Unconscious fulfilling of Scripture

Today, sitting in a waiting room while my mom had her eyes dilated for a post-cataract surgery check-up, a man plopped down across from me wearing a tank top. On one of his shoulders was a huge grey-and-black tattoo of a human skull.

When John 19 says Jesus Christ, “bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha,” it’s called that because it’s a place of execution; a place of death.

When Mark 15 says “they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it about his head, And began to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews!" this is the Romans soldiers mocking Christ.

“Thorns in the Bible are similar to the curse God placed upon the earth because of man’s sin,” explains Richard Jordan. “They crown Him with the curse that represents the curse of sin; the curse of death.

“They put it on His head because it’s the cursed thinking; the deadly thinking of man’s sin that gets Jesus Christ crucified. He’s made a curse for us. Why? Because we have cursed thinking; thinking that produces death.

“Christ is going to take the place of the wicked thinking of man and He’s going to go there. They’re going to kill Him on the place that represents death.

“Now, by the way, these guys have no idea what they’re doing. They don’t know the crown of thorns had anything to do with . . . those Roman soldiers didn’t care one thing about the Bible or the God of Israel.

“But you’ll see as you go through Mark, and if you go to the other gospel accounts that are more full, over and over again, unconsciously, they’re fulfilling Scripture. Unconsciously they’re doing things that represent a picture of what Scripture said would happen here.

*****

“There’s a principle when you study prophecy--one of the most important ways to describe dispensational Bible study to people is to point out the issue of progressive revelation.

“When you study dispensationalism, you’re studying a time line. As the time line goes on, people know more than they did before.

“The Covenant Calvinist view is, for example, that all men in time past looked forward in faith to the Cross of Christ and they knew everything about the Crosswork that you and I know.

“They say Abel and Moses understood Jesus was going to die on the Cross for them. And you say, ‘Wait a minute, that’s not what the New Testament tells you! The 12 Apostles didn’t even know He was going to die! Well, if they didn’t know, how come these birds back yonder, 4,000 years before, knew it?! Somebody forget in the meantime?’

“In I Peter I, it says that the angels looked, when they made these prophecies like Isaiah 53, and it says they wrote it down and said, ‘Lord, what is that talking about?!’ and they didn’t know! ‘What’s He mean?!’ So you know they weren’t looking forward with an understanding of what now we look back and understand.

“You see, the idea that everybody’s saved exactly the same way--by looking forward or backward in faith to the same thing, believing Jesus is going to die on the Cross--is a denial of progressive revelation.

“Progressive revelation says there’s things back there they didn’t know that now we do know. The basis of dispensational truth is understanding the differences between that. Well, when you understand that principle, then the idea of typology becomes a fascinating subject to you.

“What happens with typology is you have things happen that you get over here, and you begin to understand something, and you’re able to look back at history back here and see how God did things, said things and taught things that at the time, you didn’t know what they meant but now you do know what they mean and can look back and see, ‘Oh, look! There’s a picture of this reality PRE-WRITTEN in the text!’

“In modern terminology we talk about prototypes. It’s a pre-picture of the reality that comes over here. A prototype demonstrates to you that whoever is writing this and organizing this, knows the future so when the reality comes, and it tells you what it is, He can say, ‘See, I had this planned all along. Look how I did this and look how I did that.’

“When you begin to think about it that way, you begin to look back into places like the Book of Leviticus and the ceremonies that are performed. Colossians 2 says these things back here are a shadow of things to come. Things aren’t in the Bible just to fill up space. So there’s a fascinating one here in Leviticus 12 that is a prototype of a time schedule . . .”

(another post later)