Some practice with types.

Rivers are indeed substantial barriers to ready crossing, especially to armies on the move. If you have a great river like the Mississippi, bridges are few and far between. Sometimes great landmarks in our lives here on earth are such barriers. Death is the ultimate one of these. It is at intellectually known, often dreaded or feared. As it is written, Jesus came that he,

“and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.”
Heb 2:15 WEB

So what is the last river we cross before we
enter the true promised land?

For us as Christians it is obviously the river of death, that dreaded of all obstacles. And the last obstacle the children of Israel had to pass before the promised land was the river Jordan. It is thus a fitting symbol of our death before entering heaven.

Our songbooks are full of testimony to
Jordan as the river of death.

“On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand and cast a wishful eye,
to Canaan’s fair and happy land, where my possessions lie.”

“One more river, and that wide river is Jordan …”

And so on. These songs and sentiments are not out of place. It is implicitly part the imagery of Canaan as the promised land of heaven, and rising to take possession of it.

And when we finally come to the river of death?

What happened when Israel finally came to the Jordan? The priests led the way bearing the ark of the covenant. They were to stop when their feet were in the water, and the waters stopped flowing, “and rose up in one heap, a great way off.” The people of the land upstream were drowned by the waters, and the children of Israel passed over on dry ground.

So it is that the children of God cross over the river of death on dry ground, but the wicked are drowned by these same waters.

As it is written,

“… he who has part in the first resurrection. Over these, the second death has no power, …”
Rev 20:6 WEB

One of the shortcoming of the modern church
is ignorance, or the ignoring, of types.

The so called “scholarly” often treat such as unintended impositions on the text. They sometimes view these as things invented to cover for failed prophecies. They ignore the direct statement of types as evidence, and there is much of that. For instance, “a prophet … like you,” and “circumcise your heart, ” and so on. Or David writing in the first person in Psalm 22 of things which never happened to him! This was clearly intentional. Psalm 22 is a very clear prophecy of the crucifixion of the Christ. We should asking question like the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:34:

“Who is the prophet talking about? About himself, or about someone else?” WEB

Incredibly, many act as if God could not/would not possibly be that sophisticated! This is a huge blind spot in much of our preaching. We have let the unbelief of some, influence the preaching of many believers.

WEB is the World English Bible, a copyright free revision
of the original ASV American Standard Version 1901