Introduction - A Few Words
About Old Testament Types
by A.W. Pink
NOTE: This study is an edited version from A.W. Pink's book "Antichrist"
"In the volume of the book it is written of Me" (Heb. 10:7), said the Lord Jesus. Christ is the key to the Scriptures -- "Search the Scriptures they are they which testify of Me," are His words; and the Scriptures to which He had reference were not the four Gospels, for they were not then written, but the writings of Moses and the prophets. The Old Testament Scriptures, then, are something more than a compilation of historical narratives, something more than the record of a system of social and religious legislation, or a code of ethics.
The Old Testament Scriptures are, fundamentally, a stage on which we’re shown, in vivid symbolism, stupendous events of the future. The events recorded in the Old Testament were actual occurrences, yet were they also types. (A type is an example or illustration that points to a person or an event). Throughout the Old Testament dispensations God caused to be shadowed forth things which must yet come to pass. This is in full accord with a basic law in the economy of God. Nothing is brought to maturity at once. As it is in the natural world, so it is in the spiritual: there is first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. So there is first the shadow, and then the substance; the type, and then the antitype.
"Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning" (Rom. 15:4). Israel's tabernacle was "a figure for the time then present" (Heb. 9:8, 9), as well as the example and "shadow of heavenly things" (Heb. 8:5). Concerning the history of Abraham, his wives and his children, the apostle was inspired to write "which things are an allegory" (Gal. 4:24). These and other passages which might be quoted witness plainly to the typical meaning of portions of the Old Testament.
Many of God's servants have written at length upon the Passover, the brazen serpent, the Tabernacle, etc., as well as upon the many ways in which such men as Abel, Noah, Isaac, Moses, David, etc. prefigured the Savior. But strange to say, very little seems to have been written upon those who prefigure the Antichrist. So far as we are aware practically nothing has been given out concerning the many Bible characters of ill fame, who foreshadowed that coming one, that occupies such a prominent place in the prophetic scriptures. A wide field is here opened for study, and we take pleasure in now submitting to the careful perusal of the reader the results of our own imperfect researches, hoping that it may lead others to make a more complete examination of the subject for themselves.
Besides the plain and literal sense of Scripture, there is also a mystical sense, hidden beneath the surface and which can only be discovered as we, in dependence on the Holy Spirit, diligently compare scripture with scripture. In pursuing the latter we need not only to proceed with due caution, but in "fear and trembling," lest we devise mysteries of our own imagination, and thus pervert to one use what belongs to another. The principle which will safeguard us is to thoroughly acquaint ourselves with the antitypes. Let nothing be regarded as a type unless we are sure there is an exact correspondence with the antitype. This will preserve us from erroneously supposing that any person who is clearly a type of either Christ or the Antichrist is so in every detail of his life. Thus Moses was plainly a type of Christ as our Mediator, and in many other respects too, but in his failures and in other details of his personal history he was not a type of Christ. So, too, with those who foreshadowed the Antichrist: not everything recorded of them prefigured the character or deeds of the Man of Sin.
We shall now look at six Bible characters, each of which strikingly typified the Antichrist.