All right, would you open your
Bibles to the book of Matthew, chapter 24. And we'll read verses 15 through
18. Matthew 24, 15 through 18. Our Lord here is speaking to
his disciples. It's the last message. We talked about the Last Supper.
Well, this is the last message before he goes to the cross. And it's prophetic about what's going to happen.
And it's been twisted misunderstood and misapplied and understandably
so because like virtually all prophetic passages of scripture
it was not said in such a way that we could pinpoint dates
and we could know exactly what's going to happen But as our Lord
said on another occasion, I tell you these things so that when
they happen, you'll understand. In other words, he gives enough
information in his prophetic utterances that when they do
happen, we go, oh, that's what he meant. And we'll know what's
going on when others don't. For example, everything our Lord
Jesus Christ did on earth, including His crucifixion, was prophesied. It wasn't until after it was
all done that anybody would say, oh, that's what Moses meant,
that's what Isaiah meant, that's what prophetic scriptures do.
But he says here in verse 15 of Matthew 24, when therefore
you shall see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel
the prophet, stand in the holy place, whoever reads, let him
understand. Then let them which be in Judea
flee to the mountains. Let him which is on the housetop
not come down to take anything out of his house. Neither let
him which is in the field return back to take his clothes. Now, all you have to do to get
a large crowd is to advertise that you're going to speak on
the subject of prophecy. Especially if you can relate
it somehow to modern day world events. I grew up in a church
that nothing could happen in Israel that it didn't somehow
or another show up in a message. And they were saying, you know,
just any time now the Lord Jesus is going to come back and rapture
all his people out and then there's going to be seven years of tribulation
and then the second coming. They had it all mapped out. And
I remember one preacher in particular who's still on TV. I mean, we're
talking 50 years ago, and he's kind of old then, but the guy's
still going. But back before, he became too big to actually
preach in just churches. Now, he's a worldwide guy. But anyway, he said, I'm no longer
looking for signs. I'm listening for sounds. In
other words, the trumpet of the Lord is what he was talking about.
And that just had us on needles and pins, thinking just any minute
Jesus was going to return. You know, a portion of the world
is going to disappear, and boy, if you get left behind, you know,
you're in a mess. And they had scary words, but
they're Bible words, but scary phrases. Antichrist. I always heard about antichrist.
Do you know that the word antichrist appears in only four verses of
scripture? And all four of those verses were written by one man,
the Apostle John. We heard about the beast, and
the mark of the beast. And to hear them talk about it
you would think that there's some reference to it in every
book of the Bible. It's referred to in one book of the Bible. And this morning we're going
to speak of another one of those subjects that they like to talk
about because it sounds scary. It sounds ominous. The abomination
of desolation. Now it sounds scary to us because
we almost never use the word abomination. We know it means
something bad, and it sounds absolutely horrible. That's an
abomination. The abomination of desolation.
And you know something? It's only mentioned five times
in all the scriptures. Three of those times occur in
the book of Daniel, one time in the book of Matthew, and one
time in the book of Mark. And in the books of Matthew and
Mark, there are just two men recording the same message from
the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus is referring
to Daniel. So in essence, the only original,
shall we say, occurrence of that phrase, abomination of desolation,
is in two visions that were given to the prophet Daniel. And these
two visions spoke of a historical event. In chapters 10 through
12, some glorious being came to Daniel and spoke to him and
said, and I'm paraphrasing, here's what's going to happen in the
next while. And it was given in terms of
kings and kingdoms and empires that would rise and fall, and
warfare between the king of the south and the king of the north.
And it says that in all of this, at some time or another, someone
would come and set up the abomination of desolation. Well, Daniel didn't
know who he was talking about because there were no names given,
either to the kingdoms or to the kings involved. But now that
the event is over and has already happened, it was traceable. You can see that this angel that
appeared to Daniel, of course, had been told by the Lord what
things were going to happen. And even though he spoke of them
in vague terms, yet just like a family tree, you can trace
out those kingdoms that would rise and fall and the various
kings. And in chapters 10 through 12, this person who had set up
the abomination of desolation, we know him in history as Antiochus
Epiphanes. And he came into Jerusalem. He
was one of the empire leaders after the death of Alexander
the Great. And he ruled over that area that included Judea.
And he was a brutal man, like all of them were. I mean, you
know, we think some of the empire builders of our day are brutal.
