Hi John, God Bless you again.

To : Bill Griese Re: Abomination of Desolation and the proper order of end time events.

Hi Bill , God Bless you for your work on this.  I perhaps like you, have done deep study on this the past many years.  Though I am not a Pastor per say, I just finished a two part radio message labeled: "Matthew 24 vs. Luke 21".  If you would like to listen to it, it can be found at: www.realchristian.net/matthew24vsluke21.html

While I have been a Christian for most of my fifty years and always interested in end times prophecy even from childhood, it wasn't until five years ago or so, that the Lord showed me (because I finally prayed for the knowlege on this), that one big reason there is so much confusion on end time events order, is because many of us including myself for too long, don't go to the book of Revelation alone, for proper endtime events order of things, as we must.  Until we do this we will perpetually be splintered as Christians.

All previous prophecy must be plugged into Revelation, starting at the first seal, for the proper numerical, sequential and chronilogical order, otherwise confusion and opinion will rule and this is one reason why there are so many differing opinions and new doctrines popping up all the time.

Please look at Matthew 24 again and you will see Jesus was not going in any particular order the way that John does in Revelation. Instead Jesus was skipping around and there are a few reasons why he likely did this.  One is that he knew that he would be revealing more to John later on, in fact not just more, but the final big picture in Revelation.  Two is, in Matthew he was speaking to the Jews, not the Gentile Chrsitians as in Luke chapter 21 to whom he gave a message with stark differences.

It's important to realize the differences not only between Luke and Matthew, but also how it all gets plugged into Revelation.  As he was speaking to the Jews in Matthew, he was describing everything in chapter 24 as if they all would see every sign and event, including the Rapture event, the Abomination of Desolation AND even the last preaching of the Gospel, by the angel.
Jesus spanned the entire tribulation period and told them when they see all these things they would know the end was near.

However, he did not tell them their redemption, would be near as he told those in Luke.  Why not?  Because for the most part the Jews, approx. 97% of them today, will not be ready for the Rapture event, before the tribulation starts.  It is estimated that only 1 out of 35 Jews today are Messianic Jews who belive in Jesus as their Messiah.  Out of 13,000,000 Jews today, thats only 300,000 or so.

Jesus obviously knew this would be what the majority of them would see going on during the end times of "Jacobs trouble."
The fact that Jesus mentioned the preaching of the Gospel angel in Matthew 24, before the abomination of Desolation proves this point clearly along with other things as well.  The Gospel angel preaches long after the AC goes in and desecrates the temple.
So until we plug all previous end times prophecy into Revelation for proper order, we will have more and more camps of belief on many end time events only adding to the confusion.

In the service of the only true and living God,

Craig Opal