Kingdom Come

“When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)...then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh / mortality be saved:” (Matthew 24:15-22)

The abomination of desolation is commonly conceived as a statue, no doubt because it is reported to  “stand” by YHVH’s Savior and to “be set up” by Daniel.

However, Daniel clarifies that living beings – not statues – are “set up”.

“O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour...whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and WHOM he would he set up; and WHOM he would he put down.” (Daniel 5:18-19)

While the False Prophet does put a statue in place of the person, the essential “set up” is understood to mean the more comprehensive and higher abstract meaning “to raise in authority or power;  invest  with  power:  They set the general up as a dictator.” See also Psalm 75:5, Psalm 132:11, Proverbs 8:23, Isaiah 9:11, Daniel 4:17, Hosea 8:3-4.

The scripturally educated disciples knew exactly what Jesus was talking about.

“we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and…we came through the nations…

• ye have seen their abominations…the gods of these nations…
• Lest there should be among you…whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God…go and serve the gods of these nations; saying, [this is how] I shall have peace...
• then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke…the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, ” (Deuteronomy 29:16-21)

The first of the major prophets, Isaiah, really sets in stone the meaning of abominations that cause desolation.

1. “Say ye not, A confederacy...[with pagan nations], 
2. [But rather] Sanctify the LORD of hosts/ armies himself…And he shall be for a sanctuary.” (Isaiah 8:6-14)

And again with Egypt, one of the most powerful empires across centuries:

1. “Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; and stay on horses, and trust in chariots, because they are many; and in horsemen, because they are very strong;
2. but they look not unto the Holy One of Israel, neither seek the LORD!” (Isaiah 31:1-2)

“In the year that [General] Tartan came unto Ashdod [sent by Sargon II the king of Assyria] and fought against Ashdod, and took it…and the the inhabitants of this isle [besieged Jerusalem surrounded by a sea of chaos] shall say in that day,

Behold, / Wow! such – ASHDOD! – is our expectation,”to be delivered from the king of Assyria: and how shall we escape?” (Isaiah 20:1-6)

Ashdod was a stronghold of the ancient Anakim / abominations / demi-god warrior giants. (Joshua 11:22) where they maintained a temple to the Amorite’s god Dagon. (I Sam. 5), the Semitic name for the most ancient Sumerian god Enlil, equivalent to the Western god Zeus / Hebrew Satan.

Get it? Israel had made a political alliance with the notoriously abominable heathen nation! And YHVH’s answer is – NO! Turn around! To me! To me!

“but ye have not looked unto the maker thereof, neither had respect unto him that fashioned it long ago. And in that day did the Lord God of hosts call to weeping, and to mourning, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth: And behold [instead!] joy and gladness, slaying oxen, and killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine: let us eat and drink; for to morrow we shall die…Thus saith the Lord God of hosts, Go, get thee unto this treasurer, even unto Shebna, which is over the house [of God, temple / treasury, and say…

Behold, the LORD…will drive thee from thy station, and from thy state shall he pull thee down. (Isaiah 22)

Get it? This allows us to understand through the common educational process of compare and contrast with Daniel’s description of

1. “from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away,
2. and the abomination that maketh desolate “set up.”

In conformity with the Mosaic code, the precedent set with Manassas, the thundering denouncements made by multiple prophets, and historical validation, the abomination that causes desolation is joining with the foreign leader who establishes a military-religious-political alliance with Israel.

1. Military: “arms shall stand on his part,”
2. Religious: “AND they [Jews] shall pollute the sanctuary of strength” abandoning YHVH of Abraham with an Interfaith Alliance forging a powerful alliance among people of diverse faiths and beliefs to build a resilient, inclusive democracy and fulfill America’s promise of religious freedom and civil rights not just for some, but for all. “AND shall take away the daily sacrifice [to YHVH] and [in its place] they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate,” i.e. a tourist attraction -“My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” (Matthew 21:23)
3. Political: “And the abomination / allied ruler shall do according to HIS will [defying the mutually agreed upon terms of the alliance];

and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods…nor regard any god: for he shall magnify himself above all.

• But in his estate – [the nature of interest that a person has in land or other property, esp in relation to the right of others] – shall he honour the God of forces / strongholds…a god whom his fathers knew not…a strange god, whom he shall acknowledge and increase with glory:
• and he shall cause them / underling gods to rule over many…
• and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time.” (Daniel 11-12:1)

There are multiple historical examples of covenants made between Jewish rulers who forsake YHVH’s covenant for an alliance with the rulers of Daniel’s four prophetic kingdoms.

“king of Babylon, sent letters and a present [bribe, request for alliance] to Hezekiah . And Hezekiah was glad of them, and shewed them [agreed to it]…all the house of his armour, and all that was found in his treasures: there was nothing in his house, nor in all his dominion, that Hezekiah shewed them not [as part of the terms of the alliance].

Then came Isaiah the prophet unto king Hezekiah, and said…Hear the word of the LORD of hosts: Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the LORD.” (Isaiah 39)

Bear in mind that Hezekiah was the most exemplary king in all of ancient Judah, beyond even King David if we take every word literally. So why such harsh judgment on the alliance with Babylon?

