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The False Prophet | Copyright | Dedication | Contents | List of Illustrations | Preface | The Great Detective | When Are We? | 69 Weeks | 1290 Days | The Wrong Rock | Two Witnesses | Time, Times & a Half | Mounting Evidence | One More Time | Timeless Covenant | Leopard-Bear-Lion | Two-Horned Beast | The Big Lie | Scarlet Beast | Wherefore, Come Out | Last Trumpet | Hour, Day, Month & Year | Bifids & Chiasms
The False Prophet - Skolfield
1290 Days
CHAPTER 4
Be not ye like your fathers,
which trespassed against the
LORD God of their fathers,
who therefore gave them up
to desolation, as ye see.
2CH 30:7
WHEN I began this study of Revelation twenty-four years ago, what
I really had in mind was finding scriptural support for the Seven-Year
Tribulation view I was so confidently teaching. I was just as
convinced as everyone else that there was going to be one. So the
surprise of my life came when I couldn’t prove that view from
Scripture. Major pillars of that view are the prophetic “days” of Dan
12:11-12 . We now realize we should probably interpret those days
as years. But if they are years, how do we know when they began or
when they end? For that, we need look at when the Lord gave this
prophecy to Daniel:
Dan 10:1 In the third year of Cyrus the Persian, a thing was
revealed unto Daniel ... but the appointed time was long: and he
understood the thing, and had understanding of the vision.
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Dan 10:1 to Dan 12:13 is the final vision of Daniel’s prophetic
ministry. The year was 533BC and the prophecy is obviously about
the future of Daniel’s people, the Jews then in captivity. A major
portion of this prophecy is a detailed account of the Medo-Persian
and Greek control of the Jews in the Holy Land during the next 400
years. The Babylonian empire had fallen some three years earlier and
Daniel was now a very old man, probably in his nineties. He had been
a captive in Babylon for 73 years. According to Ezr 3:2, the Jews had
just begun their trek back to the Holy Land under the leadership of a
Jewish prince named Zerubbabel and a high priest named Jeshua.
That is the historic setting for Daniel’s final prophecy, within which
is a curious passage about “times” and another about days:
Dan 12:11 (NASB) And from the time that the regular sacrifice is
abolished, and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be
1,290 days.
Curious, indeed. Are these prophetic “days” just ordinary twentyfour
hour days, or could they be years again, like they were in the 69
weeks ... and if they are years, what is an “Abomination that maketh
Desolate?” Well, the verse refers to the “daily sacrifice” and since
those sacrifices were only offered at the temple in Jerusalem, then
temple sacrifices were probably involved. As a result, that
abomination would have to be something done to God’s temple site
that would defile it and make it impossible for the priests to offer
sacrifices there. It was true in Daniel’s time and it is true now. God
has not changed where Jewish sacrifices should be offered anywhere
in the Bible.1
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1 The OT continually corrects Israel’s people for offering on the “high places,”
instructing them to bring their offerings to the temple instead (2 Ch 28:24-25). Priests
were authorized to sacrifice only on the Altar of Burnt Offering (Deu 12:10-14); so to the
Jews, an Abomination that made Desolate would be anything that kept them from offering
sacrifices on the temple site. Levitical law dictated that anyone who desecrated the temple
was to be stoned with stones until dead. In defiance of this, a Greek king, Antiochus
Epiphanies, sacrificed a pig on the altar of burnt offering (circa 168BC). That started the
Maccabean revolt, and the incident has been known ever since as an “abomination that
made desolate.” After that desecration, the priests had to perform extensive purification
of the altar before they could again offer burnt offerings upon it.
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1290 Days 38
But to which abolition of sacrifices is the Lord referring in this
“1290-day” prophecy? Now please, let’s not try to make a New
Testament doctrine out of this Old Testament Scripture. The
addressees are clearly defined. It is in Hebrew and to the Jews. It is
about the Holy Land while Gentile powers were ruling there. Context
refers to “thy people” (Dan 12:1). Daniel was a Jew and the prophecy
was given to him, so it is to and about the Jews during the Time of
the Gentiles. There is no reason to believe the Lord was telling Daniel
about an abolition of sacrifices that might take place 2500 years later,
at the end of the Christian Era.
Sacrifices were suspended three times in the Old Testament: once
before Daniel (2Ch 28:24-25), once during the Babylonian captivity
(2Ch 36:19 and Ezr 3:6), and once, about four hundred years later by
the Greek king Antiochus Epiphanies. So to which event do you
suppose the Lord might be referring?
Well, to whom was this prophecy given? To Daniel in 533BC.
Result: we have every reason to believe that the Lord was referring
to sacrifices that were abolished during Daniel’s own lifetime: to an
abolition of sacrifices to which Daniel could relate!
Was it at the time of destruction of the temple? It doesn’t seem
so. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the temple in 586BC, but
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Photo courtesy of Biblical Archeology Review
The Temple Mount as seen from the North. The Muslim memorial, the Dome of the Rock,
stands in its center as it has for 1300 years. In the upper left is the Al Aqsa Mosque,
considered by Moslems to be their 3rd most holy. Circled in the lower right is a little,
unimposing cupola, the Dome of the Tablets. Late archeological evidence indicates that
the Holy of Holies in both the Solomonic and the 2nd Temple was located here, some 330
feet north of the Dome itself. The Dome appears to be in what was once called the Court
of the Gentiles.
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the prophet Jeremiah tells us that temple sacrifices continued long
after the temple was burned:
Jer 41:5 ... from Shechem, from Shiloh, and from Samaria, even
fourscore men ... with offerings and incense in their hand, to bring
them to the house of the LORD.
