| Word | American Tract Society - Definition |
| TYPE | In Greek tupos, a word denoting some resemblance, and translated "figure" in Ro 4:15, "ensample" in Php 3:17, "manner" in Ac 23:25, and "form" in Ro 6:17. So also Moses was to make the tabernacle according to the type or model he had seen in the mount, Ac 7:44. In the more general use of the word, a scriptural type is a prophetic symbol, "a shadow of good things to come," Heb 10:1, "but the body is Christ," Col 2:17. The typical character of the old dispensation is its most distinguishing feature. For Example, the paschal lamb and all the victims sacrificed under the law were types of the Lamb of God, and illustrated his great atonement; showing that guilt deserved death, and could only be atoned for by the blood of an acceptable sacrifice. But they were also intended to foretell the coming of their great Antitype. The Old Testament types include persons, officers, objects, events, rites, and places. Thus Adam and Melchizedek, the prophetic and the priestly office, manna and the brazen serpent, the smitten rock and the passage over Jordan, the Passover and the Day of Atonement, Canaan and the cities of refuge are scriptural types of Christ. However striking the points of resemblance which an Old Testament event or object may present to something in the New Testament, it is not properly a type unless it was so appointed by God, and thus has something of a prophetic character. Due care should therefore be taken to distinguish between an illustration and a type. |