1.  Adam and Eve’s nakedness, the badge of their sin and disobedience, was covered

    (atonement) through the sacrificial death of innocent animals, picturing forgiveness and

     restoration as their skins became clothing representing, in type, the righteousness of Christ.

 

     This ceremony is the prototype of the sacrificial system to be outlined to Moses at a later

     date.  Sinful man could live in the presence of a holy God Who accepted the death of

     animals as a temporary basis of fellowship until, in the fulness of time His son would fulfill

     the type as the Lamb whose precious blood would wash away sin’s stain.

 

2.  The death - life principle is graphically portrayed by the rising from the place of death of

     Isaac having figuratively been sacrificed by the father.  Conversely, the ram takes the son’s

     place as a substitute looking forward to the time when the Son will be the final and sufficient

     substitute whose death on the cross means life for believers under both the old and new

     covenants.

 

3.   Joseph died figuratively at the hands of his brethren and being supposed dead for many years

      appears alive to provide salvation for his family.  His magnanimity is a lovely portrayal of

      our Lord Jesus who said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

 

4.   Moses consigned to death by Pharaoh is committed to the place of death, the river, by his

      mother, with the hope of some kind of deliverance from whence she too received her

      beloved son from the dead “in a figure.”

 

5.   “Where thou diest I will die” says Ruth as she chooses the path of suffering to accompany

      Naomi back home.  But by God’s grace she rises to unimaginable heights as the bride of the

      wealthy Boaz and becomes an ancestress of our Lord Jesus.

 

6.    David assigned to death by Saul and later by Absalom comes back to “reign in life” as king

       in Jerusalem and, as a man who should have died after arranging for Uriah’s murder, lives

       by God’s grace as a man “after God’s own heart.”

 

7.    Three men arose from a fiery furnace after walking in that “valley of death” with One who

       appeared to Nebuchadnezzar as a son of the gods.  Their obedience and that of Daniel’s,

       though leading to the place of death, resulted in their being “highly exalted” and being

       lifted up above their fellows.

 

8.    Guided by her uncle, Queen Esther obediently agreed to risk her life on the behalf of her

       people.  Facing death she approached the king with the words, “If I perish, I perish” but the 

       upraised scepter she found grace and life for herself and them.

 

 

     All of these and perhaps others you might think of obediently took “the way of the cross”

     though by them it was not known as such and in this life found deliverance.  Time would fail

     to tell of those who likewise took the way that led to a martyr’s death but opened to them the

     path of life where there is “fulness of joy” and “pleasures for evermore.”