by Pastor Mark Perkins, Front Range Bible Church, Denver, Colorado
Genesis 5:22-24 tells Enoch’s story:
“Enoch lived with God for three hundred years after the birth of Methuselah (his son). Thus all the days of Enoch came to three hundred and sixty five years. Enoch lived with God, and he was not, for God took him.”
Hebrews 11:5 provides us with further interpretation:
“By faith Enoch was transferred [to heaven] so that he should not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”
Jude verses 14 and 15 quotes from the apocryphal book of Enoch, and it says,
“And about these also Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying,”Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgmeent upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him."
When he was sixty five years of age, Enoch was transferred - body, soul, and spirit - to the presence of God in heaven. There he stayed for three hundred years, at which time his soul and spirit were painlessly removed from his body, and he was transferred to paradise.
Enoch also was a prophet while he remained on planet earth, and he talked about his own generation, as evidenced by his prophecy recorded in Jude’s epistle.
Enoch lived in a time of great apostasy. This time began during the life of Enosh, and was fully developed by the time Enoch came around.
The apostasy of that time was unbridled, since the Mosaic law had not yet been written.
Rom. 5:20, “And the Law came in the side door, so that the sin might increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.”
The time included a tremendous amount of demonism, even to the point of sexual relations with them. The demons were attacking the genetic line of Christ, hoping to pollute His human genetic purity and thus destroy His role as mediator.
Therefore, they seduced human women (and only women), and impregnated them. By the time of Noah’s life, all but Noah’s family had succumbed.
The human women were weakened by their hatred of God (see Enosh), and easily enticed by the attractiveness of these demons.
There was great violence, and the human race was in a constant state of war. The half-angelic humans had great superhuman powers (see Hermes, Aphrodite, Apollo, Neptune, etc.), and they were superintelligent and superattractive (see Helen of Troy and Aphrodite) as well.
Many strange and terrible creatures roamed the earth, the brood of demons. Their fossil record remains - thanks to the great fossilizing powers of the flood.
It was in this time that Enoch lived, moved to maturity following the plan of God, and was transferred to heaven by the omnipotence of God. Enoch did not see physical death because of his maturity, and he stands as a precursor to resurrection.
Although Enoch was not truly resurrected, his transfer to heaven was very much like a resurrection.
During all his time in heaven, Enoch stayed in his human body, yet face to face with God. It is probably a comment on his maturity that he was able to stand it, though in his sinful body.
After three hundred years of life with God, he was then transferred to paradise, under the earth.
At the resurrection of Christ he was transferred to heaven along with all the Old Testament Saints.