The following words have a similar meaning:
The angel sent a sickle to harvest the vineyard of the earth and throw it
into the great winepress of God’s anger. The winepress was trampled
and blood went out; sixteen hundred stadia away it was as high as a
horse’s bridle. (Revelation 14 : 19 , 20 )
Blood means falsified truth. There are many other examples in those
seven chapters.180 The Gospel writers described the stages of decline and corruption
that the Christian church would undergo (Matthew 24 ; Mark 13 ; Luke
21 ). Their reference to “a great affliction such as has never existed since
the world began and will never exist again” [Matthew 24 : 21 ] means an
attack by falsities against the truth until there is no truth left that has not
been falsified and finished off. (“Affliction” has the same meaning in
other passages in the Word as well.)
Their reference to “the abomination of desolation” means the same
thing, as does “the desolation [flying] on a bird of abominations” and
“the close and the cutting down” in Daniel [ 9 : 27 ]. The events in the
Book of Revelation listed in the previous section [§ 179 ] also describe
the same attack.
This attack came because the church saw God’s unity in the Trinity
and his Trinity in the unity in three persons instead of one. The church
has been mentally based on picturing three gods and vocally based on
confessing one God. People in the church have separated themselves
from the Lord, even to the point where they no longer have any concept
of divinity in relation to his human nature. Yet he is in fact God the
Father in human form, which is why he is called “Father of Eternity”
(Isaiah 9 : 6 ) and why he says to Philip, “Those who have seen me have
seen the Father” (John 14 : 7 , 9 ).
181 You may well ask what the source is that yields the abomination of
desolation that Daniel describes (Daniel 9 : 27 ) and the affliction such as
has never existed before and will never exist again (Matthew 24 : 21 ). The
answer you will find is the faith itself that is universal to the Christian
world, together with the now traditional concepts of how that faith
flows into us, acts on us, and is assigned to us. Astoundingly, the posi-
tion that that faith is the only thing that justifies us (although that belief
is really a fairy tale, not a faith) occupies every square inch of the Chris-
tian churches. In the Sacred Order, it rules as virtually the only theology.
This position is what all candidates for the ministry eagerly learn, con-