I am convinced that God has done the same thing with creation. Take anything, whether in nature or in Scripture, and look for spiritual meaning, you will find Christ.
I agree 100%. I may be accused of mysticism here, but I think it is a Biblical truism that the physical and spiritual worlds reflect each other. I believe that all of the Levitical services that God ordained were to allow human beings to experience and partake in things spiritual. I believe the same of baptism (water immersion) and the Lord's Supper. I also believe that there is not a passage of the Scripture in any book that is not unraveled if one will just put the Messiah in the middle of it.
Even, strangely enough, kosher.
God has put meaning into everything, and our business is to search it out.
Amen. "The glory of God is to hide a thing; but the honor of kings is to search out a matter" (Pr. 25:2).
Thus a spiritual Abomination of Desolation, would have to be connected with Christ because he is the Spiritual Temple, and the desecration would have been on or immediately after the Cross.
Not necessarily, though I don't think you're completely off here. First, we have to be very careful about time restraints on God's Word--"I am coming soon," is no less true because 2000 years of mortal time have passed, for a thousand years to us is as a day to God.
Too, we have to be careful not to overemphasize the spiritual to the point where we discount the physical. In order to save us from a spiritual condition--sin and death--the Messiah made Himself both a spiritual and physical sacrifice. The physical sacrifice reflected the spiritual sacrifice and vice-versa.
Therefore, when dealing with the Abomination of Desolation, while admitting that there is a spiritual reality (a false god trying to set himself up in the believer, who is a temple of God), let us not discount the physical reality: Yeshua says that this future Abomination will take place in the geographical location of Judea, for example. He further states that those who lived there would have to flee at that very moment, and that we should pray that it doesn't take place in the winter or on the Sabbath and that nursing women would be at a particular disadvantage (Mt. 24:15ff). All of these point to a physical act, not merely--or rather, only--a spiritual desecration.
The connection to Messiah Yeshua is made clear in both the Olivet Discourse and in 2 Th. 2--in both cases, the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Abomination of Desolation is a sign of the Second Coming--within 3.5 years, in fact (Dan. 9:27 and 12:11-12; Rev. 11-12).
All things point to the Messiah, but not always directly. Some things are signs to show us God's schedule, like the coming of the Antichrist.
Does that make sense? And do you disagree? The answer to the first question doesn't have anything to do with the answer to the second, of course. :-)
I am not going to disagree with anything in this post, but I have some questions and I will try to use the above paragraph to frame them. It is not my intention to overemphasize the spiritual over the physical. I see a spiritual theme running beneath the surface throughout scripture and nature. Nicodemus was confused when he was confronted with this. I think we need to find guidelines to discern between natural and spiritual.
You talk about a spiritual condition--sin and death--. Which is it? There is a natural sin and a spiritual sin, a natural death and a spiritual death. There is a physical sacrifice and a spiritual sacrifice. Do you think the cross is physical or spiritual?
Anyway, I am always looking for the spiritual significance, in any passage of scripture. There is something in the Abomination of Desolation that I cannot see. In the meantime, I will look at the physical because that is what I can see.
Seven