Matthew 24 and Luke 21 are companion chapters, slightly different accounts of the same event in Jesus’ life, a discourse about the closing events of pre-Millennial history. There has been a tendency through the years to take portions of these chapters and relegate them to the ancient past, namely, the A.D. 70 destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. There are items inside those chapters that just seem to “fit” better back there. No one questions that the latter portions of his words are about His coming, but the portion from the “abomination” to these obvious last things is in question by some.

But the piecemealing of this chapter won’t work. The disciples asked for a sign of His coming and the end of the world. He gave it: the abomination of desolation will trigger the beginning of the end. All that happened in first-century Palestine is only a preview of the real deal. The truth is, the abomination of desolation and its aftermath are all still in our future!

One clue is the piece about Jerusalem. Luke’s account has Jesus saying that that city will be trampled, or trodden. “Pateo” in the Greek. That very same word is used in Revelation 11 where an angel tells us that the city will be trodden of the Gentiles for three and one half years during the Tribulation.

For more evidence, Jesus claims that one stone will not be left upon another when all the devastation is finished. Standing before our eyes lo! these many centuries has been the so-called “wailing” wall in Israel. A building that Jesus was looking at when He made His pronouncement, still stands! But on that final day, it too will fall.

And, Jesus made it clear that all things will be fulfilled when he is finished being angry with Israel’s unbelief. This is in accord with the 70-weeks prophecy of Daniel that says that all prophecies will have been fulfilled when the time limit of 490 years has been reached. None of this had happened by A.D. 70, and today we still await many Messianic prophecies to be completed.

Further, it is immediately after this tribulation time that Jesus comes and the church is raptured to be with Him. That obviously did not occur in the first century. But the text flow of the chapter indicates it is all one final event.

Daniel too connects the abomination of desolation to the final weeks of history.