Messiah: The "grand event" of the OT

"...Now since it was, as has been observed, God’s manner of old, in the times of the Old Testament, from generation to generation, and even from the beginning of the world to the end of the Old-Testament history, to represent divine things by outward signs, types, and symbolical representations, and especially thus to typify and prefigure future events, that he revealed by his Spirit, and foretold by the prophets; it is very unlikely, that the Messiah, and things appertaining to his kingdom and salvation, should not be thus abundantly prefigured and typified under the Old Testament, if the following things he considered.

"It is apparent from the Old Testament that these things are the main subject of the prophecies of the Old Testament, the subject about which the spirit of prophecy was chiefly conversant from the beginning of the world. It was the subject of the first proper prophecy that ever was uttered: and it is abundantly evident from the Old Testament, that it is every way the chief of all prophetical events. ‘Tis spoken of abundantly as the greatest and most glorious event, beyond all that eye had seen, ear heard, or had entered into the heart of man; at the accomplishment of which not only God’s people and all nations should unspeakably rejoice, but the trees of the field, the hills and mountains, the sea and dry land, and all heaven and earth, should rejoice and shout for joy; and in comparison of which the greatest events of the Old Testament, and particularly those two most insisted on, the creation of the world and the redemption out of Egypt, were not worthy to be mentioned or to come into mind, and in comparison of which the greatest and most sacred things of the Mosaic dispensation, even the ark itself, the most sacred of all, was not worthy of notice. And it is also abundantly evident from the Old Testament, that it was the grand event that, above all other future events, was the object of the contemplations, hopes, and raised expectations of God’s people, from the beginning of the world." -- Jonathan Edwards, "Types of the Messiah, Etc.", The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 6