people that die, if the numbers we have are accurate.

We know that thousands of Roman soldiers died. We know that thousands of Jewish soldiers died. And according to Josephus, there was 1.1 million civilians that died, most of them from starvation and disease. So we have wars, there were rumors of wars. You have a guerrilla war going on for a while, and you have these armies clashing. You end up with Masada, where over 900 Jews commit suicide instead of surrendering to the Romans. Jerusalem itself, during this time period, suffers so much devastation. Wars and rumors of wars. You have pestilences, you have disease epidemics, you have starvation, there's even recording of cannibalism. You have signs in the skies. Josephus talks about visions people saw in the skies, though Romans talk about visions people saw in the skies. Now, if any of that sounds familiar, well, that's because that's what it said to the Olivet drops. That's what it said to the Olivet drops.

Luke 19. Let's look at Luke 19 first before we go to the Olivet drops, because Jesus gives a prophecy here that was fulfilled in 70 AD. Luke 19, verse 41. Luke 19. And there are those who say that this was written by Luke years later, and he made it up.

Since we take the chronology of the Bible as true, that this was said by Jesus before he died, before 70 AD. Now, as he drew near, he saw the city. He's drawn close to Jerusalem. And he wept over it saying, if you had known even you, especially this your day, the things that make for your peace, a vow that you're hidden from your eyes. All the prophecies talked about the Messiah coming, and he says, I'm here. It's your day. You're the people I'm supposed to come to, and you have rejected me. For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you, and close you in on every side, and love you and your children within you to the ground. And they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation, the visitation of the Messiah, the Son of God.

He said, they're going to come and they're going to build an encampment around you, which is exactly what the Romans did. So he tells them. It's written down here. Now, I don't know whether he said this publicly, or he said it to his, just his disciples, but it's written down. It's a prophecy, and we know it took place. Now, when we compare what is said in the Olivet Prophecy, wars, rumors of wars, he tells the people in Jerusalem to flee, remember, in the Olivet Prophecy. There are some who believe, well, that means the abomination of desolation talked about by Jesus in the Olivet Prophecy has already taken place. And so they look at the Olivet Prophecy as having already been fulfilled, except for one or two verses. And that's not true either, because what we have here is a second partial fulfillment. Just like to the Jews at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, they experienced an abomination of desolation. These people experienced, in part, an abomination of desolation. That doesn't mean that Daniel 12 and its future abomination of desolation at the time of the resurrection isn't yet to come. It's going to come, too. So what happens here? What happened? Matthew 24. Matthew 24.

Because this sets the stage for the Olivet Prophecy, and why the Olivet Prophecy wasn't completely fulfilled. That is a total misunderstanding. They're called, um, what is that? It's a a prophetic movement. Preterists. Preterists. And they believe that all of the book of, almost all the book of Revelation, and almost all of the prophecy have already been fulfilled. So there's no use looking for those things that happened. It's already happened. The problem is, what they're looking at in Matthew 24, there was a partial fulfillment. To the people who lived in Jerusalem, he said, you're going to be destroyed. And the Olivet Prophecy gave a little details about what's going to happen. But the Olivet Prophecy mainly is about Daniel 12. It's just a partial fulfillment.

That's why it says in verse 3, now as he said on the Mount of Olives, his disciples came to him privately saying, tell us what then, well, tell us when these things will be, and what will be the sign of your coming and the end of the age. So he's not telling them about, oh, I'm going to just tell you about a few years ago when Jerusalem is destroyed. He's telling them about the end of the age. In fact, that's exactly what it says in verse 29 and 30. Immediately after these events, you will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds. So we can't now pull all this out, say, I had already happened. No, this was a warning. If you had lived in Jerusalem, but it was under siege, and you would have seen, and you would have known the Olivet Prophecy, you would have thought, wow, this is happening. And there's actually a group of people who seems to think what's happening. We don't know this biblically, but there are a number of records that during this siege, a group of Jews left. They knew what was happening, and they left, and they received a supernatural sign to leave that others saw, and it's recorded, but didn't know what it was. They heard a voice that told them to leave. They were the Christians. The Christians left during the siege.

And hundreds of years later, they existed, because there's records of this little town of Pella, which is in Jordan. There's this records of these people who lived there that said, oh yes, we're the people, our descendants were the ones that left Jerusalem during the siege, and we believe in Jesus Christ, and they kept the Sabbath.

And there they were, hundreds of years later. So there was a group of people who left, but this may have helped them, but this is the greater fulfillment that is in the future. It's the greater fulfillment that we're looking at. That's what we're looking for.

So let's go to verse 15 now, and let's look at the greater fulfillment that's yet to come.

Therefore, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, whoever reads, let him understand.

Let those who are in the Judea flee to the mountains. So he tells the people who may be in Jerusalem or in Judea at this time, get out when you see the abomination of desolation.

