35. The Abomination Of Desolation (End-Times Series Part 16)

Welcome to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 35, the abomination of desolation. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today, we're going to be talking about the abomination of desolation.

And we'll begin with the calm before the Olivet storm. As the sun was setting lazily in the Western sky, the disciples were setting up camp atop the Mount of Olives, which overlooked the city to the east.

With the tumultuous events of the day still ricocheting in their minds, none of them felt at peace, and all of them had a lot more questions than they had answers. Not one of them, however, involved a future temple, an important point for us to remember.

Jesus’ Judgment on Jerusalem in the Olivet Discourse

You see, it was earlier that morning that Jesus went toe to toe with the Jewish elite in the city. He rode in as true king on a donkey, and they rejected him, Matthew 21, one through 10. Immediately after this spectacle, he defiantly cleansed the leprous temple as true priest, whom they would soon be sacrificing on a Roman altar, Matthew 21, 12 through 17.

Before this happened, he took up the mantle also of true prophet, issuing three scathing parables of judgment, two humiliating rebukes to their lunacy, and seven woeful covenantal curses upon that city, all signaling the imminent demise of Judah, Matthew 21, eight through 23, 39.

By these events, Jesus had more than certainly added jet fuel to the homicidal fires that were already smoldering against him in the city. Soon, the feckless Jewish aristocrats would succeed in butchering their creator and covenant God.

Yet, by inflicting such malice upon God's beloved son, that generation unwittingly sealed its doom, Matthew 23, 35, and Matthew 24, 34. Its temple, which was supposed to be the place where man and God came together to meet, was put under demolition order by the king of kings, and it would soon be reduced to rubble, Matthew 24, one through two.

But now, atop the Mount of Olives, as the ephemeral rays of sunlight began dissipating amid their campsite, the time had finally come for the disciples to ask Jesus the biggest questions that they had asked him to date.

Jesus, the disciples asked, when will these things be? That was question one. The second question, what will be the sign that your judgment against Jerusalem is drawing near? And then third, when will the end of the age be?

As Jesus turned to see the last remaining photons of light dancing upon Herod's magnificent temple, I can imagine that tears formed in his eyes as he began to answer their questions. When will these things be?

Looking right at them, Jesus told them that a 40-year period had been set apart for the destruction of Jerusalem, and that there would be many signs and much evidence that would accompany that moment.

Matthew 24, 34 tells us that all of it would happen within a single generation. For instance, he told them that in that 40-year period, false messiahs were going to lead many people astray, and they were going to promise that they would untangle the people of Israel from Roman oppression, and that the disciples must not be deceived and follow after them lest they follow them to their ruin.

He told them that the Roman Empire, which was known for its Pax Romana, which means the peace of Rome, is going to experience a heightened period of instability through an uptick in wars and rumors of wars that are going to shake the foundation of the entire geopolitical landscape in the known world.

He also alerted them that the physical earth was going to begin shaking with earthquakes and famines, which were going to descend upon the empire, signaling that spiritually significant seismic shiftings were afoot as the old world lurched away from Jerusalem, being the center of Yahwistic worship, to Christ being the only way, the only truth, and the only pathway for life.

As these signs were happening, Jesus promised, that persecutions and tribulations are going to be ratcheted up against the fledgling church, who loved Jesus even to the point of death. In the same way that a rabid dog attacks most furiously in the moments before a mercy-filled bullet enters its brains, so the Jews, led by various zealot factions, would lash out tirelessly in their final hours, beating, maiming, and even executing Christians all throughout the Roman world for sport.

And while, in their staggering confusion, the Jews, believing that they were actually doing the will of God, God mercifully put them down for their extreme lawlessness and their hatred of love. Yet, even while it seemed that the entire world was gonna be set against the earliest church, Jesus also promised that the gospel was gonna have a tremendous effect during those 40 turbulent years.

He predicted, as Judah furiously protested like a king mackerel on the line, that the gospel was gonna be preached in all the known world, Greek word oikomene, which was an allusion to the Roman Empire at that time.

