More on Daniel’s Abominations

In the Olivet Discourse (Mark 13:1–27), Jesus spoke about the Temple’s destruction. His disciples asked two questions about it: when would “these things” happen and what would be their sign (Mark 13:3–4). 

Jesus grouped his signs. The first group would not be signs of the Temple’s end (Mark 13:5–8). The second group would directly affect the disciples (Mark 13:9–13).

Jesus’s third group of signs would precede the Temple’s fall (Mark 13:14–23). These tribulation signs (Mark 13:19¹) included Daniel’s abomination of desolation. Jesus said,

So when you see the ‘abomination of desolation,’ spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. (Mark 13:14)

Our last post showed Daniel mentioned this abomination in two passages, Dan 9:26–27 and Dan 12:11. Jesus said the Temple’s fall would fulfill these prophecies.

Inmillennialism uses Mark 13:14 to interpret Dan 9:26–27 and Dan 12:10–11. This accords with a principle we mentioned in our Let’s Start Building a Prophetic Model post. We “should recognize the priority of prophecies and explanations found in the New Testament.” P. W. L. Walker agrees: “Biblical theology requires that the Old Testament material be interpreted through the prism of the New.”²

This post lists some results of this approach. We will provide the text of Scripture in italics, followed by our comments. Other legitimate explanations exist, but these confirm our thesis—the Olivet Discourse is about the Temple’s destruction, nothing else.

Daniel 9:26–27

“And after the sixty-two weeks.” Here, a “week” is seven years (cf. Gen 29:27-30). Daniel’s vision contains 70 weeks or 490 years. This period began when Israel was in Babylonian exile with the “command to restore and build Jerusalem” (Dan 9:25).³

The Jews built the Second Temple during the first 7 weeks (or, 49 years). Sixty-two weeks later (i.e., after 434 more years), “Messiah the Prince”—Jesus—began his public ministry (cf. Mark 1:9–11).

“Messiah shall be cut off, but not for Himself.” This refers to Jesus’s death on the cross during the seventieth week. He died not for himself, but to save “His people from their sins” (Matt 1:21). This happened in AD 30.⁴

“The people of the prince who is to come.” This prince is “Messiah the Prince” (i.e., Jesus; Dan 9:25). “His people” would destroy Jerusalem and the Temple. 

Jesus used this imagery in one of his parables. He said, “when the king heard about it, he was furious. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city” (Matt 22:7). These (Roman) armies would execute the Messiah’s judgment on Jerusalem.

“Till the end of the war.” That is, until the end of the Jewish wars that preceded the Temple’s fall, a period of 3-1/2 years (AD 66–70).

“Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering.” Dan 9:27 is parallel to Dan 9:26. Both describe Daniel’s seventieth week. In Dan 9:26 “Messiah shall be cut off” after the sixty-ninth week.⁵ In Dan 9:27 he brings an end to sacrifice and offering “in the middle of the [seventieth] week.”

Jesus offered himself as “one sacrifice for sins forever” (Heb 10:12) in the middle of Daniel’s seventieth week. Paul reasoned, “Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin” (Heb 10:18). The Temple and its sacrifices continued after Jesus’s crucifixion but that event determined their end.

“The final statement of v.27—‘And on the wing [of the temple] he will set up an abomination that causes desolation, until the end that is decreed is poured out on him’—is difficult.”⁶ This is true for all prophetic models. We will not attempt an explanation here.

Daniel 12:10–11

James Farquharson says Dan 11:31–12:13 is a prophecy of continuous historical events. Their fulfillment began when Antiochus Epiphanes took possession of Jerusalem (ca. 167 BC) and ended with the Jewish Wars (AD 66–70).⁷

This agrees with Jesus’s statement that the “abomination of desolation” (Dan 12:11) would come when the Temple fell (Mark 13:14). Farquharson says Jesus took “his quotation from Daniel 12:10–11.”⁸ We will confine our remarks to those two verses, remembering the context in which Jesus placed them.

“Many shall be purified, made white, and refined.” God purifies his saints through tribulation. Daniel said as much about the abomination of desolation under Antiochus: “some of those of understanding shall fall, to refine them, purify them, and make them white, until the time of the end; because it is still for the appointed time” (Dan 11:35).

In the tribulation about which Jesus spoke, an added dimension would exist. Inmillennialism says “the great tribulation” of Rev 7:14 is identical to the “tribulation” of Mark 13:19.⁹ In the former, “one of the elders” says “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 7:13–14). The tribulation in the Olivet Discourse would effect purification only in those who possessed the white robes of Christ’s righteousness.

“But the wicked shall do wickedly; and none of the wicked shall understand, but the wise shall understand.” Jesus called the apostate Jews of his day sons of the devil (John 8:44). They did not understand what God was doing through Christ. Paul said, “none of the rulers of this [Mosaic] age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8). “The wise” were those to whom the Son had revealed the Father and his purposes (cf. Matt 11:27). 

“And from the time that the daily sacrifice is taken away, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there shall be one thousand two hundred and ninety days.” Farquharson makes an important point about the relationship between the abomination and the cessation of the daily sacrifice:

There is nothing whatever in the verbs of the sentence to indicate which of the events should precede the other.—The interval of time between them only is expressed.—The terms are literally, “And from the time the daily sacrifice is caused to be taken away, and to the setting up the abomination of desolation, a thousand two hundred and ninety days.”¹⁰

The abominable Roman legions entered the holy land to suppress the Jewish rebellion in AD 66. The daily sacrifice ceased 3-1/2 years later when the Temple fell in AD 70.

Conclusion

Jesus linked the abomination of desolation in these two passages to the destruction of the Second Temple. The above analysis shows this connection satisfactorily explains them. They do not require us to expand the subject of the Olivet Discourse beyond the Temple’s demise or past Jesus’s generation. To that extent, these passages confirm our prophetic model (inmillennialism).

1. The KJV has “affliction.”
2. Peter W. L. Walker, Jesus and the Holy City: New Testament Perspectives on Jerusalem (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 309.
3. The image in this post is Daniel and Cyrus before the Idol Bel by Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn (1606 – 1669). This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).
4. A. T. Robertson, A Harmony of the Gospels for Students of the Life of Christ (New York: Harper, 1922), 159.
5. The 7 weeks of Dan 9:24 plus the 62 weeks of Dan 9:26.
6. Gleason L. Archer, Jr., “Daniel,” in Daniel–Minor Prophets, vol. 7 of The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, ed. Frank E. Gaebelein (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 117–18.
7. For a tabular summary, see James Farquharson, A New Illustration of the Latter Part of Daniel’s Last Vision and Prophecy (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1838), 222–31.
8. Farquharson, Daniel’s Last Prophecy, 53.
9. For discussion, see our previous post Jesus the Seal Breaker.
10. Farquharson, Daniel’s Last Prophecy, 199.