ANCHOR School of Theology

Stephen Bohr

Secrets Unsealed

14. The Flood Story As An Illustration of Historical Typology

We want to continue our study of principle number 7 and it's a very important principle, that which was literal is spiritual now and will be literal in the coming kingdom.

We want to take a look at a story that we find in the Old Testament, it is in a certain sense a global story but it also has many literal things that point to spiritual realities in the future, and so we are going to use this story to illustrate how literal things in the past can apply spiritually towards the end of time before the second coming of Christ.

And basically you have the handout, the title of it is The Flood Story as an Illustration of Historical Typology, and we're going to see several principles here, we're going to see how types and anti-types work, we're going to see also how the literal becomes symbolic, we're going to take into account several principles that we've already studied and I'm sure you're going to be able to see these principles as we study along.

I'm going to follow the outline just as it is, we've asked you to fill in the blanks, this is a different type of class we haven't done this before but you're going to help me fill in the blanks.

In this lesson we want to study the cataclysmic worldwide flood in Noah's day.

The reason why this study is so important is because Jesus said that the flood foreshadows the destruction which will come upon the world at the very end of human history.

Jesus said, As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it also be at the coming of the Son of Man.

But is there more to the story than meets the eye?

Is the parallel just that the destruction at the end of time is going to be like the destruction in the days of Noah?

Is the parallel only that the wickedness of the world before the flood is going to be similar to the wickedness that will exist in the world before the second coming of Christ?

Or are there more typological things involved than just the wickedness of the race and the destruction that came?

Now the subtitle that we have here is Satan's hidden pre-flood agenda.

Satan had a special agenda when it came to blending the righteous and the wicked before the flood and that's what we want to take a look at now.

So let's go to our outline and fill in this blank.

Genesis 315 explains that there would be warfare between 2 seeds, and what is the first blank there?

Now both of them were in the case of Adam and Eve both of them were children of Eve, but the seed you are is not determined by your birth it's determined by your choice, you realize that.

Now the next point is that in the story of Cain and Abel, Abel was the woman's seed, very well and Cain was the seed of the wicked 1.

Now by influencing Cain to kill Abel, Satan thought he had gotten rid of the seed.

The devil suspected that perhaps Abel was the promised seed of Genesis 3.15, so he says I'm gonna get rid of this young man and therefore the prophecy of Genesis 3.15 cannot be fulfilled.

But of course you know in Genesis 4 God gave Adam and Eve another seed in place of the seed that Satan had killed by using Cain.

Now in the next section that we have here it says Genesis 4 16 to 24 presents the genealogy of Cain, and Genesis 5 delineates the genealogy of Seth, who took the place of Abel.

So the devil says I killed Abel, problem solved.

God says not so easy, I'll give another seed, and so the devil soon realizes that he's not going to be able to kill all the seeds, because he kills the seed and God brings another 1.

So the devil says I need to implement a plan B, there has to be a better plan than trying to kill the seed, and by the way soon the devil realizes that what God is doing is preparing a holy line from which the Messiah will come.

He soon discovers that these seeds, lowercase s, are really preliminary seeds that will lead to the coming of the seed in the future, and that God is preserving a holy line from which the seed will come.

Before we are able to discover the devil's hidden pre-flood agenda we must review a few things about the world before the flood.

Number 1, between creation and the flood there was a period of 1, 656 years.

Number 2, before the flood human beings lived to be over 900 years old, at least some of them.

Though sin had entered the world, their physical and mental energy must have been enormous.

Imagine a scientist working in a laboratory for close to 900 years with much more mental energy.

In fact Ellen White says that Adam was created with 20 times the mental energy that men have today, so they were not living in caves and killing dinosaurs with stone hatchets.

There were no drastic temperature changes, the world was close to its pristine beauty, there were no drastic temperature changes, there was no scarcity of food or natural resources.

Most likely there was very little disease, and Ellen White confirms this.

God had told man to be fruitful and multiply.

Imagine how many children 900 year old people could have.

There must have been millions if not billions of people on the planet the day before the flood.

1656 years in a world where there was very little disease, where there was much more mental energy, there was no scarcity of natural resources, and God had told man to be fruitful and multiply.