And, as we saw in the preceding weeks, this was fulfilled by the late 50s and early 60s AD, as Paul tells us, that the gospel was preached to every creature under heaven, and it was having the same effect in all the known world as it was in the church at Rome.

This is Colossians 1, 6 and 23, Romans 10, 16, and 18, Romans 16, 25 through 26. Now, Jesus told them that all of these signs are gonna begin occurring before the end was finally upon them, just like labor pains sort of set about the eventual delivery in motion, although it's going to be hours and hours before the delivery occurs.

In the same way, these signs were labor pains pointing to the future fulfillment of it all, and today we're gonna begin moving out of that initial phase of the labor, and we're gonna be moving into that final phase where we see the city being crushed.

When Jesus says, therefore, in Matthew 24, 15, he is narrowing his prophetic timeline to the events that would happen immediately before the city of Jerusalem falls to the Romans, which will basically push us forward to the year 68 AD.

This is what Jesus said. Therefore, in light of all of the signs that I've just mentioned, when you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of through the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place, then let the reader understand, Matthew 24, 15.

Why a Future Temple Is Not Required

Part two, Dispensationalism's New Technicolor Temple. Now, I wanna begin this section with a little bit of snark. Imagine, as insurmountable evidence for a first-century fulfillment has been steadily stacked up as high as heaven throughout this series that we've been going through, I can imagine that the balking futurist will nimbly look right past the colossus that's towering over his head and retort something like this, wait just a minute.

How do you think the temple is gonna be rendered desolate, Kendall, if it's no longer in existence? Can you tell me that? And then, with the kind of twinkle in their eye normally found among a starving predator chasing down some maimed gazelle in the Serengeti, the dispensationalist, I imagine, lunges forward, clearly on the attack, saying something like this.

Clearly, Jesus is talking to you and I about a future Antichrist who's gonna rise upon the world stage, and he's gonna take back, or he's gonna turn his back on this newly reconstituted Israel, and he's gonna say something about 1948 and how the Antichrist is gonna pollute this newly rebuilt temple with abominations that's gonna cause it to be rendered desolate, and on and on and on he drones until finally he says something like this must be what this passage is saying, as he proudly, not even clearly, veils his smug, self-righteous appearance, and then he concludes his statements by simply saying, clearly, Kendall, you do not know your Bible, and anyone who thinks like you doesn't know their Bible either.

And yet, I know that that was me mocking, but I can actually think of nothing that is more biblically illiterate, more intellectually pathetic, and honestly, just more downright laughable than the exchange that I just hypothesized, and yet, so many people believe this is exactly what Matthew 24's talking about.

And now, I am not mocking any Christian who believes a premillennial view or a dispensational view. That's not my point. My point is teachers and pastors who've studied this topic and teach this crap.

That's what I'm mocking, because that is not what this passage is actually saying. Instead of Jesus answering his disciples' first century questions, the dispensational says that he looked past them in order to answer ours, because somehow our situation is more important than theirs.

Instead of judgment coming upon that generation, which is what Jesus actually said, then it must be some amorphous punishment that's gonna happen in the modern world at some time for some unknown reason.

Because why? Because it just is. Instead of Herod's temple being brought under specific covenantal curses for her specific covenantal trespasses, and then left desolate in a single generation, which is what the text is actually saying, hermeneutical hula hoops must be jostled incoherently around the teacher's gyrating hip flexors to even come close to making Jesus mean a future temple.

The absurdity of that fact, given the mountain of context in favor of a first century view, is about as hard to stomach as dishwater after dinner. Now, to be fair, a new shiny temple is the only possible way that a futurist could ever claim that Matthew 24 applies to the future.

It's essential to their entire theological schema. It is the thread that, if pulled, will turn the entire sweater back into nothing more than a ball of yarn some silly cat will play with. That is precisely why that the dispensationalists will ignore all of the contextual evidence, everything that's in this passage that we have shared that comes right out of the scriptures.

They'll ignore that. That's why that they'll scour the recesses of the interwebs looking for evidence of a temple blueprint or some future construction project that's secretively getting ready to begin at any moment on Reddit.

