ENOCH
By
D. M. PANTON.
“The
Church of today must be the Enoch of our world. We Christians must show the people of our time
what the good life really means: it is the reproduction of the life of
Christ by the grace of the Holy Spirit. Such an example will not be popular, but it
will please God, to whom one day we must render an account. It may also earn Enoch's reward:
translation to Heaven without passing through the portal of death. But we have Enoch's testimony to give, namely
that Christ will return to this earth to set up the Golden Age. Two world wars have sharpened the interest of
many people in the truth of the Second Coming of Christ; but this interest has
been divided into two schools of thought. One of these is linked with the name of J.
N. Darby, and holds that the Church will entirely escape the
tribulations which precede the Return of Christ. The other school of thought is linked with the
name of B. W. Newton, just as brilliant a scholar as Darby,
and these friends hold that the whole Church must endure the tribulation.
May it not be that the golden mean of
these two antinomies is the truth? If
we exercise the faith of Enoch in a humble walk with God and a clear
testimony to His Word, we may prevail to escape what is coming,
upon the world. "Watch ye and pray that
ye may be accounted worthy to escape" (Luke 21 :36).” - Frank
V. Mildred.
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Enoch,
the morning star of the world, is a model for us today of extraordinary value
as the great prototype of all rapture. For Enoch was, like ourselves, a Gentile; his
was the age which saw the birth of scientific invention in the world;*
he lived in an age of rapidly deepening wickedness when the earth was filled
with violence; his feet stood on the brink of a judgment that was to sweep
the whole earth; he was, as the Holy Ghost emphasises, “the seventh from Adam” (Jude 14) - that is, a type of all who, after
six thousand years of sin, shall share the Sabbatic
Rest; his deliverance - the first of its kind in the history of the world,
as ours will be the last - was by a sudden and supernatural removal, through
a gateway into heaven that has only twice been opened since, and then only to
distinguished saints; and his is the only rapture in the Bible enforced upon us by the Holy Spirit as a
model for us. So also the very
setting of his record is luminous with spiritual light. For we know absolutely nothing of the physical
facts of his life: not a single outstanding event in it is recorded: out
of profound obscurity he leapt into heaven. How profoundly suggestive! “Hearken, by beloved brethren, hath not God chosen the poor
of this world, rich in faith.” His hidden diamonds - [R.V.]
“to be heirs of the kingdom which He promised to them that love Him?”
(James 2: 5). The Church knows nothing of her brightest
stars, for she moves beneath the range of their heavenly orbits.
[* Jabal as
founder of commerce, Tubal-Cain of
manufacture, and Jubal of art (Gen. 4: 20-22), were the dawn of today’s mighty
meridian: the early world held in it, even to the rapt saint, a mirror of our
own far vaster age. Enoch’s removal many
decades before the Flood makes sure (by type) the escape of all latter-day Enochs from approaching judgments, by secret rapture
like his.]
Most
significantly, it is the Apostle who writes the preface to the Apocalpytic judgments - Jude - that most stresses
Enoch’s testimony, and reveals it as exclusively a Second Advent testimony.
Enoch prophesied saying, “Behold, the Lord came with
ten thousands of His holy ones to execute judgment upon all”
(Jude 14) - upon Jew and Gentile, Church and
world. Here a new truth swims into our
ken like a fresh star. Rapture is
peculiarly linked with testimony to the Lord’s return: this was Enoch’s
express and exclusive witness. So our
Lord’s word to the Philadelphian Angel runs thus: “Because thou didst keep the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from that hour which is to come upon
the whole world” (Rev. 3: 10). Of all the saints of Hebrews
Eleven, Enoch alone was translated: and of Enoch, alone of them all, is
Second Advent testimony recorded; so much so that the Holy Spirit says
that it was to men of our dispensation, four thousand years before it opened,
that Enoch spoke: “to these Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied”
(Jude 14); and so riveted together is a
Second Advent mouth and life with rapture, that lo, Enoch himself became the
bodily proof of his own testimony. “He was not, for God TOOK him” (Gen. 5: 24). “One is taken,
and one is left. Watch therefore”
(Matt. 24: 41).
The
Spirit reveals a second ground of Enoch’s translation. “By FAITH Enoch
was translated that he should not see death” (Heb.