They don't hold a candlestick to what these guys were. They
were slash and burn people. That's what they were like. But
this Antiochus Epiphanes, he was in charge of Judea. That was part of his kingdom.
And he got mad at the Jews. And so he actually, there was
actually a warfare, as it were, or a conflict even among Jewry,
because there were some who wanted to modernize and become more
like the Greeks. And there was ones who wanted
to stay traditional. And of course anytime there's a little civil
war going on, anybody in charge of that area is going to get
upset. So he said, alright. He outlawed traditional worship. And what he did is he came into
Jerusalem with his military and he actually set up a statue of
the God he would have called Zeus right there in the temple,
in the holy place. in the sanctuary and so there is standing this
abomination an idol in the temple of God and it brought desolation eventually some men rose up we
know them as the Maccabees and I think it was four brothers
And they said, enough of this. And they went and took over the
temple, took it back, took the idol out, purified the temple, and reinstituted the old covenant
worship there, rededicated it. And from then on, the Jews had
this feast of dedication every year. In fact, it talks about
our Lord being at the temple one time during the feast of
dedication. We call it Hanukkah. But that is the modern day, it's
Hanukkah, and that's when these Maccabees restored the temple. But that happened about 165 years
before the Lord was born. So how can the Lord be talking
about an abomination of desolation yet to come? Well there had been
a vision also in Daniel chapter 9, this one we know the messenger,
his name was Gabriel. And Gabriel said seventy-sevens
are determined upon your people. And he gives a series of events
which includes to finish transgression, to put an end to sin, to bring
in everlasting righteousness, to anoint the holy place. He says after 69 of these sevens,
and these sevens were seven year periods. After 69 of these sevens,
Messiah would be cut off and have nothing. Now that's the
only time in these visions that there's a particular historical
event that we can identify and know the time it happened. That's
crucifixion of the Lord. That's when Messiah was cut off.
But it also says that after this, and we're assuming that it's
after this, and during the 70th week or 70th seven, there would
be someone who would come and with his army would set up an
abomination that causes desolation. Now Luke is the one who reveals
to us what this was. because Luke never says abomination
of desolation but when Luke gives the account of our Lord giving
this message that we see in Matthew it says when you therefore shall
see the abomination of desolation Luke puts it this way when you
shall see armies encircle Jerusalem let him that is in Judea go to
the hills and all the stuff afterwards And what our Lord was referring
to here in Matthew chapter 24 was accomplished about 40 years
later when General Titus from the Roman Empire came with his
Roman army, encircled Jerusalem, devastated it, and their insignia,
their insignia, was the eagle and it was an idolatrous insignia
and it got set up in the temple an abomination and it brought
desolation because that particular general didn't just set up an
idol when after he set up an idol he tore the place down. Now here's the thing our Lord
said Or the prophet Daniel said, 69 weeks, Messiah will be cut
off. 69, 7, Messiah will be cut off. That's 483 years. It will be
483 years after the decree to rebuild Jerusalem. We know when
that happens. And sure enough, 483 years by the time our Lord
was crucified. That's what Daniel said. But
it wasn't within the next seven years that Titus came down and
destroyed Jerusalem. Why is that? Why is there a gap
between the 69th and the 77th? Now, the religion I was raised
in, they say that gap's still going on. They say God stopped
his prophetic clock. Well, sort of, but for a reason. Do you remember part of this
prophecy here in Matthew 24? Our Lord said, this generation
shall not pass away. till everything be fulfilled. Our Lord is hanging on the cross. The Jews have done the most wicked
thing that they have ever done. They have crucified the Lord
of glory. What do you think would be God's
response to that? To destroy or make desolate? the Jews, to bring someone in,
to set up an abomination that makes desolate. But our Lord
said, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're
doing. And you know what God did? You know, everything the
Lord Jesus Christ asked for, He gets. God never said no. So the Father says, OK. This
generation who actually did this shall not pay for it. Remember
the Jews were God's people of this world. We're not talking
about eternal judgment here and things like that. We're talking
about what God was going to do to the nation. And so for a generation,
about 40 years, remember how the generation of unbelief that
came out of Egypt, 40 years they wandered around until that generation
died off. Well, this was a gracious 40 years and God let just about
everybody from that generation die off. They didn't experience
the abomination that brings desolation. There were a few of them. The
Apostle John lived long enough to see it. There were a few. Therefore, the Lord's words,
this generation shall not pass away. It'll all be fulfilled.
