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One Love
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Date Joined Jan 2003
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| Posted 4/1/2010 2:42 PM (GMT -6) |   | | When Enoch had lived years, he fathered Methuselah. Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.
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By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.
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Some things:
1) This is WAY before any of the biblical covenants (Noahic, Abrahamic, etc), but it anticipates them in the idea of relational intimacy with God; This is seen in Enoch's "walking with God" and pleasing God in doing so.
2) It seems to me that Enoch's capacity for his humanity to be "taken up" into Divine Presence (so as to experience incorruptibility without death) is grounded in the "theandrism" of human destiny in the Archetype of Humanity, Christ. Moreover, this "theandrism" of human potential is seen in the Transfiguration of Jesus, when uncreated glory permeates and shines through creaturely existence. In other words, if human beings weren't designed they way they are to participate in the Creator Spirit (according to the "specs" of archetypal divine humanity in Christ)...then Enoch would not have been able to experience such divine life...unto "not seeing death. Same way with Elijah, too.
Post Edited (One Love) : 4/1/2010 2:46:32 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
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| Posted 4/1/2010 6:04 PM (GMT -6) | | What is so amazing about this passage about Enoch (which D quoted) is in how it communicates so much in so few words.
Expressed in living color, Enoch is a life lived by one who found God and walked with God. That we are told he "pleased God" is really parenthetical; for the "walk" itself is that which pleases God.
We are tempted to differentiate too much between Old Testament and New Testament saints, as if we have something that enables us to do something "they" could never do. This simply isn't the case. Thus, the issue of Old and New Testaments is not one about the have and the have nots. The death of Christ did not give us something more than what was given to the Old Testament saints, not, at least, as it concerns walking with God. It is not that they were left without the tools to do the job, but, praise the Lord, we've been given them. It isn't that we "have the Spirit" and they didn't (and even if we do, that would still play no part in how it is that "Enoch walked with God" ).
Christ—His life, death and resurrection—gave us a way, not a possession (and yet, the way itself is the possession). Christ opened a door. He provided the means. He created passage way. His work was not to give us what was never given to previous generations. His work was not a possession to give, but a position to offer. We only need look at Enoch to see the truth of all this. Enoch's life says so much in so few words about the walk everyone of all ages is to desire.
Seen in the Old Testament and expounded in the New Testament, we will always find that our goal is the walk of death, of separation from the old, of uniting to the new. Enoch's walk started on earth (the below) and finished in heaven (the above), his body's position having caught up with his spirit's position. Enoch's life, then, both physically and spiritually, reveals to us our purpose and meaning as regard "walking with God": to walk so united with the One from above that we wil transcend the old, embracing the new, and our bodies ultimately catching up with our high position.
So, we would be hard pressed (and foolish) to look at Enoch and say that he didn't "have the Spirit." For from ages past, God's Spirit has been present. For as far back as Cain, who's walk headed opposite the direction of Enoch's (he chose the below!), God had declared to Cain, and thus to all, "You must strive against sin." Ah, but the question is then why tell someone something is possible if it is true, as is often taught today, that without the the Holy Spirit in you, you can't defeat sin?
Again, it has always been the case that man can walk with God, be His friend, obey Him, and love Hiim with all one's heart, soul, mind and strength. The only "missing" ingredient in the mix was that Old Testament saints were still waiting for full access to God to be restored—traditional theology has all Old Testament saints held up in Abraham's bosom until complete access to God was made available through Christ.
Finally, that Enoch was "taken up," is to say something about his ultimate destiny; his position. For this theology, there is no need for arguing for or against the need for Enoch to have experienced death ("for it is appointed unto man once to die..." ) before transcending to the above. That isn't the point of the passage. It is, rather, God's intention to say something, through Enoch's experience, about mankind's incompleteness: that only in God, united fully with Him, can mankind become complete. Mankind is to be from the above and not the below. Mankind is To live in unity with Him and not in division with his very own self!
In so very few words about Enoch, we see clearly, early on, the appointed destiny of mankind. As to the extent of such unity. To the extent, though, the divine will be found appropriated into the Divine has yet to be fully revealed.
StarkmanPost Edited (Starkman) : 4/1/2010 6:29:34 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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Starkman
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Total Posts : 1747
| Posted 4/1/2010 6:12 PM (GMT -6) | | Quick after thought in view of my post above...
I can't imagine a more succinct passage in the New Testament relative to our position in the "above" than found in Revelation 4:1
After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.
There's this tension...this "Here's where you belong, John," and yet, "but it's yet to come." John is not fully comfortable in the above. It's not yet fully united with his own existence. Nothing new there! But we see God's call through John for all to "come up hither." For that's where we all belong!
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One Love
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Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 4/2/2010 7:02 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
It really makes you wonder about what Paul and other NT writers meant by focusing on "death" as the enemy, and it being "appointed" to every person to die and then face judgment, etc. This is AFTER than Fall and we see a fallen human being apparently just RELATE his way into a glorified state without having to die. Maybe every person is--in an important sense--his own Adam, her own Eve.
With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
Post Edited (One Love) : 4/2/2010 7:05:38 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
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