Who says it is judgment? As in the case of King David’s sin, there were inevitable consequences in the spirit domain just as with laws of physics. Look back at the original commandment against making a covenant with idolatrous nations in Exodus 23 where the LORD says “Don’t do it!” because “it will surely be a snare unto thee.”

“ye scornful men, that rule this people which is in Jerusalem.

• Because ye have said, We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, it shall not come unto us: for we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves [in a military alliance with a more powerful nation]:
• Therefore…your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand; when the overflowing scourge shall pass through, then ye shall be trodden down by it. For the LORD shall rise up…he shall be wroth…and bring to pass his act, his strange act.” (Isaiah 28:14-21)

The bottom line is simply that two cannot walk together except they be agreed.

• ^“An unjust man is an abomination to the just:
• and he that is upright in the way is abomination to the wicked.” (Proverbs 29:27)

The most familiar cycling of Daniel’s prophecy came to pass in the second century BC under the Greek Seleucids and gives us a solid basis for understanding its future recurrence of “overspreading”, i.e. multiple abominations (Daniel 9:27)

The Seleucids gained supremacy in Palestine through the victories of Antiochus III in the Fifth Syrian [northern] War at the beginning of the second century B.C. The king entrenched his success by showing favor to the Jews for their assistance against his Ptolemaic [southern Egyptian] rivals….[Emphases added here and below.] Those benefactions set the tone for three decades of cordial collaboration between the Seleucid regime and the Jewish nation. Greek poleis [cities] flourished in Palestine, and Jewish intellectuals felt the influence of Hellenic culture. Appointment of the high priest, it appears, was subject to the approval of the Seleucid monarch…

Trouble began…from individual ambitions and family rivalries within the Jewish state…

Jason seized the occasion to aim for the High Priesthood [held by Onias]…shrewdly offered…a promise to increase revenues through higher taxes…

The Jewish leader, who had already changed his given name from Jesus [with its Jewish cultural implications] to Jason [with its Greek cultural implications]…offered…to register the “Antiochenes” in Jerusalem…as the installation of a Greek politeuma of Hellenized Jews within the city of Jerusalem…

The installation of a Greek politeuma, i.e. a government for the administration of civil affairs applicable to the Antiochenes living in Jerusalem, has major implications which is well worth taking our time to understand.

Antioch was founded near the end of the fourth century BC by Seleucus I Nicator, one of Alexander the Great‘s generals…eventually rivaled Alexandria as the chief city of the Near East…the capital of the Seleucid Empire…63 BC, when the Romans took control, making it the seat of the governor of the province of Syria…

It was also the main center of Hellenistic Judaism – ‘”The main religious issue dividing Hellenized Jews from traditional Jews was the application of biblical laws.”

What Jason was offering [as in tithes and offerings] was to transfer the civic duties, such as paying taxes in the form of both money and sacrifices, of the Hellenized Jews from the theocratic Commonwealth of Israel to the Greek ruler.

Menelaus, the envoy sent by Jason with revenues for the king, lusted after supreme power himself. He took a leaf from Jason’s book, promised Antiochus more money than his superior had provided, and won the king’s consent for his own appointment as High Priest. The new appointee was…a sharp break with Jewish tradition…

Menelaus’ tenure as High Priest intensified turmoil and civil upheaval. The new High Priest, we are told, acted in an arbitrary and tyrannical fashion, even expropriating gold plate from the Temple treasury…arranging for Onias’ [rightful high priest overthrown by Jason] assassination…through the connivance of…one of the king’s chief ministers…

[Backed by Menelaus] Antiochus marched troops into the holy city, entered the Temple, and carted off priceless treasures to Syria.

A report reached Palestine that Antiochus had been slain in battle, thus inspiring dissidents to grasp at opportunity. Jason returned from exile, crossing the Jordan with a thousand men, and attacked Jerusalem…wreaked vengeance for his setbacks by conducting murderous purges of his fellow citizens…

Antiochus…returned to Jerusalem in a fury, ordering his soldiers to conduct a massacre in the city, the outcome of which, according to II Maccabees, was the death of 40,000 Jews and a like number sold into slavery. His authority was to be established unambiguously and ruthlessly…

Some time in 167 he dispatched…a force of 22,000 men, to terrorize the populace of Jerusalem. His orders, according to II Maccabees, were to massacre all adult males and sell women and children into slavery…launched an attack on the Sabbath when unsuspecting crowds had gathered on his invitation to review a military parade. Numerous innocent citizens were slain, the city ransacked, and parts of it se on fire…succeeded by a more permanent presence. Seleucid forces occupied a citadel, the Akra and installed there a military colony, an “abode of aliens” according to I Maccabees, a place for “a sinful race and lawless men.”