That was true. They weren't all gone. Most of
them were. So in 70 AD, this abomination of desolation was
set up in Jerusalem. And it was an abomination, like
I said, the Roman army with its idolatrous images on its insignia
and all that. And it brought a true and complete
desolation to Jerusalem and to the temple. And the Jews were
scattered. Scattered all over the earth. And they have never, in any true
sense, been regathered. And so far as I know, and as
far as I can tell from Scripture, they never will be. Yes, I know
that in 1948 they made the state of Israel. But you know when
the Jews went out there among all the peoples, they intermingled
among the peoples, many of them, it's hard to find someone who
is purely Jewish anymore. Not only that, and I remember
being told that in time to come they would rebuild the temple
And they would start offering sacrifices in there according
to the old covenant. And that's when this next abomination
that our Lord is talking about, that's when it would really come.
Somebody would come up and set up an idol. Let me tell you this.
If they ever rebuild that temple and reinstitute the old covenant
sacrifices, that in and of itself would be an abomination as much
as anything else that anybody could do. The Old Covenant is
done. It was fulfilled by Christ. And
to set it up again would be to say Christ didn't fulfill it.
It would be to put a big X across the whole work of Christ. Paul
said, if I rebuild that which I destroyed. And what he means
is he was a builder under the Old Covenant. But when faith
came, that was destroyed, and he laid hold of Christ. He said,
but if I rebuild that which I destroyed, I find myself a transgressor. You don't rebuild what Christ
destroyed. There was nothing wrong with
the old covenant except this. It was useless for sinful people. It saved no one. It couldn't. It was designed to be a very dim revelation of what
would be done by the Lord Jesus Christ. And the book of Hebrews
says that when Jesus Christ came and did the will of the Father,
He established the new covenant and in so doing made the old
covenant obsolete and fading away. But the Jews wouldn't believe
that. For 40 years the Lord waited,
you might say for them, to understand, temple worship's over. The types
and shadows are gone. The reality's here, it's my son,
and they wouldn't do it. And so he brought in that abomination
of desolation. Now, having said that, and we had to get the history
down before we can go to what it means to you and me. This
abomination of desolation, two historical events mentioned in
the book of Daniel. Antiochus Epiphanes in about
165 BC and our Lord's crucifixion and then the destruction of Jerusalem
a generation later. All of it's been fulfilled so
far as these historical events are concerned. So far as the
nation of Israel is concerned. However, we know that the nation
of Israel serves us, as we view it under the Old Covenant, serves
as a very shadowy type and picture of the Church of the Lord Jesus.
And by this, I mean the professed Church of the Lord Jesus. Because
you know, in the, shall we call, professed Israel, in natural
Israel, there was still only a remnant according to the election
of grace. If you read the Old Testament,
it's amazing to see just how wicked that nation was. How unbelieving
and rebellious against God. We get this idea that Jews have
always been this kind of cut above people and faithful worshipers
of Jehovah. No, they weren't. From the time
God brought them out of Egypt, they complained their way all
the way across the wilderness. Said, you bring us out here to
die, no water, no food? God sends them bread from heaven
every day. They like it for two or three days and it's all we're
going to get. They griped against Moses. They
griped against the difficulties of the way. They get to the promised
land. And they get scared and say,
we can't overcome there. So the Lord says, okay, all you
unbelievers, you're going to die. You'll never enter My rest. And so Joshua and Caleb, the
only two over 20 years old that actually made it into the promised
land, and plus all those who had grown
from 20, on up over the next 40 years. They went in. What
did they do when they got there? Were they faithful there? Read
the book of Judges. One of the most depressing books
in all the world. And then you read about King
Saul. David and Solomon. The most glorious kings Israel
ever had. And they are pictures of our
Lord Jesus Christ. But there's a lot that they did.