That's why they will look for all of these various things because they are avoiding the truth of the matter that these things have already occurred. And yet, the absurdity finds even more improbable because even though Israel is its own nation, it has been since 1948, a number that you'll hear often in the dispensational circles, yet the reason that the Jews don't have a temple is because the third holiest religious site in the world's most violent religion is standing defiantly in their way.

And in order for them to believe that the Muslims are going to cede that holy ground is about as improbable dunking a basketball on a 15-foot goal. You'd have to be about as toasted as a Babylonian Belshazzar to not see the writing on this wall.

And that objection, that geopolitical objection that I just brought up, is by far the easiest problem that's standing in their way. Beyond the unassailable issues that are found in the context and beyond even the mere impossible geopolitical situation that's happening in modern-day Israel is the theological issue that is created by hoping for a new temple, since that new temple would entirely invalidate the gospel.

The New Testament tells us that Christ is the final and perfect sacrifice that was offered for our salvation. It tells us that the blood of bulls and goats are not effectual for the cleansing of our sins, and that's why they were only types and shadows that were serving as placeholders that were pointing us to the perfect sacrifice that now we know has come in Christ.

To revert back to such a regressive system of smelling lambs and bulls would be akin to a man divorcing his wife in order to marry the picture of her hanging over his mantle. It would be upon insanity to think that God would so easily nullify the sacrifice of His dearly beloved Son in favor of the blood of smelling livestock and dumb beasts.

It's foolishness at the highest regard. Yet, with all this evidence before us, we must rightly and we must honestly move forward and approach Matthew 24, 15, not expecting that a future temple is gonna be built that's gonna be desolated.

We must approach this as if this has already happened because the evidence has led us there. The context in this chapter has unmistakably led us to the point to where we can see that this is something that is going to happen in that generation, Matthew 24, 34.

To that end, my friends, let us explore what the abomination that causes desolation actually means and let us cite some first century records that prove to us that it's already occurred. But first, let's do some definitions.

According to the Old Testament, an abomination occurs when one of two deviant actions first take place. The first is when something sacred is used in the service of or is dedicated into the worship of an idol.

Then that thing or that action becomes an abomination unto God. You can look at Deuteronomy 7, 25 and Deuteronomy 27, 15 for a couple of examples. Yet, even sometimes when things are offered to the one true God, they may be offered in such an unregulated and disobedient way that God considers them detestable in his sight.

See Leviticus 7, 18, Leviticus 10, Deuteronomy 17, 1 for examples. Thus, an abomination can be right worship offered to the wrong God or wrong worship offered to the true God. Knowing this, we can see exactly what Jesus was prophesying in Matthew chapter 24.

Again, he's not looking forward to a future event and a future temple with a future reconstituted Israel and all of that garbledy gook. He is looking at the temple that is standing right in front of him and he is telling them that it is going to be so defiled that it's going to be left desolate forever.

Now, the question that you and I have to wrestle with is did such an event occur in the first century? But before we get to that, I think we need to understand a little bit about Matthew's gospel being very Jewish because I think that will help us understand what this passage actually means.

Matthew and Luke on the Desolation of Jerusalem

The difference between a Jewish and a Gentile gospel. The least shocking thing that I may say in this broadcast today is that when Jesus spoke to his disciples on the Mount of Olives, he was communicating to them in a very ancient and a very Jewish way.

It only makes sense for a Jewish Messiah whose ministry existed in the ancient world 2 ,000 years ago to think, feel and communicate to a very ancient group of Jews in ways that were profoundly consistent with their ancient Jewish context, am I right?

This would naturally make the meaning of this passage much easier to come by if one were an ancient person or if one were a Jewish person and even better yet, were they both. Therefore, as modern day Gentiles, 2 ,000 years removed from this text and vastly removed from the culture of the Middle East, we have got to be careful so that tremendous confusion does not arise in the gap between our contextual ignorance.

