Important Types

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 1, 1909

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 36, No. 34.

THE Bible is a book of types. Of every disposition, of every character of good or evil, God has given us types in His holy word. Every one who in past ages gave himself in the fear of God for his fellow men, shadowed forth, however dimly, the coming Sacrifice and Saviour of the world. Every manifest judgment upon men or cities or nations, in consequence of their sin, prefigured the coming final judgment on the incorrigibly impenitent.

The first children of Adam—Cain and Abel—were types of faith and love and obedience on the part of Abel, and unbelief and hatred and disobedience on the part of Cain. And the Abels and the Cains have blessed and cursed the earth ever since.

The two sons of Isaac—Jacob and Esau—were types of men who have existed, and yet exist, everywhere, the one desiring the Lord’s blessing even tho he gets it by fraud, the other selling his birthright for a mess of pottage which perishes with the using. Jacob represents a religious class, Esau those who have no faith,—children of unbelief and disobedience.

Jacob in his twofold characteristics is a type of two classes. As Jacob, the supplanter, acquiring Esau’s birthright by taking selfish advantage of his brother’s supposed need, and Esau’s blessing by fraud and deceit, he represents a class of religionists who hope by might or right, by hook or crook, by principle or policy, by right or expediency, to obtain the Lord’s blessing, which to them is largely a matter of place or position, of loaves and fishes, of the temporal instead of the spiritual. To obtain this they sacrifice principle, take the unholy suggestions of the faithless, and unite with the world and the state, only to be utterly disappointed at last.

As Israel, the prevailer with God, he represents another class, who humble themselves before God, make full restitution of what they have taken, place all in the Lord’s hands, and wrestle long and earnestly if need be for the victory. To which class do you belong?

Babylon, the city and tower built by man’s folly, which man named “Bab-il,” “the gate of God,” but which God named “Babylon,” “Confusion,” is a type of human substitution for God’s way, the type of all those schemes of men by which under a pretense of worshiping God men exalt themselves to God’s place by putting their own laws, traditions, and expediences in the place of God’s law, truth, and eternal principles of right. Every departure of the church to the world, every union of church and state, every persecution of human souls for disagreeing with human opinion set up as God, finds its prototype in Babylon of old. By her fornication she hath “made all the earth drunken; the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad.” Jer. 51:7.

“The daughter of Babylon” represents the apostate and corrupt church of all ages, the church united with the powers of the world, trusting to political and state power instead of to the mighty power of God.

Jerusalem, the City of Peace, and “the daughter of Jerusalem,” represent the plan of God, and the people of God, of all ages, trusting in Him and in Him alone,—in her past often subverted, trodden down, despoiled, destroyed by enemies, yet through the power of God rising from her ashes, builded by His power, and finally triumphant.

Reader, to which of the above individual types do you conform? With which of the above opposite systems are you allied or identified? The decision you make means life or death.