Those men came to the temple at the end of the governorship of
Gedaliah (seven to ten months after the temple was burned), so there
had to be some purified priests in Jerusalem who were still carrying
on. Two more years pass, then in the very last chapter of Jeremiah we
read:
Jer 52:30 In the three and twentieth year of Nebuchadnezzar,
Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried away captive of the
Jews seven hundred forty and five persons.
Nebuchadnezzar ascended the throne of Babylon in 606-605BC.
Twenty-three years later is 583BC. Therefore, this final captivity of
583BC is a scripturally supportable time for the sacrifices to have
been abolished. Babylonians took the nobles, artisans and priests
captive; they left only the poorest people in the land. There were
apparently no purified priests left in the land who could offer
sacrifices. What a devastating experience this must have been for
God’s people in captivity.
Oh, how the Jews repented. From the Babylonian captivity to this
very day, they have not departed from the Lord their God, nor has an
idol been seen among them. As a conquered people in exile, they had
70 years to regret their waywardness, and they never forgot it. Their
repentance is poignantly recorded in this short quote from an
unknown psalmist:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down.
Yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps
upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive
required of us a song;
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and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the LORD’s song
in a strange land?
PSA 137:1-4
Though he was hundreds of miles from Jerusalem, Daniel knew all
about these new hostages. Another group of Jewish captives being
brought back to Babylon by Nebuzaradan, captain of the king’s
guard, could hardly have escaped Daniel’s notice.1 He was daily in
King Nebuchadnezzar’s court (Dan 2:48-49). Oh, how it must have
hurt that saintly man to hear of the sacrifices being stopped and of the
Lord’s temple in utter ruin. We can prove that the temple site was
abandoned during Daniel’s lifetime from Dan 9:17 and Ezr 3:2-3.
With that historic background in place, let’s look at Dan 12:11 again:
Dan 12:11 And from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished,
and the abomination of desolation is set up, there will be 1,290
days.
By applying the day=year unit of measure to that verse, Daniel
could understand the vision. He remembered when the regular
evening and morning sacrifices were abolished. He looked from that
time on down 1290 Hebrew years into the future. He knew that an
unbelievable abomination was going to trespass on the temple
mount.2 An atrocity that would make it desolate. The abomination to
come would defile the site and prevent all future sacrifices. What
could that terrible thing be? Daniel could not know, but we can
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1 For details on the Babylonian captivity, please refer to Graph No.1 on p24. It cannot be
positively proven from Jer 41:5 and 52:30 that sacrifices were abolished in 583BC.
However, there are N.T. prophecies that give ample support for that date. Those
prophecies will be discussed in later chapters.
2 This is how Daniel could understand the vision. God gave the 1290-day vision fifty
years after the regular sacrifices had been abolished. Looking back, Daniel could see that
nothing of any special significance had taken place just 1290 ordinary days after their
abolition, so he knew the Lord was speaking of some-thing other than ordinary 24 hour
days. Daniel then put together when sacrifices were abolished with the definition for
prophetic days given by the prophet Ezekiel (Eze 4:6 “I have appointed thee each day for
a year.”) and saw that the abomination was still 1290 Hebrew years in his future.
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1290 Days 42
because 1290 years since the sacrifices were abolished have already
passed. They were over in 688AD.1
So what happened in 688AD? Well, from 685 to 705AD, the
Muslim Kalifah, Abd el Malik ibn Marwan, built a memorial to
Muhammad, the Dome of the Rock, on God’s temple mount! Thus,
we now have a positive identification:
The Dome of the Rock is the Abomination of Desolation!
That is not just coincidence or suppositional theology. The
day=year interpretation fits the words of Daniel 12:11 exactly and it
fits known history TO THE YEAR. The construction date of the Dome
of the Rock is a plain historic fact that you can prove for yourself
from any good encyclopedia or world history.
And so, for the first time in Scripture, we run into the Moslems.
Islam, and nobody else, was responsible for the construction of the
Abomination that maketh Desolate!2
That temple mount of God Most Holy was made spiritually
desolate over 1300 years ago and it remains so today. The Jews can’t
offer sacrifices to the Lord on His holy mountain while that structure
to THE false prophet remains there. That is why there is such an
interest among conservative Jews about tearing it down. It is no secret
to the Jewish Rabbis that the Dome of the Rock is an abomination
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1 Some may argue that sacrifices could have been abolished a year or two earlier, or a
couple of years later than 583BC, as suggested by the author. But none argue that they
were abolished earlier than the destruction of the temple (586BC), nor more than ten years
later. The Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque were under construction on the temple
mount for about 20 years, from 685 to 705AD. Leaving the widest latitude for scholarly
argument, that 20-year window cannot be circumvented.
2 Jerry Landay in his book, The Dome of the Rock (Newsweek, New York, NY, 1972) p.
18, records that when Khalifah Omar entered Jerusalem in 639AD, he was met by
Sophronius, Bishop of the Jerusalem Church, who showed him around the city. Seeing the
temple mount (then in rubble), Omar declared that he was going to build a memorial to
Muhammad on the original site of the temple of God. Sophronius exclaimed in horror,
“Verily, this is the Abomination of Desolation as spoken of by Daniel the prophet, and it
now stands in the holy place.” Though Sophronius was an old man of about 80, Khalifah
Omar put him in prison and to forced labor, the severities of which killed him.
The Dome of the Rock being the Abomination that maketh Desolate is not a new
theology. It’s a truth that’s been with the Church for over 1300 years, but somehow we
have managed to forget the prophetic words of Sophronius, Bishop of the Jerusalem
Church.
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1290 Days 43
that makes desolate. In the following chapters we will see how the
New Testament fully supports the identity of the dome as the
Abomination that maketh Desolate.
Now don’t forget 688AD and the Dome of the Rock. We’re
going to run into that date, and Islam, again and again. And
remember 583BC, too. Both dates are important.
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GRAPH NUMBER 5