So the world undoubtedly had at least millions of inhabitants by the time that the flood came.

Now Genesis 6, 1 through 4 speaks about the sons of God and the daughters of men.

Now what happened between the sons of God and the daughters of men?

The story in Genesis tells us that the sons of God entered to the daughters of men, now that expression entered means that they had sexual relations with them, they contracted marriages with them.

The sons of God are the descendants of Seth.

And by the way, 3 women are mentioned in the genealogy of Cain, very unusual to have women in genealogies, and I'm not going to go into the meaning of their names but the meaning of their names has to do with their external appearance.

In fact 1 of them means jewel or ornament, ada, we say ada.

In other words all of the names of these women emphasize their external attraction.

What is it that attracted the sons of God?

You read what the rabbis say, they say that the women ran around painted up in nakedness of flesh and all decked out, that's what the Jewish rabbis say happened.

Let me ask you, do you think that there were also daughters of God here before the flood?

So why didn't the sons of God look at the daughters of God?

Why did they look at the daughters of men?

There must have been some external appearance to the daughters of men that the daughters of God didn't have.

In other words, the daughters of God were ordinary, they didn't put on all the paraphernalia, they didn't paint themselves up, and they didn't run around in nakedness of flesh as the Jewish rabbis express it.

Some Bible teachers have thought that the sons of God were angels, have you heard that interpretation?

And that the daughters of men were human, and that the result of the cross breeding between the 2 was the giants, a hybrid that was half human and half demon, that's the view that many scholars have today.

This view must be questioned for at least 3 reasons.

Number 1, the immediate context, remember the importance of the context?

The immediate context indicates that the sons of God were the descendants of Seth and the daughters of men were the descendants of Cain.

The previous 2 chapters give us the context.

Chapter 4 the genealogy of Cain, Chapter 5 the genealogy of Seth, and then 6.1 Sons of God, Daughters of Men.

The context indicates clearly who they were.

Number 2, Genesis is the book about 2 seeds, Cain and Abel, the sons of God and the daughters of men, Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau.

In every 1 of these cases both seeds are human.

The Bible elsewhere makes it clear that the sons of God are those who have been converted to Jesus Christ.

Behold what manner of love the Father has given us that we should be called the sons of God, 1st John Chapter 3 and verse 1.

This gives us another important principle that we're going to study when we deal with how to interpret Bible symbols and that is that symbols do not always mean the same thing in Scripture.

The meaning of terms can change and for example I'll ask you what does a lion represent in Scripture?

When you find the word lion what does it mean?

Well it can mean the literal animal, it can be a symbol of Satan who goes about as a roaring lion, it can be a symbol of Christ the lion of the tribe of Judah, It can be a symbol of Christ the Lion of the tribe of Judah, it can be a symbol of Babylon the first beast of Daniel 7, so whenever you find lion it doesn't necessarily mean it means the same thing, you have to take into account the context.

It's true that sons of God can refer to angels, the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord in the book of Job, those are angels.

The sons of God sang and shouted for joy at creation, Job 38 and verse 7, those are angels.

But just because the expression sons of God is used in 1 context doesn't mean that it means the same thing in the other context, because sons of God can also refer to converted people.

Very important to take into account the context.

Now by mingling the seed of the woman with his own seed, Satan reduced the number of faithful people on the planet to 8.

The devil's agenda, he soon discovers, he says it does no good to kill the seed because God brings another 1.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to mingle the 2 seeds, And the devil knows that when you mingle the 2 seeds the wicked seed overwhelms the righteous seed, and he says if I can mingle the 2 seeds God's seed will lose its identity, the number of faithful people will dwindle until eventually it will disappear, and God will have no 1 through whom to bring the Messiah into the world.

His plan A is to kill the seed, His plan B is to mingle the seeds in order to destroy the holy line.

Did he try to do that all throughout the Old Testament, destroy the holy line?

Yesterday we studied about Esther, he tried to destroy Israel.

Because he knew that the seed at this point he knew the seed was going to come from the lineage of Israel, so he says if I can wipe them out then there's not going to be that seed that is going to crush my head.

Did the devil mingle Israel with the surrounding nations?

