The antitype is the major, often end-time event that a smaller historical event, the type, foreshadows. Most prophecy is dual, consisting of a type and an antitype, just as Scripture shows a physical reality prefiguring a spiritual one. In the Olivet Prophecy, Jerusalem's destruction in AD 70 is the type, and the Great Tribulation immediately before Christ's return is the antitype. This explains why Christ said His coming would follow the tribulation of those days. Failing to see the antitype led early Christians to expect His return after Jerusalem fell, and their disappointment contributed to apostasy. It also led the Jews to reject Christ, since they expected a conquering king and overlooked that the prophecies of a reigning Messiah describe His second coming and millennial reign. The type often stops short of fulfilling the whole prophecy. In Luke 4:16-21, Christ read Isaiah 61:1-2 and stopped after the first line of verse 2, because the rest belongs to the antitype, fulfilled worldwide in His millennial reign. Not every prophecy has an antitype. Predictions about Tyre, Sidon, and Ashkelon seem to have none. God mainly uses duality for prophecies concerning Israel or the church. Ancient Babylon, which took Judah captive, is a type of the world's society that rebels against God and persecutes His church, and it will share Babylon's fate. The first-century apostasy is likewise a type of an end-time apostasy, so believers must watch.

Most futurists hold to the principle of type and antitype, and so do the churches of God. A prophecy given in one era has a minor fulfillment, the type, usually within a generation or two of the time it was spoken. It also has a larger, more significant, and sometimes spiritual fulfillment, the antitype, at the end time before Christ's rule. These are dual prophecies, fulfilled once early on and a second time much later in history. Isaiah's prophecies in Hezekiah's day about Babylon, only about a hundred years ahead, are an example. They were indeed fulfilled in the past, but their greater fulfillment is still future. This understanding bears on Christ's words in the Olivet Prophecy. Jesus speaks in a "prophetic tense" that does not account precisely for great swaths of time, and He shifts between the people before Him and those far in the future. The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and other past tribulations therefore do not exhaust what He foretold. They do not qualify as the Great Tribulation, which is still future. "This generation" refers to the generation that has the power to destroy all flesh.