[fortheDeclaration]

Luke 21: 20 “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. Then LET THOSE WHO ARE IN JUDEA FLEE TO THE MOUNTAINS, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. Matthew 24:15-16: “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— then LET THOSE WHO ARE IN JUDEA FLEE TO THE MOUNTAINS. Clearly, these are not separate events:

Clearly they are!

For in Matthew, something gets set up in the Temple that causes Desolation.

Nothing is set up in the Temple in Luke.

When the siege began in 70AD, those armies that had circled Jerusalem left for a time and Christians knowing the warning got out.

The Jews didn't and were destroyed.

The warning is Matthew is for Jews living in the Tribulation time who see something happen before the desolation occurs, the abomination being set up in the Temple and they are to told to flee then and don't even go into their houses to get anything.

“But the abomination of which Daniel writes is that the Emperor Cajus, as history tells, had put his image in the temple at Jerusalem as an idol, for the people to worship, after everything there had been destroyed.” —Martin Luther, (”Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Trinity; Matthew 24:15-28” from his Church Postil, first published in 1525)

An Idol being put in after the destruction is not what Matthew says.

It speaks of the people seeing the idol being put in before the destruction.

There was no temple left when the Romans finished with its destruction.

Hadrian put up an idol later after yet a second attack, years later, and actually razed the ground hoping that Jerusalem would never be rebuilt.

Read what the verses actually say and not what you want them to say.

[tabsternager]

“An Idol being put in after the destruction is not what Matthew says.”

Take that argument up with Martin Luther, for he was the one who made that statement.

Martin Luther knew both Luke and Matthew weren’t about some future “third” temple event because he obviously knew that there is no “third” temple mentioned anywhere in the Bible, and for very good reason — because Christ is the Temple.

Read Matthew 24 and Luke 21 again objectively. If you do that, then you will see that both Gospel writers were relating the same message, the same warning, the same signal to flee the city — i.e. the destruction of the temple in 70 AD and the end of the Mosaic Age (not the “end of the world” as people like LaHaye would have you believe).