The Abomination of Desolation

This article will show that New Testament writers sourced information from the Old Testament. The abomination of desolation is certainly an unresolved mystery with several self-opinionated interpretations presented. The original form must be retrieved to clearly illustrate what the abomination of desolation heralds.

Run-of-the-mill explanations merely point back to Antiochus Epiphanes being the abomination, as he plundered the Jewish temple.

Announcing the clue to solving this puzzle is found in Dan. 12:11 and reads as follows. “And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away and the abomination that maketh desolate set up there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days.”

Understanding how the daily sacrifice was taken away in original O.T. type is essential, as a base. Those who only literalise falsely claim that Antiochus Epiphanes is biblically documented as the primary transgressor. But is this true?

The perennial question as to what expositors have written reams about is, “What is the daily sacrifice, and how/when was it “taken away?” O. T. prophetic writers borrowed recollections of the Bible temple-history including ceremonies as foundational models, as that is exactly what they were. The “tabernacle/temple” in Jerusalem was only a pattern of the Heavenly. Later prophetic writers projected these visions as spiritually ever-present circumstances in application, hence the compounding down the eras.

The O.T. daily sacrifice was the daily burnt offering. See Numbers 28:3,4. It was an evening and morning oblation, a continual burnt offering, Exd. 29:42. Yes, it was continual, it was a verb, part of action in Israel’s ceremonial token. This was demonstrating, each person had every right to determine individual sacrifice. They were given a choice. The burnt offering was a total sacrifice. It taught all that a complete individual sacrifice was of necessity if innate conscience were to be redeemed after a period of prohibition. The daily sacrifice offering, was part of the entirety of service to be calculated over a seven-year period. Seven Sabbaths of years, see Leviticus 25:8.

The Jewish sacred year consisted of twelve months of 30 days = 360 days a year. Every few years an intercalary month was added to align with the seasons. This month was not considered in reckoning times of feasts and sanctuary ceremonial over a seven-year period.

The sacred feasts commenced on 15/1 Abib with Passover and eating unleavened bread. Pentecost (new meat offering) was 50 days after Passover in third month Sivan. Day of Atonement 10/7 Tishri was followed by the great celebration of atonement, Feast of Tabernacles, commencing 15/7 and lasting 7 days. The ceremonial time of the year lasted 6 months from 15/1 to 15/7. Seven half-years is 180 x 7 = 1260 days. Atonement meant the children of Israel were cleansed of wrongdoing (missing the mark). To add to this service or take away would be the most highest sacrilege.

Remember the O.T. writers were writing to the children of Israel. They condemned their habitual regression into idolatry – turning away from the spiritual, time and time again. How can this idolatry be detected? Could such idolatry be the abomination of desolation? Did God’s people, the peculiar people, go wrong? Tut, tut, it is always the enemy who is in error, by following the Devil, not God’s elect, no. Is idolatry a desolation or stultifying of the mind? Now to see in detail the O.T. example of idolatry that describes the abomination of desolation.

Following Solomon’s reign the twelve tribe - kingdom was split into two. Israel of 10 tribes became the kingdom of Israel in the north whilst 2 tribes Judah and Benjamin became kingdom of Judah in the south. Jeroboam did not want the people of the north returning to the house of David and Rehoboam king of Judah. He thought they might kill him. So Jeroboam, “the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them (his people), It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of Egypt. He set one calf in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan…And Jeroboam ordained a feast in the eight month, on the fifteenth day of the month, like unto the feast that is in Judah…” See 1 Kings 12:25-33.

