The apocryphal books of 1 and 2 Maccabees strongly depict the time of Antiochus and the Jews’ zealous resistance to his harsh and sacrilegious tyranny. He butchered countless thousands of Jewish men, sold much of their better halves and children into slavery, and tried to entirely eliminate the Jewish religious beliefs. He desecrated the Temple by sacrificing a pig, the most ceremonially unclean of all animals, on the altar and forcing the priests to consume its flesh. He then established in the Temple an idol of Zeus, the pagan deity he fancied himself as manifesting. That dreadful defilement by Antiochus was a sneak peek of the even greater abomination of desolation to be devoted by the Antichrist in the end time.
Abomination represents an object of disgust, repulsion, and abhorrence. In Scripture it is utilized mainly to signify things connected with idolatry and gross ungodliness. The Hebrew equivalent was typically used of rites and paraphernalia associated with the wicked conduct of pagan religions. In the book of Revelation it is utilized to represent the immoralities and spiritual uncleanness of the false religious system known as “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots. In the new paradise and brand-new earth there will be absolutely nothing dirty and nobody who practices abominations and lying.
The notion all people are equal is one to which any affordable individual will provide psychological assent. However when we understand that Jesus has actually taken away our pity, and that because of this we have nothing left to conceal, absolutely nothing left to fear, and nothing left to prove, we really own the concept that every person is equivalent. To the degree we’re able to internalize the liberty Jesus has secured for us, our energies move from preoccupation with self to preoccupation with the appeal of God and the thriving of our neighbor.
Now we pertain to the statement that “on the wing of detestable things, or abominations, comes one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate. In the past, You have actually taken the wing as a reference to the eagle, and therefore collectively to Edom and Rome, both of whom are represented by the eagle in the Old Testament. The Romans and Idumeans together managed to ruin the Temple. The Idumeans (Edomites) invaded the Temple and filled it with human blood. The Romans sacked it. You understood the last expressions of the verse to be saying that in time the Romans would also be ruined.
False worship is idolatrous worship. When the Jews rejected Jesus and kept offering sacrifices, they were participated in idolatry. This was the “wing of abominations” that happened in the Temple. It is why the Temple was ultimately destroyed. The particular desecration that occurred was the massacre of converted Jews that occurred just before A.D. 70, as prophesied in the book of Revelation. It was the blood of those saints that Jerusalem was made to drink to her own destruction.
With this in mind, though, it certainly appears that the simple presence of wicked Edomites and Zealots in the Temple is not enough. We need to have a cessation of true sacrifices and an implementation of counterfeit ones. And naturally, that is precisely what occurred in the New Covenant. With the death of Christ, the sacrificial system came to an end. Any blood sacrifices provided after the cross were possible abominations.
Antiochus Epiphanes set up an idol in the Temple to be worshiped by the Jews, however the Antichrist will set himself up as God and need worship from all mankind. He will end all sacrifice in the Temple and devote the abomination that makes the holy place desecrated and desolate, a location entirely detestable to Jews.
