The Book Of Enoch

Biblegems #268

Question: What do we know about the book of Enoch that was quoted by Jude?

Jude 14-15  Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all of them of all the ungodly acts they have committed in their ungodliness, and of all the defiant words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

Enoch was Cain’s first son, and also the name of the world’s first city, which Cain named after his son (Gen. 4:17). The prophecy of Enoch mentioned in Jude is found in First Enoch (the first book in a collection of five known today as Ethiopic Enoch).  While the writing of the existing manuscripts dates back to the 3^rd century to 1^st century B.C., the original content is presumed to extend all the way back to Enoch himself.

The Book of Enoch was widely read in Jewish and Christian circles in New Testament times, and portions of all but Book Two have been found among the other ancient Dead Sea scrolls in the Qumran caves. First Enoch, or “The Book Of The Watchers,” quoted by Jude builds on the account in Genesis 6:1-4 of the “sons of God” uniting with the “daughters of men,” resulting in the offspring of giants. The “sons of God” are identified in Enoch as a band of angels (called “Watchers”) who are captured by angels sent from God and imprisoned until the Final Judgment. Jude’s quote from First Enoch (see above) refers to the Day of the Lord and the outpouring of His wrath upon rebellious mankind prior to that Final Judgment Day.

While the Book of Enoch is not inspired Scripture, God in His sovereign wisdom did inspire Jude to quote from it. God used a book that was popular among Christians in the first century, including the apostles, to convey certain truths about the End Times. That does not validate everything written in the Book of Enoch. On the other hand, the New Testament does refer to a specific group of angels who:

Jude 6  …did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day…

And of—

         1Pet. 3:19b-20a  …imprisoned spirits—to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built.

And…

         2Pet. 2:4   For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell (Lit., “Tartarus,” which means “pits”) and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.

This descriptive language borrowed directly from First Enoch compares Enoch with the crucified and risen Christ. Enoch had been sent to the rebellious, imprisoned angels to pronounce God’s judgment. When they asked Enoch to beg God’s mercy on their behalf, God responded with the same declaration of judgment. In 1 Peter 3:19, Jesus, crucified but made alive by the Spirit, “preached” (Lit., “made a proclamation”) to these imprisoned spirits: He is the true Enoch (by comparison) who walks with God, and has overcome sin, death and all the demonic powers of evil. In the words of the apostle Paul:

         Phil. 2:10   …that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth…

Who Has Ascended Into Heaven?

Biblegems #147

Question: Jesus says that no one has entered into heaven, yet in the Old Testament both Enoch and Elijah are said to have gone into heaven. Has anyone besides Jesus ascended into heaven, or not?

Here are the three references for the above question:

John 3:13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man.

Gen. 5:24 Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

2Kings 2:11 As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.

“Heaven” is a very broad term. Depending on the context, it can mean, “sky” (Gen. 7:11); “universe” (Ps. 33:6); the “spiritual realm” where we interact with God, angels and engage in spiritual warfare (Eph. 6:12); and our eternal residence as followers of Jesus Christ in God’s presence (Jn. 14:2).

In addition, the apostle Paul talks of being caught up into the “third heaven”:

         2Cor. 12:2 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows.  

The third heaven was a familiar concept in Jewish literature in NT times that referred to Paradise (2Cor. 12:4), also known as “Abraham’s side” (Lk. 16:22). This was the realm of the righteous dead prior to the death and resurrection of Jesus. It would be here, the third heaven or Paradise that Jesus referred to when he said to the dying thief on the cross:

         Luke 23:43  Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.

For the sake of an earthly comparison, we could call the third heaven the anteroom or waiting room of heaven proper. All those who died as faithful believers in the one true God prior to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ would enter into Paradise. They entered heaven proper upon Jesus’ ascension (Rev. 4:4) awaiting the day when they would receive their resurrection bodies (1Thess. 4:14-17).

Paradise is the “heaven” where Enoch and Elijah, along with all the Old Testament saints such as Abraham, Moses, David and the prophets waited until the resurrection and ascension of Jesus to the right hand of God. So they are in heaven awaiting the Second Coming of Christ  for the resurrection of the body. And for those of us who are “in Christ” now, death takes us immediately into the presence of the Lord in heaven where we too will await the resurrection of the body at His glorious appearing:         

2Cor. 5:8 We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

So Jesus, our sole authority on heaven, is absolutely correct when He said that no one had gone into heaven (prior to His resurrection) other than Himself. His resurrection and ascension “parted the curtain,” so to speak, giving access to the very presence of God. Until then, God’s faithful people from the Old Testament era awaited their entrance into heaven in Paradise.

Who Was Cain Afraid Of?

Biblegems #118

Question: After God banishes Cain for killing his brother Abel in Genesis 4, Cain complains that others on the earth will kill him for his crime when they find him (Gen. 4:13-14). Who are the others on the earth at that time that Cain is afraid of? Where did these other people come from?

Adam and Eve, the ancestors of the human race, and their children, Cain and Abel, were real, historical people. In addition to Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve had many other children  (Gen 5:4). And in the 930 years of Adam’s life (Gen. 5:5), these children grew up, intermarried, and had children of their own, resulting in a population of at least one hundred and twenty thousand people by the time of Adam’s death. We know from Scripture that these descendants of Adam and Eve spread out and established settlements all over the ancient Near East. 

Reading Genesis 4 -5 can be deceptive when it comes to following the passage of time. But a careful reading can be very revealing. For instance, chapter 4:1-2 takes us from the conception and birth of Cain and Abel right into their adulthood. By the end of verse two they are both living independent of their parents and working at their respective occupations. Abel is murdered in verse eight; and by verse sixteen Cain is in exile in “the land of Nod, east of Eden.” Then, in the very next verse, Cain has found a wife, who gets pregnant and has his child, Enoch—all while Cain is building a city, which he names after his son.

The point is, the account of Cain and Abel moves quickly from one key event to another. This is to show that within the first thousand years of human history God’s command to Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28) was already well under way. Thousands of people—the descendants of Adam and Eve—populated the earth, farmed the land, tended livestock, constructed cities, and brought with them the plague of sin and death.

So it is clear that Cain and Abel had many brothers and sisters, most of whom had hundreds of years of separation between them. In fact, in the “written account of Adam’s line” (Gen. 5:1) Cain and Abel are not even mentioned, nor are any of their siblings except Seth. Why? Because Seth represents the ancestral line of Noah (Gen. 5:28-29), who played a principal role in God’s plan of salvation. All the descendants of all the other siblings of Cain and Abel were lost in the Flood, except those who married into Noah’s family and were aboard the ark.

So who was Cain afraid of when he went into exile? His own brothers and sisters and their extended families. The same is true for all of us, for we are all related to one another, only separated by time, distance and multiple layers of intermarriage. We are one family—the human family—and each person’s sin impacts the rest of the family. That’s why salvation from sin and death had to come through a human being, but one who was without sin.

         1 Cor. 15:21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.

The death and resurrection of Jesus has reversed the curse of Adam and Cain!