The Veil Lifted At the Dawn of Salvation

A scarlet cord runs through the history of mankind from the Old Testament of the Holy Bible to the New, all leading to the eventual arrival of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, as a baby in Bethlehem. 
 Biblical types-typology-verify Scripture; an image, a person or a place in the Old Testament such as the birth of Christ is fulfilled many hundreds of years later called an antitype in the New Testament; types enhance & broaden human understanding of the character of God and truth.
 In his testament, the disciple Matthew meticulously records the family lineage of Jesus so we can understand the purity of His genetic line, untainted by the spiritually corrupt Nephilim of Genesis 6:1-4.


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The most familiar type may be the story of the reluctant Jonah who spent three days in the belly of a whale (alive or dead-we are not told) only to be spat out on the shore of Nineveh on the Tigris River, now Mosul in Iraq; this imagery evokes the three days Jesus spent between the cross and His resurrection.


The residents of Nineveh worshipped Dagon, the fish god.

Some have speculated that—after being expelled from three days and nights in the belly of the whale— Jonah’s skin and hair were bleached white as he stepped onshore to meet people who worshipped Dagon.


Jonah spent 40 days warning Nineveh’s residents they needed to repent.


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The man Moses—leader, writer, law giver, spiritual warrior—is a type of Christ.

Sent to deliver the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, Moses’s life foreshadowed Jesus’s sacrifice which freed humanity from the bondage of sin.


Moses, too, was royalty, someone who gave up a kingdom and a court.


Moses was called eight times up Mount Sinai, eventually to receive the ten commandments that provide basic guardrails for human behavior.


When Moses descended Mount Sinai the sixth time and witnessed the pagan creation of the golden calf, in anger he threw and broke these sacred stones written by the hand of God.

In his eighth and final ascent up Sinai, Moses alone was tasked with cutting new stones in just one day and carrying them back up the mountain-about 7500 feet altitude.

Moses asked to meet Him face to face, as those who love God long to see Him.


Yahweh warned no man can look on His face and live, so He placed Moses, just as He did Elijah 700 years later, to see only His back from the cleft of the rock, surrounded by light and love and the same wind (ruach) that had accompanied the Israelites in their desert wanderings.


After 40 days with those who followed Him, Jesus ascended.
 Moses spent 40 days and nights alone on Sinai without food or water; he absorbed so much of God’s glory that when he descended Mount Sinai, his face shone with such supernatural light that his people were frightened.

Moses covered his face with a veil because all who saw him did not understand and could not look at him.


Every time Moses met with Yahweh, his face shone so brightly that he was transformed; gradually the brightness faded the longer he was physically away from God.


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The veil itself is highly symbolic, a type.

The Apostle Paul completes that symbolism by noting in 2 Corinthians that, “ We are not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away.

But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away.

Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts. 1But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.” (NIV)

Only with that communion does the spirit burn within us as a candle in the dark.

Under the Old Covenant, only the high priest who, after purification ceremonies, was allowed to pass through the tabernacle curtain to enter the Holy of Holies, wearing a veil which represented the barrier that sin creates between God and man.

The need for that veil-which represented Jesus’s human body—was removed when Jesus voluntarily gave up His life on the cross.


At the same moment of His human death, the curtain of the tabernacle was torn from TOP to BOTTOM. That curtain—that veil—was 60 feet tall and 4 inches thick. No human could have torn it.


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The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ changed everything; His intervention removed all barriers between God and man, pushing humans from the old covenant of laws to a new covenant of access to the Almighty through a covenant of the heart.

How important is the Old Testament type of the veil and its corresponding New Testament antitype?

They are not merely interesting- they provide connections.


Moses was not allowed to enter the promised land because he had disobeyed God by disrupting another type when he struck the rock to bring forth water, disobeying God’s instructions.


The veil on Moses’s face was a type of the separation sin creates from God. When God ripped the temple veil, He established that God’s grace superseded the law and the old covenant.


When Christians spend time with the daily manna He offers us (another type of God’s Word), we too begin to reflect the supernatural glory of the Lord as He transforms us.


Many years later, the transfiguration of Jesus is united with Moses and Elijah who both stood with him now face to face.
 The types that are laid out in the Bible verify God’s authentic message of love and redemption.


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Light, too, is a type.


The imagery of light runs throughout the Scriptures, as God’s love transforms those who love Him.
 God’s light is brighter than anything we know; it can never be hidden, no matter how dark our days.


One day the spirits of those who love Jesus will have no need to long to be near the light because all veils will be thrown aside and the light imagery that runs through His Word will be our reality.

We will be surrounded by a Light so pure and bright that it can be felt in our bones as a fragrance.
 We will be in the City of Light.

Just as dawn breaks the sky, the light that arrived as a tiny baby brought the dawn of salvation to mankind.


His light is so bright musicians say it “terrifies the dark” even against the three days of darkness of the 9th plague of Egypt that was so dark it could be felt. 



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“The little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay

The cattle are lowing

the baby awakes


the dawn of salvation

beginning to break

I love thee, Lord Jesus,

oh, gift from above


The King of the Heavens,

forever with us”

Photos from Wood County, Ohio