Luke actually tells us that the abomination of desolation is going to involve the destruction of Jerusalem. That's what he says. Because Luke and Matthew give slightly different versions of the all of their prophecy. They contain a little different details. You put them together, and you get the whole message. So we have this all of that prophecy that has yet to be fulfilled before Christ comes, and you have the abomination of desolation. Let's go back and think about this here, what happened in 70 AD for a minute.

Because we know what happened. We know what the abomination of desolation was under Tychus Epiphanes. What was the abomination of desolation in 70 AD?

He says this, of course, Jesus says this abomination of desolation will be assigned at his return. It will stand in the holy place, which is the temple. It will involve Jerusalem being surrounded by armies. That's exactly what happened in 70 AD.

You have a Roman emperor that decides he's going to stop and squash this whole Jewish nation. He's going to destroy them. You have armies surrounding Jerusalem, and once they conquered, they were going to go into the temple, which was now Herod's temple. You know, he remodels Rebebel's temple, and they were going to set up a pagan statue and do sacrifices. They stopped the sacrifices, but they stopped the sacrifices for almost 2,000 years.

They stopped them. It doesn't say when they would stop this time. They just got stopped. The only reason they didn't get to do that was the Roman soldiers were looting the temple, and it caught on fire. So when they set up the statue and did pagan sacrifices, they had to do it in the ruins of the temple because they destroyed it.

So it happened like in Taggis Epiphanes, but not exactly, because it was in the holy place, but the holy place had been destroyed. They didn't... I don't think they meant to burn it down. They were going to turn it into a Roman temple, but with all the looting going on and the slaughter of people going on, it burned down.

So you have the exact same things.

Let's talk about the future in a minute. What's going to happen in the future? It's going to first Thessalonians. First Thessalonians. Second Thessalonians chapter 2. Second Thessalonians chapter 2.

Now here's a prophecy about just before Christ's return. So we know the abomination of desolation is going to be set up again in the holy place.

Now that leads us to a certain conclusion.

There's going to be little sacrifices because it happened that way the first two times.

Sometimes people try to spiritualize that way. They're just going to be in the church.

We know how it happened the first two times.

There's going to be some place in Jerusalem where there's sacrifices. Now that doesn't necessarily have to be a giant temple.

I mean, the sacrifices were done for hundreds of years in a tent.

But there has to be some places where there are no sacrifices.

And that they're considering the new temple. It may be a large building. It may be a little building. It may be a tent.

But it's got to have an altar to it.

An altar where they say, okay, this is the new temple.

This is why you've heard of John Hage. He's a minister in San Antonio with a huge megachurch. Like 9,000 people. He has raised millions of dollars, just like other evangelical megachurches have, millions of dollars and sent it to Jerusalem to build a temple.

That's why in Jerusalem today, sanctioned by the Israeli government, there is a group of people, the Levites, they know they're Levites, they've traced their lineage. They're being trained to do... I mean, this isn't some conspiracy theory. They have a website. The Israeli government openly claims to support it.

They're doing this in the open. It's not some private thing. They have them trained. They have the priestly garments created.

They're breeding the animals to be the exact animals they need. They've recreated the utensils they need. They're just waiting to set up an altar.

They just can't do it because, well, they don't have control of the temple.

And there are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of evangelicals in the United States sending them money to do it. Why are they doing it here? Because they want Christ to come back. See, they're doing it for two different reasons. They're doing it here because they want Christ to come back, and they're trying to, okay, build a temple so you can come back.

They want to do it so they can return to Judaism and do sacrifices. Which, of course, as Christians, we're not supposed to do animal sacrifices. So you have two different motivations to accomplish this.

This is one reason why even the Catholic Church has gotten involved because they said, look, let's just declare Jerusalem an open city and have it governed by the UN, and then we can have all religions worship together on the temple mountain. Well, if they do that, believe me, that means they can do sacrifices. So there's an attempt to actually do this.

So now let's go to 2 Thessalonians 2.

Now, brethren, Paul writes, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled, either by spirit or by word or by letter, for as if it was from us, as though the day of Christ had come. Somebody would come along and start telling the people of Thessalonica that Christ has already come back. And, of course, Paul's writing them saying, you know that's not true. Remember what we taught you. Let no one deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, show himself that he is God. Here we have somebody in the temple, whatever this temple is, you know, I'm not necessarily looking for, you know, we're looking for a big temple. It doesn't have to happen that way. It may be that way, but there's some place called the temple. And here's a person who sits there and claims divinity. It's a messianic figure.

He claims divinity, and he sits in the temple. This prophecy has not happened. It sure didn't happen to somebody indeed. He says, do you not remember that when I was there with you, I told you these things. And now you know what is restraining that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed from the Lord, and the Lord will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy him with the brightness of his coming. This person is killed by Jesus Christ when he comes back. I have seen this passage used for some of the most bizarre explanations. That this man was this, you know, is this man, then he died. Oh, no, it's this man. He's that man. Well, then he died. No, this man is destroyed at the return of Jesus Christ. The important thing is he ends up in the temple, a temple, whatever it is.

His coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, and here's why he claims divinity with all power and signs and lying wonders and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. For this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, that they may be condemned who do not believe the truth but have pleasure in unrighteousness.

Hmm. We have the abomination of desolation, and we are going to have a temple again.

I'll make a side note here. I'm speculating a little bit. It says that he sends them a delusion because they did not want to know the truth. They rejected the truth. But see, how could people reject the truth? At the time that this man comes along, there will be two individuals, a political leader and a religious leader. This is the political leader here. He's giving his power from this religious leader who makes him divine. People worship him. There's also two other individuals known as the two witnesses, and the two witnesses will tell the world the truth. Because of electronic media, the whole world will know. We know it's the whole world because when they kill them, it says the entire earth rejoices. So how do they know the truth and reject it? Because there's going to be two witnesses who also are performing miracles. You're going to have two men over here performing miracles, and two men over here performing miracles, and both of them are going to claim that they're the two witnesses.

At least they're both going to claim they're from God, right? So if you know the scripture, you're going to have to determine which one is the two witnesses. Well, it's easy, folks. The two witnesses have no political power. They don't sit in the temple. They have seemingly no resources, except, well, they call it out fire from heaven. I mean, God gives them all these, but they aren't in charge of anything. They're just two guys that God calls to do that job.

So what can we put together now? Jesus told us, watch therefore you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.

So that means an understanding of why is the abomination of desolation is very important, because we're to watch that. We're not to fear it. Now, we go through these subjects, and sometimes people are just filled with trepidation afterwards. No, we're to watch this. In fact, we're told to flee. If you're in Jerusalem, get away.

Run away, because this is going to be a terrible time.

We know from the first two what happened.

In each case, there is a temple. In each case, there's a man who comes and hates God's way, hates it, and takes over that temple, and sets up, literally, pagan statues and does pagan sacrifices, and in both of the first two cases, they stopped sacrifices. And of course, in order to do that, they had to surround Jerusalem with armies. So you see that in both of the cases that we know. So knowing what we know, if we take Matthew 24 and we take 2 Thessalonians 2, what do we come to?

Well, this is what we should be watching. A place in Jerusalem where daily sacrifices are reinstated.

Because that's what happened the first two times. I don't see why we need to try to make this an allegory of something. There's going to be some kind of sacrifices. If I didn't have the first two times, I could make up an allegory, by the way. You know, make it sound real good. All this, that this holy place is the church. This holy place is whatever, you know.

But no, we know what happened the first two times. The coming of the man of Wallis who claims to speak for God and he's the world with miraculous signs and wonders. Well, Antiochus Epiphanes. At first we had, I think it was Titus, was the general that took Jerusalem.

He ended up being emperor later.

But, once again, you have this powerful political figure who sees himself as divine. Antiochus Epiphanes, by the way, believed he was divine. And all Roman emperors believed they were divine. So this isn't anything new! Someone comes along and, only this person does miracles and seems to truly be divine to the majority of the world. And armies surrounding Jerusalem.

The armies this time don't totally take Jerusalem.

They surround it and they fight it. But you know why we know that? Is that Goliath 14? When Christ comes back, they're fighting for Jerusalem and most of the city's taken and there's a small group of Jews still hanging on and that's when he comes back.

So this time he comes back before they totally destroy Jerusalem.

But there is going to be sacrifices. There's going to be the cessation of sacrifices. There's going to be the abomination of desolation that involves an evil ruler that goes to Jerusalem and there's going to be some kind of other worship there that is absolutely pagan. Just like the first few times.

Now, if you notice, none of this has happened yet. So we don't have to flee yet.

But you know what? It could happen fairly quickly if the right things happen. In other words, it's set up to happen at some point. But once again, this isn't to live in fear. It's to say, wow, look what God did in the past. The first time, his people, the Jews, rose up and created a nation. They overthrew their man of sin. The second time, the Christians fled Jerusalem and got away from their man of sin. He's going to protect some of his people. Not all of them.

Prophecies tell us that. But some of these people are going to be protected and some are going to be martyrs. But he comes back for those people and they're either changed or they are resurrected from the dead. In other words, what Daniel 12 said, where we started, the whole focal point is the Messiah is coming back and he's going to save his saints. There is going to be a resurrection.

And he says, it's at the time after the abomination of desolation.

So here we just defined a term. You know, and it's a whole hour to define a term.

But in doing so, I think you can better understand that this abomination of desolation is in the future. It's happened already twice. We know what to watch for. But more importantly, we need to remember this is given to us to have faith and so that we are living our lives so that we're prepared for the future return of Jesus Christ.