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Posted on 03/10/2026 9:15:42 AM PDT by ebb tide
Exorcist Father Ripperger shared in an explosive recent interview that Scripture’s reference to the “abomination of desolation” taking its place in “the temple” is “actually a reference to the Catholic Church being compromised.”
Fr. Ripperger explained the reference in an interview with podcaster and former U.S. Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan while refuting Protestants who mistakenly believe that the Book of Daniel’s reference to the “temple” in which the abomination of desolation will stand at the time of the Antichrist is the Jewish Temple.
These Protestants want to help rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in an effort to usher in the Antichrist, and by extension, the Second Coming of Christ, Fr. Ripperger noted.
“The Fathers of the Church are clear that it will never be rebuilt and that the reference to the abomination of desolation taking its seat in the temple is actually a reference to the Catholic Church,” explained the exorcist priest.
READ: Exorcist Fr. Ripperger: ‘The situation for the Antichrist is just about present’
This means that “there’s going to be some way in which the situation in the Church will become compromised,” he added.
This interpretation of the Church Fathers is supported by the fact that Christ Himself warns of the abomination of desolation referred to by the prophet Daniel as something to come in the future: “When therefore you shall see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place: he that readeth let him understand. Then they that are in Judea, let them flee to the mountains.” (Matthew 24:15-16)
Because Christ’s new covenant supersedes the Old Covenant, the “holy place” refers to the Catholic Church, not the Jewish Temple.
Moreover, the Book of Daniel refers to the abomination of desolation as tied up with the cessation of a public “daily sacrifice.”
“They shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate. (Daniel 11:31)
“And from the time when the continual sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination unto desolation shall be set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred ninety days.” (Daniel 12:11)
Referring to Antichrist, the Book of Daniel says, “And he shall confirm the covenant with many, in one week: and in the half of the week the victim and the sacrifice shall fail: and there shall be in the temple the abomination of desolation: and the desolation shall continue even to the consummation, and to the end.” (Daniel 9:27)
As Catholics understand, the daily sacrifice of lambs upon the altar of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem derived their value and meaning from their fulfillment by the Sacrifice of Christ, the Messiah, renewed daily in an unbloody manner in the Holy Mass.
Such a “daily” and “continual” sacrifice after Christ became incarnate and established His Church can then only refer to the daily sacrifice of Christ on the altars of Catholic churches during Holy Mass. The “desolation” referred to in the “holy place” could therefore refer to the absence of Jesus Christ’s presence in churches.
This meaning of the abomination of desolation is affirmed explicitly by the Douay-Rheims commentary, as shared by Father David Nix during the last Rome Life Forum:
“It specifically shall be fulfilled by Antichrist and his precursors when they shall abolish the Holy Mass which is the sacrifice of Christ’s Body and Blood, and the only sovereign worship due to God and His church.”
Fr. Nix added that this refers only to the public Mass, not private Mass. He noted that if the words of consecration in the Novus Ordo Mass are changed, it “will not be valid.”
Fr. Ripperger himself clarified in an interview with Dr. Taylor Marshall about his book The Limits of Papal Authority on the Liturgy, that “the pope, because of divine positive law, he does not have the authority to change the words of consecration to something other than what they were as Christ initiated them.”
An abomination of desolation in Catholic churches at the time of Antichrist also comports with a prophecy from Our Lady of La Salette, as written by one of the visionaries, Mélanie Calvat, that “Rome will lose the faith and become the seat of the antichrist.”[1]
ReferencesReferences
| ↑1 | Johannes Maria Höcht, Die Große Botschaft von La Salette [The Great Message of La Salette], Stein am Rhein 2004 (8th ed.), p. 161. |
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Ping
The “desolation” referred to in the “holy place” could therefore refer to the absence of Jesus Christ’s presence in churches.
Nope.
Yep.
By the way, the Gospel reading from Matthew 24, speaking of the abomination of desolation and the end of the world, was removed from the modern lectionary after Vatican 2. It had been the gospel reading for the last Sunday of Pentecost. No longer.
Our late, great traditional pastor spoke of it as the “scary gospel”, summing up the liturgical year and directing our thoughts to death, judgement, heaven, and hell.
boy. this is about the most inane and agenda driven interpretation of end times Bible prophesy, i’ve ever read. this can’t be mainline Roman Catholic doctrine; can it? i can’t imagine the great theologian Aquinas signing off on any of this.
Cross-check
the post should be retitled for “Catholic Caucus” only, as some protestants have positions that can pretty well “inflame” the issue
That's not possible.
Fr. Ripperger is wrong on this point. I.e.
The Temple and the Antichrist
While some Fathers believed a Third Temple would never be built, others—such as Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome—suggested that a temple might be built, but only as a tool of the Antichrist. In Against Heresies, Irenaeus wrote that the Antichrist would sit in a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, seeking to be worshipped as God. Similarly, St. Cyril of Jerusalem taught in his Catechetical Lectures that the Antichrist would deceive the Jews by rebuilding the Temple of Solomon to present himself as the Messiah. Therefore, in the Patristic mind, any physical rebuilding of the Temple was not a holy endeavor to be celebrated, but a sign of the end-times apostasy and the rise of the "Man of Sin."
References:
Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies ; Cyril of Jerusalem. Catechetical Lectures; Hippolytus of Rome. On Christ and Antichrist.
You are correct, dadfly. The LieSite articles presented by ebby on a daily basis have no basis in fact or theology. They have little continuity in theme or meaning. Inane is a proper term. They are propaganda hit pieces not within mainstream Catholicism, right ebby?
Re: Post 12.
I believe that Irenaeus, Hippolytus and St. Cyril of Jerusalem have it right. I.e., A 3rd temple will be used/occupied by the anti-Christ. For Christians and as confirmed by scripture - we are His temple. We worship Christ in Spirit and Truth.
"The Shift from Stone to Spirit The Fathers emphasized that the "Third Temple" is not a building of stone but the Body of Christ. St. Augustine of Hippo, in The City of God, articulated that the Church is the true Temple of God. He argued that the Jewish Temple was a temporal sign of a spiritual reality. Once the spiritual reality (the Church) arrived, the sign became obsolete. This transition from a localized, ethnic cult center to a universal, spiritual temple is a cornerstone of Patristic ecclesiology. To rebuild the physical temple would be, in the eyes of the Fathers, a "judaizing" error that denied the sufficiency of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice.
Reference: - -- Augustine of Hippo. The City of God
Except that Antiochus IV Epiphanes already did this:
Antiochus IV Epiphanes is widely recognized in biblical scholarship and historical sources as the figure who committed the abomination of desolation in 167 BCE.
He was the Seleucid king who captured Jerusalem and desecrated the Second Temple.
He erected an altar to the Greek god Zeus and sacrificed a pig—an unclean animal—on the altar of burnt offering, a direct violation of Jewish law.
This act halted the daily sacrifices and fulfilled the prophecy in Daniel 11:31, which speaks of an “abomination that makes desolate” being set up in the sanctuary.
The event is also described in 2 Maccabees 6:2, which confirms the desecration and the placement of a statue of Zeus in the Holy of Holies.
This act sparked the Maccabean Revolt, leading to the rededication of the Temple—commemorated today in the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.
Haggai 2:9a NKJV
“The glory of this latter temple shall be greater than the former,” says the Lord of hosts.
Of course Christ's visible presence in the second temple was a greater glory than all of the earthly treasures any man could contribute to it.
But the conversation intensified as Jesus explained that the temple was going to be destroyed. And, in the minds of the disciples, this was an end-of-the-world kind of catastrophe.
It was in this context that Christ described a still-future abomination of desolation. An earlier abomination of desolation had already occurred when Antiochus Epiphanes desecrated the second temple, stopping the daily sacrifices, erecting an altar to Zeus there, and sacrificing pigs on it.
There are some who interpret this as being fulfilled in 70 AD when the temple was destroyed because the temple was defiled, images of Caesar were worshiped there, and the daily sacrifice ended. However, a 42 week reign of Antichrist did not happen, nor did the sign of Joel of simultaneous solar and lunar eclipses happen. Nor did Jesus return and gather the elect to Himself.
This and other scriptures suggest that the final and ultimate fulfillment of the abomination of desolation prophecies in Daniel (yes, there are more than one) is yet future still.
I suggest that most of the specific elements of the Olivet Discourse were plain and literal. That is how the disciples understood them because that is how Christ meant for them to be understood. So, the idea that the temple was the spiritual temple rather than a coming third temple is a somewhat novel idea. (Not saying recent, as the idea could be centuries old but was novel when it was suggested because it was not how it was originally understood).
The description of the temple, the measurements in particular, by John in Revelation indicate a future temple on earth. There is also a temple in Heaven. While there is no abomination in the Heavenly temple, it is interesting that it appears that Satan will be expelled from Heaven at exactly the same time the abomination of desolation occurs on earth. Both occur at the middle of Daniel's 70th week.
Followers of Christ will do well to heed the signs He gave us, and beware of Antichrist and his mark. Christians will defeat Satan, Antichrist, and the mark, but we must be willing to die for Christ if God ordains for us to endure these things:
Revelation 12:9-11 NKJV
So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, “Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.”
means nothing to me....am I ready today? get ready. the rest is crap.
Good read. Pius X brings home that when we place ourselves above Christ, 'we become the abomination'. Many in Christendom focus on the anti-Christ being a particular and specific person. Pius X reminds us to guard against the desire to be worshiped and abandonment of the Trinity - this too is an abomination & an anti-Christ. Too often Christians get caught up in the mystery and fascination of the "anti-Christ". Pius X reminds us to guard against becoming an anti-Christ.
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