The Abomination of Desolation - St. Marys Coptic Orthodox Church

150
DAY OF THE LORD
Since every eye shall see Him, then it would be foolish to listen to
others telling us that he has already come! And a further clue is given
us in the same verse, “Behold He cometh with clouds.” So, Christ,
unlike Antichrist and the false christs that will come after he is gone,
will come on the clouds, from heaven and not from earth.
This will be the desperate attempt that Satan will put forward,
hoping that if it were possible, to deceive the very elect. But God
forbids that those who endure the Great Tribulation in the sure
knowledge that Christ will come and save them, should follow those
false christs.
SATAN’S FINAL ASSAULT ON THE CHURCH:
Having failed to destroy the elect by tricking them into going after
the false christs, Satan now plays his last desperate card: an all out
assault on the Church using whatever forces remain at his disposal in a
world already half destroyed. Revelation 20:7-9 summarizes for us this
final assault of Satan on the elect:
And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of
his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four
quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to
battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And they went up
on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints
about, and the beloved city.
The thousand years has ben dealt with in a previous chapter. The
Church believes that the thousand years began with Christ’s redeeming
death on the cross, by which the strong man (Satan) was bound and his
goods (the souls that were his captives in Hades) were spoiled (Matt
12:29). It will end in the last days before the second coming of the
Lord.
Satan will use nations that have not taken part in the events that
ended in the destruction of Babylon. These nations are called Gog and
Magog. Note that we are told that they “compassed the camp of the
saints about” that means they came against the place prepared by God
for the “Woman clothed by the Sun” (the Church) where she shall be
kept away from the tyranny of Antichrist, (see Revelation 12 and our
chapter on the flight of the Church.) More details about this final war
against the church are given to us in Ezekiel 38, 39 and Zechariah 14: