The Teaching Tools of Scripture
Yeshua made heavy use of the Natural Pictures Teaching Tool by relating many things about spiritual truths using parables. He often began a parable by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like …” and then proceeded to tell a story about seeds, crops, harvests, landowners, fathers and sons, or some other aspect of normal human existence or the natural world with which His audience was well aware. That picture in the natural world was meant to teach us something about the spiritual world, or God, or the kingdom of heaven, that we might not otherwise understand.
God created families, for example; marriage and procreation and children were all His idea. He could have designed human reproduction any way He wished, but He designed marriages of husbands and wives; He designed families with parents and children. Later on when He revealed Himself as our Husband (Isa 54:5) or as our Father (Isa 63:16), we immediately understood the intensity of the love and the depth of commitment He had for us.
This is the teaching tool of Natural Pictures.
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Gen 1:26
In Gen 1:26 the natural picture is man. God created man in His own image. By seeing and understanding man as a natural picture, we can better see and understand something about God that we could not otherwise see and understand.
The nature of man revealed in Scripture is of a human being as a single, unique and unified individual existing in three intertwined parts of spirit, soul, and body.
And you shall love YHVH your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. Deu 6:5
May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Yeshua Messiah. 1 The 5:23
Deu 6:5 expresses man’s three parts as heart, soul, and strength. 1 The 5:23 expresses man’s three parts as spirit, soul, and body. They are two witnesses who agree that man is a triune being, of heart or spirit, of soul, and of strength or body.
Hear, O Israel: YHVH our God, YHVH is one. Deu 6:4
Man made in God’s own image, using the teaching tool of natural pictures, reveals that God is a single, unified, and unique Being existing in three intertwined parts of Father (Psa 89:26, Mal 2:10) Son (Psa 2:7, Isa 9:6), and Holy Spirit (Gen 1:2, Exo 31:3).
Prophecy and the prophetic Scriptures, as well as prophetic dreams (Gen 37:5-8), also employ this tool.
I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets. Hos 12:10
A similitude is a counterpart or double, according to Webster’s, a visible likeness. God is telling us that He often communicates prophetically using images or symbols – Natural Pictures – that stand in for something else.
We see this in Revelation, where symbols are introduced in the very first chapter. The symbols that have already been explained elsewhere in Scripture, pass without comment. The double-edged sword coming from the mouth of the Son of Man (Rev 1:16) needs no explanation as to its symbol, because the Word of God has already been described as a sword elsewhere (Eph 6:17, Heb 4:12). But the symbols not encountered before receive comment, so we learn that lampstands are symbols standing in for churches, and stars are symbols standing in for angels (Rev 1:20).
Examples:
The Teaching Tool of Natural Pictures and the Deity of Messiah (3)
The Teaching Tool of Natural Pictures and the Deity of Messiah (4)
The Teaching Tool of Natural Pictures and the Deity of Messiah (5)
Exodus 25 through 27, The Natural Picture of the Tabernacle
Leviticus 6, The Natural Picture of the Whole Burnt Offering
Numbers 8, The Natural Picture of the Menorah
Matthew 25, Natural Pictures in the Parable of Ten Virgins
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