The garrison expanded with the addition of renegade Jews, the “Antiochenes” enrolled by Jason as citizens of the polis or politeuma a few years earlier; and foreign settlers, the “people of a foreign god”. The Akra would serve as a rampart of Seleucid strength in Jerusalem for the next quarter of a century. Dissident Jews took the only recourse remaining to them: flight, escape to the desert and mountains, and preparations for guerilla resistance.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes now readied his most extreme measures. To the shock and consternation of the Jews, Antiochus seemed determined to stamp out their religion itself. Antiochus directed subsequent measures quite specifically at Jewish practices, in damaging and disastrous fashion. He forbade burnt offerings, sacrifices, and libations in the Temple; he ordered the erection of altars, shrines, and images, the sacrifice of pigs and other impure animals, the elimination of circumcision, the burning of the Torah, and a range of activities that would require violation of Jewish practices and profanation of religious life. The dictates applied not just to Jerusalem but to the towns of Judaea generally, and evidently also to Samaria. Disobedience brought the death penalty.

His agents entered the Temple, defiled it with illicit intercourse, piled unclean offerings upon the altar, and compelled Jews to eat pagan sacrificial victims and to parade with wreaths of ivy at Dionysiac festivals. The Temple itself was now rededicated to Zeus Olympios and the sanctuary at Mount Gerizim to Zeus Xenios….the introduction of a pagan altar into the Temple at Jerusalem…the first sacrifice of a pig on that altar, an act of unspeakable desecration for the people of Judaea. There was valiant resistance among many of the citizenry. But the soldiers of Antiochus ruthlessly punished dissent, torturing and executing those who preferred martyrdom to capitulation. The measures of the king were devastating and calamitous.

By now the modern mind should be able to grasp that

• the abomination that makes the city of Jerusalem and the land of Israel desolate
• is a false savior from mortal death replacing the true Singularity source of Eternal Life in the Resurrection of the Dead.

For certain, the minds of Jesus’ apostles were fixated on their recent history of the Maccabees when Jesus reiterated them to his disciples.

“And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.” (Luke 21:20-21)

The following excerpt is from an excellent hermeneutical deduction of “the abomination of desolation” as being the army, i.e. “the people of the prince that shall come” (Daniel 9:26).

Mark 13:14 and Luke 21:20-21 record Jesus’ words during the Olivet discourse very similarly. The biggest difference between these two gospels is that instead of saying, “When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong” . . . .” Luke says, “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies . . . .”  Luke appears to be defining the abomination that causes desolation…

Graven images and foreign gods are an abomination according to the Law of Moses.  The spiritual presence of the deity in the idol was expected to ensure martial victory to its devotees.  Through faith in their idols of Zeus, two pagan armies caused the desolation of Israel.  The Greeks were the first to do so in the second century B.C. during the Maccabean Wars.  Then in the first century A.D., the Romans caused even greater havoc during the Jewish War.  The abomination that causes desolation is the Greek and Roman armies with their pagan idols of Zeus and Jupiter on their ensigns that literally caused the desolation of the Holy Land…

The Romans did almost exactly the same thing in A.D. 70!  Upon seizing the Temple, the Romans set up their ensigns on the eastern gate and offered sacrifices to them (Wars 6.6.1).  The main ensign was Aquila, the eagle that carries ZEUS’ lightning bolt.  Here we see a veritable idol of Zeus like that erected 200 years earlier by the Greek army in the Jewish Temple during the Maccabean Wars.

Jerusalem is often called the “holy city” (Daniel 9:24, Matthew 4:5 and Revelation 11:2)…The Roman army surrounded Jerusalem three times during Israel’s first century war with Rome.

In Iyyar A.D. 66, Gessius Florus entered Jerusalem with the Roman army and killed almost four thousand people in the city.  Later that year Cestius surrounded Jerusalem with the 12^th Legion. The third time the Roman army encompassed Jerusalem was in A.D. 70 under the command of Caesar Titus.

The presence of the Roman army outside of Jerusalem…was Jesus’ sign to His people to quickly flee the city in fulfillment of Luke 21:20-21.  The massacre that ensued in A.D. 66 in the Upper Marketplace immediately after the Roman army entered the city explains why.  Similarly Cestius’ arrival to and abrupt departure from Jerusalem later that year preceded a violent civil war in the city.  In both occasions those who failed to quickly leave Jerusalem after seeing these armies put their lives in great risk…

Thus in both Matthew 24:15 and Luke 21:20-21 Jesus tells His people to flee to the mountains when they first see the Romans.  

And this is exactly what they did. As Roman armies gathered to besiege Jerusalem, believers in both Daniel’s and Jesus’ prophecies were able to escape.

The false pair of messiahs detailed in the post The Vile King – one leading the army and one leading religious empowerment –  keeps popping up like Whack-a-Mole.

And he shall plant the tabernacles / military bivouacs of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain (Daniel 11:45)

Mr. Trump decided to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem because he likes to keep campaign promises made to his base…

That included right-wing American Jews whose message was amplified by the conservative orthodox Jews dominating Mr. Trump’s inner circle.

It also included evangelicals whose voice was amplified by the devout Christian in the White House, Vice-President Mike Pence. “God decided Jerusalem was the capital of Israel more than 3,000 years ago during the time of King David,” I was told by Dallas evangelical pastor Robert Jeffress, who cited Biblical history. He and another leading voice in the pro-Israel part of the Christian world delivered prayers at the opening ceremony.