Horrible. terrible. And then after they
were dead, I mean, Israel split into two nations and the northern
ten tribes, they never did have a king that followed God. And
Judah was kind of a mix. And so it is with professed Christendom
in our day. There's a lot of people in the
world. They claim it's the largest religion in the world. Two billion
Christians. I beg your pardon. There's two billion people in
Christendom, but out of that group there is a remnant, according
to the election of grace, who truly make up the spiritual Israel,
the Israel of God, the household of faith. And these words that were spoken
to these disciples of our Lord Jesus, who were part of the remnant
according to the election of grace out of the house of Israel,
these words spoken to them have a voice for you and me. Now,
in order to understand this voice and how it applies to you and
me, we're going to have to Notice something from the book
of Daniel, from the three texts of scripture in the book of Daniel.
We're not going to turn there for time's sake. Let me just
read them to you. In Daniel 9, 27, it says, and
he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week, or one
seven. And this is a reference to Titus,
General Titus, the Roman Empire. And in the midst of the week,
He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease. And
for the overspreading of abominations, he shall make it desolate, even
until the end or the consummation. And that which is determined
shall be poured upon the desolate. And they said, where's the abomination
of desolation? That word translated overspreading
in your more modern translation is the word wing. And the idea
is that he set up in the wing of the temple, this abomination
of desolation. And then in Daniel chapter 11,
31, and this is the first reference to Antiochus Epiphanes, an arm
shall stand on his part, that is military be backing him up,
and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, that's the temple,
and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place
the abomination that makes desolate. And then in chapter 12, verse
11, from the time that the daily sacrifice is abolished and the
abomination that causes desolation is set up, there will be 1,290
days. Now, in all three cases, we've got this abomination of
desolation, but in all three cases, we have something that
comes right before it. In all three references to this,
before the abomination that brings desolation was set up, it says
the daily sacrifice was stopped. What is that daily sacrifice?
It is Christ and Him crucified. The sacrifices of the old covenant
never put away sin. They couldn't. Animals can't
stand in the place of men and bear their iniquity. They were
illustrations. Every lamb, every bullock, every
pigeon, whatever animal that went in there and its life was
taken from it as a sacrifice unto the Lord was pointing to
the Lord Jesus Christ before the abomination could ever be
set up. The sacrifice had to stop. You
can't put in an idol until you've removed the truth. This ending of the sacrifice,
let's look at how that applies to the churches which claim to
be Christian. In those days, if you were to
look in the temple and see that sacrificial worship going on, you would see that the Jewish
religion was a very bloody religion. It was all based upon sacrifice. And that sacrifice spoke of several
truths. First of all, it spoke of the
holiness and righteousness of God as contrasted to the great
sinfulness of man. You say, how does it do that?
Well, why are they having sacrifices in the first place? I mean if all it was is God wanted
you to give up something to show how much you loved Him, you could
have given money. Which they did. You could have just given some
kind of jewelry or something like that and that would have
done it. But that's not what these sacrifices were for. You weren't killing a lamb to
show you loved God. You brought a lamb, laid your
hands on it, and confessed your sins over it. And the priest
took a knife and slit its throat and captured the blood and poured
it out before the Lord and burned the carcass of the animal. Why
is that? Because God is holy and righteous
and says, I will by no means clear the guilty. I am of pure
eyes and to behold iniquity, meaning to look upon it with
favor. If he can't behold iniquity, he's certainly not going to be
able to behold us, who are full of iniquity. If there's anything
that blood sacrifices teach us, it's this, God does not forgive. So wait a minute, the Bible's
always talking about God forgiving. Not simply that God lets it go. God forgives on the basis of
the debt being paid by Jesus Christ. Without the shedding
of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Moses said, show me
your glory. And among the things that God
showed to Moses was this, I will by no means clear the guilty. There are many churches in this
world today that preach the forgiveness of God in such a way that God
is set forth as a doting grandfather, indulgent of the misbehavior
of his grandchildren. And just says, oh, they're just
kids, let it go. God never says that. God is holy
and righteous and will exact the just penalty for every sin. It will be done. And the blood sacrifices tell
us that we're sinners. Jesus Christ died on the cross,
not because we were good and worth saving, but because we're
bad. and need saving. There is no way for you and I
to measure our sins and I don't even know if it would be good
for us to do that. Todd Nyberg told me one time he was reading
from one of the old-time writers, said, you need to pray two prayers.
First pray, God show me myself, and then pray, God show me thyself.