11: 5). The faith which is so
enormously emphasised throughout Hebrews Eleven,
while it necessarily assumes saving faith, is never only saving
faith, but a faith far vaster and more potent. Abraham and Sarah begetting Isaac in extreme
old age; Moses renouncing the Egyptian palace; Jericho levelled by marching
priests; actual resurrections from the dead; kingdoms subdued, promises
obtained, the mouths of lions stopped, the power of fire quenched: all these
were the operations of something far beyond saving faith. Therefore see the tremendous truth. The faith for translation, so far from
being merely the faith for salvation, is ranked by the Holy Spirit among the
great achievements of the world. And so, alone among all these patriarchs, it
is Enoch’s experience of rapture that is seized upon by the Holy Spirit to
emphasise reward: “for BEFORE his
translation he hath had witness borne to him that he had been well pleasing
unto God, for he that cometh to God must believe that he is a
rewarder.”* For Enoch was rapt when all the
patriarchs except two - Adam was dead, and Noah not yet born - were still on
earth, and remained so. It was not faith
that he would be translated, for it is nowhere said that God revealed to him
that he would be removed without death, nor, since the event had never before
occurred, could he have imagined it: but faith which made him well-pleasing to
God whereby he was translated: the faith which pleased God lay
not so much in the creed, as nestled in the heart of a sanctified life, a
root of the full bloom which God plucked. Enoch held nine hundred or a thousand years of
life on earth, with corruption at the end of it, as nothing compared to a
sudden heaven. He ceased upon the
noontide of his life: to the youngest of all the patriarchs, for abandoning
this life, God has given five thousand years in a better world.
[*"It was God’s
purpose to deliver him from the power of death as a reward of his
faith in the living God: his deliverance was a manifold reward of the faith"
(Delitzech).]
So the Holy Ghost now draws a general lesson of the utmost practical and prophetic importance to us:- that the pleasure given to God by the rapt is not the mere act of conversion, but a whole life of devotion: so that the Old Testament phrase is - “Enoch walked with God” (Gen. 5: 24), in continuous well-pleasing; it was his walk which produced his removal. He changed his place but not his company. For “without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto Him:” that is, whichever phase we choose - he “pleased” God, or he “walked” with God - both imply faith, and continuous faith: “for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder [a renderer of reward; Alford] of them that seek after Him." "God removed him in so unusual a manner from the earth that all might know how dear he was to the heart of God" (Calvin). To a life of extraordinary merit God granted an extraordinary reward; he became Enoch the immortalised because he had been Enoch the sanctified; the very name “Enoch,” with the extraordinary significance of Bible names, means dedicated, consecrated, separated. So our Lord says - “Watch ye and pray always, that ye may be ACCOUNTED WORTHY to escape” (Luke 21: 31); “Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to render to each according as his work is” (Rev. 22: 12). Had not God designed to do Enoch special honour, it had been easy to deliver him from the coming translation by ordinary death, as He did Methuselah. It has been said that the utmost reach some Christians attain is that they are pardoned criminals: Enoch is one of the few men in the Bible against whom no sin is recorded. “In all ages it has been universally acknowledged that no higher honour was ever publicly bestowed on any man on earth than that bestowed on Enoch and Elijah, an exalted honour evidently given to illustrate the unalterable principle that God remarkably honours those who are specially honouring to God” (Cornwall) *
[* “Not without Enoch’s
faith, let us rest assured, shall we be deemed worthy of an Enoch-like
translation. Not without Enoch’s walk
shall we be found among the wise and ready virgins. Not without Enoch’s testimony concerning
the coming of the King and Judge shall the precious promise to the
So
now all concentrates on the walk with God:- “Enoch WALKED with God” (Gen. 5: 24). This
expression occurs only twice in the Bible:- of Enoch,
type of the heavenly deliverance; and of Noah, type of the Jewish escape: and
it is recorded once of Noah (Gen. 6: 9), but
of Enoch twice (Gen. 22: 24); for the
heavenly calling involves a double intimacy with God. None will escape from the coming
judgments save those who walk with God. There is an exquisite beauty about the phrase
discernible only to a sensitive spiritual vision: it implies close intimacy and
unbroken communion: an agreement of mind and purpose, a union of heart and
soul, a sympathy of sentiment and affection. “Can two walk together
except they be agreed?” (Amos 3: 3). It means a lonely life: Enoch walked with
God when all men were walking contrary to God: nothing
in the world is more valuable than the ability to walk alone, for it is the
supreme requisite for walking with God. The man who walks with God becomes exceedingly
sensitive to criticisms of Christ, and exceedingly sensitive to the inevitableness of judgment (Jude
15). The universal ungodliness
obsessed Enoch like a nightmare (Jude 15),
exactly as it did Elijah (Rom. 11: 3): it is
most remarkable that the only two men ever rapt before Christ were each
distinguished for extreme loneliness, and for fearless testimony in an age of
dominant wickedness; that is, the man who stands alone for right is the
man whom God delights to honour. It
is an extraordinary comfort that Enoch’s sole recorded distinction is his
goodness: no administrator like Moses, or warrior like David, or statesman like
Daniel; no hero of splendid exploit, or world-shaking achievement; the great
prototype of all rapture was simply an ordinary man filled with
extraordinary goodness; a morning star flooded with the light of the still
un-risen Sun. The law in the natural
realm - that like attracts like - rules also in the spiritual: heaven attracts
the most heavenly; until, in the set design of God, acting upon ever-deepening
heavenliness of character the mighty magnet suddenly works (Mark 4: 20), and the Enochs
are gone.
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