When Jesus delivered this Olivet discourse to his disciples, he employed some of the most richly Jewish language that's found anywhere in the New Testament. This is especially true in the record given by Matthew who is by far the most Jewish of all the gospels.

In that account, Jesus warns his disciples that the holy city and its temple was gonna be left permanently desolate as it had been in the past because of the same kind of defiled worship that was being offered once again.

Jesus is saying that this temple is gonna be defiled a second time because it's already happened in the past for the exact same reasons. Now to make this point abundantly clear, Jesus reminds his disciples of the first Jerusalem temple.

It was built and dedicated long ago by the good King Solomon. That, because of their covenant infidelity, had been burned to the ground by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians in the year 586 BC. According to Daniel, this was not a random event that was perpetrated by happenstance or by some geopolitical bully.

To say it differently, the Jews were not victims of bad circumstances or luck. They were being punished by God for centuries and centuries of covenant rebellion and abominations that had been polluting their temple.

Read Daniel 9, one through 19. As a result of all of this unfaithfulness, the Jews lost their place, they lost their temple, and they lost their nation there in the sixth century BC. That same reality of an invading pagan army that burns down their temple was going to come once again, except this time it would be permanent.

That's what Jesus is saying. Now, we know that this interpretation of Matthew 24 is true for two very important reasons. First, because Jesus alludes to Daniel, who's going through roughly the same thing that the disciples are gonna face, and Daniel tells us why these things are happening.

We're not gonna be able to get into the prophecy of Daniel in the 70 weeks in this episode. This episode's already long enough. We'll get into that in maybe a subsequent episode later, but we know that the first reason that this is true is because Daniel tells us that it is.

The second reason that we know that this interpretation is correct is because our Gentile brother Luke, who wrote the most Gentile-oriented gospel out of all four gospels, says in a very different way than Matthew does, a way that's much easier for us to understand, he says that it's true.

Instead of communicating like a Jew, reminding us that an abomination that causes desolation, book of Daniel, all these things are very Jewish, instead of doing it in that way, Luke blurts out the obvious in his parallel account in the Olivet Discourse by saying this.

When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. Matthew says that it's an abomination that causes desolation. Luke says when you see the armies surrounding Jerusalem, then you'll know that its desolation is near.

In both sense, the Jewish Matthew and the Gentile Luke are saying the same thing. Jerusalem and its temple are gonna be left utterly desolate, but one is saying it in a Jewish way and one is saying it in a Gentile way.

And thank God for Luke, to all of us who are Gentiles, who very clearly understand what it means for a city to be surrounded by armies and war, to burn that city to the ground and make it desolate. That is what Matthew was saying as well, but Luke says it in a way you and I can hear it.

Now, thus far, we've seen that Jesus is predicting this 40-year period of false messiahs, wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, violent persecutions that are all gonna happen to the church, and as these events transpire, he tells us that the gospel is gonna have widespread success.

It's gonna go throughout the Roman world, but even while that gospel's winning, the Jews are gonna become even more lawless and more indignant, and they're gonna begin not only killing Christians, but they're gonna be ripping themselves apart from the inside out, and all of that is gonna climax by this pollution in worship on the altar of God that so permanently destroys and defames and defiles their temple that it's gonna never be rebuilt again.

Again, is there an event like this that happens in the first century that can explain Jesus's prophecy? And in fact, there's not just one, there's four. Final section, and there was four. There are at least four events that could historically qualify as the abomination that causes desolation, and if you remember from above, an abomination can either be an act of authentic worship offered to a strange God, or it can be an act of strange and authentic worship offered to the one true God.

One is in the service of idols, one is idolatrously worshiping God. Both of these examples are in view when Jesus gives us this prophecy. The first is gonna be more of the wrongly worshiping God, and that's the zealot-led abomination.

Zealot, Edomian, Roman, and Jewish Abominations

Now, at the time of Jesus, it's important to understand the politics that were at play so that you can understand how the temple was made desolate. At the time of Jesus, and especially after his resurrection and ascension to heaven, the nation had fallen into a panoply of disparate factions that were really only being held together by a single thread, which was their hatred of Rome.

