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Creative Bible Study
According to this verse, Adam was a "figure" of someone else who was to come. The meaning of the word "figure" is similar to that of type. Adam was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ who was to come later.
The offering of sacrifices for sin in the Old Testament was a type of the final sacrifice for sin which was to be offered by Jesus in the New Testament:
The Holy Ghost thus signifying that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing:
Which was a figure for the time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience. (Hebrews 9:8-9)
"Pattern" is another word describing Biblical types:
For if he were on earth, he should not be a priest, seeing that there are priests that offer gifts according to the law;
Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount. (Hebrews 8:4-5)
Each of these words--shadow, figure, and pattern--all contain the idea we refer to when we speak of types. A type is a person or thing in the Bible which God used to represent some other person, thing, or event that would appear in the future. It was a shadow, a figure, or a pattern of what was to come.
THE METHOD EXPLAINED
When we study these types it is called typological Bible study. We study a person, place, event, or thing and then we study the thing of which it is a type. In a way, types are like prophecy. They give an advance view of what is to come in God's future plan. Like prophecy, some types have been fulfilled. Others remain to be fulfilled.
Although the type is important in itself, it has an even greater significance in the future person or event which it represented. Types are physical pictures of spiritual realities. For example, the experience of the children of Israel being healed from the bites of serpents is an actual Old Testament event. The Old Testament account in Numbers 21:6-9 tells that serpents bit the people and caused many of them to die. Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. Everyone who looked at the bronze serpent recovered from the serpent's bite. This event is a type of the death of Jesus: