“Abomination Of Desolation”

“And on the wing of abominations will come one (Antichrist) who makes desolate.” (Daniel 9:27c)

The “Abomination of Desolation.”

The “sacrilegious object that causes desecration” is the way the New Living Bible translation puts it.

It is the key anchor point in our Lord’s discussion of the end times in the Gospel of Mark. (Mark 13:14)

In the first century after Christ’s ascension into heaven, the “Abomination of Desolation” prediction (Mark 13:1-2) was fulfilled when the Roman armies under general Titus ransacked Jerusalem (70 A.D.), burned the Jewish Temple to the ground and set an idol on the very spot where it once stood.

But that wasn’t the first time in Israel’s history that the “Abomination of Desolation” appeared.

When the Jewish people were given over to captivity for turning their backs on the Lord, Nebuchadnezzar looted the Temple and stole the holy vessels away. (597 B.C.)

Some four centuries later (and yet again) Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the rebuilt Temple by sacrificing a pig to Zeus on its sacred altar. (167 B.C.)

It was (and still is) a pattern of Israel’s (/God’s) enemies to hijack the representation of the Jewish people’s religion and defame/deface it. (Thus an Islamic Mosque sits on the Temple Mount today.)

Ultimately, the “Abomination of Desolation” will find its grandest (and most hateful and demonic) fulfillment in the last days when Antichrist takes his seat in the Temple at Jerusalem and declares himself to be God. That’s when all hell breaks loose. (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4; Revelation 13:1-18)