There was the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the zealots, and there was various other groups that were vying for power. They were vying for authority and control. And basically, after Jesus ascended into heaven, all of these tenuous alliances began to break down as those who were more friendly to Rome, like the Sadducees, were sharply divided with those who wanted freedom, like the zealots, at all costs.

This divide can be really illustrated by those two opposing groups who were in power just before the nation of Judah was reduced to ashes. The first group that I mentioned was the zealots who were sort of the fiery brand of vigilante freedom fighters that were willing to do anything, and I mean anything, even murdering their own countrymen to be free from the tyranny of Rome.

The other group, the Sadducees, were more friendly to Rome. They were in bed with Rome. They had gained their political offices by someone in Rome, and they were using their political connections in order to ensure the peace and stability for the Jewish nation.

The Sadducees considered the zealots to be religious terrorists, while the zealots considered the Sadducees to be traitors and political sellouts, to say the least. And given that kind of political turmoil, civil war was inevitable.

This divide became even more severe while the Roman armies began staging outside the city, or as they were attacking even other cities in Judea. For a season, the Sadducees remained in control of the temple, and they favored a peaceable surrender to Rome in order to save the millions of lives that were in the city from being slaughtered.

Now, this infuriated the zealots, who were more than willing to die and for their own people to die than to live another moment under the rule and tyranny of Rome. Thus, as the battle with Rome inched closer and closer, the civil war between the zealots and the Pharisees erupted inside the city of Jerusalem.

At this point, with the Sadducees basically, according to the zealots, looking like sellouts, the zealots thrashed their way in AD 67 towards the temple mount, murdering anyone who stood in their way, and soon they would execute the high priest himself, take control of the temple, and they would install their own puppet high priest to serve as the head of their newly federated state religion.

If this were not bad enough, and this is absolutely on epic proportions when it comes to temple etiquette, all of these things are abominations, it's reported that they actually did the unthinkable, murdering people inside of the temple building itself, defiling it with their atrocities and with the blood of those who were slain.

And yet it goes even further than that because to seal their destiny, the zealots allowed violent and armed criminals to roam about the temple precinct, apparently protecting their newly acquired territory, even allowing some of the miscreants to venture inside of the most sacred place on earth, the Holy of Holies, which would have been an unthinkable, unconscionable abomination that warranted their utter demise.

Josephus tells us like this, and now when the multitude had gotten together in assembly and every one of them in indignation at these men, that's the zealots seizing upon the sanctuary at their rapine and murders, but they had not yet begun their attacks upon them because they imagined a difficult thing to suppress these zealots.

And Ananus stood in the midst of them, that's the high priest, and casting his eyes frequently at the temple and having a flood of tears in his eyes, he said, certainly it would have been good for me to die before I had seen the house of God filled with so many abominations.

Or these sacred places that ought not to be trodden under the random filled with the feet of these bloodshedding villains. How then can we avoid shedding tears when we see the Roman donations in our temples while we will see of all our own nation taking our spoils and plundering our glorious metropolis and slaughtering our own men from which enormities these Romans themselves would have abstained.

To see those Romans never going beyond the bounds that have been allotted to profane persons, not venturing to break in upon any of our sacred customs, nay, having a horror of their own minds when they view at a distance those sacred walls, while some that have been born in this very country and brought up in our own customs called Jews do walk about in the midst of the holy places at the very time when their hands are still warm with the slaughter of their own countrymen.

Josephus, the Jewish Wars, book four, chapter three, paragraph 10. This is an example of the second kind of abomination that was listed previously, that Jewish born people who believing that they were acting in the service of the one true God seized upon the temple in 68 AD.

They spilled the blood of the priest instead of the sacrificial offerings. They ended the mosaic economy of religion and they cut off the sacrifices. And then they proceeded to fill the temple with all kinds of treachery and villainy for three and a half years as Rome was besieging the city.

