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Daniel

I have heard several interpretations of Jesus’ warning about the ‘sign of your coming and of the end of the age’ in Matthew 24, and I still struggle to understand. I default to how only God knows the day and hour of the coming of the Son of Man (24:36). Something that I can grasp, though, is the pointer back to God’s servant Daniel.

Apart from Jesus’ title for Himself, the Son of Man, appearing memorably in Daniel 7:13–14, there also is this shout-out: ‘So when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by the prophet Daniel…’ (Matthew 24:15).

The ‘abomination of desolation’ is mentioned in Daniel 9:27. It concludes a vision about God’s anointed one and ‘bringing the rebellion to an end, to put a stop to sin, to atone for iniquity’ (9:24).

Again, I don’t totally get what’s going on here. But what I gather from Jesus’ reference is that Daniel witnessed the chief opponent of God (the ‘abomination of desolation’) being defeated – by the Son of Man… the Son of Man predicted by Daniel, declared as having arrived in the Saviour form of Jesus.

Written by BEN MCEACHEN