Mark 13:14

"But" identifies the contrast between the false and true signs. The true sign was the appearance of the abomination of desolation (cf. Daniel 9:27; Daniel 11:31; Daniel 12:11; Matthew 24:15).

The abomination of desolation is something abominable associated with idolatry that would defile the temple resulting in its desertion by the godly. [Note: Cf. C. E. B. Cranfield, "St. Mark 13," Scottish Journal of Theology 6 (July 1953):298-99.] The ultimate abomination would be the Antichrist, the abomination in view primarily in Matthew and Mark’s accounts. The immediate abomination would be the polluting of the temple preceding its destruction in A.D. 70. A former abomination was the Syrian Antiochus Epiphanes who erected a pagan altar over the brazen altar and sacrificed a pig on it to Zeus in 167 B.C. (1 Maccabees 1:41-64; 1 Maccabees 6:7). [Note: Cf. Josephus, Antiquities of . . ., 12:5:4.]

The abomination would be standing where it did not belong. Mark described Jesus saying that the abomination (Gr. bdelygma, a neuter noun) would stand (estekota, a masculine participle) as a person who set himself up as God in the temple. The fact that Jesus used a masculine participle to modify a neuter noun suggests that the abomination is a man.

Mark avoided referring specifically to the temple sanctuary, though Matthew did refer to it (Matthew 24:15). Perhaps Mark did this to avoid planting the idea of polluting the temple in any Roman reader’s mind. His parenthetic instruction to the reader would have encouraged Roman Christians to seek the identity of the place in Daniel’s prophecy (Daniel 9:25-27).

When the Zealots occupied the temple in A.D. 67-68 and installed a usurper, Phanni, as high priest, Jewish Christians fled from Jerusalem to Pella, a transjordanian mountain town. [Note: Idem, The Wars . . ., 4:3:7-10; 4:6:3; Eusebius, 3:5:3.] This flight prefigured the one that will take place in the future (i.e., the Tribulation).