INTRODUCTION
Who is he? Is he alive today? How will we recognize him? Won’t Jesus come first?
The subject at hand is not exactly new for me. Those who have followed my works online have seen full commentaries on the book of Revelation and Daniel, plus several other smaller works about “last things.” It’s a topic that won’t go away. And why should it? Our life is about eternity, and we are of course curious about the passageway to that place.
Please join me now on this search for deeper understanding of what God has told us in His Word about the man of sin.
“Who cares?” is surely a response to my title on some Christian fronts. My answer is that the Holy Spirit cares. Through Daniel, John, Paul, and the very Son of God, He has given us an answer to the question asked by some of the first disciples. Do you remember the incident? It is recorded in Matthew 24:3. They wanted to know specifically when Jesus would return to them, and what would be the sign of that coming. Jesus gave them a very specific answer. But we have been locked in a traditional interpretation for so long that we are afraid to venture out and listen to what He really said. His response was clear and understandable. And knowing that response is the first step in knowing the “who” behind the “what” that is coming.
We’ll talk about all that later. My point here is to respond to the somewhat lazy attitude of many western Christians to the Word of God. Some of it comes from teachings disseminated by those opposed to the literal meanings of Scripture. For them, antichrist is a force, or a church system, and the question that I raise is preposterous. They believe that narrowing everything down to one man in one short period of time is not an option. But in the end, Scripture reveals such a man and his personal demise in the Lake of Fire (Revelation 19:20). Empires and church systems are not normally thrown into perdition all at once. But men are.
I am not yet quite as old as was Daniel, who was physically overwhelmed when he received the messages we will examine. But even at my age, dealing with the revelations he saw (and we need no new ones, thank you!) is a bit draining. The implications raised by the facts I have discovered are mind-consuming as well as time-consuming. The pictures conjured up because of the staggering truths of our future tend to crowd out lesser thoughts. And this too is an answer to those who would still say, Who cares?
I care, for one. The Spirit told us all in Revelation 13:18, “Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast…” and in Matthew 24:15, “...whoever reads, let him understand.” Wisdom, knowledge, understanding, are not forbidden by Scripture, especially knowledge of His Holy Word. Only a love-less proclamation of that knowledge or an attempt to bring pride and glory to self because of that wisdom are condemned in the Word (I Corinthians 13).
Would so many chapters be devoted to the end-time theme if God meant His people to remain blind and ignorant? No, let’s give to the study of every detail of the Word the same time and energy we might otherwise spend on true vanities, such as sports activities, the media in general, and all else the world has to offer for our distraction. Those who say “Who cares?” need to be asked what their own priorities are.
We’ve all heard it said, “I’m looking for the Christ, not the antichrist!” But, pre-tribulation message notwithstanding, the apostle Paul adamantly affirms that the day of Christ’s revelation will not precede the day of the antichrist’s . Though some may be convinced that somewhere hidden in Paul’s words is the secret knowledge Paul had that Jesus would be stealthily snatching away believers seven years before this revelation, the Scripture is truly silent about such a thing. But even if it were so, can it do harm for us to be diligently searching the Scriptures so that we know when our visitation from above is drawing near? What could possibly be a more important way to spend our free time than in digging into God’s Word and sharing our findings with those around us?
If antichrist is coming, will it not be good to know where He will arise, and where not? What political situation must be in place before he takes power? A little of his background?
In the pages to follow, I have tried to exercise a slavish obedience to the text as it is written, with no apologies. It is the doctoring of texts, the smoothing of them for rational moderns (now called post-moderns, I am told. No matter, it’s the same unbelief) that eventually waters them down altogether and causes seekers to go away empty.
What if the texts mean exactly what they say? For example, what if both Daniel and Matthew saw “the abomination of desolation” happening in the end of time? If we could prove that, would we be looking elsewhere for fulfillment? Following both the writing of Daniel’s prophecy, and the words of Jesus in Matthew 24, something happened in history that Bible scholars mistook as the fulfillment of the prophecy. Today nearly every commentary one reads on these two passages will attest that Daniel’s “abomination” was fulfilled in Antiochus Epiphanes, and that Jesus’ prediction was fulfilled by the Roman general Titus.
Case closed.
But in both cases, the Enemy distracted us from the truth and from the real fulfillment, still in our future. We were swayed by “history”. This has happened many times since. People see a rising candidate for “Babylon” or “antichrist” and they begin to rework Scripture to make it all fit. And of course it never does, though there are always compelling reasons to believe the new theory. Hitler, Nero, Franco, Caesar, the Pope, Rome in general, and tons more have been lifted up as possibilities by persons who failed to read the text as it is written.
