Lesson Study 19 Copy

“Therefore, when you see the ‘ of desolation’, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (whoever reads, let him understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.”

This phrase “abomination of desolation” is often used in the Old Testament to describe Israel’s sin of bringing the awful practices of pagan worship into God’s holy temple. God’s strongest rebukes and judgments were reserved for these times of inexcusable apostasy. (See Jeremiah 7:28-34 and 2 Kings 21:2-7.) Jesus said Daniel contains prophecies about similar abominations standing in the holy place that result in the temple’s desolation.

“Hear the prayer of Your servant, and his supplications, and for the Lord’s sake cause Your face to shine on Your sanctuary, which is .”

The first abomination of desolation happened in Solomon’s temple in Daniel’s day and is the focus of his prayer in Daniel 9. Additionally, there are two other abominations of desolation predicted in chapters 8-12 in connection with the second and third temples. We begin this lesson by examining the abominations that led to the destruction of Solomon’s temple. We will see that these events become a pattern for the abominations that desolate the second temple in A.D. 70, as well as the last­day temple before Jesus returns.

“Moreover, all the leaders of the priests and the people transgressed more and more, according to all the of the nations, and defiled the house of the Lord… Therefore, He brought against them the king of the Chaldeans, … they burned the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, … to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. As long as she lay , she kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.”

Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel lived during a time of widespread departure from the true faith of God. Religious leaders introduced pagan worship into the temple services. God sent prophets and calamity to bring them to repentance, but they refused all appeals until “there was no remedy” (verse 16). God will do everything to get our attention, but when people continue to reject His compassionate appeals, He is left with only one other option—judgment. The glorious temple built by Solomon and the city were completely destroyed in 586 B.C. by Babylon and the people carried away to foreign lands.

“North of the altar gate, was this of jealousy. . . ‘Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater abominations’… So I went in and saw, and there—every sort of creeping thing, abominable ,… ‘you will see greater abominations’… to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz…’You will see greater abominations than these.’… Twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the toward the east.”

God lists the abominations of paganism that were brought into His church. Each new wickedness is greater, culminating in the most detestable. The first is people bowing before an image. The second is unclean beasts. Third, women weep for Tammuz, a Babylonian god. But the greatest abomination is when men turn their backs on the temple of God to worship the sun in the east.

God’s people had deliberately rejected God’s seventh-day Sabbath to worship the pagan sun god. Jeremiah prophesied that if they did not repent, their city would be destroyed Jeremiah 17:20-27). When they refused to change, Babylon desolated the city “to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. As long as she lay desolate, she kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years” (2 Chronicles 36:21). The abomination above all others that led to the desolation of Solomon’s temple was breaking the seventh-day Sabbath in favor of the pagan sun god.

Remarkably, many of these very same practices came into the Christian Church during the Dark Ages—images, unclean animal foods, non-Scriptural traditions originating in ancient Babylonian worship, and Sunday as a worship day.

“North of the altar gate, was this image of jealousy. . . ‘Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater abominations’… So I went in and saw, and there—every sort of creeping thing, abominable beasts,… ‘you will see greater abominations’… to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz… ‘You will see greater abominations than these.’… Twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun toward the east.”

God lists the abominations of paganism that were brought into His church. Each new wickedness is greater, culminating in the most detestable. The first is people bowing before an image. The second is unclean beasts. Third, women weep for Tammuz, a Babylonian god. But the greatest abomination is when men turn their backs on the temple of God to worship the sun in the east.

God’s people had deliberately rejected God’s seventh-day Sabbath to worship the pagan sun god. Jeremiah prophesied that if they did not repent, their city would be destroyed Jeremiah 17:20-27). When they refused to change, Babylon desolated the city “to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. As long as she lay desolate, she kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years” (2 Chronicles 36:21). The abomination above all others that led to the desolation of Solomon’s temple was breaking the seventh-day Sabbath in favor of the pagan sun god.

Remarkably, many of these very same practices came into the Christian Church during the Dark Ages—images, unclean animal foods, non-Scriptural traditions originating in ancient Babylonian worship, and Sunday as a worship day.

“For they say, ‘The Lord does not us, the Lord has forsaken the land.’”

They thought that God doesn’t care how His people worship. They reasoned that the God of their fathers, with His laws defining worship and lifestyle, had faded off the scene and they were in a new era. This excuse was far from the truth. God was constantly sending prophets and preachers to condemn the paganism that infiltrated His church (2 Chronicles 36:15, 16). But they didn’t want to listen. God eventually got their attention when their city was destroyed, and they were either killed or carried off into Babylonian captivity.