Is it any wonder that God was gonna severely punish that nation? Number two, the Edomian abominations. Now, as the zealots were attempting to secure the temple and to squash the rebellion Ananus seemed to be instigating, you can see Jewish Wars four, three, 10 through 11, they, the zealots, sent word to the Edomians to come and help them.

The Edomians were the descendants of Edom. And if you'll remember that the Edomites came from Isaac's son, Esau. Now, this group was normally seen as an enemy to the people of Judah and they had been ever since the wilderness wanderings in the book of Numbers, but they lived just south of Judea and they would have been more than happy to spill Jewish blood for sport.

So when they received the summons from the army of zealots, they themselves mustered an army of about 20 ,000 men who marched quickly to Jerusalem and was greeted by these zealots who were cutting down their own people for sport.

When they got there, the zealots cut down one of their important gates that they were gonna need for protection against the Romans and they welcomed the Edomians in. Now, chaos ensued when that happened.

Nearly 8 ,000 Jews were slaughtered when these 20 ,000 people came into the city. These 8 ,000 people who were loyal to the high priest were killed in the temple courtyard, filling its court with puddles of blood.

The high priest Ananus was also murdered in this bloody battle, as well as any other priestly official who was aligned with him. This most surely fits the criteria for the kind of abomination that Jesus is talking about in Matthew 24.

Since the Edomians were pagans that were not allowed in the temple court, so there you have an abomination already. And with all the atrocities that they committed in the temple precincts, it's no wonder that Josephus says this.

"'But the rage of the Edomians "'was not satiated by those slaughters. "'But now they betook themselves into the city "'and they plundered every house. "'They slew everyone that they met. "'And for the other multitude, "'they esteemed it needless to go on with killing them, "'but they sought for the high priest "'and the generality that went "'with the greatest zeal against them.

"'And as soon as they caught them, "'they slew them. "'And then standing upon their dead bodies "'as a way of jesting, "'upbraided Ananus with his kindness to the people, "'and Jesus," that's a follower of Ananus at that time, "'with his speech made to them from the wall.

"'They proceeded to that degree of impiety "'as to cast away their dead bodies without burial.'". That means they threw away Ananus and this man named Jesus without even a burial. And Josephus says, "'Although the Jews used to take so much care "'of the burial of men, "'that they took down those who were condemned "'and crucified and buried them "'before the going down of the sun, "'I should not mistake if I said "'that the death of Ananus was the beginning "'of the destruction of the city of Jerusalem.

"'And that from this very day forward, "'it may be dated that the overthrow of her wall "'and the ruin of her affairs, "'whereupon they saw their own high priest "'and the procurer of their preservation "'slain amid their city.'".

He was on other accounts also venerable, a very just man. He's talking about Ananus. And besides the grandeur and the nobility and dignity and honor of which he possessed in that office, he had been a lover of a kind of parody, even with regard to the meanest of people.

He was a prodigious lover of liberty and an admirer of democracy and government and did ever prefer the public welfare before his own advantage and preferred peace above all things, for he was thoroughly sensible that the Romans were not going to be able to be conquered.

He also foresaw that of the necessity of a war that would follow any act of rebellion and that unless the Jews made up matters with them very dexterously, they would be destroyed. Josephus even continues, he says, "'I cannot think that it was because God "'had doomed this city to destruction as a polluted city "'and was resolved to purge his sanctuary by fire, "'that he cut off these great defenders "'and well-wishers,' Ananus and Jesus, "'with those that a little before "'had worn the sacred garments "'and had presided over the public worship "'and had been esteemed venerable "'by those who dwelt on the whole habitable earth, "'when they came into our city, "'they were cast out naked "'and they were food for the dogs and the wild beast, "'and I cannot but imagine that virtue itself "'must have groaned at this scene "'and lamented that she was so terribly conquered "'by wickedness, and that was the end of Ananus and Jesus.'".

Josephus, Jewish Wars, Book Four, Chapter Five, Paragraph Two. "'From my perspective, these Edomian-led abominations "'and the slaughter that occurred in the city "'ought to be considered right alongside "'the abominations that were brought on by the zealots, "'since they occurred in the same period of time "'and they concern the same bloody occasion.

