When Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up against the king of Assyria to the river Euphrates, Josiah frustrated Pharaoh Neco's expedition and was killed by him (v. 29).
Josiah was brought to Jerusalem by his servants and was buried there in his grave (v. 30).
The history recorded in the Old Testament is a type. The history books were put into the Holy Scriptures because, in typology, they give us a vivid view of God's economy. The essence of the typology of the Old Testament history is God's economy with Christ and His Body as the center and reality.
In one of the books of history, 2 Samuel, we see that David, a man according to God's heart, wanted to build a house, a temple, for God (7:2-3). However, God did not need that kind of house (vv. 4-7). Rather, God wanted to build David a house (v. 11b). Through a prophecy in typology, God told David that eventually the house that He would build for him would have a seed and that this seed would be God's Son. The seed would therefore be both human and divine. It would be a human seed, yet it would also be God's Son. Christ was God becoming the seed of David. This means that God Himself, the divine One, became a human seed, the seed of a man, David. This seed was Jesus, the God-man, Jehovah the Savior.
Jesus is our Creator becoming our Savior, our salvation. He is the creating God who became a man by being born of a virgin. He remained in the womb for nine months according to the principle ordained by God for man. When He came out of that womb, He was no longer only God; He had become the God-man. This God-man lived on earth for thirty-three and a half years and then entered into death through crucifixion. In His crucifixion He accomplished redemption and terminated the old creation.
The death of Christ was the death of a God-man. In one of his hymns Charles Wesley wrote, "Amazing love! how can it be/That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?" (Hymns, #296). The One who died on the cross and shed His blood was a man, yet Acts 20:28 tells us that this blood was God's own blood. The death of this wonderful God-man was all-inclusive. It terminated the entire old creation. The One who created Adam died on the cross as the last Adam (1 Cor. 15:45), the last of mankind, to end Adam.
Within Adam there is a sinful nature, or sin. When Adam was terminated by the cross, the sin within Adam's nature was also terminated. Furthermore, this sinful nature in Adam is just Satan himself. Thus, when Adam's nature, sin, was terminated, Satan was also destroyed (Heb. 2:14). In addition, the world, which was invented by Satan and is one with Satan, was also destroyed through the death of Christ on the cross (John 12:31). Christ's wonderful death ended the fallen man, and through this He ended man, sin, Satan, and the world. At the same time, through His death Christ released the divine life within Him to be dispensed into all God's chosen and redeemed people, regenerating them with the divine life. Then Christ entered into resurrection, and in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit.
The life-giving Spirit is the Creator God who became a man, lived a human life, passed through death, and entered into resurrection. Today our God, unlike the God of the Jews, is not only divine but also human. He is not only God but also man, with Christ's death and its effectiveness and with His resurrection with its power, all compounded together to be the life-giving Spirit, the ultimate consummation of the processed Triune God. The Triune God was embodied in Christ, who eventually became the life-giving Spirit, the pneumatic Christ, who is the reality of resurrection. Today we have the consummated Triune God, the pneumatic Christ, and the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit who is the reality of resurrection.
Resurrection is not just a matter; resurrection is a living person, the Lord Jesus Christ (John 11:25). He is the resurrection and in resurrection He has become the life-giving Spirit. For us today the reality of resurrection is Christ as the life-giving Spirit.
Christ is now in resurrection as the life-giving Spirit, the consummation of the processed Triune God. Since He is in resurrection, we, His believers, should also be in resurrection and live in resurrection. Resurrection means that all the old, natural things have been terminated and that something new and spiritual has been germinated. This is resurrection—the termination of the natural and the germination of the spiritual, to transform the natural into the spiritual. In resurrection we do not live a natural life but a life that was terminated in the old nature and germinated in the new nature to make us members of Christ.
Christ today is a corporate Christ with many members (1 Cor. 12:12). This means that He is not only the Head but the Head with the Body. Here we have the very essence of God's economy, with Christ and His Body as its center and reality.
In this economy God became man in order to make man God in life and nature (but not in the Godhead) through a marvelous process. With God this process was incarnation, human living, death, and resurrection. With us this process is regeneration, sanctification, renewing, transformation, conformation, and glorification. God has become man, and eventually man will become God in life and in nature. Then the eternal economy of God will be accomplished.