Daniel 11:28

"Then shall he return into his land with great substance; and his heart shall be against the holy covenant; and he shall do his pleasure, and return to his own land. At the time appointed he shall return, and come into the south; but it shall not be in the latter time as it was in the former. For ships of Kittim shall come over against him; therefore he shall be grieved, and shall return, and have indignation against the holy covenant, and shall do his pleasure: he shall even return, and have regard unto them that forsake the holy covenant. And forces shall stand on his part, and they shall profane the sanctuary, even the fortress, and shall take away the continual burnt-offering, and they shall set up the abomination that maketh desolate. And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he pervert by flatteries; but the people that know their God shall be strong, and do exploits. And they that are wise among the people shall instruct many; yet they shall fall by sword and by flame, many days. Now when they shall fall, they shall be helped with a little help; but many shall join themselves unto them with flatteries. And some of them that are wise shall fall, to refine them, and to purify, and to make them white, even to the time of the end; because it is yet for the time appointed."

This paragraph stresses the outrages of Anitochus Epiphanes, stressing his destructive attacks upon God's worship, the Temple, and the Law of Moses. Such an all-out attack upon the very soul and continuity of the Israel of God was truly an event of the greatest magnitude. (See under Daniel 8:14, above, for a discussion of Antiochus Epiphanes' attack upon God's worship.)

We have already noted the almost negligent reference to the "little help" that the Maccabees would give to God's cause in that emergency (Daniel 11:34). This absolutely forbids any notion that anyone in the second century B.C. era could have authored this chapter.

"The abomination that maketh desolate ..." It is the use which Jesus Christ himself made of this passage that must take priority in our efforts to understand it. In the first instance of that "abomination," it was without question the desecration of the Temple, the pollution of the altar by the offering of a sow upon it, the erection of an image of Zeus Olympus in the Temple itself, and other outrages of Antiochus. However Christ in Matthew 24:15,16 (and related passages) mentioned another "abomination of desolation" that would come into the "Holy Place," making that a signal for the Christians living at that time to flee from the City of Jerusalem, which they did, saving their lives by their flight to Pella, during the final destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Thus this "abomination of desolation" was associated with "the end of the first Israel" in the destruction of their nation, their worship, and their status as "God's chosen people."

But there is something which goes far beyond even that. Christ himself by his detailed prophecy of Jerusalem's destruction mingled it with prophecies of the Final Judgment and of the end of the world, the prophecies themselves having double meanings applicable to both events! From this, the conclusion is irresistible that the destruction of Jerusalem is to be understood as a type of the destruction of the whole world, or "the end of the world," to use Jesus' own words. Therefore, since the abomination of desolation was featured dramatically in the fall of Jerusalem, it follows that the antitypical fulfillment of this will occur a second time in"the time of the end." All of the ancient students of the Bible have understood this perfectly.

What is that antitypical fulfillment. The world powers shall become increasingly hostile to the worship of God, any god. The final result will be an all-out effort to exterminate the name and knowledge of God from the face of the earth. There will arise an Antichrist, the antitype of Antiochus Epiphanes, "Whom the Lord Jesus shall slay with the breath of his mouth and bring to naught by the manifestation of his coming" (2 Thessalonians 2:8). This evil person is called the Lawless One (2 Thessalonians 2: 8). It is incorrect to identify this person with the Man of Sin. (See Excursus on the Man of Sin (Vol. 9 in our New Testament Series of Commentaries), pp. 106-117.)

These are but a few of the very weighty considerations that require an eschatological interpretation of some of the following passages in this prophecy. Therefore with Daniel 11:36 we pass into a prophetic presentation of the kind of world governments that shall precede the end of the world.