“And Arms [ Forces] shall stand of His [Antiochus IV(175 B.C.E. – 164 B.C.E)] Part;

And They shall pollute [defile] The Sanctuary of Strength;

And shall take away The Daily Sacrifice,

And They shall place The Abomination That Maketh desolate.”

(Daniel 11:30)

Exodus 29:38 – 42

Now This is That Which Thou Shalt Offer Upon The Altar:

Two Lambs of The first Year Day by Day Continually.

The One Lamb Thou Shalt Offer In The Morning;

And The Other Lamb Thou Shalt Offer At Even.

And With The One Lamb A Tenth Deal Of Flour Mingled With The Fourth Part of An Hin of Beaten Oil,

And The fourth Part of An Him of wine for A Drink Offering.

And The Other lamb Thou Shalt Offer At Even;

And Shalt Do Thereto according to The Meat[ Flour] offering of The Morning,

And According To The drink Offering Thereof,

For A Sweet Savour – An Offering Made By Fire Unto THE LORD.

This Shall Be A continual Burnt Offering Throughout Your generations

At The door Of The Tabernacle Of The Congregation Before THE LORD,

Where I Will Meet With You to speak There Unto Thee.”

When Antiochus IV was returning from Egypt after having been humiliated by The Roman Senate, a rumour spread in Judaea that the Seleucid king had been killed. The rejected High Priest, Jason, gathered a force of 1.000 soldiers and made a surprize attack on The City of Jerusalem. Menelaus, Antiochus IV’s chosen High Priest was forced to flee Jerusalem during the ensuing riot.

Antiochus IV, however, was not dead. He attacked Jerusalem, and restored Menelaus, then executed many Jews.

According to The Second Book of Maccabees 5: 11 – 14 Antiochus ordered his soldiers to cut down without mercy those whom they met and to slay those who took refuge in their houses. There was a massacre of young and old, a killing of women and children, a slaughter of virgins and infants. In the space of three days, eighty thousand were lost, forty thousand meeting a violent death, and the same number being sold into slavery.

After restoring Menelaus, Antiochus Iv issued decrees aimed at helping the most enthusiastically pro-Greek faction of Jews ( usually called “Hellenizers”) against the traditionalists.

He outlawed Jewish religious rites and traditions and the Temple in Jerusalem was changed to a syncretic Greek-Jewish cult that included worship of Zeus.

Antiochus sacrificed a great swine at the image of Moses, and at The Altar of GOD That Stood in The Outward Court, and sprinkled them with the blood of the sacrifice. This was “The Abomination That Maketh Desolate’ (Daniel 11:31b).

JESUS warned HIS Disciples that when They “Saw Jerusalem surrounded with armies (Luke 21:20) – “The Abomination of Desolation spoken of by Daniel The Prophet stand in THE HOLY PLACE” ( Matthew 24:15) they were to flee Jerusalem.

What occurred under Antiochus Iv would take place again, but this time The Desolation of The Temple would not be “Two Thousand and Three Hundred Days”(Daniel 8:14).

Next Week: Daniel 11:32