“From the going forth of the command to and build Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince, there shall be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; the street shall be built again.”

No. In fact, Daniel learns in vision the temple will be rebuilt and God will graciously return his people to Jerusalem for another 490 years of probation to decide if they will fulfill the purpose of their existence.

When the Jews returned to Jerusalem, in 457 B.C. in fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy, they rebuilt the temple and city and determined they would never again follow the abominations of the heathen. They began codifying how to faithfully keep the law. Over time these codes became traditions that grew to be more important than the original laws themselves. Jesus condemned them for this, saying, “You have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition” (Matthew 15:1-9). They had swung from the extreme of lax concern to legalism, but the result was the same—they made of no effect God’s commandments.

“And after the sixty-two weeks Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself; and the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end of it shall be with a flood, and till the end of the war are determined.”

The same prophecy that predicted the temple would be rebuilt, also said the Jews would reject Messiah the Prince, who was to come, and again plunge their city and the second temple into ruin by their abominations.

“Your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, and you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the our visitation.”

Jesus wept as His prophetic eye took in the terrible carnage that would result from His people not knowing where they lived on the prophetic timeline—the visit of the Messiah and their last chance to respond to God. “How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate” (Matthew 23:36, 37).

Jesus told them they could know the desolation was near “when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies” (Luke 21:20). When the Roman armies attacked Jerusalem decades later, no Christian who understood prophecy’s timeline lost their life when the temple was leveled in A.D. 70.

“You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an in the sight of God.”

Even though people in Jesus’ day had successfully avoided blatant pagan worship, they still had accepted its basic premise—man can ignore God’s Word and be saved. Jesus called this false worship an abomination. While pretending to be holy, they plotted Jesus’ death for healing a sick man on the Sabbath and for claiming to be equal with God John 5:16- 18). Ironically, the second temple’s desolation is also caused by God’s people desecrating the Sabbath. This time, they do it by killing the Creator and Lord of the Sabbath! (Matthew 12:8, 14).

“You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual , a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices… you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God.”

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it” (Matthew 21:43). This new “holy nation” and “spiritual temple” is the Christian Church made up of Jews and Gentiles. The prophecies for literal Israel were conditional upon their obedience (Jeremiah 18:7-10). God had given them seventy prophetic weeks (490 years) to follow Him, but they refused to obey (Daniel 9:24-26). It was now time for God to move to a nation that would glorify Him. After A.D. 34, the promises for literal Israel have spiritual application to spiritual Israel—Christians (See Galatians 3:27-29). “For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, … but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter” (Romans 2:28, 29) Built upon the foundation of the disciple’s teachings and Jesus, the church “grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:19-22).

“The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls… And on her forehead a name was written: MYSTERY, THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”

By the Dark Ages, the Roman Church had accepted numerous pagan doctrines rooted in ancient Babylonian worship. Noted Catholic author John Henry Newman reveals the origins of many church traditions:

“Constantine, in order to recommend the new religion to the heathen, transferred into it the outward ornaments to which they had been accustomed in their own. The use of temples dedicated to particular saints, incense, lamps, and candles, votive offerings, holy water, processions, sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images, ecclesiastical chant are all of pagan origin and sanctified by their adoption into the church.” John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), p. 373; http://www.newmanreader.org.

Protestant churches also follow many pagan traditions, such as Sunday sacredness, bequeathed to them from Rome. “Martin [Luther] went on to dangerous ground. His underlying principle, apparently, was that we are to keep to no doctrine or practice unless it is found on the face of Scripture. If that is the way we decide what to believe, how to act, then Fundamentalists themselves have problems. They would have, for example, no warrant for holding corporate worship on Sunday instead of Saturday. It was the Catholic Church that changed the day in post-New Testament times. To see how unhelpful the New Testament is, when taken alone, consider the Seventh-day Adventists, who, looking solely at the Bible, say worship should be on Saturday, not Sunday.” Karl Keating, The Usual Suspects: Answering Anti-Catholic Fundamentalists (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), p. 186.

Other abominations include: homosexual priests, pastors, and bishops, the merchandising of the gospel, gay marriages, and teaching that Jesus is not the divine Son of God. These abominations are similar to those that called down the desolations upon God’s people of old. Do we think He has somehow changed and doesn’t view these things in the same light?

“Therefore her will come in one day—death and mourning and famine.”

The seven last plagues fall on spiritual Babylon for its counterfeit worship. God mercifully calls to His people, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues” (verse 4). Just as Jesus’ warning to flee from Jerusalem saved Christians in A.D. 70, God’s call out of Babylon in the last days will save His people from the plagues.