He said, I prayed to God show me myself. And he says, I was
in hell for a week. He said, I'll never pray that
prayer again. There's a church in our town, one of the Dutch
Reformed churches. And they think that it's necessary
that you spend a great deal of time in mourning, and they're
talking like 20 years, in coming to an understanding of just how
sinful you are. Unfortunately, they build up
their own righteousness in that process. They think they're better
than others because they know how sinful they are. Isn't that kind
of silly? I'll tell you how much of your
sin you need to understand. Enough to make you flee to Christ. That's all you need to know don't
try to find out anymore the only only person in all of the universe
and outside the universe Who can tolerate the knowledge of
your sin is your Savior He who knew no sin was made to know
our sin and he bore it And he bore it so that we don't
have to. And there is no glory to him nor benefit to us in groveling
around in the knowledge of our sin as though somehow or another
that makes us nearer to God in our misery. Salvation is for
the purpose of joy. The fruit of the Spirit is what?
Joy, one of the things. We talk about our sin. But the
only reason we talk about our sin or tell anyone else about
their sin is not to make people behave. It's to make them realize
they need a Savior. Make them realize they can't
behave. Someone once said the church was not sent out to make
people behave, it was sent out to try to get people to believe. And any church in which the preaching
of the holiness and righteousness of God is being diminished and
minimized, and the sinfulness of man is being diminished or
minimized. Count on it. It won't be long. There'll be an idol there. Not a visible one. It'll be an
idol with the right name, Jesus. But it won't be the right Jesus. Secondly, when you think about
the sacrifices, and the daily sacrifice, think
about a priest. You know, when a man offers a
sacrifice for his sin, he's not the one that killed it. He brought the lamb, but it says
what he was to do was lay his hands on it and confess his sins
over it. Hand it to the priest and the
priest offered it The priest killed it And the priest offered
it blood before the Lord Particularly on the Day of Atonement, the
high priest would take that sacrifice. And he'd take that basin, that
bowl full of blood. And it had been sacrificed in
the outer court. And then he'd go into the holy
place, where was the candlestick and some of the other furnishings
of the temple. But he'd go farther. He'd go
somewhere no one else was allowed to go. And he only went there
one day out of the year. And he'd take that blood behind
the veil into the most holy place where was the Ark of the Covenant,
which represented the throne of God. And on the top of that
Ark was, we call it traditionally, the mercy seat. Strictly speaking,
it's called the atonement cover. But what he was doing, he was
going before God on his throne. The cherubim protected the throne.
That's what cherubs were symbols of. And that was the throne of God.
He is enthroned above the cherubim. So they would go, the priest
was as it were before the throne of God, and he poured out the
blood, and the throne of sovereignty, the throne of righteousness,
the throne of judgment and wrath became a throne of grace once
that blood was poured out. It was a priest. Only one high
priest. And he had to wear the right
clothes, all of them symbolic of purity and righteousness. Because the priest had to wear
clothes like that because he did not have any righteousness
nor purity of his own. He was all pretend. He wore a
turban and on the front of that, holiness unto the Lord. He had
a breastplate with 12 jewels in it, each one representing
one of the tribes of Israel. And the names of the tribes of
Israel was on his hands. And he went in there representing
only that nation. And he went in with that blood.
Now what's that tell us about? There's only one high priest
and Paul says there's one mediator between God and men. The man
Christ Jesus. And all the clothes that the
priest wore as a pretense of righteousness and holiness and
purity and innocence were real in the Lord Jesus Christ. He
didn't need fancy clothes to prove or to make himself appear
to be righteous. He actually was. He was the sacrifice and He was
the priest that offered the sacrifice in the presence of God. The book
of Hebrews, which was written to Jews to show them how the
old covenant has passed away and how Jesus Christ fulfilled
all those types of pictures, said that Jesus Christ went into
the most holy place not made with hands, not the one that
Solomon built or the one later that Ezra and Nehemiah, those
fellows built, not the second temple, the real one, the very
presence of God, the very throne of God's majesty, and even as
he was on the cross there near Jerusalem, you know, I mean an
identifiable spot, he was also in the presence of God in all
his glory and majesty, and it says he poured out his own blood. He offered himself without spot. by his own blood to God. And
you know when that event happened, in time and space, the most remarkable event happened
at the same time. In that old temple, the second
temple which had been remodeled by Herod, magnificent place, but
the veil was still there. As long as that veil hangs there,
it was a testimony, there's no way to God. You can't get to
God. But Jesus, our High Priest, our Mediator, went into the real
presence of God, offered His blood, offered Himself without
spot to God, and as a testimony, God caused that veil to split
from top to bottom. And for the first time in all
of history, anybody can look in that temple and see all the
way back to that representation of God's throne, the Ark of the
Covenant, and anyone with a mind to have access to God through
the work of Jesus Christ. What a priest. But there are
churches in which the priest is represented as having offered
his self to God But you have to accept it. Really now. How can you accept something
that was never offered to you? The blood was not offered to
us. It was offered to God. He accepted it. And therefore
everyone for whom that blood was shed is accepted right along
with the blood. Oh yeah, but you got to make
your decision for Jesus. Really now. People do make their decision
about Jesus. And it's always no. Always no. Until God, in the sovereign power
of His Holy Spirit, changes their hearts to where they freely say
yes. In the general preaching of the
gospel, the gospel is held out to people. I understand that.
