7 Things You Have To Know To Understand End Times Prophecy: Part 2 – The Abomination

Hi, this is Jack Kelley. On this CD we’re going to begin exploring the sequence of major end times events. My primary goal will be to show you that the Abomination of Desolation, first mentioned in Daniel 9:27, is central to understanding the sequence of all other end times events; with some occurring before it and others after it, because it’s the event that kicks off the Great Tribulation and is the one event in all end times prophecy that most specifically can be pinned down in time. In other words, when the Abomination That Causes Desolation takes place, everyone on Earth will be able to count the days until the Second Coming. But we who study prophecy can also count backwards to show the sequence of events leading up to it.

For example, the Abomination of Desolation can’t happen until the antiChrist appears and confirms a covenant permitting the Jews to build a temple in Israel. But that can’t happen until the Jews decide they want a temple, regardless of the controversy it stirs up, and that can’t happen until God reveals Himself to them and puts it in their hearts to return to Him. And finally, that can’t happen until the Church is gone.

The three passages of Scripture we’ll look at are Daniel 9:24-27 (the famous Seventy Weeks prophecy), Matthew 24:15-21 where the Lord ties the Abomination to the Great Tribulation, and 2 Thessalonians 2:3-8 where Paul describes the fulfilment of Daniel’s prophecy so people can recognize the Abomination That Causes Desolation when it happens.

Let’s get started.

Track 1
Hi, this is Jack Kelley. In this session we’re going to review Daniel 9:24-27, also known as the Seventy Weeks of Daniel, a passage many believe is the most important piece of prophecy in all of Scripture. Almost every mistake I’ve run across in studying the various interpretations of end times prophecy can be traced back to a misunderstanding of this passage. Before ploughing into the passage, let’s back up a little bit and review the context.

Daniel was an old man, probably in his eighties. He had been in Babylon for nearly seventy years and knew from reading the recently published scroll of Jeremiah’s writings, specifically the part we know as Jeremiah 25:8-11, that the seventy year captivity God had ordained for Israel was just about over. 

Now, the reason for this captivity was Israel’s insistence upon worshipping the false gods of their pagan neighbors. Its duration of seventy years came from the fact that for 490 years they had neglected to let their farmland lie fallow, one year out of every seven, as God had commanded in Leviticus 25:1-7. The Lord had been patient all that time but had finally sent them to Babylon to give the land the seventy years rest that were due. And that’s from 2 Chronicles 36:21. The beginning of Daniel 9 documents Daniel’s prayer, reminding the Lord that the time of the seventy year punishment was nearly over and asking for mercy on behalf of his people. Before he could finish the prayer, the angel Gabriel appeared to him and spoke the words that we know as Daniel 9:24-27. Let’s read the whole thing to get the overview, and then we’ll take it apart verse by verse. It goes like this:

“Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.

“Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble. After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed. He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.

No prophecy in all of Scripture is more critical to our understanding of the end times than these four verses. A few basic words of clarification are in order first; then we’ll interpret the passage verse by verse. 

The Hebrew word translated “weeks”, or “sevens”, refers to a period of seven years, like our word “decade” refers to a period of ten years. It literally means, a week of years. So, seventy “weeks” is seventy times seven years, or 490 years. This period is divided into three parts:

Seven weeks (or 49 years),
Sixty two weeks (or 434 years) and,
One week (or seven years)
Total: seventy weeks (490 years)

Now let’s begin with Daniel 9:24:

“Seventy ‘sevens’ are decreed for your people and your holy city to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to atone for wickedness, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the Most Holy Place.

These six things would be accomplished for Daniel’s people (Israel) and Daniel’s holy city (Jerusalem) during a specified period of 490 years. Now, I’ve inserted the word “place” at the end of this word, “holy” at the end of this verse to clarify the fact that it refers to the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

Now let’s look at verse 25:

“Know and understand this: From the time the word goes out to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until the Anointed One, the ruler, comes, there will be seven ‘sevens,’ and sixty-two ‘sevens.’ It will be rebuilt with streets and a trench, but in times of trouble.