What if the Spirit was forever giving clues which true searchers would find as they attempted to solve the mysteries of the ages? What if the pictures painted in Scripture were obvious for the one pursuing Light? What if the Bible is enough after all and the only reason we “need” extra-Biblical facts is for confirmation? Some day there may be many apologies to Jesus for having overlooked the facts He so laboriously presented through at least four men, one of them Himself!
Let us agree here that our method will be to go to the Word first, not history, news, or personality. What saith the Word? That is all that matters! And it is the Word for which we will be held accountable! May God protect us from sharing or receiving anything that is not directly deducible from one of the sixty-six books of the Bible.
Actually this task will be much easier than combing through all of the Bible’s books. We’ll be able to find the entire truth of this antichrist matter in only four of the sixty-six: Matthew, Daniel, Revelation, and II Thessalonians. Better still, of these four books, seven chapters carry the entire message. Fifty plus verses will tell it all! We’ll meander around in a few other places, but the drama unfolds in these few places. The trick will be to keep our eyes open and travel very slowly through this turf.
A little over fifty verses, taken as they are, un-edited, with no desire to please any man, church, or dogmatic system, and no worry about a publisher’s financial concerns… oh my! There is power! There is truth!
Here is the plan. Let’s go to Jesus first, in Matthew (with Luke as a back-up) and listen in on his response to the question posited above by the disciples: When is the end? When will You come? Now, we are to be faithful and productive whatever the answer is to their question, but it is still a fair question, and Jesus gives a very precise answer. In the process, He answers the question posed on the cover of this book.
Jesus leads His hearers to Daniel. Following this lead we will study in detail the definitions of the sign Jesus gives in Matthew 24. By the time we have drunk in Daniel’s visions in chapters 8-12, our mind will be reeling. With Daniel we will be overwhelmed with the truth before us.
This truth will then be corroborated for us by similar visions given to the apostle John in his Revelation, specifically chapters 13 and 17. We will see that we are not dealing with some “Old Testament truth,” but that the same Spirit spoke to both men a complementary message. Daniel and John are one in their proclamation of end-time truth.
Our final expert will be none other than the apostle Paul, obviously a student of Daniel, but also a man who by the Holy Ghost surpassed Daniel and added to the revelation as only a Spirit-filled apostle is allowed to do. We don’t often think of Paul as a “prophet” but we forget that he was caught up to Heaven (II Corinthians 12) and offered an incredible array of revelations, most of which he was not permitted to share with us. He has very important information to add to the antichrist doctrine. He warned his first-century flock about the coming man of sin. How much more should we be heeding the warning?
What will be the sign of Jesus’ coming? When will be the end and the beginning of the end? And what man, before the coming of Jesus, will be at the center of it all?
1. JESUS AND THE "SIGN" OF MATTHEW 24 (LUKE 21)
Let me say it as directly as I can. We have not been told the whole truth about Matthew 24. Scholars have seen historical facts and reached what they considered to be obvious conclusions. But facts cannot be allowed to confuse truth. It was facts that blinded the Israelites as they approached the Promised Land. Ten spies, you recall (Numbers 13) saw one set of “facts”, that the giants were real and would eat them up! Two spies saw facts that differed, through eyes of faith, on the same trip. We must read the Scriptures with eyes like the faithful spies, ever believing God is able to do even the most spectacular things. The truth of Matthew 24 can only sink in if every word of it is allowed to hit us full force, attached to our faith. Let “history” wait. Let men’s theories wait. Let us read it as it is! If you have ever read the conclusions of men about Matthew 24, and went away a bit unsatisfied, the reason is that you were made to understand rather than to believe. Many scholars feel it is their calling to explain away texts that are “too hard”. They do not deserve a following.
To the text.
Jesus pronounced an amazing statement of doom in Matthew 24:2. He claimed that everything in the beautiful temple site around them would be reduced to rubble! Not one stone would be left upon another. The common people must have been a bit annoyed. The religious leaders would use this gloom and doom talk against Him later. But the disciples were given grace to come to Him privately and ask merely when it would all take place.
