Daniel 9:26 is part of the Seventy Weeks Prophecy that Gabriel revealed to Daniel in about 537 BC.¹ This verse predicted the apostasy of, and abominations upon, the Jews after the Messiah was cut off (crucified), saying, "the end thereof shall be with a flood."² This flood came in 70 AD when the Romans destroyed the temple in Jerusalem and brought an end to the Jewish nation.³ Writing in 96 AD,⁴ John looked back in time from Patmos island to describe the same flood as a historical event. In Revelation 12:15, John described the Roman abomination of 70 AD as a serpent that "cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman." The woman in this verse refers to the ancient church of Jesus Christ.⁵ Both Daniel and John saw the same metaphorical flood of spiritual darkness and apostasy⁶ that swept over and covered the earth after 70 AD⁷ in the likeness of actual flood waters that covered the apostate earth in the days of Noah.⁸

When the Savior ministered among the Jews as the mortal Messiah,⁹ they were already in a state of apostasy.¹⁰ Their hardened hearts led them to reject and crucify the Savior¹¹ in about 34 AD.¹² After Christ's death, the apostles predicted that the Great Apostasy would follow in all the world.¹³ This flood of apostasy swept over¹⁴ the ancient church of Jesus Christ¹⁵ within decades after the apostles made their predictions.¹⁶ By 70 AD, many Christian saints were apostate and the church was drowning in a flood of persecution carried out by the Roman Empire at the behest of the Jews.¹⁷ Some faithful saints fled Jerusalem just before the Romans destroyed the city¹⁸ and they took the light of the gospel with them into the wilderness.¹⁹ People that survived the Roman Abomination of Desolation in 70 AD, whether Jew or Christian, were physically scattered in the wilderness of apostasy throughout the Roman Empire.²⁰

The same flood that brought physical death and spiritual destruction to many Jews and Christians also engulfed and destroyed the Nephites in America no later than 421 AD.²¹ The Great Apostasy became a worldwide deluge in 570 AD when the Lost Ten Tribes were translated and taken from the earth.²² Their translation saved them from spiritual destruction during the flood of darkness after 70 AD, just as the translation of Enoch's people saved them from physical destruction during the actual flood in the days of Noah.²³ The spiritual floodwaters of the Great Apostasy covered completely the entire earth when the Lost Ten Tribes were translated.

When Daniel received his vision of the Seventy Weeks Prophecy he mourned for three weeks.²⁴ He then understood that the Savior's crucifixion would bring upon the Jews a long period of spiritual darkness and desolations²⁵ that would continue until the Second Coming.²⁶ Nevertheless, Daniel chapters 10 through 12²⁷ offered the Jews hope in the short-term when they left the captivity of Babylon in 538 BC,²⁸ and hope in the long-term when a Jewish remnant will be freed spiritually and physically at the Second Coming.²⁹ In these chapters of hope, the Savior appeared and ministered to Daniel,³⁰ as did Michael the Archangel,³¹ who is Adam in mortality.³²

Daniel 10:20-21 revealed to Daniel that Michael and his army of guardian angels³³ fought to preserve and protect the Jews³⁴ within the Persian Empire.³⁵ Daniel 11:3 also assured him that Michael's protective powers and influence would continue to protect the Jews in the Persian Empire until Alexander the Great stood up with great dominion in the Greek Empire and conquered Persia.³⁶

Jewish life in the Greek Empire was generally tolerable until Antiochus Epiphanes stood up as a vile person among the Greeks in Daniel 11:21.³⁷ He killed many Jews and desolated their temple in Jerusalem with an abomination that maketh desolate in 168 BC, as recorded in Daniel 11:21-31.³⁸ Some scholars misinterpret this Abomination of Desolation in Daniel 11:31 as the Roman Abomination of Desolation in 70 AD and beyond.³⁹ However, this ignores Daniel's chronological account of the Maccabean revolt that immediately follows the abomination in 168 BC, as recorded in Daniel 11:32-35.⁴⁰

Daniel 11:35 is a transition verse that jumps forward in time to the period of the Roman Empire.⁴¹ In this verse, Daniel learns that the Jews will be desolated "even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed."⁴² The desolations that came upon the Jews in 70 AD were just the beginning of sorrows⁴³ because they rejected and crucified the Savior after they received so much favor from him as a covenant people.⁴⁴ Their desolations will continue until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled at the Second Coming.⁴⁵

After the transition verse in Daniel 11:35, Daniel describes several historical hallmarks of the Roman Empire in Daniel 11:36-45 based on Old Testament imagery. For example, Daniel 11:36-37 describes a king "who shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god." Since these verses describe the Roman Empire, this describes Roman emperor worship decreed by Caligula in about 39 AD.⁴⁶ This decree led to riots and the First Jewish Revolt in 66 AD, followed by the Roman Abomination of Desolation in 70 AD.⁴⁷

Daniel 11:38 identifies Constantine as the pagan emperor who adopted paganized Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire, saying he worshiped "a god whom his fathers knew not."⁴⁸ In the same verse, Constantine lavishly honored the so-called Christian church with gifts of "gold, and silver, and with precious stones, and pleasant things."⁴⁹

In Daniel 11:39, Constantine gave church leaders and the Christian clergy much power and wealth⁵⁰ to "rule over many, and ... divide the land for gain." This occurred when Constantine gifted immense tracts of land in Italy to the Roman church at the time he removed the capital of the Roman Empire to Byzantium‒later known as Constantinople and then Istanbul in modern Turkey.⁵¹ The immense power and control of the Constantinian church endured in the Holy Roman Empire long after the fall of the Imperial Roman Empire in 476 AD.⁵²

Daniel 11:40-41 describes the time of the end of the Holy Roman Empire. This began when Muslims overran the eastern half of the empire from the south and north in 1453 AD.⁵³ The protestant Reformation then came from the north which stripped away the remaining political power of the popes in the west by the early 1800's.⁵⁴ Daniel describes this final decline and fall of the Holy Roman Empire in Daniel 11:44, as "tidings out of the east and out of the north [that] shall trouble him: therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to take away many."⁵⁵ The final words in this verse describe the fury of the Catholic counter-reformation that was designed to stop the rising tide of Protestantism and caused many deaths.⁵⁶

Daniel 11:45 describes the end of the Holy Roman Empire as a type for all wicked kings and nations of the latter days. This verse alludes to the military force used by ancient Rome⁵⁷ to "plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain [Jerusalem]."⁵⁸ The worldly and palatial tabernacle that Rome planted in Judea was the evil antithesis⁵⁹ of God's holy mountain (temple).⁶⁰ Rome planted its tabernacle in Jerusalem when it destroyed Jerusalem and Herod's temple in 70 AD.⁶¹ However, Daniel 11:45 also predicted that Rome would eventually "come to his end, and none shall help him."⁶²

Today, the end of the Roman Empire is a matter of undisputed history and the imagery in Daniel 11:45 now serves as a foreshadow of the Second Coming. Based on recorded history from this prophetic past, Armageddon will happen and there will be a final Abomination of Desolation at Jerusalem.⁶³ The Gentiles that metaphorically plant their tabernacle in Jerusalem during the final Abomination of Desolation will come to their end at the Second Coming and none shall help them.