By Walid Shoebat

The Armenians, Syriacs, and Chaldean Christians received residency in Turkey where the must leave by 2023 when Turkey will be in full Ottoman glory having brought in the full fledged Caliphate to rule the entire region.

The Christian population of Turkey is evaporating rapidly. A century ago, Turkey’s population had 20% Christian and today the population dwindled to only 0.2%. That change came into stark relief at the Hagia Sophia during Easter holy week in April 2015 when Turkey began to usher in another prelude to the Abomination of Desolation. “The historic Istanbul cathedral and museum, Hagia Sophia, witnessed its first Quran recitation under its roof after 85 years Saturday,” reported the Anadolu News Agency of Turkey. “The Religious Affairs Directorate launched the exhibition ‘Love of Prophet,’ as part of commemorations of the birth of Islamic Prophet Muhammad.” This is in Hagia Sohpia, which was dedicated to the Wisdom of God, the Logos, the second person of the Holy Trinity and was considered throughout Christian history as the Temple of The Word of God (Christ).

Today, the “45,000 Christians, who fled the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, have to hide their true identities and pretend to be Muslim.” reports Breitbart.

Such escalation will continue which we believe will usher in the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the Prophet (explained here and here). For this occasion we ventured to explain the controversy interpreting Daniel 9:27 to put an end to many misunderstandings.

UNDERSTANDING THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION 

“And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”

Daniel 9:27 is probably the most controversial prophecy. Where Christians unanimously agree is that the “Seventy Weeks of years,” is 490 years from the issuing of the word that the petition be granted and that Jerusalem be rebuilt began this countdown on the twentieth year of Artaxerxes to the time of Christ. But the controversy begins when some say that the last week of years “he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering …” they say this was already fulfilled by Christ Who by His death “stopped the sacrifice” at the Temple. This would make the seven year covenant that the Antichrist institutes as obsolete since it was Christ who made such a covenant.

But such a view, that Christ fulfilled the seven years, is not the oldest or the only interpretation. Way before this view arose, Irenaeus about A.D. 180, was the first to offer a substantial discussion of Daniel’s seventy-weeks prophecy, recorded his view that the last week was to be fulfilled by Antichrist and not by Christ.

Even before Irenaeus, the Didache (70 A.D) and the Epistle of Barnabas (100 A.D) and Christian Apologist Justin Martyr of Samaria (150 A.D) did the same. (1)

Irenaeus explained the verse as speaking of the Antichrist who will stop the “pure offering” (the Eucharist, see Malachi 1:10-11). Keep in mind, Irenaeus was the student of Polycarp who was the student of John. This would make his view the closest to the time of Christ and His apostles. Irenaeus stated (2):

“And then he points out the time that his tyranny shall last, during which the saints shall be put to flight, they who offer a pure sacrifice unto God: And in the midst of the week, he says, the sacrifice and the libation shall be taken away …

he [Antichrist] shall speak words against the most high God, and wear out the saints of the most high God, and shall purpose to change times and laws; and [everything] shall be given into his hand until a time of times and a half time, Daniel 7:23, etc. that is, for three years and six months, during which time, when he comes, he shall reign over the earth (Against Heresies (Book V, Chapter 25)

This is why we gave a detailed interpretation we offered in our essay on why this last seven years is future and has much to do with the sacrifice of the Eucharist. We ought to examine Irenaeus before others like  “Theodoret of Cyrus”  (AD 393 – c. 458/ 466). Theodoret gives a historic interpretation, the summary of which goes like this: The 69th week brings us to the Baptism of Jesus around 27AD. The 70th week is broken up into two 3 and a half year periods. The first half is the 3 and half year ministry of Jesus until His Passion around 30AD, and the second half being the 3 and half year period of the Apostles establishing the Church starting in Jerusalem until around 33-34AD.

While all this would sound plausible to many, there is no evidence to:

1) show how this exact 3.5 years was fulfilled. After all, Daniel requires an exact calculation:

And from the time when the continual sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination unto desolation shall be set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred ninety days, Blessed is he that waiteth and cometh unto a thousand three hundred thirty-five days.” (Daniel 12: 8-12)

These are specific time calculations, and can anyone explain from the early history the 1335 days?

2) The text says “And after the threescore and two weeks shall an anointed one [Messiah] be cut off, and be no more”. Christ therefore, was crucified exactly at the end of the 69th week and not after 69 weeks of years plus another 3.5 years after Christ’s ministry.

Preterism teaches that all or most of the predictions in Holy Scripture were fulfilled in the same generation or lifetime of those to whom they were first announced.

So how do we reconcile such disputes?

AVOID THE RABBIT HOLES
When it comes to prophecy it is easy to fall into the rabbit hole, in a way, many of these interpretations are  correct, but as a type of fulfillment, and not in the long term application. Prophecy is written in a way that served a purpose. When some interpret “the ‘people [the Jews] of the coming Prince destroy their own city and sanctuary” they are somewhat correct, but as a type, since Israel by their rebellion against Messiah did cause the havoc, and when others interpret that Titus made the sacrificial system obsolete, they are also correct, but as a type, and when others say its the Antichrist who is “the prince who is to come” who makes abominable the temple (the church) this is also correct, as Irenaeus declared from the beginning.

“Historicism, however – or rather historicalism – teaches that all or most of the predictions in Holy Scripture are being fulfilled throughout the whole course of Church History. Indeed, all Church History – which started right after the fall in the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:15f) – shall endure till the very end of time.” It is crucial we look at the entire scripture as prophecy. Genesis 1:28, God predictively ordered all mankind: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth and subdue it!” This is prophecy. The plain fact is that all Old Testament Messianic promises were to be fulfilled not preteristically but historicalistically. Exactly the same applies regarding all New Testament promises of Christ’s conquest of this World.

DUALITIES AND INTERPRETING WITH THE TWO SENSES
In reality, God constructed His prophecies to fit all times. Clement, for example, saw the final week encompasses both Nero’s erection of an “abomination” in Jerusalem as well as the destruction of the city and temple in Vespasian’s reign. The prophecy served well for these times. But while Clement’s interpretation of the final week had a Messianic-Historical interpretation, even his interpretation presumed a hiatus between the first 69 weeks, and the final week. With the events culminating in 70 AD., it is significant that at the time, Christians remembered this prophecy and fled the destruction and saved their skin while the Jews who denied Jesus were pegged on crosses as far as the eye can see.

Regardless of interpretation, the one that everyone agreed on is that the desolations will continue till the end when Messiah returns: “the desolation shall continue even to the consummation, and to the end [of the world].”

In other words, Christians are aware that the devil throughout the history of God’s people will always rear his ugly seven heads, as in the past, current present, and future, to interfere in God’s business “the desolation shall continue even to the consummation, and to the end [of the world] …”

This is why we find John using “once was, now is not, and yet will come up …” The spirit of Antichrist is past, present and future, and will always cause desolations.

And so did the seven year covenant also happen when the Romans, in order to accomplish their design to destroy Jerusalem and temple, also, like the Antichrist will do, made peace with many nations, entered into covenant and alliance with them, particularly the Medes, Parthians, and Armenians, for the space of one week, or seven years. (See Gill’s exposition on Daniel 9:27)

And so when it comes to the Antichrist, it is a covenant that should be confirmed with many for 7 years. This seven years can never be understood of the Messiah whose covenant is for ever. This historicalistic interpretation is why in B.C. 270 the Jewish Alexandrine translation of Daniel from Hebrew and/or Aramaic into Greek in their Septuagint they translated Dan. 11:30, at the latter’s Semitic phrase “ships of Chittim” – the Alexandrine Septuagint states: “The Romans shall come with ships.” This would mean that the Europeans will attack the Turks as it happened in Lepanto as well as in the near future when Turkey invades Europe and again will attempt to sack the Vatican. Even Calvin who hated Rome could not dispute “This passage [Daniel 11:30] is free from all doubt, because Antiochus was restrained not by the Greeks but by the Romans…. ‘There shall come against him,’ says he, ‘ships of Chittim’ – meaning Italy.”

