One of the great mysteries of the Bible
is what happened to Enoch when God took him. Some time ago I wrote on
Elijah, showing how, unlike the traditional teaching that he went to
heaven, he could not have gone to heaven for he was still on earth
ten years after he was taken away in the whirlwind. What seems to
have been misunderstood was to which heaven he was taken away. It was
the first, as nobody could go to the third heaven where God is,
before Christ did, according to Scripture. The only place people went
when they left this life was to Paradise. Christ explained that both
in the parable of Abraham, Lazarus, and the rich man, and when He
told the thief on the cross that he would be with Him that day in
Paradise. When Christ ascended, He led captivity captive, or emptied
Paradise of the righteous dead and took them to heaven. We are told
that nobody ascended to heaven (God's abode) before Christ. Proverbs
30:4a “Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended?”
John 3:13 “And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he
that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.”
As it is doubtful that God left
Enoch stranded on another planet, (the second heavens) it seems the only answer is that he
was either transported somewhere on earth as Elijah, Ezekiel, and Philip
were, or he was taken to Paradise. More information on Paradise and
the three heavens can be found in my article on Elijah here.
http://bibleconundrumsandcontroversy.blogspot.com/2016/02/did-elijah-go-to-heaven-die-or-just.html.
We are
told everything there is to know about Enoch in a few passages.
Genesis 5:18-24 “And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two
years, and he begat Enoch: And Jared lived after he begat Enoch
eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days
of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died. And
Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: And Enoch
walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and
begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Enoch were three
hundred sixty and five years: And Enoch walked with God: and he was
not; for God took him.”
Luke
3:37 “Which was the son of Mathusala, which was the son
of Enoch, which was the son of Jared, which was the son of Maleleel,
which was the son of Cainan,”
Jude
14-15 “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied
of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his
saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are
ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly
committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have
spoken against him.”
Hebrews
11:5 “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not
see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for
before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.”
The entire content
of Enoch's life is that he was born of Jared, had a son named
Methuselah, that all the days of his life were three hundred and
sixty-five years, (that was his age when he disappeared, so that is
as old as anyone knew he was) that he walked with God, that he was a
prophet who warned of God's wrath to come, specifically the Second
Coming of Christ, not the Flood (as far as we are told) and that God
“took” him so that he should not see death, so God “translated”
him.
The mystery in all
this comes in that it says that he did not see death, that God took
or translated him. The Hebrew word for “took” means “to carry
away”. The Greek word for “translated” means “transport.”
So Enoch was removed to another place, so that nobody knew where he
went. The questions seem to be to where was he removed, and did he
receive a glorified body, stay in this body, or die and go to
paradise (the place of the dead before Christ ascended – to know
more on this read the above article on Elijah).
Most
people say he went to heaven, but it does not say that, and clearly
that is not possible for we are told in Scripture, as already quoted
above, that nobody could ascend to heaven before Christ ascended
after His death. So we know that he didn't go to heaven, as in God's
abode. That is a clear fact from Scripture. But it didn't say that he
went to heaven, it merely says that he was transported somewhere, so
that he would not see death. So there are two choices, he either
stayed on the planet where he lived out his natural life, (it is
doubtful God removed him to another one somewhere in the universe),
or God sent his spirit to Paradise. We are told that all
the days of his life were 365 years, but that is because nobody knows
what happened to him. He was that age when he disappeared, so that is
the age he achieved as far as anybody but God knows. But God does
inspire Scriptures, so unless God doesn't want us to know
differently, there is a distinct possibility that he died at that
time.
In
Hebrews 11 a few verses later, in the list of people who died in
faith, he is among those who are clearly stated to have died in
faith. Hebrews 11:13 “These all died
in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar
off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed
that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” So
that would seem to clinch the deal that he died at some point,
whether or not it was immediately upon being taken or later after
disappearing. And further, not only in John are we told he could not
ascend to heaven, but here we are told that he (and all the rest)
could not receive the
promise of eternal
life that they were
looking forward to (in resurrected bodies in God's kingdom - Titus
1:2 “In hope of eternal life, which
God, that cannot lie, promised before
the world began;”) until we
receive it too. Hebrews 11:39-40 “And these all, having
obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God
having provided some better thing for us, that they without
us should not be made perfect.”
Everybody gets eternal life (and the resurrected body) and the rest
of the promises at the same time, at the first resurrection. So we
can rule out Enoch getting a glorified body. He was not “translated”
in the sense of getting a new body like at the rapture.
But,
the objection is made, he walked with God so was exempt from death.
No, Scripture will not back that up. Romans 3:23 “All
have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” Romans
6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God
is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
All have sinned, and all must die, so that they can receive eternal
life in a new body. Now
the objection is made that some will not have to see death, but will
be raptured, so why shouldn't he. The difference is, before they are
raptured, the resurrection has occurred, so as Hebrews 39-40 points
out, everybody gets the promise at the same time. Nobody gets to jump
the gun, as it were. It was be the equivalent of making Enoch the
firstfruits of the resurrection, and he is not. Christ is. So again,
he could not have been translated in the sense of getting a glorified
body or going to heaven. Scripture rules out both of those options.
