As we grow in our understanding of the Scriptures, we recognize that God uses typology in the Old Testament to foreshadow events or persons in the New Testament, particularly Christ and His salvation.
The shadowy character of Melchizedek is called a likeness of Christ as our king and priest (Heb. 7:15).
Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac and his son rising up unharmed from the altar pictured the Father offering His Son at the cross and raising Him from the dead (Heb. 11:19).
The deliverance of Israel through Moses from Egypt’s bondage typifies our deliverance by Christ from our bondage to sin. On and on the typologies roll.
Yet by their very nature, typologies are incomplete. As prophetic symbols, the type can never achieve the status of the antitype. Simply put, Melchizedek, Isaac, and Moses are not Jesus, but simply pictorial aspects of our Savior.
For this reason, then, the Spirit of God sometimes strings together typologies to give even richer imagery of our salvation in Christ. We could refer to these as double, or dual, typologies. We can see these double types in a variety of ways.
