People say we have been talking about the coming of Christ and the end of the world for a long time & it hasn’t happened. They are right! However, the last prophet of the Old Testament (Malachi) wrote about the coming Messiah 400years before Jesus finally arrived. In Matthew 24 (Which is like a table of contents to the book of Revelation) Jesus clearly foretold the end of the world. In the next chapter, which is part of the same sermon, He told the story of the bridegroom coming to the wedding. All the girls fell asleep (they all believed in the coming of the groom.) This prophecy is a warning to us that the world will not be expecting it when Jesus comes. The theme in the parables of Matt 25 is watchfulness.  

When the disciples asked what will be the sign of His coming, Jesus gave the sign of the Gospel going to all the world (Matt 24:14), and then he gives a command to understand Daniel’s prophecy concerning the Abomination of Desolation (V:15.) The book of Daniel has had more influence on the New Testament than any other Old Testament book. The term “abomination of desolation” is Daniel’s equivalent term for the antichrist who will oppose the Messiah. In Hebrew Abomination means idolatrous, desolation means persecutor, so the abomination of desolation is an idolatrous power that persecutes the people of God.  

In the New Testament these terms from Daniel appear in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, and Paul’s Man of Lawlessness (2Thess2:3-12). They are equivalents to Revelation’s beast and its image. The beast is an amalgam of all the persecuting powers that went before it. Revelation 13 had shown us the false trinity, the final abomination of desolation. ‘Image’ is the same word in the Old Testament for abomination. Remember Jesus warning about ravening wolves in sheep’s clothing? This is the lamb-like beast that ends up speaking like the dragon. 

If you remember the numerology from a few weeks ago where we documented how every number between 1 and 13, plus other numbers have spiritual significance; 6 is the number of man and sin, 666 is the trinity of evil.