That's all I can do. And we say, you know, so long
as all we're doing is hearing the preacher say, no, I don't
want that, I don't want it, I don't want it, I don't want it. And
the Holy Spirit comes and works a work of grace and as it was,
sets it in our hands and we go, we don't want it, we don't want
it. Thank you so much. But when the work of the priest,
our priest, Jesus Christ, is diminished, look out. An abomination of desolation
is about to be set up because the daily sacrifice is being
stopped. There is the sacrifice itself. We need to be careful that in
all our attempts to understand what went on on Calvary, we don't
go beyond what is revealed. He bore our sins in His body
on the tree. How'd they get there? God put
them there. What did He bear to bear them?
I don't know. I don't know what the wrath of
God is, never experienced it. Because Christ did in my behalf,
I never will experience it. The revealed things belong to
us, secret things belong to God. Let's not try to delve into mysteries
that are too deep for us. Let us learn to enjoy the shallows.
Jesus Christ bore the sins of his people, and he bore them
in such a way that they are gone. And there shall be a search made
for the sin of Israel, God's true Israel, and for the iniquity
of Judah, God's true Judah. And it shall not be found. Why? It doesn't exist. It's gone. You say, I'm so afraid when the
books are open, what shall it say? Well, if you're in Christ,
it's going to say, He did always those things that pleased the
Father. It was His meat to do the will of the Father. He knew
no sin. He did no sin. In Him was no
sin. You say, that's going to be said
about me? Yes. Because what's true about you
was said about Christ, therefore what's true about Christ will
be said about you if you're in Christ. Oh my, anytime the priesthood
of Christ is diminished, count on it, an abomination is close
behind. Anytime the sufficiency of that
sacrifice and the success of it is minimized in any way. Watch out. An abomination is
close behind. And then, we already mentioned
this a little bit, but there's a throne. Anytime you talk about
the daily sacrifice, you're talking about a throne. This was offered to God. Not the God that wants you to
do something. Not the God that's trying to save you if you'll
just let it. But the God who's enthroned between the cherubim,
who does as he wills in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants
of the earth, and none can stay his hand. Or say, what in the
world do you think you're doing? The God who created what we call existence. He created time and space and
matter and energy and light and formed them and made you and
me and did it all with a word. That's a God that sits on a throne.
That's not a God that's begging sinners to let him do what he
wants to do. And where the sovereignty, the
absolute, unconditional, irresistible sovereignty of God is diminished,
then the sacrifice, the daily sacrifice is being removed. Watch out. An abomination is
on its way in to take its place. Now what might these abominations
be? Well first let me say this. Anything put in the place of
Christ is an abomination. Anything. I can sit here and
list things after things after things that have been put in
the place of Christ. Just understand this. The abomination
that brings desolation is anything other than Christ. Because that's
what all the sacrifice pointed to. Christ, the sacrifice for
sinners. Christ, the priest who offers
the sacrifice. Christ, the sovereign God who
accepts the sacrifice. Christ upon the throne! Glorify! You put anything in place of
that. Do you realize that's what the word Antichrist actually
means? Anti in the Greek language did not mean so much against
as it meant in place of. In fact it says when Herod died
and actually Herod, King Herod, that's not one person. Herod
was a family name. There was lots of Herods. But
when the King Herod that was alive when, let me make sure
I get sometime during the life of Christ, and then he died,
it says that his son ruled anti-Herod. Well, he didn't rule against
the house of Herod. He ruled, I'm sorry, not anti-Herod,
anti-father. He wasn't against his father.
