The Abomination of Desolation and the End of the Age
Old Testament: Daniel 9:27
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.
New Testament: Matthew 24:15, 21; Luke 21:20; 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4
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. ... For there shall be then great tribulation, such as hath not been from the beginning of the world until now, neither shall be. ... And when you shall see Jerusalem compassed about with an army; then know that the desolation thereof is at hand. ... Let no man deceive you by any means, for unless there come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, who opposeth, and is lifted up above all that is called God, or that is worshipped, so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as if he were God.
The connection
Christ Himself names Daniel's prophecy explicitly, refusing to let it remain a sealed oracle: "he that readeth let him understand." The verse carries a recognised dual fulfilment. The covenant confirmed "with many" is read as Christ's own new covenant, His Blood "shed for many" (Matthew 26:28), ratified through His public ministry and death; the sacrifice failing "in the half of the week" points to the old Temple sacrifices being rendered obsolete at the very moment of the Crucifixion, signified when the veil of the Temple was torn in two (Matthew 27:51). The abomination of desolation is read separately, and just as traditionally, as the Roman armies that besieged and destroyed Jerusalem within that same generation, an event Christ foretells in the same breath and which Luke's parallel account states in plain historical terms: "when you shall see Jerusalem compassed about with an army." One prophecy, two fulfilments within a single generation: the Cross ending the old sacrifices from within, Rome ending the Temple from without. A further, still-future fulfilment is often read alongside these two, but it rests on different ground: not on Daniel or the Olivet Discourse directly, but on Paul's warning of "the man of sin... so that he sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself as if he were God" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4), read together with the Church's own developed teaching on a final trial before Christ's return (CCC 675-677). This extension is traditional rather than scriptural in the strict sense: the link to Daniel's language is inherited and reasoned, not stated outright by Christ or Paul themselves. The Church has not dogmatically settled how Daniel's prophecy divides among these fulfilments; preterist readings (confined to Christ and AD 70), futurist readings (pointing forward to a final Antichrist), and dual or multiple-fulfilment readings like this one all have standing within faithful Catholic scholarship. This entry follows the traditional dual reading without claiming it is the only one available.
Moral sense
Guard the sanctuary of your own heart; let nothing false or self-serving be enthroned in the place that belongs to God alone, and do not mistake the delay of judgment for its cancellation.
Anagogical sense
The abomination set up in history, partial and temporary, anticipates its own definitive and final removal when Christ returns to judge; after that day nothing false will ever again stand where God alone belongs.
Warrant
Christ's own naming of Daniel's prophecy and its fulfilment in AD 70 grounds the core of this entry. The further extension to a final Antichrist figure draws on 2 Thessalonians 2 and the Catechism (CCC 675-677), developed Church teaching rather than a second explicit citation. Checked in the Greek, and both halves of the phrase carry over: bdelygma and eremosis stand together at Daniel 9:27 in the Septuagint and again at Matthew 24:15, with eremosis alone at Luke 21:20. The same pair stands at Daniel 12:11 and 1 Machabees 1:57 in the Septuagint, and at Mark 13:14 in the Gospels. Hippolytus reads Daniel's one week as 'the last week which is to be at the end of the whole world' (On Christ and Antichrist, 43), in the midst of which 'the abomination of desolation will be manifested, viz., Antichrist, announcing desolation to the world' (On Daniel, 22), and in On Christ and Antichrist (62 to 64) he sets Christ's warning in Matthew 24:15 beside Paul's man of sin in 2 Thessalonians 2 before the Lord's coming from heaven. Eusebius, writing the history of the siege, records that the church in Jerusalem had been commanded by a revelation before the war 'to leave the city and to dwell in a certain town of Perea called Pella,' and that at last 'the abomination of desolation, proclaimed by the prophets, stood in the very temple of God' (Church History III.5).
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 675.
The verses
Daniel 9:27 · Matthew 24:15 · Matthew 24:21 · Luke 21:20 · 2 Thessalonians 2:3 · 2 Thessalonians 2:4
