SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/20/2023
8:37 AM
My Worship Time Focus PT-2
“The Abomination of Desolation”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 24:15
Message of the
verse: “Therefore when you see the
abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet,
standing in the holy place (let the reader understand).
I want to finish looking at the sermon that John
MacArthur preached on this subject, but only his introduction to it as I began
looking at that in yesterday’s SD which was all about the review of what we
have been looking at over the past couple of months. I thought that it was important for us to go
over in review what we have been looking at for a while, and then in the next
SD I want to look at what this verse is talking about.
“And
I believe at the end of chapter 23 and the end of this sermon, they
have a greater hope of the kingdom than they’ve
ever had in all their experience with Jesus
because they have seen Him riding into the city to the hallelujahs and
hosannas and blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lords of the crowd, the
kids in the temple had said it to Him the next day, and
now He has cleansed the temple, and
now He talks about tearing it down, and
then He talks about coming in full presence as the Messiah, and they believe, I
think, more than they’ve ever believed it that momentarily
it’s all going to break loose and they
don’t understand that there’ll be a long period of time.
“So in
excitement and anticipation, verse
3. They have now left the temple ground, only
Jesus with the disciples privately, it
says. They’ve gone to the top of the Mount of
Olives on their way back to Bethany where they were
staying with Lazarus and his family. And
He stops at the top of the mount, sits
down and they said to Him: “When shall these things be?” And
you can just sense the fever pitch, the
tremendous anticipation that this has got to
blow right soon because of what they’ve already seen that week. It’s
all coming together. They
saw the forerunner, John the Baptist, then
came the Messiah. He
did the miracles, He
taught, He preached, and now He’s come into the
hallelujahs and hosannas and now He’s cleansed the temple, and
now He talks about ripping down this Idumaean building, and
it must mean the great exalted building of Ezekiel
is going to go up and He’s going to establish His kingdom, and
the people are going to say: “Blessed is He that comes in the name of the
Lord.” And
so they say: “When?” And even later on in Acts 1, they
say: “Is it the time now that You’re going to bring the kingdom?” They
believed it was momentary.
“And not
only do they ask when, but
in verse 3: “What shall be the sign of Thy coming?” The
word “coming” – parousia – means
“presence.” It
isn’t to say they thought He was going away and coming back, it
is to say that they thought He would come in full presence. Parousia is
presence, the
full presence of Messianic glory. What
is the sign of Thy presence and the end of man’s age? What
do we look for? Is
there an angel coming out of heaven with a trumpet? What
is it? Is it a cataclysmic reconstruction of the temple supernaturally? Is
it the knocking down of the temple? What
is it? What is the event that signals Your coming in full presence?
“Now, with
that question, the
Lord then preaches the message concerning His coming. And
He gives them the things to look for, the
signs to look for. And
not to them because they’re long dead, but
to all who will ever read the Scripture. And
starting in verse 4, we
have signs of the second coming. Signs of the second coming.
“Now, I
want to add as a footnote here so you’re not confused, the
Rapture of the church is not discussed in any place in Matthew 24 or
25. That
is not here. We
wait later for a fuller understanding of that. This
is a message given to the context of those Jews about the second coming of
Christ. The
Rapture is a subject that comes up in the epistles. We’ll
deal with that at a later time. In
fact, probably in this study somewhere, we’ll
insert some things about that. But
He is giving them a description of the time of
the second coming and the signs that lead up to it.
“Now, He
starts in verse 4, giving
them a series of general signs that the people
alive at the future time should look forward to. He
doesn’t tell them how far future it is. He
doesn’t tell them because every believer has always lived with a sense of
intimacy –
a sense of immanency, rather,
that Christ could come at any point. So
He doesn’t tell them any time. He just says “signs.”
“Notice,
please, the first sign is deception. Verse
4: “Many will come and deceive.” And
verse 5 says the same thing. The
second sign is dissension, war,
rumors of wars, so forth. Verse 7, nation rising against nation, kingdom
against kingdom. Third,
devastation – famines, earthquakes. The fourth is desecration. Verse
9, they will deliver up the saints. Fifth,
defection – many of them will be offended and
betray one another and hate one another and so forth. And
the final is declaration, verse
14, the worldwide preaching of the gospel of the kingdom.
“So He
says look for deception, dissension,
devastation, desecration, defection, and declaration. Those
are the signs. And
we went through those in detail and I showed you
how they parallel Revelation 6 to 19. None
of these happened in the church age, none
of these happened at the destruction of Jerusalem. From
verse 4 on, there is no discussion of the destruction of Jerusalem. It
is absolutely foreign to this text. And
that’s amazing because I read about 12 commentaries this week, 11
of them fit the destruction of Jerusalem in here somewhere, and
the other one isn’t sure. There
is no reference to the destruction of Jerusalem here in 70 A.D. This is
the future, prior
to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. The
destruction of Jerusalem was a judgment for its own time, for
its own sake, to
the people at that age. It
is not the end of the age, it
is not the sign of the coming of Messiah – that is future.
