Enoch And His Message

Recently I have been teaching through Genesis and the Gospel of Luke. While exploring the life of Enoch and his message in Genesis 5:24, I was amazed with the statment that he "walked with God" and also in Hebrews 11:5 that Enoch "pleased God". Elsewhere in Scripture we understand that "Walk" is a metaphor for lifestyle and actions. So Enoch had a lifestyle that was all about God. Well, I began to realize that Enoch had an intimate fellowship with God and began to know the heart of God in the midst of "wicked, evil, and violent" times (Genesis 5:5,11). Well, that is when Jude 14-15 made sense to me. You see when Enoch knew the heart of God he followed the will of God for his life. And God's will was for him warn the world of impending judgement for sin. So Enoch had a prophetic ministry proclaiming the judgement of God during the times before Noah's life. Even though Enoch (according to Jude 14-15) was prophecying about the return of Christ or the event we call the 2nd Coming of Christ, the warning was still the same. Get right with God before His judgement for sin comes. Because Enoch believed this message he preached, he named his son Methuselah, which means "death then judgement." We can assume his name more fully meant "when Methuselah dies God's Judgement will come" because upon Methuselah's death God judged the world with a great world-wide flood. Well while this topic may not be one of those "WOW" things to read, I would like to make two points that I found were a "WOW" during my study. First, Methuselah was the oldest man to ever live. He lived 969 years. That demonstrates God's abundant mercy and longsuffing toward those living in sin. Second, in Luke's gospel we read that Jesus will come again when the times and culture get as bad as it was during Noah's time. Well, if you ask me we are not far from the return of Christ and the Judgment of the world...