«　WEEK 1　DAY 5　»

　　1 Cor. 5:7 ...For our Passover, Christ, also has been sacrificed.

　　10:6 Now these things occurred as examples to us, that we should not be ones who lust after evil things, even as they also lusted.

　　Eph. 1:10 Unto the economy of the fullness of the times, to head up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, in Him.

　　God’s intention is to have a corporate Body. The nation of Israel was a type of this Body. For this, God went on from Genesis to Exodus, working Himself into the corporate Israel so that they would become the house of God, which is God’s habitation on earth as typified by the tabernacle in the midst of the Israelites. This corporate Israel is a type of the church as the Body of Christ to be God’s dwelling place on earth among men. (CWWL, 1988, vol. 4, “The Economy of God and the Building Up of the Body of Christ,” p. 273)

　　Before the New Testament age, that is, before the Lord’s incarnation, God had chosen a people on this earth called Israel ... Their forefather was Abraham. Then by Moses’ time, at their exodus from Egypt, they became a race that had at least two million people. Since then, they have become a type of the church as God’s elect in the New Testament ...The Old Testament has Israel, and the New Testament has the church... These two peoples are a description of one thing that God has done, and this one thing is the accomplishment of God’s economy... In God’s economy the people of Israel are just a type, a figure, a shadow... Israel typifies the church.

　　After the descendants of Abraham became a people, they eventually fell into the hand of Egypt and its king, Pharaoh ... This means that God’s chosen people fell into the hand of Satan and Satan’s world, so there was the need of God’s salvation.

　　Redemption is to redeem God’s fallen people back to God, and salvation is God’s saving His people out of the hand of Satan, out of the world, and eventually, even out of themselves for God to come in to make them the same as He is. So in Exodus we see that first a lamb was slain and the shed blood was sprinkled on the houses of Israel. That was called the pass-over. This means that God, the just God, the righteous God, formed something judicial to redeem His people by fulfilling His righteous requirements. That was God’s redemption.

　　Following that redemption, God exercised His salvation to save Israel out of Pharaoh’s hand, out of Egypt, and bring them into the wilderness. In the wilderness God came to be a “tabernacle,” indicating how He would come to dwell with His people to save them further... so that they might become God in life and nature but not in the Godhead. This is God’s salvation.

　　Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5 that our Passover is Christ... God could pass over us, having our sin judged and dealt with by Christ on the cross ...Following the Passover, Israel had the Feast of Unleavened Bread (v. 8). After God’s redemption and in God’s salvation, God ordained that His people should have no sin, no leaven, a feast without leaven. This was the beginning of the history of Israel, and this beginning is fulfilled by the church’s experience of Christ. By this you can see that with Israel it is a type, and with the church it is a fulfillment.

　　At the end of the New Testament, the Lord Jesus called the degraded church, Jezebel (Rev. 2:20)...The fallen church became Jezebel and is called the great Babylon, the mystery (Rev. 17:5)... Israel’s outcome was to be captured to Babylon. Eventually, they became Babylon. In Revelation 17 the Lord called the degraded church the great harlot, the great Babylon, and the mother of harlots (vv. 1, 5). This shows that the church is a fulfillment of the type of Israel. So the entire history of Israel is a type of the church. (CWWL, 1994-1997, vol. 1, “Living a Life according to the High Peak of God’s Revelation,” pp. 179-181)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1991-1992, vol. 1, “The Central Line of the Divine Revelation,” chs. 3-5