Foreshadow

Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.

[T]he ceremonies commaunded in the lawe, did foreſhadowe Chriſt.

[T]hat the excellency and efficacy of this [Jesus's] death and passion might appear, it was by manifold types foreshadowed, and in divers prophecies foretold.

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said [Ebenezer] Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"

A good man's praise foreshadoweth God's, and in His smile is heaven: […]

Even as the cloud foreshadoweth rain, so prayer foreshadoweth the blessing; even as the green blade is the beginning of the harvest, so is prayer the prophecy of the blessing that is about to come.

I have inveigled Tristan and Iseult / Back into this thy court—to Tristan's death, / And my installing as apparent heir, / As thou foreshadowedst.

Thou foreshadowest for us good hopes even for the amendment for what is being left, now that Thou hast already begun to give assent to our prayers, […]

It all sounds to us remarkably nineteenth-century; Petrarch's romantic sentiments foreshadow with uncanny precision those of Dante Gabriel Rossetti or Alfred de Musset.

If there is a significant or surprising event in the story, it must be foreshadowed earlier on. When the event that was foreshadowed occurs, that's the payoff.