When you see the abomination that causes desolation standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. (Mark 13:14)
Many manuscripts actually have here right after the term "abomination of desolation," the phrase "spoken of by Daniel the prophet." That corresponds exactly with what Jesus says in St. Matthew 24:15. Daniel speaks of this abomination in several verses (Daniel 9:27, 11:31, 12: 11). What's clear is that there is a setting up of something that is an abomination. There is then the desolation or emptiness. What is it that Daniel is talking about? You get help from the Apocrypha; it fills you in on what happens after the last of the prophets wrote and before the New Testament opens. Particularly in the books Maccabees as they account the struggles of the remnant of the Jewish faithful against the tyranny of the king Antiochus Epiphanes ( 1 Maccabees 1:41-50).
Additionally, we learn a bit more from (2 Maccabees 6:1-6). An image of Jupiter Olympus, that is, Zeus, was set up in the Temple itself. That is probably the abomination, and the desolation was the forbidding of the Jews to practice according to the Law of Moses. By the way, the commemoration of the eventual defeat of that wicked king and sequent cleansing or dedication of the Temple is the feast called Hanukkah, which you can find reference in the New Testament in John 10:22.
Antiochus Epiphanes' desecration of the Temple took place 167 B.C., so more than 150 years before Jesus speaks the words of today's reading, but did you notice that Jesus put the reference not in the past but in the future as something that His disciples will see, "when you see." That suggests that what was foretold by Daniel was only partially fulfilled in the horrible oppression of the wicked King Antiochus Epiphanes; he becomes a picture of what is usually called AntiChrist. There would be a redo of this whole mess in the future, and as prophecies tend to work, the future one will be bigger and worst than the fulfillment in the time of the Maccabees.
"Flee to the mountains..." Interestingly this had a fulfillment when the Romans surrounded the city in 70 A.D., then withdrew for just a short time, so they had a little reprieve during which the Christians in Jerusalem remembered Jesus' words and hightailed out of the city before the Romans came back and finished it off. You read about that in Eusebius Ecclesiastical History chapter 3, paragraph 5, verse 30. But if Daniel's prophecy wasn't exhausted by the time of the Maccabees, is it exhausted by the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.? Might it have further fulfillment at the time of the end - the time of the Antichrist?
The unknown writer of the Opus Imperfectum from the fifth century clearly thought so. "What shall we say then? All these things have to be understood spiritually in this manner:' Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains and 'So when you see the desolating sacrilege... standing in the holy place.' That is to say, when you see a godless heresy, which is the army of the Antichrist, standing in the holy place of the church...that is, let those who are in Christianity hasten to the Scriptures... there can be no other test of true Christianity or any other refuge of Christians who want to know the truth of the faith than divine Scriptures."
Already in those early days, this writer was convinced that the final application would be for Christians in the time of the army of the Antichrist. Those words of the Opus Imperfectum would be remembered by those troubled by the rise of the Papacy and his teachings. Martin Chemnitz, the great sixteenth theologian, cited these very works at a time when heresy had gotten established in the outward church. The Scripture provided the only sure and safe refuge for Christians in the sixteenth century and of every century!
-Pr. Will Weedon
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