Types and the Elijah Forerunner

The last two cruxes belong together, for both concern the relation between what points ahead and what is fulfilled. The fifth asks after the historical types: how far do the shadows that draw the Day in advance carry? The sixth asks after the announced forerunner: who is the Elijah who must come before the great and awesome day? Both are places where one easily asserts too much or too little, and both therefore call for the careful weighing with which this part treats the disputed questions.

Crux 5: how far do the historical types carry? This book has used the types abundantly — the shadows of the Torah (chapter 5), 586 as the most fully executed type (chapter 8), the taking-away types Enoch, Noah, and Lot (chapter 26). The question now is one of principle: what can such a type carry, and what not? Three positions. Position (a): types prove nothing — they are pious parallels without evidential force. Position (b): types are illustration — beautiful but non-binding. Position (c): types carry real weight, but can be over-asked. The weighing falls out for a nuanced form of (c). A biblical type is a God-laid example that foreshadows a later, greater event, and it carries two things. It shows that a pattern is real and of God — that God takes away before the judgment (Enoch), preserves through (Noah), leads out just before it (Lot) is no human notion but God's repeated way of acting, and the New Testament confirms it expressly (Heb 11:5; 2 Pet 2:9; Luke 17:26-30). And it gives the form of the antitype: the Day will be like 586 (the most fully executed judgment), like the flood and Sodom (de-creation and fire, with rescue for the single one). But one thing a type can*not* do: prove a time or a year. That 586 showed the judgment most fully does not date the end-Day; that Enoch was taken away before the flood proves no date for the rapture (chapter 26). The boundary is sharp and this book draws it deliberately: the typology carries the hallmark well-documented for the pattern (confirmed where the NT refers back), and weighed for the application — but as soon as a type delivers a year, the hallmark turns over to speculative. Thus, and not otherwise, do the types carry: as confirmation that the God of the Day repeats His rescues, not as a calculator for a calendar. The types as pattern: well-documented; as application: weighed; as dating: speculative.

Crux 6: who is the Elijah who comes before the Day? Malachi closes the Old Testament with a promise that would occupy the centuries: "behold, I send you the prophet Elijah, before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes; and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children [...] lest I come and strike the land with the ban" (4:5-6).1 Note at once where Elijah is placed: before "the great and awesome day of the LORD" — jom JHWH ha-gadol we-ha-nora, exactly the formula of Joel (2:31; chapter 6), the end-Day, not the manger of Bethlehem. Three positions contend. Position (a): John the Baptist has fully fulfilled the promise — no more Elijah comes. Position (b): a literal Elijah returns before the Day — the promise is wholly future. Position (c): both, in already-and-not-yet — John was the Elijah who already came, and there yet comes an Elijah-forerunner before the end-Day. The key lies in Jesus' own words, and He deliberately says two things that fit only together. On the one hand: "if you are willing to accept it: he is Elijah who was to come" (Matt 11:14), and of John: "Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him" (17:12) — John is the Elijah, already. On the other hand, in the same passage: "Elijah does come first, and will restore all things" (Matt 17:11) — a future tense, a restoration that still stands outstanding.2 Jesus thus sets, in one conversation, the already (John) beside the not-yet (a coming Elijah-ministry). That pleads against both (a) — which misses the not-yet — and (b) — which misses the already — and for (c): John fulfilled the Elijah-forerunner at the first coming, and before the second the Elijah-ministry comes once more.

But then the sharp follow-up question, and here this book weighs with care: is that coming forerunner the literal Elijah? Revelation 11 draws "two witnesses" who prophesy three and a half years before the climax, and it describes their power with a telling doubleness: "these have power to shut heaven, that no rain fall in the days of their prophecy" — that is Elijah's power (1 Kgs 17) — "and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every plague" — and that is Moses' power (Exodus).3 The two witnesses thus carry not the power of Elijah alone, but of Elijah and Moses together. That makes the most probable reading: the two witnesses are two prophets in the spirit and the ministry of Elijah and Moses — the Elijah-and-Moses function — ambassadors of the Lamb before the Day-climax, not necessarily "the literal Elijah in his own person." This book therefore carries this weighing: John = the already-come Elijah (Matt 11:14; 17:12); the two witnesses = the Elijah-and-Moses function, not-yet (Rev 11:6). But the precise identity of the two witnesses remains contested, and this book names the alternatives honestly: some read a literal return of Elijah himself (on the ground of his taking-away without death, 2 Kgs 2); others a pair of Enoch-and-Elijah (the two men who never saw death, Gen 5:24; 2 Kgs 2). Both are defensible; neither is text-coercing. The Elijah-forerunner in already-and-not-yet: weighed. John = the already-come Elijah: well-documented. The two witnesses = the Elijah-and-Moses function: weighed. Their exact identity: contested.

See how the two last cruxes mirror each other. Both concern foreshadowing and fulfillment; both carry an already-and-not-yet; and both call for the same discipline: take the pointing-ahead seriously (the types are real, the Elijah-promise stands), but do not over-ask it (no year from a type, no certain identity for the two witnesses). Thus closes the courtroom of the six cruxes. The nature of the Day is settled (cruxes 1-2): a span of time with two faces. The heart is weighed (crux 3): the Bride taken away before the wrath, as a pillar and not a wall. The embedding is laid (crux 4): within the week, alongside the tribulation, climaxing in the parousia, premillennial with the honestly named weakest link. And the types and the Elijah-forerunner are brought to their right measure (cruxes 5-6): carrying but not over-asked. All six now stand open on the table, each with its hallmark, every counter-position named. What is weighed can now be built — and that is the task of Part VII: the seventieth week, the sixth-seal placement, and the timeline as a framework, not a calendar.