The Herodian Temple of Jesus’ day had taken decades to complete. Some say it was still under construction during the life of Jesus. It was an awesome structure, and as the text implies, was made of several buildings, not just a place of worship. There were a number of separate courts for a number of separate groups of people. There were porches, and stairways leading everywhere, rooms like our storefronts to be used for shops. There was even attached to this structure an entire fortress to be used by the Roman Governor when he was in town. And there were huge walls surrounding the entire site, one of which still stands…
Were you listening? I just said one of those walls still stands. In plain sight to all of us humans for 20 centuries has been a wall from the days of Herod’s Jerusalem that was not destroyed when the Romans changed the course of Israel’s history in the year 70 A.D. In fact, Rome, it is said, left it there to remind the Jews of what they, the Romans, had accomplished in their war of near annihilation. Now, the Jews like to point out that the standing wall was a sign of God resisting the Romans and letting Israel know that His bond with them was unbroken. Whether your viewpoint is Roman or Jewish, the text before us is in trouble.
Again, Jesus: “Assuredly I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down (Matthew 24:2)."
We are either off to a bad start here or we have stumbled onto something. From the beginning of our search for truth we are being asked to rearrange thinking that has settled in since scholars have convinced us not to look further than their findings. Their findings are that Jesus’ words about the coming destruction were fulfilled in A.D. 70. But they have trouble explaining the sequence of the wording that follows in this chapter. And for sure they cannot deal with a certain “western wall” (sometimes called the wailing wall by those less respectful of Israelite feelings) that nullifies the literal acceptance of Jesus’ words.
Jesus’ words stirred the disciples into thoughts to which they had not often been drawn. All of this destroyed? How could that be? Would it mean the end of the world? The return of the Master? For, though they still had not fully believed He would die and rise again, as witnessed by the difficulty Jesus had in convincing them of such even after He was raised (Luke 24 et al), they had at least picked up the significance of His “long journey” parables (e.g. Matthew 21:33 ff). Somehow Jesus was going to leave them for awhile, then return. That much they knew.
Their question (24:3) showed they were concerned about end time matters. Jesus did not rebuke them for it, but went into significant detail explaining what is surely to come. They asked very clear questions, and Jesus answered them very clearly. Speculation has arisen as to whether they were asking several questions or one question with several parts. But the effect is the same, and Jesus’ answer is the same. He tells them when not to look for Him, but also when to know that His coming, and Jerusalem’s ultimate fall, and the end of the world, are all very near.
The Holy Spirit has seen to it that this discourse was recorded three times, to be sure we would not be unprepared when it was the time for its fulfillment. Let none of us say that these things don’t matter. They do! And we can know when these things will be. We can know the very real sign that will point to the end of all things. We can therefore know also who will be ruling the earth when it is about to go under.
First, Jesus tells us what is not the sign of His coming, and the end of the age (vs. 4-14). Heed the list well, for every so often in your life and mine, someone is going to mention one or more of these signs to you, and glibly add: “Jesus must be coming soon!”
No, these are the negatives. “See that you are not troubled…the end is not yet,” (v.6) and “All these are the beginning of sorrow,” (v. 8). The beginning is not the end.
Here is the list of things that prove nothing, but that will happen down through the years:
• Many will come saying they are Christ.
• There will be actual wars.
• There will be talk about a war starting.
• Nations and kingdoms will rise against each other.
• There will be localized food shortages.
• There will be localized spread of contagious diseases.
• Earthquakes will multiply.
• “You” (beginning with the 12 but on to our time in all of this list) will have trouble.
• “You” will be killed.
• “You” will be hated by all nations for the sake of Jesus.
• “You” will be betrayed by members of the church family.
• False prophets will arise.
• A growing sense of lawlessness, immorality, will be so pervasive as to cause many believers to love Jesus less. (This trait will be the defining characteristic of Paul’s “man of sin,” a leader the world will deserve! II Thessalonians 2.)
• This Gospel will have been preached all over the world.
After this final item, the world is ready for the end. Although many see this last event as the answer of Jesus to the disciples’ original query, I suggest that the preaching of the Gospel everywhere is not as specific a sign as is needed to satisfy those disciples or the ones living in the last days, who want something they can see. They want a “no-doubter,” something that says, “When you experience this, Jesus will be there very soon! These are not backslidden saints, by the way. These are people in love with Jesus, who want to see His face!
