Hi Chad,
First of all I want to thank you for your time and all the information you have shared. I sincerely appreciate it.
 
I am going to take some time and reread this but I am having trouble accepting that they all understood the types, prophecies, shadows of everything to come when they wrote the words. I have it all before me and I don't yet understand it all!
 
I am sure this has happened to you as well, but you teach a class or preach a sermon and someone comes up to you later and tells you how that talk was exactly what they needed and they share how God spoke to them through it and they thank you. You smile but inside you are scratching your head because nothing you said even is close to the application they arrived at! Still God uses it for His purpose in the lives of those who heard what you said. 
 
So did all the OT writers fully understand the prophetic statements they penned and how everything would be shown to be a shadow of their coming Savior? I don't know.
 
Harry

Chad Richard Bresson <breusswane@...> wrote:
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "H Dorrington" 
> Are you saying that when they told of Jonah being in the belly of the 
> great fish for three days that they knew our Savior >would be in the tomb 
> for three days as well?

Exactly. And we know that because that's how Christ himself exegeted the 
passage. And we know from Luke 24, Christ expected his disciples to 
understand the suffering nature of that Messiah.

From the very beginning of the canon, we have a death/resurrection theme in 
the redemptive story pointing forward to the seed of the woman. Not only is 
this running theme through the Old Testament narrative tied to the Messiah's 
death/resurrection in the New Testament, it is tied to our understanding of 
the New Birth, Regeneration, The Exodus, New Heart, New Creation, and in 
some cases, Reconciliation. The language Eve uses in naming Seth is our 
first hint that Eve recognizes Seth is a living substitute for Abel who 
died. The most vivid death/resurrection type in the Old Testament is Isaac 
being laid on the wood (for all practical purposes he was dead) and then 
rising again... even Jewish theologians of Christ's day saw this in the 
Moriah narrative. Joseph rises from the pit/imprisonment to be exalted 
king. The Israelites are given new life in rising from Egypt to Canaan. 
Solomon is the risen son of David (the first one for Bathsheba died). 
Ezekiel's dry bones that are resurrected also touch on this (the bones of 
ch. 37 are in the context of the new heart 36).

In three of these death/resurrection narratives, a vessel is used in the 
resurrecting of the life from within. Noah's ark, Moses' ark-cradle, and 
Jonah's fish. Jonah's fish, to the jewish reader/hearer would have brought 
to mind the Noah and Moses narratives. And we have to keep in mind the 
progression of revelation. The seed of Genesis is unfolding toward the 
flower of full bloom in Christ. The dark room of faint shadows in Genesis 
is slowly increasing in candlepower as more details come to light. To 
Christ, who obviously understood the death/resurrection theme through the OT 
better than anyone, Jonah's fish gives him a detail that the other 
narratives don't: three days in His vessel.

> Are you saying that because they spoke so plainly about God entering into 
> covenants with Noah, Abraham, etc that we >would understand that there 
> were also covenants of works, grace, creation, and redemption even though 
> they never >mentioned them?

The question is whether or not "they never mentioned them". Again, I go 
back to the imposition of our Greek mindset on a Jewish text. The Jews were 
more interested in theology through the narrative than we are. We want 
things explicitly laid out for us, usually in systematic fashion (which is 
why we tend to create systematic theology in order to understand the Bible 
better). We aren't satisified trying to understand the theology of the 
narrative because we Greeks prefer ontological communication. The Jewish 
mind and therefore literature didn't function that way. Ideas and realities 
are presented in the narrative by explication AND implication.

Would it have been a big deal for the Jew "not" to see the word covenant in 
a passage yet understand covenant is in the passage? No, because the 
narrative is conveying the understanding of covenant without using the word 
(anytime we read God saying "I will" we can be virtually certain that some 
kind of covenant is in play... which btw, is why it is interesting that the 
king of tyre is using "I will" against God. This obviously doesn't answer 
all of the questions... it's just an example of what Jews would have "heard" 
in a narrative).

> Most of the time the Apostle who walked with Christ had no understanding 
> of what He was saying, do you really believe >that all the OT writers 
> fully understood all the pictures, types,and prophecies their writings 
> inferred?

Fully understood? Of course not. They didn't know the specifics because 
they were in shadow. But they did know a lot more than we give them credit 
for. And they certainly understood inherent to all special revelation is 
the Messiah. These were writers in the line of the seed of the woman 
projecting forward in the historical narrative the seed of the woman. Which 
is *why* we're not imposing anything to the text that isn't already there. 
Redemption is the reason for the revelation.. and the Messiah is the object 
of that revelation. Always. Without the Messiah, there's no purpose for 
the revelation.

>Or was it more of a matter of progressive revelation with each one adding 
>another part? Even Paul stated we know in >part...

Correct. Again, think of the dark room that is slowly gaining more light. 
Nothing in the room has changed. It's just we see things a little more 
clearly as the light enters the room. And that room is still gaining 
light... hence Paul's statement.

> I have been told repeatedly that baptism replaces circumsion as the sign 
> of the covenant and this is found by inference in >Colossians. Are you 
> saying that this is what God is telling us since inferece affirms it?

Well, no... not necessarily. I still haven't come to place where I could 
affirm baptism as THE sign... I tend to think of the inner circumcision as 
the sign (since it is using the same word as the sign of the OC)... if 
anything, baptism might be a sign of the sign of the reality (union in 
Christ is the reality). But the problem with paedobaptists isn't the use of 
inference, it's the use of inference rightly. I know it gets complicated at 
this point and I'm running short on time for now. The Westminster 
Confession speaks of good and necessary consequence. The irony is that 
their understanding of infant baptism is neither a good or necessary 
inference/consequence. They have a ton of assumptions being place on top of 
other assumptions. We saw this in a recent discussion on the rtdisc list. 
Peal one layer off and there's another layer of assumptions. While we both 
bring assumptions to the table, IMHO, our assumptions are stronger and are 
more justified by better rightly dividing.

anyhow... now i'm rambling. hope this helps.

Chad

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