His father died. He ruled in his father's place.
He took the place of his father, an antichrist. is not a particular
individual. It is anyone and anything that
is put in the place of Christ. Now, these abominations, what
might they be? I was surprised that even among, well, in one
broad denomination of Protestant churches, they actually have
idols. I mean real idols. I was in a
funeral held, a couple of funerals held in these churches and what
really surprised me it was what was considered to be the more
conservative branch of these Protestant churches and they
had a big cross actually a whole crucifix you know with a man
on it and everything and whenever the pastor would pray, and he
had on his priestly robes. He would turn around and pray
towards that cross. And I thought, I cannot believe
this. People don't see this abomination? Why, that's as obvious as can
be. Not every religious symbol is
an idol, but you turn around to pray to a religious symbol,
it becomes an idol the moment you pray to it. You're worshipping
that thing. But brethren, abominations like that are not what we have
to be on guard for. Anybody with a lick of sense
at all can figure that out. I'll tell you some abominations
that have brought desolation to churches. Celebrity preachers. Celebrity preachers. We live
in a day of some very famous preachers, very famous sovereign
grace preachers. I don't mean from among our group.
We're pretty small in the world of religion. Big shots. And their names get named. And
you go to the Christian bookstore and their names on a lot of the
books there. Now I'm not saying that these
men intended, that they ever supplant Christ. But this I've
seen among them. The more famous they get, the
less of Christ you hear. And their fame came at the expense
of Christ. One of them, right up there in
the Twin Cities, five hours north of me, wrote some books. And
they asked the names of them. I'm not going to name it because
I don't want to start a controversy over this or that preacher. That's
not my point. But I mean it had all kinds of Christians reading
this and thinking it was the most wonderful thing that ever
happened. I got a hold of one of those books and I started
reading and I thought this is really good, this is really good and
after about 30 minutes of reading I suddenly realized I'm not thinking
about Christ, I'm thinking about me. I closed the book and said
I'm done with this thing. Preachers become idols in the
household of God. Doctrine. Do you know that you
can steadfastly hold forth particular redemption and make an idol out
of it? You can. You can worship your doctrine
instead of the one that the doctrine speaks of. In fact, I don't even
like talking about particular redemption. You know, in our
language they call it limited atonement, so it will fit into
the acronym of TULIP. The Bible never talks about the
atonement's limitations. It talks about its success. More
than that, it says, it describes it this way, the will of Jehovah
will prosper in His hand. It doesn't even talk about so
much a successful redemption as a successful redeemer. And
you can supplant the successful redeemer with successful redemption
and make your doctrine an idol. And I hear people say, I believe
the free and sovereign grace of God. So what? That just means
you believe what's true. You may as well say, I believe
2 plus 2 equals 4. It's just a true thing. Do you trust the
one that these doctrines speak about? There are churches which
are devoted to these doctrines and yet have no heart in them
for the person that the doctrines are talking about. And all you've
got to do is go to the website to find out. I'm in a town full
of Reformed churches. I went to a funeral in one of
them. Well, this was a couple of years ago. It was a stepfather
of one of our church members. So I went there. The guy really
did preach a great message. He truly preached Christ from
Psalm 23. I was amazed. I went up to him
afterwards. I said, I've been in this town
for 30 years. That's the first time I've ever heard anybody
preach Christ. And he was kind of taken back by that, too. But
they've got the creed, they've got the doctrines, and they'll
talk them up. I heard one of them preach, and
it was 15 minutes into the message before he even said Christ, and
it was, he said, your faith in Christ. So the subject wasn't
even Christ, it was their faith in Christ that he was bragging
about. Brethren, doctrine is good, but it's good for only
one thing. Leading you to Christ. Leading
you to Christ. Don't trust your doctrine. Trust
the one it talks about. Churches become abominations.
Well, I'm a member of blah, blah, blah, blah church. Somehow church
names get longer and longer because the church comes together and
suddenly there's a split over some point of doctrine so now
they gotta add that distinction to their name so that they look
better than others. You got holiness churches and
some of them may as well go ahead and be honest and say, well,
we're super holy. The original worldwide church of God. These are names of self-righteousness,
that's what they are. And the only reason they take
names of themselves like that is because the daily sacrifice
has been stopped and an abomination has been brought in instead.
