THE MAN WHO WALKED WITH GOD
By D. M. PANTON, M. A.
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 epoch of rapidly
deepening wickedness, and 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 emphasizes, "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 complete obscurity he rose into heaven.
How profoundly suggestive! "Hearken, my
beloved brethren, hath not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith"
- His hidden diamonds - "to be [R, V.] 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
to-day’s mighty meridian: the early world held in it, even to the rapt saint, a
mirror of our far vaster age. Enoch’s removal meant decades before the
Flood makes sure (by type) the escape of all latter-day Enochs
from approaching judgments, by secret rapture like his. "He was not found" (Heb. 11: 5) - thus his disappearance was known;
but that he was sought for on earth reveals that his removal had been secret.]
Most
significantly, it is the Apostle who writes the preface to the Apocalyptic judgments - Jude - who 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 our Lord’s return: this was Enoch’s express
and exclusive recorded 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). So our Lord makes the removal to turn on
watchfulness for His return. "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
emphasized 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, and mouths of
lions stopped, the power of fire quenched: - all these were the operations of
something far beyond saving faith. Therefore we 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
emphasize 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."* The reason for his rapture is lodged
in the pleasure he gave God before it occurred. 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" (Delitzsch).
For the coming removal which Enoch’s rapture pictured falls, not in ‘this day’ of grace, but in ‘that
day’ of justice: it is the very first event in the dawn of the day of
recompense according to works.
[** It is also true, however, that while
the Epistle to the Hebrews stresses only the rewarding nature of the removal,
as the main practical point for us, it is probable that Enoch, like Elijah, is
being reserved, by his extraordinarily exceptional experience, for a tremendous
destiny in the drama of the end.]
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 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 phrase 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 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
immortalized 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
tribulation 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 Philadelphian Church (Rev. 3: 10) be made
good to us" (W. Maude).
The Revised translation of Luke 21: 36 has
the exact moral import of the Authorized; for it is obvious that we do not ‘watch and make supplication to prevail’ by having been
regenerated, but by prayerful vigilance
after conversion. "Making
supplication at every season to prevail" is much more than regeneration, the work of a
moment. One
scholar’s translation is very suggestive: "Take
heed to yourselves in case your hearts get overpowered by dissipation and
drunkenness, and worldly anxieties, and so that day catches you suddenly as a
trap: from hour to hour keep awake, praying that you may succeed in escaping
all these dangers to come, and in standing before the Son of Man."
Stier thus
sums up the consequences of the prayerful vigil: “‘To stand
before the Son of Man’: first of all, to stand
as one escaped from the judgment, saved from the wrath and judgment: but then,
at the same time, as the highest and last thing of which we can be made or
thought worthy, as heirs of His Kingdom to stand before Him for ever."
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, before the Flood; and of Noah, type of the Jewish escape, through
the Flood: and it is recorded once of Noah (Gen. 6:
9), but of Enoch twice (Gen. 5: 22, 24),
the latter alone being named and expounded in the New Testament; for the
heavenly calling involves a double intimacy with God, and involves the Church
alone. For both
[* The studied vagueness of the standard
presented - simply ‘pleasing God’ - is full of instruction. God conceals
the date of the Advent so that we may be always watchful, and He
conceals the standard of holiness for rapture so that we may always be striving.
It is the manifest wisdom of Deity. None can know till he hears the
call. So the Scriptural believer holds
exactly the language of Paul: "Brethren, I count
not myself yet to have apprehended; but I press on toward the goal unto
the prize" (Phil. 3: 13).]
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