Replies

“..who do you think God will be using to preach to the unsaved during the Tribulation?” ~ gost2

“...Surely, the critics and dispensationalists say, the gospel wasn’t preached to the entire world by 70; it hasn’t even reached some people now! But we need to look behind a key word: world — this time, it isn’t aion, and it also isn’t kosmos, the word which indicates the broadest possible connotations, as we noted earlier — this time, it is oikoumene, a word used to express only the Roman Empire (cf. Acts 11:28, Luke 2:1).

It is significant that this is the only place Matthew uses this word; he has selected it carefully as a geographical delimitation; it is also significant that he has used this word rather than kosmos as he did with reference to the spreading of the Gospel correspondent with the separation of the justified and the wicked.

The gospel had to be preached to the Roman Empire as a whole before the end of the age. Was this fulfilled? According to the NT, it was (Rom. 10:18, 16:25-7; cf. 2 Tim. 4:17; see also Rom. 1:8 and Col. 1:6, which uses kosmos hyperbolically).

Secular history would agree that there were churches as far away from Judea as Italy; evidence of evangelism in places like Britain and Germany are based only on tradition. Nevertheless, with a church in Rome by the 50s, it could hardly be argued that evangelism in Britain, the farthest-flung part of Rome’s Empire with respect to Judea, was not likely by 70.

Matthew 24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:)

Mark 13:14 But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,)

Dispensationlists tell us that this refers to a yet future Temple, and to the actions of one called Antichrist with a capital A. But here for the first time, Luke offers a very interesting divergence:

Luke 21:20 And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.

Luke as a Gentile writer has a propensity to explain peculiar Jewish twists to his Gentile readership; “faced with a cryptic allusion to Daniel, they would not be in a position to obey the command” to read and understand [Wr.JVG, 359]. It seems clear — especially since the Greek word for “desolation” is the same in all three Gospels — that he thinks that the “abomination of desolation” as to do with Jerusalem being surrounded by armies.

A few observations, now that we have looked at Daniel and its own fulfillment in 70 AD.

First, it is worth noting that the Josephus, not at all having the Olivet Discourse in mind, saw the Daniel prophecy as fulfilled with the destruction of the Temple in 70 and regarded the shedding of priestly blood in the sanctuary as the desecration or abomination that caused the 70 desolation [Keener, Matthew commentary, 576].

Josephus called the Temple “no longer a place fit for God” [War 5.1.19] and said that God was the author of its destruction.

Second, Luke’s indication is that the coming of the armies signifies that the “abomination” is soon to take place, and that the desolation will occur soon thereafter.

So do we have a pre-70 event that fits the bill? We do indeed — it happened when the Jewish Zealots, those ancient terrorists, occupied the Temple and committed various acts of sacrilege, including using sacred materials for war and crowning a “high priest” in a farcical ceremony.

The retired priest Ananus himself used the word “abominations” to describe what happened. They committed bloodshed in the temple sanctuary, thereby profaning it by killing the innocent [Keener, ibid. — and it was exactly three and a half years after this “desecration” that the Temple was destroyed; for the relevance of this, see our Daniel article http://www.tektonics.org/esch/danman.html ].

As an added note.... http://www.tektonics.org/esch/olivet01.html