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A temple is not an abomination in itself - or there would be no temple during the Millenium, which Ezekiel gives pretty detailed info on.
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You'll have to show me that. I am being stretched quite a bit in this discussion but it's probably a good thing because it makes me check scripture and think things through. BUT I know of no temple of God any more but the one built without hands, the very people of God ourselves, each of us being a stone of that temple built by Christ.
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Look at parallel passages. In other places in Daniel it refers to Antiochus Epiphanes who does the same thing as the Antichrist will do - Antiochus was the type, the Antichrist was the antitype (ie. the fulfillment). See Daniel 8 and 11.
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Yes, I understand Antiochus to have been a type of the Antichrist, and I've been expecting the final Antichrist to come and fulfill the Daniel scripture even more perfectly, but it just doesn't seem right to call a restored temple a holy place when it was never meant to be anything but a type of Christ, and its function has been completely fulfilled in His perfect sacrifice. That means we would have to look for a different kind of fulfillment perhaps,
OR the literal idea of the Antichrist's placing himself in the restored temple as God could fit if the language is understood from the unbelieving Jewish point of view. But it would be a mistake for a Christian to regard a restored temple and especially restored animal sacrifices as anything but an abomination to God, quite apart from the Antichrist's doings in it.
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Daniel 8:11-14 Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. And an host was given him against the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression, and it cast down the truth to the ground; and it practised, and prospered. Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.
Daniel 11:36 And the king shall do according to his will; and he shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak marvellous things against the God of gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished: for that that is determined shall be done. This is the Antichrist, and it is yet future
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I agree, but that passage about the daily sacrifice is particularly hard to understand. I need to study it.
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- this is what Jesus was referring to:
2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. What this passage teaches is that the Antichrist will defile the holy of holies (which is what the word for temple means here, the inner sanctuary of the temple). Like Antiochus already did, he will defile the holy place with an idol (according to Revelation 13 it will be an idol of himself, unlike Antiochus who defiled the OT temple with a pig).
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Yes, I understand that is the usual teaching about these things, which I also learned at one time, but I now have a problem with the very idea of a restored temple, as we know it was a type of Christ and that it was destroyed because He is now our perfect sacrifice. In the time of Antiochus and the Maccabees Christ had not yet come, but He has now come and any animal sacrifice done now would be a stench in the nostrils of God -- so for such sacrifices to stop couldn't be an offense to God. I do not know how to put all this together, but the usual understanding just doesn't work as is.
Actually I tend to read that about His sitting in the temple of God shewing himself that He is God to refer to the papacy, and particularly the last pope who will probably be the next, who puts himself in the place of God. That makes the "temple" have some other meaning than the usual though.