There are seven years. There are also seven heads. And while many become dogmatic, that the Antichrist kingdom is Roman, we say, ‘you are right’, and when others say it is Grecian, we also say ‘you are also right’ for it is Greco-Roman which must include Asia Minor, where Christ Himself said it was the seat of the devil in Pergamum. Most who disagree use prejudice and not the Holy Spirit as their modus-operandi to interpret prophecy. They hate Catholics which is by far throughout history the only accepted prejudice even till today. More Catholics were killed in Hitler’s crematoria than any other faith, yet no one today finds a holocaust memorial in their name. This should speak volumes.

WHY THE SACRIFICE THAT ANTICHRIST STOPS IS THE EUCHARIST
Evangelical love to argue over prophecy. I had one objection saying that the text says “sacrifice” and “grain offering” in Daniel, which Antichrist stops, they say cannot possibly be the Eucharist since the text has two types of offerings “grain” and “sacrifice”. But this can only be resolved because the Eucharist fulfills two: a literal sacrifice in a literal bread. Evangelicals and Messianic congregations reject the sacrificial part in the Eucharist which Daniel, as well as Malachi and Exodus end the argument over this heated debate once and for all.

It is here where many get blinded. God works in mysterious ways and always brings the prophecies together to amaze only the true seeker, while it creates further doubts and more confusions by insisting that a temple sacrificial system must be what Daniel is speaking about.

But such a system, if it comes or not, should make no difference. Here is why. What one must contend with is this question: Christianity did resume a “pure” sacrifice offering, making null and void the old animal sacrifice (see Malachi 1:10-11 and the whole book of Hebrews) and succeeded where the Jew failed, to implement it, continue it, stopping the desecration that ended in 70 A.D, and this continuation which will make Daniel 9:27’s abomination to also be for the ends of days. No one can argue that this “end” of the Jewish sacrificial system.

So lets take a walk to see what I mean just incase I wasn’t clear here. When they asked Christ in Matthew 24, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” Christ answers: “you will hear of wars and rumors of wars…”

Who is this “you”? One can read it both ways from two senses. This “you” is for both the disciples (at the time) and the church (its continuation and succession). While at face value one could argue this is regarding the disciples at the time, they are correct, and while others point to the end of the time, they too are also correct. Always remember, it is both, until the context is so clear.

This “you” extend to much more than just the disciples. When Christ gave authority to the disciples to forgive sins (John 20:23) such an office is until He returns: “I am with you to the very end of the age.” (Mathew 28:20)

How could Christ be with the disciples “to the very end of the age”?

So when we read “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake”.

This “you”, while it has an immediate fulfillment for the apostles, but the other sense is for the church until the ends of days.

In everything, prophecy shows a succession from the apostles which is how prophecy is written and is why one can never eliminate such succession since Christ’s church is one. “He who endures to the end shall be saved” means what it simply says, that Christians must endure war, false prophets, false Messiahs and persecution without conversion to the spirit of Antichrist, and this must be until the Christian dies with the faith in order to be saved. So when the Arian Heresy sprouted, this was the spirit of Antichrist that denied the Trinity (The Father and The Son and The Holy Spirit) so whoever joined it and died in such belief, they were eternally damned. The same goes for today where we see this same spirit plunge the Hebrew Roots Movement, these too, if they die denying the Trinity will be damned forever. This is a serious issue.

Even the Didache (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles), before Irenaeus, around A.D. 70, also  predicts using historicalistically: “In the last days, false-prophets and corrupters shall be multiplied [cf. Second Peter 2:1f], and the sheep shall be turned into wolves…. And then shall appear the ‘deceiver of the World’ [Second Thessalonians 2:3-8 & Revelation 12:9 & 13:11f] as ‘Son of God’ – and shall do signs and wonders, and the Earth shall be delivered into his hands…. But [post- tribulationistically] they that endure in their faith, shall be saved…. Then the World shall see the Lord.”

“Therefore when you [the disciples, as well their extension] see the ‘abomination of desolation,’spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place” … then flee. While this applied somewhat during Antiochus and it also did apply then in the time of the apostles, and it also applied when the Ottomans set up their abominations at Hagia Sophia, when Antichrist Muhammad II (there are many Antichrists) invaded Constantinople, and will also apply very soon in the very near future and is why I write this, especially to seven lamp stands, the seven churches that were represented in Asia Minor, Turkey where is the seat of the devil is, as John predicted in Revelation 1.

Many object in seeing a ‘seven year covenant’ to be instituted by the Antichrist. They bring a challenge. They say that Christ stated to look for the “abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel,” and not a  “seven year” tribulation. They argue that if there was this seven years, ‘wouldn’t it be logical that Christ would warn about this seven years, instead of simply the abomination which occurs 3.5 years later’?

This way Christ would give a 3.5 years head-start for all to ‘hit the road’ and ‘flee’ instead only fleeing at the moment when Antichrist sets up his abomination.

But one must consider, Christ was also speaking to His disciples to flee when the Temple was to be destroyed and not just to flee when the Antichrist comes way into the future. Such an interpretation would have destroyed them. He was not worried for them to set up a calendar countdown, He knew that they will soon see the Temple destroyed and Titus’s army heading there. He was speaking to them of the temple with not one stone standing on the other. Armies coming to Jerusalem and coming to the temple signaled them to flee.

Everything is resolved when we view by seeing the types and interpreting with the two senses. One is to avoid the debating mindset and rabbit holes to see Scripture from the perspective of an eternal author Who sees in three dimensions, while we simply view the image and the shadow to only fully comprehend everything after it is all fulfilled. The singular sense approach is always found wanting and is easily countered by the serious challenge. If this “abomination of desolation” is only historic, and if Christ fulfilled the seven years (2 X 3.5), in Daniel 7:8, can someone point where in history is this: “another little horn, possessing eyes like a man and a mouth uttering great boasts”?

This evil person “will speak out against the Most High and wear down the saints of the Highest One, and he will intend to make alterations in times and in law and they will be given into his hand for a time, times and half a time” (7:25)?

The text matches what the first interpreter Irenaeus did, who wrote his works to avoid heresies. How could the perfect Christ have fulfilled this 3.5 years when this period is taken up again by an evil one in Revelation 12:14, where it is defined as three and a half years (12:6). Also, Revelation 13:5 reveals that “the Beast” (not Christ) will operate for 42 months. The same period of persecution under the Antichrist is described in Daniel 12:11 as 1290 days, to be dated from the setting up of the Abomination of Desolation (Dan. 11:31; cp. Matt. 24:15).

Further details follow in Daniel 8:23; this tyrant, is to arise “in the latter time” of the Syrian kingdom which arose out of the divisions of the Greek kingdom of Alexander the Great “when the transgressors are come to the full.” This does not hold good of the time of Antiochus, but of the closing times of the Christian era where even Daniel said to “seal the book” for it was “for the time of the end”.

Especially in our times, Christians must be extremely careful, that when they study scripture is to put the whole puzzle together and never to isolate verses without looking at the entire scheme in the whole of scripture.

There is no escape therefore, that many modern Catholics and Protestants are in error on this major  point. Despite the arguments, one must keep in mind, there is no single interpretation on this issue as the standard cut-and-dry dogmatic Catholic or Protestant interpretation. Christians must never be boastful in also keeping in mind that Protestants inherited prophecy interpretations from the Catholics but that  Protestants confused it focusing strictly on animal sacrifices instead of seeing the obvious; the prophecies of Malachi 1:10-11 and Daniel were focusing on the new sacrifice: the Eucharist. How else will the prophecy in Exodus 12:14 be fulfilled “forever”:

And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.” (Exodus 12:14)

How could God institute this Old Testament “sacrifice” calling it “memorial” while it must and will be observed “for ever”? Can anyone scientifically define “for ever” or explain an eternal sacrificial system where the offering is sacrificed and is a memorial for ever? There are no sacrifices that the Jews do. So did this prophecy fail?

