We are sometimes urged away from understanding the types of Scripture on the basis of authority. Yes, people say, there may be typological significance to many aspects of Scripture, but we are not the Lord, and we are not his apostles and prophets. What authority do we have to interpret this way?
This overlooks the rebukes of Scripture. The Lord Jesus, as He was teaching the disciples on the road, before He revealed Himself in the breaking of the bread, admonished them this way – “fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” It is true that Jesus spoke the truth when He unveiled Himself in the Old Testament, but it is also true that He expected every reader of the Old Testament to have already seen Him there, and He rebuked them when they did not.
Our task, therefore, is to throw ourselves on His mercy, and submit to His shaping of us in worship. But just as some fools lag behind in their laziness, so other fools run ahead, thinking they have peered into great mysteries when they have only spun idle fancies in their own heads. Christ is in the Old Testament, all of it, but He is not there in every conceivable way. We see Christ in the rock that accompanied the Israelites, and in the impaled serpent upon the pole, and in the manna, but we do not see Him in Pharoah, or in the golden calf.
In handling the Scriptures typologically, the common (and proper) question is this: “Where are the brakes? How do we know this, or that?” The answer is here – Christ reveals Himself to us here, when we come in true, evangelical faith. So, come in true and humble faith.