By faith Enoch -- the company God keeps

The Word for today:
Hebrews 12:1-17

mark this: (Hebrews 11:5)
By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.

Stand in the Rain likes to exercise its vivid scripturally-based imagination. So when we see the chance, we take it.

Today’s article, then, will be in the realms of speculation, conjecture, whimsy, and delight. Though these things might not butter your bread, they will surely frost your cake…

Enoch is one of those characters who make the Bible a mystery! Just when you think you’ve got things figured out, you run into a Melchizedek or an Enoch to remind you that you don’t know jack, Jack.

Genesis gives us all of 51 words about Enoch…

Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him. (Genesis 5:21-24)

And every one of those 51 words leaves us hoping for the 52nd, which isn’t there—because Enoch isn’t there anymore, either.

Enoch is the answer to some of the best Bible trivia questions:

Q. Who is father and son, respectively, to the Bible’s oldest and second oldest persons, respectively?
A. That would be Enoch, whose son Methuselah (969 years) and father Jared (962 years) had the longest lives in scripture.

Q. There are two people in scripture who do not die. Name them.
A. Enoch and Elijah.

***

Most of the time, Enoch is taught as a picture of the Rapture, which he certainly is. Stand in the Rain has already presented him in that way, as a picture of our transported future selves.

But he’s more, so much more, than just Enoch the Transported. So today we’d like to introduce you to Enoch the Transformed…

Genesis says that Enoch walked with God and he was not. Enoch had vanished! Certainly that can mean more than a mere disappearance. Could it be that as he walked with God, his “appearance” became more and more Christ-like, to the point where Enoch was not.

In this transcendent regard, carefully consider these scriptures:

John the Baptist:
"He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

The Apostle Paul:
“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. “ (Romans 8:29)

And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven. (1 Corinthians 15:49)

The Apostle John:
Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. (1 John 3:2)

***

It is true that Enoch disappeared, in a moment—poof!

But the far greater story is that a man named Enoch, who had not walked with God for his first 65 years, turned his steps around. Nothing much happened at first, but day after day, step after faltering step, he kept on and on with God. Then one day, after 300 years of a re-shaping relationship, God noticed that Enoch had become so much like Jesus (and so unlike the old Enoch) that, effectively, Enoch was not.

So, the transformation complete, God took him.

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