Now here’s a clear prophecy of the timing of the first Coming. When this message was given to Daniel by the angel Gabriel, Jerusalem had lain in ruins for nearly seventy years and the Jews were captive in Babylon. Counting forward for 7 plus 62 periods of seven years each, from a future decree, freeing the Jews and giving them permission to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, they should expect the Messiah. That’s a total of 483 years from the time they received permission to rebuild Jerusalem. We have to distinguish between the decree to rebuild Jerusalem from the decree that set them free after their captivity, because the Jews were freed a few years later and given permission to return to their homes, restore their ruined temple and begin offering sacrifices there. But, according to Nehemiah 2:1, the actual decree to rebuild Jerusalem’s protective city walls was not given until the first month of the twentieth year of his reign by King Artaxerxes of Persia. That would be March of 445 B.C. on our calendar, about ninety years after the Jews were freed. And exactly 483 years after that, the Lord Jesus rode down the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem on a donkey to shouts of “Hosanna!” on the only day of His life that He permitted His followers to proclaim Him as Israel’s King, fulfilling Daniel’s prophecy to the day. 

The Hebrew (text) in Daniel 9 calls Him “Messiah, the Prince” denoting the fact that He was coming as the anointed Son of the King and was not yet crowned king Himself.

And in Luke 19:41-45 He reminded the people of the specific nature of this prophecy:

As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”

He held them accountable for knowing Daniel 9:24-27. A few days later, He extended that accountability to us.

“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

This is a quote from Matthew 24:15 where we are also required to understand Daniel 9.

Now let’s go back into Daniel 9 and take verse 26:

 After the sixty-two ‘sevens,’ the Anointed One will be put to death and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.

So first came 7 sevens (or 49 years), and then 62 sevens (or 434 years) for a total of 69 sevens (or 483 years). At the end of this period their Messiah would be executed, or literally, destroyed in the making of a covenant having received none of the honor, glory and blessings the Scriptures promised Him. And the people of the ruler yet to come will destroy Jerusalem and the temple shortly thereafter. Israelites would be scattered abroad, and peace would elude the world. We all know that Jesus was crucified establishing the New Covenant in the process, and thirty five years after that the Romans put a torch to the city and temple, destroying both. Surviving Jews were forced to flee for their lives. In the ensuing Two thousand years I don’t believe a single generation has escaped involvement in a war of some kind.

And then, something strange happened—the heavenly clock stopped.

Sixty nine of the seventy weeks had passed and all that was prophesied to happen during those 483 years had come to pass but there was still one week (or 7 years) left to fulfill the rest of the prophecy. There are hints in the Old Testament that the clock had stopped several times before in Israel’s history when, for one reason or another, they were out of their land. And in the New Testament we’re also given hints that while God is dealing with the Church, time ceases to exist for Israel. That’s from Acts 15:13-18.

But the clearest indication is that the events foretold in Daniel 9:27 simply haven’t happened yet. Let’s read Daniel 9:27:

He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.”

Now here’s the missing seventieth week.

But before we try to understand it, let’s recall a rule of grammar that will help us make our interpretation correct. And the rule is this: Pronouns refer to the closest previous noun. “He” being a personal pronoun, refers to the closest previous person. In this case, the ruler who will come.

And so, a ruler who will come from among the old Roman Empire (European Union?) will confirm a seven year treaty with Israel that permits them to build a temple and reinstate their Old Covenant worship system. Three and one-half years later he will violate this treaty by setting up an Abomination that causes the temple to become desolate, putting an end to their worship. And this Abomination brings the wrath of God down upon him and he’ll be destroyed.

The most obvious way in which we know that these things haven’t happened is that the Jewish Old Covenant worship system requires a temple and there hasn’t been one anywhere on Earth since 67 A.D. when the Romans destroyed it.

Now, some say Daniel’s prophecy was fulfilled during the Roman destruction, but most believe it is yet future, partly because of the term Abomination That Causes Desolation. It is a specific insult to God that has happened only once previously. Antiochus Epiphanes, a powerful Syrian king, had attacked Jerusalem and entered the temple area in 168 B.C. There, he had sacrificed a pig on the temple altar and erected a statue of the Greek god Zeus with his own face on it in the Holy Place. He then required everyone to worship it on pain of death. Now this rendered the temple unfit for worshipping God and so incensed the Jews that they revolted and defeated the Syrians. This event is recorded in Jewish history in 1st Maccabees where it’s called, The Abomination That Caused Desolation. And the subsequent cleansing of the temple is celebrated to this day in the Feast of Hanukkah.

Later on, the Apostle Paul warned that in the latter days a world leader will become so powerful that “he’ll exalt himself above everything that is called ‘god’ or is worshipped and will stand in the temple proclaiming himself to be God.” That’s from 2 Thessalonians 2:4.