So given that
Scripture shows us that he had to have died, we then ask, where did
God take him, and how is it that he didn't see death, if he had to
die? Isn't that a contradiction. Now we have to interpret these
things in the light of what we know to be true from Scripture. The
death referred to cannot mean that he did not die. He had to have not
seen some other sort of death. There are several possibilities as to
what “death” is in this verse. The word “see” in Greek means
“behold, perceive, be aware of, and have knowledge of.” The Bible
does not tell us when the sons of God came down and married the
daughters of men, but the apocryphal book of Enoch (which is quoted
in Jude) tells us that this happened in the days of Jared, Enoch's
father. For the moment we will go along with that, as the timing
seems right. As Jared lived almost 600 years after Enoch went
missing, it is quite possible that this incursion happened after
Enoch was taken. Had they come down when Enoch was alive, it would
seem that his name would have been the one used to pinpoint the time,
as he is a far more important person in Bible terms than his father,
and it would also pinpoint the time of the incursion far more closely
than saying it was during Jarod's life.
Enoch prophesied
about the Second Coming of God's wrath, not the wrath of God through
the Flood. That always seemed strange to me, given that God's wrath
was about to fall on the world and wipe it out back then. It would
seem that he should have been prophesying about that instead. However
if the incursion had not yet happened when God removed him, he would
not be prophesying about the Flood, because he wouldn't know about
it. Instead he was prophesying about the wrath of God on the world
when the Messiah would come. That was all part of the plan of
salvation which Enoch obviously knew about, so that is what he
preached. Up until that point, most people lived very long lives, and
death was probably not known for the most part, as it was very rare
for a person to die. They were used to animal death for sacrifices,
but hardly anyone had died. We only are told of three people up to
that time, although there could have been more. In fact the only
patriarch in the list from Adam through Seth down to Enoch to have
died by the time Enoch left this earth was Adam. He died when Enoch
was 57 years old. Seth was still alive, as were his descendants. Abel
would have been killed before well before Enoch came along as Seth
was not born until after Abel died. There was a rule against murder
after Cain killed Abel, but that didn't stop Lamech (Cain's
descendent). He killed someone also. It is likely that since Cain
left the area when God punished him and having founded a city
elsewhere, his descendants and Seth's descendants did not interact a
lot so Enoch probably was not aware of this death either.
So the only death
that we can be sure that Enoch had probably seen was Adam's. There is
the possibility of other unrecorded natural deaths or even murders,
but the Bible does not indicate any. Death for people was virtually
unknown to man at this point. Very few probably died, given the
length of life at that time. So to take Enoch so that he would not
see (behold, be aware of, or have knowledge of) death could simply
mean that he was taken before death really started occurring or
became the normal state of things, as it is for us today. To take
Enoch at that time, would be to take him before all the death and
destruction of the incursion of the fallen angels had occurred as
well, as they did bring death and destruction with them, with all the
violence they perpetrated over the centuries until the Flood. So if
it is meant that Enoch did not see death in the world, it could be he
was transported to a remote location to live out his life in solitude
and peace away from the violence and sin, and die from natural causes
before the Flood, or the alternative is that God took his spirit from
his body at that time and just sent him to paradise.
Another
interpretation might be that “death” is meant to mean being put
to death by someone else, or killed, not death from natural causes.
The Bible tells us that the violence and evil was so great that by
the time Noah came along God had to destroy the world to save it. If
Enoch was around for the incursion, and even before that, his
prophesying God's wrath upon a wicked world (the world was not all
righteous even before the incursion) would not have been accepted
with much tolerance. Given that prophets were usually martyred, it is
not far-fetched to assume that Enoch would have been hunted down to
be killed as was Elijah. In that case we can hypothesize that God
didn't want him to be tortured or murdered, and again either removed
him to a remote part of the planet where they could not reach him
until he did die, or God took his spirit and buried the body, so that
it could not be found and mutilated by those who hated him. It could
mean that God wanted to remove his life force so quickly that he
wasn't even aware he was dying. He just took him straight to
Paradise. In this case he was translated from life to Paradise
without going through the painful process of death.
It says Enoch was
“translated.” Some like to equate this with the rapture, as in a
moment we are “changed”, so they say that he received a glorified
body and went to heaven, but that was already dismissed as a
possibility above. No man ascended to heaven before Christ, and
nobody receives the promise until we can all receive the promise. The
word “translated” means to be transported. It is the same word
that is used elsewhere when talking about moving from one location to
another here on this earth, such as when they moved Jacob's body in
Acts 7:16. (“carried” is the same Greek word “metatithemi”
that is translated as “translated” in Hebrews). Enoch was moved
or transported somewhere else. There are only the two possibilities.
He was moved to a remote location away from the rest of the world and
what was going on, so that he would not see the carnage and
destruction of death or be murdered, and he died of natural causes
before the Flood, or God took his spirit and transported it to
Paradise at that time, in which case he did not die a natural death,
he was just transported out of his body to Paradise and did not see
death in the sense that a normal person would. Either one of these
theories can work, as either way he died, as it says in Hebrews that
“all these died.” If one believes that the 365 years is
accurate, and we should believe that God's Word is accurate, then the
choice we should probably make is that God transported his spirit to
Paradise without him going through the process of a natural death.
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