13. What Was Literal & Local is Spiritual & Global

Anchor School of Theology, you are pioneers because this is our first class, that's amazing, so someday you'll be able to say we were at the first anchor class.

Now today we are going to begin our study at principle number 7, you should be on page 19 of your syllabus, and I'm going to read the principle and then we are going to take a look at this principle which is very very important in the study of Bible prophecy.

What was literal and local in the Old Testament with literal Israel is spiritual and global in the age of the Holy Spirit with spiritual Israel?

It is a vital principle and if you read Lewis Weir's book The Certainty of the Third Angel's Message this principle comes forth time and again, time and again, because it's a very important principle in the study of Bible prophecy.

The first thing that we want to take a look at is the fact that the reason why the Jewish nation of Christ's day rejected Jesus is because they had a rigid literalism and this hid the identity of the Messiah.

There are several indications in the Gospels that show that they literalized everything and they missed the deep spiritual significance of the literal things of their religion.

They saw only the literal, but they did not see the spiritual meaning behind that which was literal.

In Matthew chapter 23, if you go with me there, Matthew chapter 23 and verses 23 to 28 we find Jesus expressing this idea that the Jews had of emphasizing the external.

Beginning with verse 23 Jesus is speaking here to the scribes and Pharisees, He says.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you pay tithe of mint, and anise, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith.

These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone.

In other words, you need to externally tithe, but it has to be with the correct spiritual motivation.

Verse 24 Blind guides who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.

Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence blind Pharisee first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.

For you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead man's bones and all uncleanness.

Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

The outside was emphasized, but the inside did not square with the outside.

In other words, they had outward forms and ceremonies but they did not understand the inner meaning of these ceremonies and these observances.

There are several examples that we find in the Gospels of this.

You have the case of Nicodemus, remember Nicodemus this great Jewish member of the Sanhedrin, Jesus said you must be born again, And what did Nicodemus think?

He says to Jesus, how can I get into my mother's womb again and be born again?

Jesus was speaking about spiritual birth, he was not speaking about literal birth, but Nicodemus took the words of Jesus literally.

Jesus also said destroy this temple and in 3 days I will raise it up.

How did they understand that declaration of Jesus?

They said, listen this temple has been built for years and you say that you can destroy it and you can raise it up in 3 days?

But Jesus was not speaking about the literal temple, He was speaking about what?

He was speaking about the temple of His body, He was giving a deeply spiritual significance to the temple.

We also have evidences in the Gospels that the Jews were expecting literal Elijah to come, and that's the reason why John the Baptist when he was asked if he was Elijah he said, no I am not Elijah.

Of course he was not Elijah literally, he came in the spirit and power of Elijah.

In other words John the Baptist was a spiritual Elijah, he was not a literal Elijah, But the Jews were expecting literal Elijah to come.

And Jesus explained, no, this is 1 who comes in the spirit and power of Elijah.

But they believed that Elijah was going to come in person.

They missed the deep spiritual significance.

Jesus once said that we have to eat his flesh and drink his blood, that's in John chapter 6.

Well the Jews immediately said this man is guilty of recommending cannibalism, We cannot eat someone's flesh and drink someone's blood that is blasphemy.

But Jesus explained later on, He says the flesh doesn't profit anything, the words that I speak they are spirit and they are life, His flesh represented the word, but they understood what Jesus was saying literally.

The Jews believed that Jesus, that the Messiah was going to occupy a literal throne in Jerusalem, and he was going to be like David, he was going to sit on the throne, he was going to destroy all of the literal enemies of Israel, and he was going to put literal Israel at the apex of the world.

But what they didn't realize is that Jesus came at His first coming to be a spiritual king, a spiritual king of a spiritual kingdom, and you find all of the texts in here in your syllabus that illustrate this point.

They expected the Messiah to rule literally in literal Jerusalem from a literal throne, but Jesus came to be a spiritual King and to establish His spiritual kingdom.

Well the Jews believed that literal circumcision guaranteed salvation.

In fact if you were circumcised you were a member of the inner circle, but if you read several texts in the New Testament like Romans 2 verses 28 and 29 the Apostle Paul says literal circumcision in itself means nothing.