In Revelation 13:14 and 15 we are told that he’ll have a statue of himself erected and require everyone to worship it on pain of death. And in Matthew 24:15-21 Jesus says that the Abomination That Causes Desolation spoken of by Daniel will kick off the Great Tribulation, a period of time, three and a half years, that coincides with the last half of that Seventieth Week of Daniel. The similarities between this coming event and the one from history being so obvious, most scholars are persuaded that one points to the other since nothing in the intervening years fits so completely.

Now, perhaps because of a devastating war in the Middle East, a new leader will soon emerge on the scene. With great personal charisma and a plan to end all wars, he’ll captivate and control the world. Since all true believers will have recently disappeared from the Earth in the rapture he will have no trouble persuading most remaining inhabitants that he is the promised Messiah, the Prince of Peace. He will astound and amaze them all with feats of diplomacy and conquest—even performing the supernatural. But when he claims to be God, all hell will break loose on Earth and three and a half years of the most terrible times mankind has ever known will threaten their very existence.

But before they can all be wiped out, the real Prince of Peace will return and overthrow this imposter. He will set up His kingdom on Earth; a Kingdom that will never be destroyed or left to another. Having given His life to “finish transgression, put an end to sin, atone for wickedness and bring in everlasting righteousness”, and having fulfilled all Biblical vision and prophecy, He will anoint the Most Holy Place and receive the honor and glory and blessings the Scriptures promised Him. Israel will finally have her kingdom restored and will live in peace with God in her midst and you and I, as the Bride of Christ, will rule and reign with Him forever. You can almost hear the footsteps of the Messiah.

Track 2
Well, on our last track we talked about Daniel’s Seventy Week prophecy found in chapter 9, verses 24 through 27. And, specifically in verse 27 we spoke of a technical term called, the Abomination That Causes Desolation. Just to review, let’s go back and read Daniel 9:27:

He will confirm a covenant with many for one ‘seven.’ In the middle of the ‘seven’ he will put an end to sacrifice and offering. And at the temple he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him.”

Now, of course you remember from our last track that the “he” spoken of there is the anti Christ. He’ll confirm a covenant with many for one “week”. This refers to the last seven years of the 490 year time that was set apart for Israel and Jerusalem by the angel Gabriel. And specifically, we are talking about the the Abomination That Causes Desolation.

Now, when Daniel wrote this prophecy in about 535 B.C. no such event had ever taken place. But something that was called the Abomination That Causes Desolation did take place almost four hundred years later in 168 B.C.  

What happened was this:

Antiochus Epiphanes, a powerful Syrian king, had attacked Jerusalem and entered the temple area in 168 B.C. There, he sacrificed a pig on the temple altar and he erected a statue of the Greek god Zeus with his own face on it in the Holy Place. He then required everyone to worship it on pain of death. Well, this rendered the temple unfit for worshipping God and so incensed the Jews that they revolted and defeated the Syrians. This event is recorded in Jewish history in 1st Maccabees, where it is called the Abomination That Caused Desolation. And the subsequent cleansing of the temple is celebrated to this day in the Feast of Hanukkah.

And so, you had there an event in 168 B.C. which was referred to in Jewish history as the Abomination That Causes Desolation. Specifically, it was the requiring of the Jews to worship a pagan god in their own temple. In this case it was a statue of Zeus with the face of the Syrian ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, placed on it. And that was the event that rendered the temple unfit for worship.

All right. So many look at this prophecy of Daniel in 9:27, and they look at the historical record of 168 B.C. and they say, “Well, there’s the fulfillment. That took care of it. No more future. We should not look forward to this being fulfilled again because it’s already been done.” And yet, when we go into the New Testament to Matthew 24 we see Jesus mentioning an event He calls the the Abomination That Causes Desolation but He mentions it to His disciples as if it’s still in the future. Let’s read it.

In Matthew 24:15 He says to them:

“So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.

That’s Matthew 24:15-21.

Now you see how Jesus clearly tells them to look forward to an event that He calls the Abomination That Causes Desolation. He refers to Daniel 9:27, the only other place where that phrase appears, and He tells them it’s going to happen in the future and it will be the specific event that kicks off the Great Tribulation. In fact, the name “Great Tribulation” comes from that passage in Matthew 24:21. And so, it happened in the past, and yet Jesus is speaking of it as if it is going to happen in the future.

