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Study on ALLEGORY:
Mistakes That Teachers Make
When most people try to teach on subjects like ministry, they think that the natural place to look is in the New Testament, because that is where it all happened. That is where the church started and where the apostles functioned.
There were no apostles in the Old Testament. There were some prophets there, so people tend to use the Old Testament a bit for prophets. This is largely because there is very little about prophets in the New Testament.
So the mistake that a lot of teachers make is to go back and see how the prophets of the Old Testament functioned, to try to interpret the same functions into the New Testament prophet.
For those of you who have been or are going through our prophetic course, you should know by now that the New Testament prophet is not the same as an Old Testament prophet. So it is a bad idea to take that route.
Allegories in the Old Testament
The Old Testament however was given to us, not just to teach us principles, but to lay a foundation pictorially, symbolically and allegorically.
The Scripture is filled with allegories. What is an allegory? It is when you take one thing as a picture or type of another thing.
The Old Testament is known as the type or the shadow. It is not the real thing, but it’s a type or picture illustrating and pointing to the real thing which is then revealed in the New Testament.
This means that sometimes, in order to fully understand what is clearly taught in the New Testament, we need to go back and look at some of the types, pictures and models that were given in the Old Testament.
Paul Used Allegories
I am going to share two Scriptures now that Paul wrote, which very clearly indicate that it is the right thing to do. I will show that it is Scriptural to do this, because Paul himself did it.
The first one is from Galatians 4:22 to 26 which says, For it is written, that Abraham had two sons, the one by a slave girl, and the other by a free woman.?But the one who came from the slave girl was born under the influence of the flesh; and the one from the free woman was by a promise.?
This is an allegory: for these are two covenants; the first from mount Sinai, which refers to bondage, which is Agar.?For Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia, and refers to Jerusalem at the present time, which is in bondage with her offspring.?But Jerusalem which is from above is free, which continues to be the mother of us all.
How do you even understand what he is talking about? You might think, “Jerusalem is the mother of us all? What is he talking about?”
You see Paul is using allegories. He is using a real event in the Old Testament and saying that it has a symbolic meaning.
The other passage is from 1 Corinthians 10:1 to 4. He says, Nevertheless, brothers, I don’t want you to be ignorant concerning the fact that our forefathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;?And were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea;
What is that about? We are baptized into Christ and Moses is a picture of Christ. All ate the same spiritual food; They didn’t eat spiritual food. They ate real food, but Paul was allegorising it. And all drank the same spiritual drink: for they drank from that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that rock was Christ.
I had a picture in the Old Testament of a rock where the water came out, and Paul was saying that rock was Christ. He was saying that both the water and the food were spiritual things. It was something spiritual. You see he was allegorising it.
With many of them God was not very pleased: for they were slain in the wilderness.?Now these things were our models, to show us that we should not crave after evil things, as they also did.
Understand the Pictures in Scripture
Paul shows here very clearly, that to get the fullness of the truth from these Old Testament events, we must not just read them as history. We have to see the spiritual significance in them.
To understand the Old Testament fully, you need to realize that it is more than a history book. It was a picture. It was God putting on a special play if you like, to illustrate what was to come in the future in the New Testament.
So if you want to get the full truth from the books of the Old Testament, you need to learn how to allegorize.
There is a time to interpret Scripture literally, and there is a time when we should interpret it figuratively. You need to know the difference between the two.
Allegorizing Esther
A classic example of how to get the best out of a Scripture by interpreting it figuratively is the book of Esther. The book of Esther doesn’t have the word God mentioned anywhere in it.
If you have been around this ministry for long enough, you may remember that I did a full teaching series on the book of Esther. In this teaching I allegorized everything in the book and gave you a very powerful teaching on the spiritual life from the book of Esther.
If you haven’t read that book, I do believe it is available for free download. If it isn’t we can give you a link to it. Just contact John and ask him for it. I think you will enjoy it, because you will see how I can take a story and allegorize it.
Everyone loves the story of Esther, the beautiful woman who twisted the king around her little finger. However it is actually a totally spiritual book when you interpret it allegorically.
A Sign of a True Teacher
This is what makes the difference between someone who knows how to learn and impart knowledge, and someone who is a real teacher that is anointed by God.
You see anybody can study and regurgitate the knowledge that they gained. School teachers do that all the time.
I hated history class. They droned on and on with all the history of what happened and what everybody did. If my teachers had learned to allegorize, I may have listened to them because they would have made it a bit more interesting.
A true Bible teacher has the ability to take the history of the Old Testament, allegorize it and use it to illustrate powerful spiritual truths that are clearly taught in the New Testament.
A lot of people are confused on the Teaching Ministry. What is the difference between a Bible teacher or someone who has a Teaching Ministry and someone who just does teaching as a job?
Surely there are people who are really good at explaining things? They are good at presenting knowledge, and making it simple and easy for people to understand. You see you don’t even need to be saved to do that.
Here is the difference. A teacher gets revelation. He or she looks at the story and sees the allegory. Of course you cannot see the allegory if you haven’t learned the real thing, because the allegory is only a picture of the real thing.
Watch Out for Heresy
A lot of people try to allegorize something and then make up false doctrines. There are quite a few people who have built a lot of heresy or false doctrines on allegories from the Old Testament, so let’s not go overboard on that.
People say, “The number seven means this.”
Yes there are some numbers that have meaning. In fact probably up until the number seven is about the highest you need to go. You could go up to the number 12 which can be a picture of the 12 apostles, the tribes of Israel.
Seven is always a picture of God’s perfect number, so I sometimes use some of the smaller numbers. Five can be a picture of the Fivefold Ministry as well.
These are real things in the Scripture. However sometimes people say things like, “According to numerology, the number 23 is 20 plus three, and 20 divided by two comes to 10, so that means this.”
Throw it away. That is not being a Bible teacher. There is no revelation there whatsoever.
So look out for those kinds of teachers who like to try and confuse you with science. They take all of the fancy knowledge that they have learned in the natural and squeeze it into Scripture, to make the Scripture mean what they want it to mean.
No, if you are going to allegorize the Old Testament, you better have clear teaching in the New that matches it. You see if what you are teaching from an allegory does not match clear teaching in the New Testament, you are in heresy.
Your revelation might sound real fancy and people may say, “Wow, what a teacher. I have never heard that before.”
Well I hope you never hear it again because it is probably heresy. Bible teachers overlap and they all teach differently, but they all teach the truth.
I am just laying this as a good foundation, because I am going to be showing you how to allegorize correctly. I will show you how to take principles from the Old Testament and interpret them correctly in the New Testament.