Matthew 24:15

The abomination of desolation was first partly fulfilled by divers profanations of the temple, as when the image of Cæsar was set up in the temple by Pilate, and Adrian's statue in the holy of holies, and when the sacrifices were taken away; but will be more completely fulfilled by Antichrist and his precursors, when they shall attempt to abolish the holy sacrifice of the mass. St. Hyppolitus, in his treatise de Anti-Christo, mentioned by Eusebius, St. Jerome, and Photius, thus writeth: "The churches shall lament with great lamentations, because there shall neither be made oblations, nor incense, nor worship grateful to God.... In those days the liturgy (or mass) shall be neglected, the psalmody shall cease, the reciting of Scripture shall not be heard." --- The prophet Daniel (xii. 11.) calculates the reign of Antichrist, from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away; which by able commentators, is understood of the sacrifice of the mass, which Antichrist will endeavour to suppress. --- The abomination of desolation, [2] or the abominable desolation. Instead of these words, we read in St. Luke, (xxi. 20.) When you shall see Jerusalem surrounded by an army. Christ said both the one and the other. But the words in St. Luke, seem rather to give us a sign of the ruin of Jerusalem, than of the end of the world. --- Spoken of by Daniel, the prophet. The sense is, when you shall see that very prophecy of Daniel literally fulfilled hereafter. What follows in the prophecy of Daniel, confirms this exposition; when the prophet adds, that the desolation shall continue to the end; that the Jews from that time, shall be no more the people of God, for denying their Messias; and that they shall put the Christ to death. But what then was this desolation, which by the following verse, was to be a sign to the Christians to fly out of Judea? Some expound it of the heathen Roman army, approaching and investing Jerusalem, called the holy city. Others understand the profanation of the temple, made by the Jews themselves, a little before the siege under Vespasian; when the civil dissensions, those called the Zealots, had possessed themselves of the temple, and placed their warlike engines upon the pinnacles; and a part, at least, of the temple was defiled with the dead bodies of those killed there. It was at that time that the Christians, according to Christ's admonition, left Jerusalem and Judea, and fled to Pella, beyond the Jordan. See Eusebius, lib. iii. Hist. chap. v. (Witham)

[BIBLIOGRAPHY]

Abominationem desolationis. Greek: Bdelugma tes eremoseos. The same words are in the Septuagint, Daniel ix. See St. Jerome on this place, and St. John Chrysostom, hom. lxxvi. and lxxvii. in Matt.