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Christian Carnival August 31st

After a two-month break I'm going to submit something to the Christian Carnival again. Here's the details for this week's carnival:

This week the carnival will be hosting over at blog, Crossroads.

If you wish to enter a post, make sure it is one that is dated past Aug. 23. In your entry, include the following information:

The name of your blog
The URL address of your blog
The name of your post entry
The URL address of your post entry
A short description of the post entry

Send your submission to:
christiancarnival@gmail.com

What is 'the abomination that cause desolation' in Mark 13:14?

One (of many) rather puzzling verses in the ‘little apocalypse’ of Mark 13 and parallels is Jesus’ warning about the ‘abomination that causes desolation’ standing in the Temple as being a sign of the imminent coming of the Son of Man. I’m a rather strong preterist when it comes to the apocalyptic passages in the Gospels, and although it’s fairly common to read Mark 13 as being about Jesus’ prediction about his Second Coming, I’m less sure that this is what Jesus is talking about and what he is trying to communicate to his disciples.

The Coming of the Son of Man

Jesus is clearly alluding to Daniel 7 in this passage, where we see that the ‘coming of the Son of Man’ does not speak of a downward descent of Jesus on a cloud towards the Earth at the end of time, but of his ascending to God and his vindication over and against the evil beasts who had been seeking to dominate and rule. The ascending Son of Man is given the Kingdom and all authority, which he shares with the saints. I think in Jesus’ allusion to this he is not offering a series of signs that will precede his return to earth many centuries in the future, but referring to a series of events that are about to unfold in the history of Israel and Jerusalem that will bring an end to the current age and herald the handing over the Kingdom to the Son of Man and his saints.

AD70 and the Destruction of the Temple

So I’m a bit of a preterist when it comes to Mark 13, and I believe that the best explanation of the text is likely to be found in and around the events of AD70 and the destruction of the Temple (which is also around the same time Mark was writing his Gospel) and that the ‘abomination that causes desolation’ is not the Dome of the Rock or some kind of Left Behind style statue of a future global antichrist.

Mark sees the warning of Jesus as being directly relevant for the audience he is writing his Gospel for, hence his warning: ‘let the reader understand’ is interjected into the monologue. Clearly Mark realised that his readers (and hearers of course) needed to be aware that the coming ‘abomination that causes desolation’ would be the trigger for a series of disastrous events from which the only course of action would be to flee to the hills as quickly as possible.

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