I am using them in a manner consistent with the whole of scripture and not using Daniel (or any other text) selectively. Desolation is a term and concept first spoken of in Genesis 1. It's mentioned 150 times in the Bible! The first abominations in scripture are not explicitly labeled in scripture but that does not change the fact they are abominable. Desolation, for example, is abominable; it is an abomination. We find the first abomination mentioned is found in Exodus and its mention is paradoxical. The next one is that of homosexual sex (in Leviticus). There are about four dozen mentions of abomination using that specific term in the Bible and twice that many using synonyms like "detestable" (our English translations do not always translate the Hebrew "
toebah" identically, and the same holds true of the Greek "
bdelygma").
Daniel's use of the terms does not stand in isolation apart from the whole of scripture. Anyone who thinks it does must first justify that position, not assume it.
So the better questions are,
Are you assuming the words abomination and desolation are used in a manner completely different from the rest of scripture?
If so, how was that view reached given the fact the theme of desolation runs through scripture literally from beginning to end?
Where did you first learn to do that?
Because using two verses in Daniel uniquely is not exegetical. Especially in neglect of how the newer revelation informs the older one.
Let me encourage you to watch and listen for something: the use of the Old Testament in neglect of what the New Testament says about those very same verses. You'll find it happen in nearly every thread in the Prophecy and Eschatology board. You'll hear it in many a radio teaching on Christian radio, and in the pulpit of Dispensational congregations Sunday mornings. Listen for it.
Why?
Because Christians are not Jews!
Those who teach Christian eschatology
only from the Old Testament and those who emphasize the Old over the New are committing a form of Judaization. Not sure I mentioned this earlier in this thread because it's come up in other threads, but this method of handling scripture started with John Darby in the early to mid-1800s. No other eschatological view separates the OT from the NT, Israel from the Church, or thinks Israel relevant to Christian eschatology. Dispensationalism stands alone in this practice. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum there is Replacement Theology (so don't confuse my posts with that pov
).
If we were to read the two mentions in Daniel of "
the abomination of desolation," literally we would conclude it is the desolation that is the abomination.
That is what a
literal reading of Daniel 11:31 and 12:11 actually
state. I mention this because one of the core principles of the Dispensationalist hermeneutic is the literal reading of scripture. The problem is Dispensationalist are generally very consistent with their own hermeneutic. If they were they read Daniel to say the desolation is the abomination. Every time God declares something desolate He is also saying that event or that condition is abominable, hated, cursed, loathed, etc. When Jesus mentions the pending abomination of desolation he;s already declared the "house" desolate. Now, a reader of that passage can consider the "house" the temple, or the "house" to be the larger "house" of Israel. Both were desolate by Matthew 21-26.
Yes, Matthew 21 through 26.
Matthew 24 does not exist in a vacuum. Matthew 24 is just one part of a much longer narrative covering about five chapters where Matthew records the events of a single day. The day began after the day Jesus cleaned out the temple. He returned to teach and was repeatedly accosted by the Jewish leaders, first the Sadducees, then the Pharisees, alternating back and forth until he indicts the Pharisees in chapter 23. At that point he tells them their house is already desolate!
The entire passage is related to the Law of Moses. When a house became infected with mold or otherwise infested, it was to be cleaned out, inspected, and then vacated for seven days. At the end of seven days the house could be re-inhabited if the mold had not returned. Jesus cleaned out the House of God and returned the next day to find it reinfested! It was full of dead men's bones (a reference to the unclean nature of dead bodies). It was
desolate. It would have to be destroyed. And that's where Matthew 24 begins, "
Do you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here will be left upon another, which will not be torn down." And that is exactly what happened.
If you'll also read the chapters leading up to Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem, you'll note the nature of his parables change. They become more about judgment. At the beginning of Matthew he's not so apocalyptic. That changes as he approaches the city of peace. Culturally, the sacrificial sheep were herded in four days before Passover, so it's likely Jesus' entrance had him walking among the sheep being herded into the city. That would add an explanation as to why people put down pam fronds; they didn't want him to soil his feet in sheep dung. They thought he was going to announce his kingdom. Little did they understand he'd be dead by the end of the week.
It was an abomination.
Such was the desolation of Israel.
And the typical response by Dispensationalist leaders is, "Yes, that was a desolate abomination, but it was not THE abomination of desolation."
I will suggest to the readers there is nothing more desolate or more abominable than the sinful unjust rejection and murder of His Son.
Revelation 21:1-27 (
excerpted for space)
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them, and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away." And He who sits on the throne said, "Behold, I am making all things new." ................I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb............. and nothing unclean, and no one who practices abomination and lying, shall ever come into it, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.
Desolation and abomination run through scripture from beginning to end. They do not begin in Daniel. I am not using the words abomination and desolation in a general sense; I am using them as Daniel uses them - in light of whole scripture. It is the Dispensationalist who does not use the words as Daniel did. They proof-text Daniel and ignore all else that God prophetically said about those words.
