---
title: Mark 13:14
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/mark-13-14/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/mark-13-14.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Mark 13:14
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Mark 13:14

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> So when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it should not be (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "However, when you catch sight of the disgusting thing that causes desolation standing where it should not be (let the reader use discernment), then let those in Judea begin fleeing to the mountains."

## JW Usage

The "disgusting thing that causes desolation" is read by JW publications as a modern fulfilment — applied historically to the League of Nations after 1919 and now to the United Nations. The aside "let the reader use discernment" is taken as Jesus signalling a future, symbolic referent rather than a first-century event. The verse is one piece of the larger 1914 framework; it is rarely allowed to stand on its own merits because its first-century fulfilment is difficult to deny once Luke 21:20 is brought alongside.

## Protestant Usage

Read Mark 13:14 alongside Luke 21:20, where the same instruction is given but the cipher is decoded — "when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near." Luke is Jesus's own commentary on Mark's "disgusting thing." The early Christians read the verse this way and acted on it: when Cestius Gallus's legions surrounded Jerusalem in AD 66 and unexpectedly withdrew, the Jerusalem church fled to Pella across the Jordan (Eusebius, Church History 3.5.3). When Titus returned in AD 70 the city was destroyed exactly as Jesus said. The League of Nations was founded in 1920 and has no connection to Jerusalem, the temple, or anything Jesus described — the substitution is a 20th-century imposition on a 1st-century prophecy.

## NWT Issue

The NWT renders bdelygma tēs erēmōseōs as "the disgusting thing that causes desolation." The translation is an accurate semantic gloss but it severs the technical Septuagint link to Daniel 9:27, 11:31, and 12:11, where the same Greek phrase ("abomination of desolation") is the technical term for the temple sacrilege that triggers judgement. Standard English translations preserve "abomination of desolation" precisely because the link to Daniel is the whole point — Jesus is identifying his own warning as the fulfilment of Daniel's prophecy. The NWT's plainer rendering loses the intertextual freight that ties Mark 13 back to its Old Testament source.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [The Abomination of Desolation — Luke 21:20](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/abomination-desolation.md) — Jesus explained His own prophecy [Eschatology]