“So all
these six things mark the end time. And
I showed you the key to that. Verse
8, would you notice it? All
these surrounding verse 8 are the beginning of birth pains. Please,
the word “sorrow” doesn’t
help us to interpret this text if that’s what
it says in your edition of Scripture. It
is birth pains that is the Greek term. And
you remember I said to you, when
do birth pains come, at
the beginning of pregnancy? All
during pregnancy? No,
they come at the very end of pregnancy. And
when the birth pains start coming, you
know birth is near. Jesus
purposely chooses that as birth pains, just
like the prophet of old saw the men, as
it were, in travail, going through the agonies that
would issue in the birth of the kingdom. All
of these events stack up at the very moment of
the coming of the kingdom and they are parallel to
the seals and the trumpets and the bowls of Revelation. And
you remember the seals happen sort of elongated. And
then the trumpets are faster. And
then the bowls are rapid-fire as there is an
increasing frequency and intensity of those final
pains as there is in the birth of a child. So
it’s a graphic picture.
“So all of
these things have nothing to do with the Rapture of the church. They
have nothing to do with the destruction of Jerusalem. They
have to do with the time of the Tribulation and the speeding up of events, painful
events, that bring about the establishing of Messiah’s kingdom. So
He gives them this big picture of general things, but
He knows that’s not really what they’re asking because their question was: What
is the sign? What’s
the one event that says we know this is it
because we might see wars and we might see deceptions
and deceivers and we might see defectors and
we would see the gospel being preached. That
could – we could see that even now today. There
could be a lot of things we see. How
do we know that this is really it? So
He says: “All right, I’m
going to give you one sign that kicks the whole thing off.” And
in verse 15, He says: “When you therefore shall see” –
stop there for a moment. When
you see this – the end of verse 15 – you better understand.
“So He’s
given them some general signs, the
birth pains at the very end of man’s day that result in the birth of the
kingdom. But
He gives them here the trigger that sets the whole thing off. This
is absolutely a fabulous verse. And
we’re not going to get past this verse because it’s so filled with truth. And
we’re not even going to exhaust it this morning, but
it is a key verse in understanding this transition from
what He has said through 14 to what He’s going
to say from 15 to 31 – very, very key.
“Now, when
you who are alive in that day” –
and He uses the prophetic “you” as
we pointed out in our last study. “When
you who are alive in that day see this, you
know you’re in the Tribulation. Here
is the trigger that sets the birth pains of verses 4 to 14 loose on the earth. This
is the key event.”
“You say,
“What is that event?” Look
at it. “When you therefore shall see the abomination
of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand
in the holy place, whosoever
reads, let him understand.” When
you see that, you
can understand. That
is the sign. Now
let’s go back to Daniel 11, and
maybe I’ll get a little further into the insight so
that you’ll understand where we’re going. Now,
in Daniel 11, we meet a very important personality, and
we call him antichrist. He
is called here the willful king, the
king who does his own will, who
does not regard the god of his fathers, the
desire of women nor any god. He
magnifies himself above all – verse 37. In his estate shall be honor, he
honors the god of fortresses, the
god of might, and
so forth. And this is a description of the great antichrist, the
great willful king who does his own will, who
flaunts his dislike and hatred toward the true God and His Christ, and
he sets up his own power and his own strength.
“And what
happens if you put the biblical picture together is, in
Daniel 2 we find that there will be in the end
time a rising of the old Roman Empire. The
final form of the Roman Empire has ten toes. And
it is territorially reconstructed Rome. The
old Roman Empire occupied western Europe and some of eastern Europe as well, of
course, but in the new final form of the Roman Empire
which is crushed by the coming of Messiah, it
shows this big image, the
final form a ten-toed representation of the Roman Empire, which
is smashed by the Messiah who is called “the stone cut out without hands.” So
the Messiah comes and crushes a final ten-nation confederacy, which
is like the old Roman Empire. But
what’s going to happen is, out
of that system – according to Daniel and according to the book of Revelation –
will rise a great leader.
“And this
guy will rise out of that European confederacy and he will become a savior to
Israel. He
is going to be the one who is the protector of Israel. They’re
going to make an alliance with him, as
we’ll see in a little while, for
their own protection against the Arab-Russian alliance, which
will come into a final form as Ezekiel 38 describes it and comes
against them. They
do it for their own protection. He,
by the way, is the one spoken of in Isaiah 10 who
is the one they lean on who smites them. Because
in the midst of that alliance he destroys them. Israel
has made an alliance with this guy. He
is in control. The
powers of the world move into Israel as described in the 11th chapter of
Daniel. It’s
described with detail. At
the time of the end – verse 40 – the king of the south comes, the
king of the north comes, all
these powers come in and then comes tidings out of the east, that
great army from the east. And
in this initial conflagration that happens, the
antichrist and his western power is victorious. But
it’s at that point when he’s made his alliance with Israel, he’s
become Israel’s protector, the
world comes to fight against him, to
fight against and take Israel, in
that battle, he wins – he wins. And when he wins, he
then commits the abomination of desolation as we’ll see in Daniel.”
12/20/2023 8:46 AM
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