What if the stories and events of the Old Testament are not only historically and accurately true but are also allegorical to New Testament truth and are prophetic? If you believe this to be true, I have a few secrets to share with you:
- You are among the 1% of believers who ever considered this and grasped it by faith.
- Others will think you are crazy. They may mock, shun and criticize you.
- Your Bible study life will never be the same, and you will draw closer to the Lord in your understanding and fall more in love with Him than you ever imagined.
In literature, an allegory is a fictional story parlayed to represent moral or spiritual truths. The famous books “Pilgrim’s Progress” and “Hinds' Feet on High Places” are examples. But your awesome God, the Author of life, designed actual Biblical history to also represent the future outlined in the New Testament. All the way through Revelation.
You probably have been unknowingly exposed to this Biblical phenomenon but didn’t think of it in terms of true allegory tied to New Testament doctrine. I’ll give two quick ones here:
- Abraham offering Isaac was true history that was also prophetic of New Testament truth. Sacrificing animals, with the shedding of their blood, was God’s Old Testament method of atoning for sin. He instituted it as true allegory for the New Testament washing away of sins. He used Abraham’s intended sacrifice of his beloved son Isaac to picture that. The story is in Genesis 22. Read this: And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. (Gen 22:8) Fast forward to the day John the Baptist announced Christ’s entrance: The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. (John 1:29)
- Moses making a serpent of brass and putting it on a pole in Numbers 21 was odd, as was the instruction for all who had been bitten by the fiery serpent to look up at the brass serpent on the pole to be healed. God designed that incident as a true allegory of what would happen later in the New Testament. Satan bit us all with sin, and the only antivenom was Jesus becoming sin for us. Jesus explained this Himself when He said: And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:14-15)
Though the whole Old Testament is filled with historically true allegories representing New Testament doctrine, the word allegory is only used once in the Bible. To explain it, I’m going to give you a new word to think about. Proxy. Characters in the Old Testament were proxies or stand-ins for New Testament truths. They were real people and real events that also serve as proxies.
One more that you can look up on your own for homework is the doctrine Paul outlines in Gal. 4:41-31. I’ll get you started right here with the beginning of this passage: Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law? For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bondmaid, the other by a freewoman. But he who was of the bondwoman was born after the flesh; but he of the freewoman was by promise. Which things are an allegory: for these are the two covenants; the one from the mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar… (Gal. 4:21-24)
Finish reading the passage (Gal 4:21-31) and then think back to the Old Testament story of Sarah and Hagar having children. When you read of Sarah demanding that Abraham go into her handmaid Hagar and make a baby, you scratch your head. A) How odd of Sarah. B) Much odder for Abraham to blindly obey his wife and do it. That’s the way you think of the true historical story. You’ve probably heard plenty of sermons rehearsing the events. But don’t forget God and His goal with Old Testament history. He is sovereign over events, and they happened for a New Testament doctrine reason.
So, here’s a way to look at Old Testament stories. See them as designed by God as true allegories for New Testament doctrine or Bible prophesy of end times. It’s the way we study the Bible around our house.
And to close, if God didn’t intend for true Old Testament stories to picture New Testament doctrine or prophesies, how else would you explain these verses? Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure (Isa. 46:9-10)
R&J Shee
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