Caller: Pastor Doug, I've head you talk about dual prophecy before?
Pastor Doug: Yes sir.
Caller: I was wondering what is your understanding of dual prophecy? How does that relate to typology?
Pastor Doug: Well I don't know that there's an immediate connection. Let me explain them separately for the sake of being clear.
Dual prophecy means that because God is not linear in the way He does things, the Lord can speak, and one prophecy of the Lord can have different applications in other words, Jesus, when He foretold the signs of the second coming, He covered several phases of history with one answer.
For instance, He said, '...When you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the Prophet [this is Matthew 24] stand in the Holy Place, let those that be in Judea flea into the hills.' Well, that happened back in the time of the Apostles in 70 AD. The Roman power that was going to desolate the temple, they withdrew temporarily before they destroyed Jerusalem. The Christians that were in the city fled into the hills. But there's also a future application if you read Daniel chapter 12 about the abomination of desolation, speaking of when God's people are hedged in once again with religious laws. And there are a number of examples. Let me give you another one. In, I believe it's 1 Chronicles 17, when Nathan the Prophet comes to King David and David says he wants to build the temple for the Lord. Nathan says you're not supposed to build the temple David, but your son who will come after you, he will build me a temple he'll build me a house.
Well David's son Solomon did build a literal house. But Jesus, the Son of David, said destroy this house made with hands and I'll make one without hands. So it applied both to Solomon, but it even more so to Christ there's a dual application there. And you can find literally hundreds of examples where there are multi-dimensions to these prophecies of God. The Word of God is deep and living and we cannot make it flat and single-dimensional.
Caller: Well my understanding is that dual prophecy can have multiple fulfillments that are detached from each other.
Pastor Doug: As long as they don't contradict one another that's true, because God's word is consistent.
Caller: Whereas typology, like the destruction of Jerusalem is like a type of the abomination of desolation at the end of time.
Pastor Doug: That's true.
Caller: So is there a difference between the two?
Pastor Doug: Well the Lord tells us where the types are. Now you just quoted what happened to the Jewish people. We don't need to guess that that's a type of the last days because Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10: '...these things happened to them as examples for us upon whom the ends of the earth have come.'
So the experience of God saving the Israelites is an example of how He saves all people from the slavery of sin. And what happened to those who rejected the truth is a symbol for what happens to us. What happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, Peter says, is an example it's a type of what happens to the wicked in the end destroyed by fire. So, yeah that's typology. You just use the precedent that God lays down and you're safe, okay?
Caller: Okay thanks.
Pastor Doug: Okay good question!