The Gospel has been making inroads world-wide for many centuries. It is at its all-time greatest expansion today. The Gospel is on every continent and in every country. But there are cultural groups, some say several hundred, living in those countries that have not a word of Scripture in their native language. Do all qualify as “nations” in the Bible sense? Will Jesus wait until every man, woman, and child has had a chance to hear a word of Scripture in his own language? Is that the requirement? Then what of the millions who have already died without hearing that Word?
Or was Jesus’ statement general on purpose, adding only one more backdrop for the condition of the world when He is about to come? It is true that the world will not end until the Gospel has gone around the world, but that process has taken many hundreds of years, and may take many more. It cannot be a “sign”, for no one knows exactly when it is fulfilled. In fact, is it fulfilled now?
In the next verse, 15, is a statement that is so specific that it far overshadows all that has been said so far. I believe it is the answer the disciples were seeking. It is backed up by Scripture and followed up by an action scenario that leads quickly to the end of the world!
Let me make that last point again. It will change forever your idea about the end times. If you are able to grasp what I am sharing here, you will be able to lay aside human opinions that have for so long governed Matthew 24. The point is this: There is absolutely no textual need for any break between verse 15 and verse 31. That is, the “sign” mentioned in verse 15 kicks off a series of events that leads in a relatively short time to the very revelation of Jesus Christ in the clouds. This is one understanding you will not receive in most other discussions of this passage available today. It sweeps away theories. It frees itself from historical speculation. It ties itself directly to passages in Daniel and Revelation and leads God’s people to see that One Spirit spoke to all. The message is awe-generating, even frightening at times, but not confused.
Do you see it? A signal is given, panic ensues, worldwide trouble follows this, so bad that the time period is shortened by God Himself, more false prophets appear, Jesus comes! Those who see the beginning of this series of events will most likely see its end (Matthew 24:34). Otherwise it could not be considered a sign. If the “abomination” took place in the first century but I live in the twenty-first, why should I think it was signaling anything?
Granted, in A.D. 70, armies did encircle Jerusalem, and the Roman conquerors destroyed almost everything standing. And the Temple was defiled by Caesar’s general Titus. And those in the vicinity panicked and ran, not necessarily because Jesus had told them to (for the unsaved Jewish community had long since written Jesus off) but because that’s what you do when you are met with such a forceful attack. Yes, Jews were protected in neighboring Edom, at Petra, etc. But the rest of chapter 24 did not happen. Jesus did not return to Earth! And the instructions given to us remain intact: “Let him that reads understand.” I think no one was reading about this catastrophe in A.D. 70. But we read. And more and more, we understand. This event has not yet occurred, though the Jews of the first century had a very real dress rehearsal.
I realize that what I am proposing will set predictive prophecy study back many years, and that’s a great idea. Let’s set it back, in fact, to the days when it was first spoken, and read for ourselves what Jesus said!
Let’s continue on with chapter 24 and then go back to verse 15 to answer the key question that arises there: What is the abomination of desolation?
Verses 16-20. Those listening, and especially those reading , are told to get out of town when they see the signal. Yes, there is still some unfinished business to take place in the Jewish community. The fact that A.D. 70 was a “false alarm” does not cancel out the ultimate judgment coming to that part of the world. The Word of God still stands, and it is unfulfilled. Thanks to Him for the many who have gone to Israel to call out a remnant of the Jewish people to salvation. But the great majority of Israelites will not accept Israel’s God until forced to do so.
Yes, Israel will run again on that day. In the midst of the prophecy of this destruction given in Zechariah 12, God says to Israel (v. 12) that they will be asked to look on the One Who was pierced for them. A spirit of supplication will come upon them as they look and are grieved at what they see. While fire rains from Heaven all around them, they will be taken to a place of refuge and exposed to the truth about Messiah. 144,000 such believing Jews are enumerated in Revelation 7:1-8. The woman of Revelation 12, whom we know to be Israel, is taken to a hiding place for three and one half years and nourished miraculously. Here is where they meet Messiah, in my opinion. This would explain why there is still going to be some running in Israel’s future. They will run right into Jesus’ arms.
Needless to say, none of this happened in A.D. 70. The prophecy is not fulfilled.
Verse 21 should have been the “give-away” thought to all of us who lived through the turbulence of the 20th and early 21st centuries. We should have seen that a temporary destruction of Jerusalem by an ancient Roman army was not what Jesus was talking about when he mentioned unprecedented trouble. Never before, never since, says verse 21. No world catastrophe that comes near this one. And yet we can all think of or read of times when the peoples of our world, or even the Jews alone, were in greater trouble than those days of history following Jesus’ stay here. How many people perished in the World Wars? How many Jews in the Holocaust? What about atomic bombs and nuclear warheads?
Jesus saw the chaotic drama of all time taking place. So horrifying, so universal, so devastating that our Sovereign God will step in and shut it all down (v. 23) before every living thing on the planet, including those chosen to enter into Kingdom life, is snuffed out. That was not A.D. 70. Our thinking must change. The sign of Matthew 24:15 points to the end.
Verses 23-25. During the course of this destructive period, which we have not yet entered, more false prophets and Christs arise. Great signs and wonders will occur, orchestrated in part by the religious assistant of the man of sin described in Revelation 13, and alluded to in II Thessalonians 2. People love signs and wonders. Not content with what the Word says, they will have itching ears and listen to anyone who can back up his message with a miracle. In antichrist’s reign there will be miracles a-plenty, and this is how he will keep the world in his grasp.
Verses 26-28. Many will try to say that Jesus has already come, as they did as early as the first century, in Thessalonica. It was this perversion of the truth, an early attempt at a rapture theory, that occasioned the book of II Thessalonians… and thank God for it! Jesus asserts in Matthew that He is not coming back gradually, slowly, casually, or spookily. When He is here, you will know immediately!
Verse 29, coming here as it does, following a lengthy response to his beloved and very curious disciples, ought to stop forever the thought of a pre-tribulation catching away. Is it conceivable to you that Jesus, having been asked what He was asked by disciples, not Jewish rabble, not enemies, would fail to tell His closest friends and allies about a secret coming seven long years before His arrival again to the planet? When they wanted to know about His coming, would He have deliberately passed over the fact that they would not have to run when the others did, that they should not fear false prophets as the others feared, that they should not be bothered about looking up to the heavens as the others when signs in the heavens occur, because they would already be with Him?
Two key words appear in this verse. “Immediately”. After the trouble caused by the abomination of desolation, the “sign” the disciples asked for, no years, months, weeks or days intervene. When that time period, defined by Daniel and John in their visions, is over, immediately it is the end of the age!
And need I say it, “after”. Jesus comes for His own after the tribulation, the world’s great trouble, Jacob’s trouble. What more can Jesus say to our confused church generation than what He already said? No hint of a previous coming. But a clear statement of this one. All the powers of the heavens shaken. Jesus appears. He sends His angels. They sound the last trumpet. They gather His chosen from the four winds. They are caught up! They are raptured! They are spared the judgment that now falls on the planet. But they are not spared the great tribulation.
So there is Matthew 24. How clear it is. How muddled has been our thinking. Oh how much better to take what Jesus says as He says it.
Here now is the sign He spoke in that chapter, verse 15: Read it carefully:
“Therefore when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (whoever reads, let him understand),”
One thing Jesus does not do anywhere in this discourse is tell us what the sign means! Instead, he refers us to the Prophet Daniel. And there we must go, if we are to understand. Daniel spoke no less than four times about the “abomination of desolation”. He approaches the subject several ways, and leads us to some clear conclusions. He also points us to a man in history who actually desecrated the temple in an abominable way. Yet evidence within Daniel and the clear sense of what Jesus is saying tell us that that ancient king has not fulfilled the prophecy of Daniel or Jesus. Not yet.
Jesus says that when we see this abomination, this thing God hates, it will be standing in the holy place. Standing because it is placed there? As in the previews we get in history from Antiochus Epiphanes two centuries before Christ? Or General Titus forty years after Christ? Or standing of his own accord, and sitting too, as Paul reveals in his second letter to Thessalonica, chapter two?
Standing in a place that is holy. No need to conjecture as to what was the holy place to the Jews. Daniel speaks of a Temple. Jesus was standing near the Temple when He spoke these words. Paul says this man will actually be in the Temple of God!
Yes, we know that our bodies and the church of Christ are both referred to as temples in the Bible. But there is no need for such an interpretation when the text cries out to be literally understood. We are talking about a man here, in one historical –yet still prophetic - incident, who sits in a physical space, inside the yet to come Temple of the Jewish people. Many seem not able to believe that God can do the things He seems to be saying. Like, how could there be yet another Temple? Perhaps many asked that when Solomon’s Temple was floored. But a new building came. Actually the plans for such an edifice in our day are already on the table. A quick “Google” search for the “Temple Faithful” will yield more than enough evidence that real live Jewish people are planning a come-back of sacrificial worship just as soon as it is politically possible. Never mind that it will not be “efficacious” or necessary, it is coming.