"'By filling the temple complex with murder, "'violence, pillaging, and theft, "'and a form of worship that would only be welcome in hell, "'the zealots and the Edomians plunged Judah "'on a collision course for ultimate destruction, "'and that's only the first two abominations.'".

The third, the Roman Abomination. After three and a half years of zealot and Edomian temple travesties, the Romans eventually did break down the outer wall of the city and they fought their way systematically to the temple mount, where the final part of the battle ensued.

By divine providence, the temple was set on fire, causing the remaining zealots to become easy prey for the Roman invaders who murdered them with ease. As the temple was burning and the dead bodies were baking in the noonday sun and off the heat of the fire from the smoldering temple, it seemed clear to everyone that the Romans had accomplished their purpose.

So they did what any pagan would have done in the same situation. They brought in their idolatrous symbols and ensigns and began sacrificing to their pagan deities as an act of thanks for the victory in this battle.

The worst part of this display is that this concentrated act of idolatry was performed in the very same spot where thousands upon thousands of faithful priests had served Yahweh before. This is what Josephus tells us.

And now the Romans, upon the flight of the seditious into the city and upon burning the holy house itself and all of the buildings round about it, brought their ensigns, which are pagan symbols of worship, to the temple and set them over against the eastern gate.

And there they did offer sacrifices to them and there they did make Titus Imperator with the greatest acclamations of joy. Jewish wars, book six, chapter six, paragraph two. This is the kind of abomination where idolatrous symbols are integrated into the worship of God.

That's the first kind of abomination that we talked about before. And in doing this, the Romans not only profaned the holy temple, but they caused it to become desolate, which also fits the description that Jesus gave in Matthew 24.

In truth, this three and a half year period that we've all been examining together today was filled with all kinds of abominations from the very beginning to end. There was the right worship of the wrong God, there was the wrong worship of the right God, there was Edomian, Zealot, and Roman abominations that were filling the temple to the brim so that it needed to be purified, cleansed, and destroyed.

And yet, the fourth abomination is even greater. Number four, the Jewish abomination. Even beyond the deplorable abominations that were committed by the Zealots, the Edomians, and the Romans, the most spiritually significant abomination that was ever committed was the rejection of Jesus Christ by the Jews.

When Christ came and tabernacled among his people and told them the very words of God and performed miracles that only God in the flesh could have done, the Jews had a once in all of history opportunity to fall on their faces and worship their covenant king who had in love visited them in the flesh.

And yet, out of some sort of misconstrued envy for authority and power, a hatred for God, and a concentrated dose of idolatry for their temple, the Jewish establishment rejected Jesus Christ and they set about to murder him, John 11, 42 through 53, and John 11, 19, 15.

When they rejected the resurrected Christ as both their Lord and their God, their sacrificial system immediately, not only became obsolete, but it became repugnant to God. As soon as Christ rose from the dead, I mean as soon as Christ rose from the dead, that old sacrificial system from that moment forward became the epicenter of the most egregious abominations ever committed on earth.

Now I want you to follow my logic here. Why could I say that sacrifices that were commanded in the Bible now became the epicenter of abominations on earth? How did that change happen so quickly? And it's when we remember that all of the Old Testament covenant lambs and goats and bulls were but types and shadows that were pointing to Christ.

And after his resurrection, we must remember that all true worship on earth would be directed at him. He says, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. No one comes to God except through me, not through lambs, not through bulls, not through goats, not through wave offerings and drink offerings and poured out offerings, none of that.

He is the image of the invisible God. If we remember that, then offering up an animal at any time thereafter was not only unwise and unscrupulous, it was flagrant and pure hatred against God. God provided his one and only son to be the end of all sacrifices.

He gave his best, the only perfect man, to atone for all our sin, to prefer the smelly calf over the Savior Christ, is the most extreme kind of idolatry imaginable. It is the equivalent of saying, God, I prefer the dumbest, weakest, lamest substitute that lives in the field, that marches through piles of its own polluted excrement over the radiant son that you have provided.