Luke 21:20

Only Luke has this. So he speaks of armies surrounding the city, which was true then. He does not speak, as Matthew and Mark do, of the abomination of desolation, which can only be proved true in its closing agony. The siege our Lord describes, with all that came out of it, cannot be a future event. What follows it is the humiliating hold on the Jewish capital by one nation after another, until the allotted seasons of Gentile supremacy end.

This is the clear reply to the only part of the disciples' question that Luke records. Jerusalem surrounded by armies was to be the sign that its desolation was near.

When they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies, they could know that its desolation was near. This is still a very different thing from the "abomination of desolation" that Matthew and Mark speak of. That one is tied to the middle of the last week of Daniel, while this one comes between the sixty-ninth and the seventieth week of the same chapter: "And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary" (Dan. 9:26). There is no excuse at all for confusing two things so different, when the gap between them is stated so clearly.

Schmiedel claims that Luke himself, in his own mind, treated Titus's desolation of Jerusalem as the same thing as Daniel's "abomination." That only shows how little that critic understands the plan of Old Testament prophecy. As the Expositor points out, it is typical of Luke that he kept the two apart.

Nothing can be simpler. The prediction is exact. The directions match exactly what the Christians living in the city did when Titus's army approached Jerusalem. There is no call to special haste, and in fact there was no occasion for special haste. Every reader knows what followed. The Christians, warned by this prophecy, left the city. The city was destroyed, and its people were either killed or carried off into slavery.

The Christians, remembering the Lord's warning, left Jerusalem together before the siege closed in. They travelled to Pella, a village beyond the Jordan. There they stayed until Hadrian allowed them to return to the ruins of their ancient city.

Then those who believed the words of Jesus did flee to the mountains, and so escaped the horrors of the siege. Then began the "days of vengeance" for the Jew. They will not stop until everything foretold has come true. Then started the long captivity, which has continued and will continue, with Jerusalem under the feet of the nations, until the times of the Gentiles end. Those times began when God raised up Nebuchadnezzar, who took the throne from the last king of David's line. They will end with the crushing of Gentile rule at the appearing of Christ.

Upon the guilty city, stained with the blood of the prophets, and now to be stained with that of their glorious King also, days of vengeance were coming.