Now, there really isn’t anything to be confused about here because, the fact that it happened once before in history told them exactly what to look for. You see, it would be hard to look for an event that had never happened before and yet, He points to an event that had happened in history almost two hundred years before He spoke this prophecy and tells them to look for it in the future and He also says that it would be the future event that is characterized by the term, the Abomination That Causes Desolation.

And so, if we are reading this correctly, and I believe we are, what we’re being told here is that some time in the future (future to the disciples and as we’ll see in a few moments, future to us as well) there will be an event taking place that will be so insulting to God that it would render the temple desolate and that event would be called the Abomination That Causes Desolation and you’d know it when you saw it because it would look like the one that happened in 168 B.C.

All right. Now, Jesus spoke this prophecy in 32 A.D. There’s no way anything happened like that between 32 A.D. and 67 A.D. when the temple was destroyed. There was never an event like that in those 35 or so years. The temple was destroyed in 67 A.D. there has not ever been a temple rebuilt there since that day up until this one. There is no temple in Jerusalem now, there has not been on there since 67 A.D. when the Romans destroyed it. And so, it would have been impossible for someone to stand in the temple and erect this Abomination That Causes Desolation between that time and this. So, we know that we are still looking for this Abomination That Causes Desolation. And the Lord Jesus Himself tells us in Matthew 24:21 that when this happens it will commence the Great Tribulation. And at that moment, those people who live in Judea (which is a region of Israel) those people who live in Judea are to flee to the mountains, not going back to their house for anything. Not wasting any time at all. Going as quickly as they can. Because, at that moment, when that happens then the Great Tribulation will commence. He says that that would be the event that would be unequalled. Not since the beginning of the world, never to be equaled again. That would be the most serious series of judgments ever to be levied against mankind for his sins.

All right, so what do we know so far about these events that lead us to conclude that the Abomination That Causes Desolation is still in the future? Well, the first thing we know is that Daniel gave this four-verse prophecy in chapter 9 which is called the Seventy Week prophecy that set aside 490 years for Israel and Jerusalem.

Four hundred eighty three years of those passed according to the prophecy. When the Messiah came and was executed the clock stopped. Seven years of the prophecy remain to be fulfilled. Now we’re told that someone from the nation that destroyed the temple and the sanctuary in 67 A.D. (which of course, was the Romans) would come and enforce, or confirm, a covenant with Israel for the final seven years. And in the middle of that covenant, he would set up something called the Abomination That Causes Desolation.

Then we know from Matthew 24, that that Abomination That Causes Desolation is still in the future to us but it will look like an event that took place in 168 A.D. when Antiochus Epiphanes erected a statue of the Greek god Zeus with his own face on it in the Holy Place and required everyone to worship it on pain of death. And so, we have this historical model of the Abomination That Causes Desolation there. But Jesus tells us that the real fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy is still in the future to us.

Now we’ll go to 2 Thessalonians and get a little clearer picture of how this is going to happen because the model that we’re given of the event in 168 A.D. had a statue standing in the Holy Place, a statue of a pagan god. But what will happen as the real fulfillment of this prophecy?

And here we’ll go to 2 Thessalonians 2 to find out. And what we’ll learn in 2 Thessalonians 2 is that Paul is writing to the church in Thessalonica because of a report that they received that the Day of the Lord had already come. And Paul’s going to say to them that that can’t be because certain things that have to precede the Day of the Lord have not yet taken place.

And he says in verse 3:

Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion 

Or “falling away” or “apostacy.”

occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction.

This is a title, one of forty two, that’s found in Scripture for the antiChrist.

And then it says in verse 4 that:

He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshiped, so that he sets himself up in God’s temple, proclaiming himself to be God.

All right. So, there’s a pretty clear event that will signal the beginning of the time that Paul calls here the Day of the Lord. Now I’m going to suggest to you that this time is the same time that Jesus called “The Great Tribulation” because all through the Old Testament it speaks about a great series of judgment that’s coming on the Earth at the end of the age and it’s always called the Day of the Lord.

