Abomination of Desolation

Concise Bible Dictionary:

This exact expression occurs only in Matt. 24:15 and Mark 13:14, referring to what had been revealed to Daniel 12:11, where it is connected with the great tribulation (ver. 1) spoken of by the Lord in those Gospels. Daniel 9:27 shows that the time of the abomination is in the last half of the last of the seventy weeks named in Daniel 9:24. The person who makes a covenant with the Jews in those days and afterward breaks it, we know to be the head of the future Roman empire. See SEVENTY WEEKS. Of this person an image will be made, and the people will be constrained to worship it (Rev. 13:14-15); but we do not read that it will be carried into the future temple; whereas our Lord says that the abomination will stand in the holy place. On the other hand we read that the Antichrist “exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thess. 2:4). The “abomination of desolation” is evidently connected with the trinity of evil spoken of in Revelation 13, and will be the work of Satan, the Roman beast, and the false prophet. It will end in dire desolation. The desolator is the Assyrian (Isa. 8:7-8; Isa. 28:2,18), the northern king who will then hold the territory of Assyria (Dan. 11:40).

From Anstey’s Doctrinal Definitions:

This refers to the idolatrous “image” that the Antichrist will set up in the temple in Jerusalem which the Jews will be forced to worship (Dan. 12:11; Matt. 24:15; Rev. 13:12-18). Gentiles in the empire of the Beast (the western nations) will also worship it (Rev. 13:12 – “the [prophetic] earth”). It will be “set up” in the middle of Daniel’s 70th week (Dan. 9:27; 12:11). The worship of the image by the mass of the Jews will call forth God’s judgment upon them in the form of a desolation of the land of Israel by an Arab confederacy of Islamic nations (Psa. 83:1-8; Dan. 11:40-42). A remnant of the Jews will, for conscience sake, refuse to bow to the image, and will be persecuted for it (Isa. 8:11-16; Matt. 24:21-22).