They trust their church. There are other things that become
abominations. Mark described these abominations,
instead of saying it stood in the holy place, it says stood
in a place that it ought not. You know what becomes an abomination
in churches? I'll tell you, one of them is politics. It's awful
to see these churches either for or against Trump.
I don't care what their view of Trump is. If it's coming across
the pulpit, That's something, now politics is a legitimate
thing, but when it's in the pulpit, it's standing in a place that
it ought not. It's standing in a holy place.
When I say the pulpit, you know I'm using that figuratively.
When it becomes part of the message, it's in a place that it doesn't
belong. I'm grateful that I live in the
United States of America. Not as grateful as I was 20 years
ago, but... grateful. Things have kind of
gone downhill or maybe I'm just becoming an old fogey, I don't
know. But as grateful as I am for that,
and as strong opinions as I might have about this or that political
issue, it does not belong anywhere in the preaching of a gospel
minister. It belongs nowhere in the ministry
of a gospel church. These churches that are siding
and saying, telling their people you ought to vote for this person,
you know what happened? The daily sacrifice stopped and they brought
in an abomination and put it in its place. And you know what
it does? It leaves the church desolate. You say, well these
are huge churches. Yeah, dead ones. Huge, dead churches. That's pretty desolate. Now, let me wrap this up. The Lord said to his disciples,
when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel,
he told them what to do. Run for the hills. That's what
he said. Run for the hills. He said, the guy that's out in
the field, don't let him even come back to the house to grab
some of his clothes, pack a suitcase. He said, if you're on the top
of the house, don't even go down. Jump off the top and run. Why? It's that serious. Because once
the abomination, and that's anything other than Christ, once it is
present, desolation is right on its heels. And you don't want
to be there for that. You don't want to worship in
a desolate church. You don't want to worship in
a church with Ichabod, the glory has departed, written over it.
I hear people say, well, I'm going to go to church. I know
they don't teach this and set forth Christ as they should,
but they've got something for the kids. Yes, they've got abominations
and desolations for your children. Take them there if you want to
fill them with abominations and have them end up desolate in
the end, without God, without hope in the world. Trying to keep a little church
like this together and pay the bills, that requires a little
extra something, doesn't it? It would be a lot easier to join
one of these bigger churches and you could write a smaller check because
that many people can cover the expenses. Why don't you? Well, the grace
of God, of course. We know that's the original cause,
but it's because you have a heart for the daily sacrifice and no
heart for abominations. If abomination is set up, and
you know, right now this church tells the truth. Doesn't mean
it always will. This generation will pass away.
Somebody else will be standing in this pulpit, different people,
sitting out in the pew. Might happen in the generation
of our children, might happen in the generation of our grandchildren. But if an abomination is set
up, run for the hills. Better you should live alone
in the mountains. than down in the city that's about to be made
desolate. And here's the thing we have. We can tell that the abomination
is on its way. We don't have to wait for the
abomination to show before we run. We say, hey, I'm not hearing
Christ. They're not talking about Christ
here anymore. They're preaching something else.
Oh they mention Him once in a while but that's just because they
kind of feel they have to. They aren't setting forth His
glory. They aren't calling on us to worship Him. And I'm finding
no satisfaction in my heart. What do you do? Does it say take
a big stand? stand up in the middle of service
and point your finger at the preacher and tell him he's wrong
or something? He said, no, leave. Run for the hills. Run for the
hills if you gotta be alone. Or if there's a bunch of you
who realize what's going on, run for the hills and build a
church there. But you leave. Because once the sacrifice is
stopped, the abomination comes in. And then it's desolation. So all of this, Daniel's spooky
prophecy, our Lord's repetition of them, was not just for the
Jews. It was for you and me, but we
don't have to be spooked by them, or the ominous tones of a phrase
like the abomination of desolation. What it is to us is safety. We realize in churches abominations
will be set up. Keep your eyes open, your ears
open, And once the daily sacrifice ceases, get out. And find some
place where it's still being carried out. Where Christ is
being preached. And meet with Him. If you can't
do that, if you're too far away, thank God we got internet in
our day. I realize that ain't quite the same thing as being
there, but it's getting close. Whatever, don't listen to anything
but the daily sacrifice and run from anything else. Well, the
Lord bless you all.