He says that is simply an outward observance that shows that God wants to circumcise your heart spiritually, He wants you to be converted, but they understood circumcision only as a literal rite, they did not understand it as a deeply spiritual observance that God had given them.

And then you have the issue of the literal phylacteries, you say what are those phylactery things?

Well Matthew 23 verse 5 speaks about these phylacteries and Ellen White in Desire of Ages 612 and 613 explains how the Jews used their phylacteries.

Basically they were small little boxes where they would put a little parchment inside the box with a scripture and then they would stick these little boxes with the scripture on their forehead and on their right hand, because in Deuteronomy it says that you're supposed to take God's words and you're supposed to put them on your forehead and on your right hand.

What they didn't realize is that the phylacteries had a very deeply spiritual significance.

It was no good to paste these scriptures on your forehead and on your hand.

The spiritual meaning was that these scriptures should be in your mind inside and that they should affect your behavior which is represented by your right hand.

In other words they totally missed the spiritual significance of their religion and therefore when Jesus came they were not ready to receive Him.

Every institution of Judaism pointed forward to some spiritual function of Jesus, but the Jews could only see the literal land, the literal water, literal altars, literal incense, literal garments, literal veils.

Their entire religion was superficial and external, and when Jesus attempted to show the deep spiritual significance of their religion they rejected him.

Roman Catholicism is a refined system of Judaism where mere forms take the place of spiritual realities.

1 finds in the Roman Catholic churches holy water, literal altars, literal priests, literal vestments, literal candles, literal incense, literal images, a literal interpretation of prophecy, literal thrones, a literal sword, and they believe that they partake of the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ.

In other words, Roman Catholicism is a continuation of Judaism, as if Jesus had not come.

A Christian system that really in practice rejects Christ and exalts forms of religion, external forms of religion.

Regarding the rigid literalism of the Jewish leaders and the disciples of Jesus, Ellen White explained, Desire of Ages page 391.

They cared not for the mysterious spiritual kingdom of which He spoke.

What kind of kingdom did Jesus speak about?

In Desire of Ages page 670 Ellen White explains about His disciples, the disciples of Jesus.

The disciples did not understand the spiritual nature of Christ's kingdom though He had so often explained it to them.

So basically folks this principle tells us that what was literal has a spiritual significance today.

Now let's pursue this by examining several examples from Scripture on how the literal actually points to the spiritual.

It's not that we reject the literal, the literal is the foundation, it's the basis for the spiritual interpretation.

If you didn't have the literal you wouldn't be able to have a spiritual application of what is literal.

So the literal is important but the meaning of the literal in its spiritual sense is what is very important.

Now you received a material on the robe and you can read that if you haven't at your leisure, but what I want us to notice is what the Bible means by garments.

This is a good illustration of this principle of the literal representing the spiritual.

Now in the Garden of Eden were Adam and Eve covered with a literal robe?

Yes they were, their robe was composed of literal light, correct?

They were literally covered with light, that was their robe.

What did that robe represent spiritually?

The Spirit of Prophecy, if you read the material, the Spirit of Prophecy says it represented their righteousness, they were obedient and righteous and holy.

In other words, their literal robe was light, the spiritual meaning was righteousness.

Now what happened when Adam and Eve sinned?

They lost their righteousness first, they first lost their spiritual robe, and what happened when they lost their spiritual robe?

So the literal and the spiritual need to be understood together, but if you miss the spiritual you're missing the lesson that God is trying to teach.

So when Adam and Eve sinned they had spiritual nakedness and therefore they became literally naked.

Spiritual nakedness, losing the spiritual robe led to physical nakedness.

He hung naked on the cross folks, that has deep spiritual significance.

Why did Jesus hang naked, physically naked on the cross?

Because He was bearing our spiritual nakedness, He was bearing our transgression of the law.

Who should have hung on that cross naked?

12. Who’s Hero Is Jesus Christ?

It's amazing how much information God's holy word has and how inspiring and strengthening it is.

Whenever I read the scripture and whenever I teach scripture my faith is increased and my faith is strengthened.

By repeating things you are strengthened yourself and so it's a real blessing to share this material with you and I want to say that I appreciate greatly your willingness to take a whole week to come here to Fresno.

Some of you drove from the East Coast, I know someone here who drove from Atlanta, Georgia and I said you don't really have something to look forward to, driving back.

Anyway we'll pray that God will give you traveling mercies brother and we appreciate you coming, of course we have people here from Australia, from Great Britain, I mean it's amazing that we had so many people respond to the invitation to come here to the Anker Bible School.

We do appreciate it and we hope that it will be a blessing to all of you.

In our last session today we are going to discuss another story that we find in the Bible that is a typological story whose hero is Jesus Christ, and we're referring to 1 of the few occasions when a woman is a type of Christ, and that is the story of Esther.

And so turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Esther chapter 3 and we're going to be looking at several things in this book but we're going to begin in chapter 3.

Now the first thing that I would like to mention is that there are 4 key protagonists in this book.

The first protagonist is a political figure, the political figure is of course Ahasuerus, his Greek name is Xerxes.

The second figure is a religious figure, the second figure is called Haman, and by the way Haman is instigated by his wife, she's a shadowy figure in the story, her name is Zeresh.

And so basically you have 3 enemies of Mordecai and of the Jewish people, You have King Ahasuerus, you have Haman, and you have Zeres the wife of Haman who is advising him, she's the advisor of Haman.

And then of course besides these 3 enemies you also have Mordecai, he symbolizes the faithful remnant, and of course along with Mordecai you have the Jewish people.

So you have God's people and you have the 3 enemies of God's people, and then you have 1 other figure in the story and that figure is an intercessory person, and that intercessory person is none other than Esther herself, she's the intercessor in favor of God's people at that time.

Now it's important to realize what this battle really involves.

When you look at the story you'll discover that the battle is between Haman, the son of Hamadathah the Agagite, and Mordecai, whose total and complete name is also given in the book.

Now this means that this controversy was much longer standing than just between these 2 individuals, because if you look at the lineage of Mordecai you're going to discover that Mordecai was a descendant of King Saul, And you're going to find that Haman the son of Hamadathah the Agagite is a descendant of King Agag who Saul was committed to kill, and Saul did not, and that's the reason why you have this story in the book of Esther.

So the enmity is a long-standing enmity, It's not a recent enmity just in the days of Esther, it goes all the way back to the beginning of the Hebrew monarchy.

Now behind the scenes of course is Satan himself instigating this threefold alliance to slay Mordecai and the remnant.

In the book Prophets and Kings page 601 we find this short statement about what the devil's intentions were.

Ellen White states, Satan himself, the hidden instigator of the scheme, was trying to rid the earth of those who preserved the knowledge of the true God.

So who was behind this triple alliance that we find here in the book of Esther, these 3 enemies, it was the devil himself and he wanted to get rid of the knowledge of God, of the true God in the earth.

Let's go to Esther chapter 3 and read beginning with verse 2, Esther 3 and verse 2, and there are many things that we could say about the first couple of chapters and succeeding chapters but in the interest of time we're only going to be able to touch upon the highlights of the book.

Verse 2 says And all the king's servants, who were within the king's gate, bowed and paid homage to Haman.

So whenever Haman appeared what did the servants do?

For so the king had commanded concerning him.

So is this a political decree to render homage to Haman?

Yes, it is the civil power giving the decree to render homage to Haman, but there was a remnant that refused.

Notice what it continues saying there in verse 2.

But Mordecai would not bow or pay homage.

Incidentally in the book of Esther the name of God is not mentioned, in fact you would believe that this is a secular experience that is taking place because it doesn't use the word worship it says that Mordecai would not bow and pay homage to Haman.

Back to Menu

All Teachings

14. The Flood Story As An Illustration of Historical Typology

58m

13. What Was Literal & Local is Spiritual & Global

58m

12. Who’s Hero Is Jesus Christ?

58m

11. The Son (God) and the number 666

58m

10. The Sabbath and Redemption

58m

9. A Providential Election

58m

8. Christ is the Center of Bible Prophecy Part 2

58m

7. Christ is the Center of Bible Prophecy Part 1

58m

6. The Importance of the Historical Flow Method- Part 2

58m

5. The Importance of the Historical Flow Method- Part 1

58m

4. Notes on Daniel 2

58m

3. Principles for the Study of Bible Prophecy- Part 3

58m

Sound Doctrine