So the verse says that when we see what Daniel said, it’s time to run. And it closes with an all-important admonition to all Bible-readers. The Spirit of God knew that the words being spoken in that day would be more important to readers than to hearers in the long run, and so made sure that they (readers) got the message: understand! Read it over and over, do your homework, figure out what this means! What is inside will eventually jump out at you. Yes, the Lord knew that the words being spoken that day would be committed to pen, to typewriter, to computer, and that literally billions of people would one day have access to them. It has now reached you. May you have the grace to seek the Lord with all of your strength until you have unlocked fully your future.
Before we follow the Lord’s leading to go back to Daniel, it is necessary that we take a quick visit over to Brother Luke. In his 21st chapter is a parallel passage, presumably spoken at the same time by Jesus. But there is at least one clear difference in the text that might be disturbing to some. Luke heard from the Spirit and/or his Spirit-filled sources some words that Matthew was not led to share with us. Remember, Matthew was there. Luke was not. But we believe both men have given us the Spirit’s message from the lips of Jesus.
In verse 20, having gone through all the same preliminary listings of things that will not be signs that the end is near, Jesus turns to a sign related to the abomination, one that must come before that horrid scene, and one that is similarly mentioned by Daniel. According to Luke, what we will see before fleeing, should we be there on that appointed day, is an army fully surrounding Jerusalem.
Oh my, the armies that have surrounded this city! I imagine Jerusalem holds the record there! Nevertheless it is one part of the sign that the Lord wanted us to have, and fulfils exactly Daniel 8:12, where an army is supplied to the evil ruler to enforce his will. He takes over the city, and then according to Paul, enters the Temple itself. There is no real difference then in the two accounts.
Noting the above truth reminds one to say that Jesus speaks nothing of the identity of a particular man, His archrival. He points us to Daniel for that piece of work. He does not tell us much about background, the times, the political structure of the end times. These pieces are scattered all over the Scriptures, assuring that only the diligent and caring will find them and fit it all together. Unfortunately, the “cares of this life” choke out most of this desire to search the Word for answers. May God change our priorities!
Luke brings out another important piece of information. In the same passage in which Jesus talks of the very end of all things, parallel to Matthew and Mark, Luke quotes Jesus as saying that Jews will once more be led away captive to all nations!
We remember how this happened when Babylonia and Assyria attacked Israel. Surely the Jews have been all over the world since the much later days of Rome too. But Luke says this happens yet again after the signal of the surrounding armies and the following desecration of the Temple. He says further that following the abomination are the days of vengeance when every prophecy about everything is fulfilled (verse 22)! This is the end time.
Will there indeed be time in the few short years that follow before the coming of Jesus for yet another Jewish dispersion? Especially when we have already seen how the remnant Jews, the 144,000, are going to be protected and confronted by Jesus?
I believe that an answer for this question is in Revelation 11:2, where according to John, Jerusalem will be trampled by the Gentiles for three and one half years. It will be a replay of the Assyrian invasion, when that people sent their own citizens to populate Israel while taking Jews to captivity.
Yes, the book of Revelation assigns only three and one half years to the “times of the Gentiles”. We were taught that that period was all the way from A.D. 70 until 1948, when the Jews recaptured Jerusalem. There were indeed some Gentiles there, mostly of Mid-eastern descent. But the Bible seems to be showing us a cosmopolitan urban center where Jews are no longer a threat to world peace. Where Gentiles rule.
I believe that this process will begin a few years earlier when a contract is signed with the Jewish nation, allowing them to have their Temple worship if they will relinquish the city to humanity. Then antichrist will reverse things and finish the process he has begun by eliminating Jews from their own city.
In some of these last things I speculate. But there are some definites I hope we have gleaned from Matthew 24. Let’s review.
• The disciples asked for a specific sign about the end.
• Jesus gave the disciples a specific sign and referred them to the Book of Daniel.
• When the Temple is surrounded and desecrated, the end is near.
• After the “sign” there is unprecedented devastation.
• After the devastation, Jesus comes.
So the key to understanding all these things is to be found in Daniel’s prophecy. This will mean a journey back 500 years before Christ to visit a very old and respected man living as a life-time servant of two Empires, yet prospering in the things of God. Daniel, that is, the Spirit in Daniel, has some very important clues for the solving of this mystery. The journey will be well worth the effort. Prayerfully then we go...