By making two objects of golden calves as gods of worship Jeroboam “took away” the daily sacrifice, the continual, ever-present burnt offering. He took away an individual’s innate right. Furthermore adding to this apostasy he ordained a feast 30 days after the Feast of Tabernacles, that great celebration of atonement or pardon. By Jeroboam ordaining a feast on 15/8 thirty days after the Feast of Tabernacles add 30 days to 1260 = 1290 days. “From the time the daily (1260 days) shall be taken away (by Jeroboam) and the abomination (idolatry) that maketh desolate (the mind) set up, there shall be 1290 days.” This was Israel’s literal idol-worship condemned unceasingly by their God of creation - Jehovah in the O.T. The children of Israel had literised and de-spiritualised a redeeming concept.

In the Book of Daniel, Antiochus Epiphanes, the little horn which came forth out of one of the four horns when the Grecian Empire divided, (see Dan. 8:1-12), “and an host given” him against the daily,” (The host was apostate Jews, see 1 Maccabees 1: 10-15 was a later fulfillment of this prophecy, as they plundered the temple. Certainly this was a type but it was not the foundational stone of plundering. The abomination is beginning to compound now.

Contemporary expositors point to Antiochus Epiphanes but they omit the apostate Jews. Their aim is to show it is “others” and not “us” that bring about notional ideas. But regression takes place within. When literalism abounds, spirituality is lost. Yes, Spirituality is a verb, not a noun. Action, create. This ability is the possession of the liberated.


Now Apply the New Testament

The abomination of desolation is mentioned in Matt. 24:15 and Mark 13:14. It is time to examine the declaration in Matthew.

Jesus, having been shown the buildings of the temple said to his disciples, “There shall not be left one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.” Remember the disciples world was Judaism. The stones of the temple represent the tenets of Judaism. The temple was a “pattern” of the original soul-Temple. The disciples, gripped by legalism wanted to know, “when shall these things be?”

Jesus speaks of many events such as false prophets rising, wars, famines, earthquakes etc. Then he announces, “This gospel of the kingdom (the gospel of peace - Rom. 10:15) shall be preached in all the world (OIKOUMENE = a place, cohabited, Roman Empire) then shall the end come.” The harvest is the end of the world. Matt. 13:39. This word “world” is from AION meaning (Jewish) a Messianic period (present or future) eternal. Here in Matthew it was the end of the world the disciples knew. Being a foretelling, the prediction would compound in substance as it compacts with the passage of time.

However, the preaching of the gospel of peace was/is the trigger to incite a momentous apocalyse. It is the end of the world of superstition.

Jesus says, “When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whosoever readeth let him understand). Then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains.” Matt. 24:15,16.

The abomination of desolation would stand in the holy place in the Roman-day setting. Matt. 24:15. Mark 13:14 writes, stand “where it ought not.” Where is the holy place, the HAGIOS? This is where the abomination (idol-worship) should not stand. The holy place is a consecrated place, a sacred place, the most holy place. The law of love, the law of liberty, is represented as placed in the ark in the tabernacle. Firstly it was written and placed in the original Temple, the soul-Temple. When the body is reunited with an innate soul the Creator’s law of consciousness, James 1:25, will be written in our hearts and in our minds. See Heb. 10:16. This is the holy place where no one must trespass.

The abomination did stand in the holy place in the Roman-day report as it demanded the quelling of the Messianic Spirit. The Pharisees and Sadducees were responsible for deceiving the populace. The Sadducean high priest had whipped the citizens of Jerusalem into mass hysteria, as the story goes. The life of benevolence, compassion, healing and teaching of the protagonist, Jesus, was silenced. This was a spiritual application – the great archetype. As the messianic message was rejected the teachings of Judaism crumbled, having no lasting meaning. Disregarding the true Temple-life destroyed in the temple in Jerusalem and its service. It had lost its value. It was time for harvest. A new age would emerge.

Don’t express your opinion if it is contrary to institutionalism’s status quo, for then you must be condemned. Today, applying to the Jew of the heart and mind, idolatry is the worship of the idols of doctrine and the dogma of literalism. Should this ever be challenged, what then?

To reiterate, this paper shows our spirituality has been taken away and replaced by the literal teachings of symbolic writings.


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