Okay. So here is a specific thing that will mark the beginning of it. And this ties the other two passages together very nicely because Daniel has said, you remember, that in the middle of that last seven years the antiChrist would set up an Abomination That Causes Desolation. Jesus tells us the Abomination That Causes Desolation is still in the future and when it happens, it will kick off the Great Tribulation and that we will recognize it when it happens because it had a model in the past. And the model in the past, of course, as we’ve said a couple of times here, has been the time of the Maccabean Revolt where Antiochus Epiphanes set up this statue of the Greek god Zeus. Now here, Paul is telling us that the real fulfillment of this will be when this antiChrist actually stands in the temple and proclaims himself to be God. The statue is not the issue this time. This time the complete fulfilment, and this is why Jesus has us looking forward to it telling us that the thing that happened in 168 was just a model or a shadow of it—a for-type, a symbol, if you will. But the fulfillment of this will come in the future when a man we call the antiChrist stands there and personally declares himself to be God and elevates himself above everything that is worshipped or called God.

This event has never taken place. No man has ever stood in the Holy Place and proclaimed himself to be God. Didn’t happen in 168 B.C. It hadn’t happened when Jesus spoke it because He told us to look forward to it in the future. In the 35 or so years that the temple stood in Jerusalem after the crucifixion it didn’t happen, and then the temple was destroyed and hasn’t been rebuilt yet. When it is rebuilt, that will be a signal that the end of the age is near. But when this man stands in the Holy Place proclaiming himself to be God, that will be your signal that the Great Tribulation is beginning and is only three and a half years of human history left.

Now there’s one final point we need to make here, because as we have just said in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 that the Day of the Lord can’t come until the man of destruction is revealed, and when he reveals himself he will stand in the Holy Place, proclaiming himself to be God. Now, there’s something that has to happen before he can be revealed. And so, we’ve got: the Day of the Lord can’t be revealed until the man of sin comes, and the man of sin can’t be revealed until something else happens and for that, let’s go down to 2 Thessalonians 2:6. And Paul says to the readers here:

And now you know what is holding him back,

That is, the antiChrist.

so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work; but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, 

All right, so there’s someone holding this spirit of antiChrist back. In other words, even though there is evil in the world today—we can see it all around us—it has not been able to express itself fully. In other words, the level of evil we’ve seen, although it certainly seems bad enough to us, is nowhere near what it could be if it weren’t for the fact that something is holding this spirit of lawlessness back. In one of the translations, it says something is restraining it. And it talks about the Restrainer being a “he”—a person, not an ‘it’, a force, or a circumstance or a condition, but a “he”. A person.

Now, the wording here is kind of obscure and so you have to look pretty carefully to see this, and obviously it does take some amount of understanding of context and things to make all this clear. But, most people believe that this Restrainer, this force that’s holding the spirit of lawlessness back, is the Holy Spirit as resident in the body of the Church. And so, this Holy Spirit has to be taken out of the way (or literally, the Greek here says, “out of the midst” of the Earth) before the full extent of evil can be unleashed upon Earth, which of course is what happens during the Great Tribulation. And this is one of the things that leads us to believe that the rapture of the Church has to take place before the antiChrist can be revealed.

And so, if we come backwards here, the Day of the Lord/Great Tribulation cannot be commenced until this antiChrist stands in the temple proclaiming himself to be God and fulfilling Daniel’s prophecy of the Abomination That Causes Desolation.

The spirit of lawlessness (or the antiChrist, really) can’t be revealed until the power that restrains him is taken out of the way. And that means before the Day of the Lord can come, the antiChrist has to be revealed. Before the antiChrist can be revealed, the Church has to be raptured. So, there you have Paul telling us in those few verses just exactly how events will take place and it lets us have a very clear picture then that the sequence of events is:

1. The rapture of the Church,
2. the battle of Ezekiel 38 when the antiChrist is revealed, when Israel requires a temple, and when they begin the last seven years of human history, and then in the middle of that period,
3. the Great Tribulation, and at the end of that then comes,
4. the Second Coming, and then following that,
5. the Millennium, and then finally,
6. Eternity.

So that’s why we place the sequence of events the way we have done so in this passage, and that’s why it’s so important to know this sequence so that you don’t get deceived by things that happen so that you begin to think, “Gee, is that this or is it that?”

Well, understanding all these things, having it all clear in your mind, helps you to know and not have to worry about someone else’s interpretation and not having to worry about being deceived, and not have to worry about how much of this you’re going to have to face.

It’s my firm conviction, after twenty years of studying Bible prophecy, that the Church will not see any of the Tribulation period, it will not see any of the Seventy Weeks of Daniel, it will not see any of the events leading up to the revelation of the antiChrist, and I’m now convinced it will not see the Battle of Ezekiel 38 and 39. The rapture of the Church has to precede all of these events in order to fulfill prophecy literally, which is the way we understand it in this study.