And once we examine the whole context of Malachi 1:10-12, it becomes even clearer than the sun, the stars in heaven, the mountains, the deserts and the seas:

Oh that there were one among you who would shut the gates [no more temple sacrifices], that you might not uselessly kindle fire on My altar! [no burnt offering] I am not pleased with you,” says the Lord of hosts, “nor will I accept an offering from you. For from the rising of the sun even to its setting, My name will be great among the nations [gentiles, not Jews], and in every place incense is going to be offered to My name, and a grain offering [sacrificial offering, communion] that is pure [perfect]; for My name will be great among the nations [gentiles],” says the Lord of hosts. (Malachi 1:10-11) 

This is a universal system to be observed everywhere and at all times as if Christ’s passion is current and forever including even burning incense. And since God, as all the faithful agree, is above and beyond the restrictions of time (Psalm 90:2) this is a continual event of Christ’s Passion.

It is here that one needs to apply the types and the two senses and tie Malachi 1:10-11 with Daniel 9:27 and with Exodus 12:14. Only when we do all this, we find that the Eucharist is the only explanation (Grain offering). While Jews still celebrate passover, they are missing the sacrifice and the slaughtering of the lamb. When we examine the Protestant interpretation, it fails, for animal sacrifice did not continue which a sacrifice is mandated in Exodus 12:14.

This is why both Jews and Protestants want to avoid this at all costs since it proves an apostolic-succession view that has been held by Malachi including Jesus and Daniel who all predicted the end of Jewish sacrifices and ushered in a grain sacrifice, the Mincha grain offering, which will only and perfectly match with the Eucharist. Only the Eucharist will fulfill all: a memorial as Exodus mandated as well as Christ (“do this in remembrance of me”) and a sacrifice (Exodus 12:14) that continued from Moses until now and forever:

“Take and eat; this is my body … This is my blood of the  covenant … from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.” (Matthew 26:29, Luke 22:18)

“Forever” in Exodus 12:14, and “In My father’s kingdom” should end all arguments, this is not a re-sacrifice, but a perpetual continuation for God’s glory and for a memorial. In Malachi 1, God clearly prophesied the animal sacrificial system will be ‘no more’ and will be replaced by and continued with a sacrificial system called “grain offering” that is “pure” which only Christ is pure. And since Israel does not continue such sacrificial system of killing lambs, God then was speaking in Exodus to the “faithful” and not simply Israel, and by this the sacrificial system continued to the faithful gentiles, in the form of the Mincha  which literally means “grain offering” and by this, Exodus 12:14 did not lie.

Any other interpretation would have made God a liar. God forbid.

If Ezekiel’s Temple was about predicting animal sacrifices, that will commence prior to Christ’s return, than God failed for two millennia since in Exodus 12:14 it specifically instructed the faithful that such sacrifice will commence henceforth from Moses and then continues “for ever”. God also calls it a “memorial” (to remember as Christ said (“in remembrance of Me”) while it had an action: a literal and eternal and continual sacrifice “for ever“. This can only be the “grain offering” and the Eucharist. This interpretation is inescapable or else, the question remains: How is such a passover observed “for ever”?

“Eat the Bread” and “drink the cup” “In My Father’s Kingdom”. Is this just simple “bread” and simple “grape juice”? Is there no significance to have such tradition stem  from Moses, even Abraham before, to later on the Church, and even later be drank again in heaven (in My Father’s kingdom) for ever?

This is an amazing sacrifice and is not some memorial only. It is for this reason that I opted for the apostolic-succession interpretations instead of the nonsensical modern interpretations of the Left Behind series and the Messianic many of whom deny the Trinity. Therefore, the Eucharist is the literal Body and Blood of Christ. The Mark of God in response to the Mark of the Antichrist is a literal mark just as it was for the Israelites during Moses and Ezekiel.

This is what apostolic churches do and missing this brings in the curse and the judgment and to deny the sacrifice is the mark of Antichrist, not Christ.

Many Catholics who are against Vatican II and the Novus Ordu are even taking a stand realizing that the “smoke of Antichrist has already entered” the Vatican where the Eucharist has been desecrated turning it into Protestant style mass, and they see this as the pre-curser of the abomination of desolation. In this video, one should watch the new method (which was influenced and preferred by the Protestants) and the old method which is preferred by the anti-Novus-Ordu Catholics: