Daniel 9:27 “Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week; But in the middle of the week He shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall be one who makes desolate, even until the consummation, which is determined, is poured out on the desolate.”
As we have already discussed, half way through the seven-year peace treaty that he would have negotiated with Israel, the Antichrist will attend an event in the temple at the invitation of the Israeli government. At that event an assassination attempt will be made on his life which, as we have already mentioned, he will survive. The assassination attempt will not take the Antichrist by surprise, for as one who will be in close contact with Satan himself, he will be well aware of the planned assassination and will use the attempt as a pretext for the invasion of Israel. And so, while pretending to foster peace with Israel by attending the event at the temple, he will have already prepared the armies of the surrounding Muslim nations to be ready to invade Israel at his command. In response to the assassination attempt, the Antichrist will break the peace treaty with Israel and call on the surrounding Muslim nations to invade Israel to extract revenge on them. The above passage of scripture confirms that truth to us when it declares that “in the middle of the week he shall bring an end to sacrifice and offering”. The week in this passage refers to the seven-year treaty period, and the ending of sacrifice and offering in the middle of the week means that he will end the Jewish offerings in the temple after three-and-a-half years of peace. And so we see that the Antichrist will manifest his true identity while standing in the temple in the city of Jerusalem, and it is at that point that the saints must flee Israel if they want to survive.
Zechariah 14:1-2 “Behold, the day of the Lord is coming, and your spoil will be divided in your midst. (2) For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem; the city shall be taken, the houses rifled, and the women ravished. Half of the city shall go into captivity, but the remnant of the people shall not be cut off from the city.”
Notice in the above passage of scripture that it is the Lord Himself who will bring the nations against Israel at that time. And so when the Muslim armies surrounding Israel invade, the Israeli army will be taken by complete surprise, because of which they will be very quickly overrun and the nation of Israel will thus fall into the hands of their enemies. The above passage of scripture describes the result of that invasion by telling us what will happen in the city of Jerusalem, and indeed the whole nation at that time. The Jews that survive the invasion will be taken into captivity and be placed into concentration camps once again (just as they were during the Holocaust). There will be approximately sixteen million Jews living in Israel at that time, most of whom will still be unbelievers, even though a large percentage will be orthodox Jews observant of the Law of Moses. Because most in Israel at that time will be Jews who observe the Sabbath, our Lord tells His saints to pray that their flight will not be on a Sabbath. The reason for that is because most of Israel will shut down for the Sabbath, and it will therefore be that much more difficult to travel. And so we see that it will only be the small population group of believing Jews that will recognise the sign given to them by our Lord Jesus, and will thus flee to the mountains.
Michael E.B. Maher
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