Walking With God

On Sunday evenings, our pastor has been preaching through Genesis. Last night, he focused on Enoch. What an interesting man! After he had lived "only" 65 years, Methuselah was born. (When most people lived to be 900 years old, 65 is still practically a child.) Methuselah means "when he is dead, it will be sent." God revealed to Enoch that when his son died, there would be some kind of great judgment on the earth.

After Methuselah was born, Enoch was a different man. He preached of this coming judgment. (Jude 14, 15) He spent his life communing with God. "Enoch walked with God" He lived three hundred and sixty-five years, a relatively short time back then, raising a family and preaching...and walking with God.

(Genesis 5:24)
"And Enoch walked with God and he was not;
for God took him."

I think about how it must have affected his family. Did he disappear in his sleep..while he was eating...while he was preaching? Did he leave his robe behind? Did he just take a walk and not come back? (The writer in me is just begging to put it into a story.)

I heard about a little girl who explained it by saying, "God and Enoch were taking a walk together. At the end of the day, they were closer to God's house than Enoch's, so Enoch went home with God."

Methuselah had a son named Lamech, who had a son named Noah. (which means "a resting"...another complete thought of symbolism) Lamech died before his son. Methuselah lived longer than any man on the earth, 969 years. The year that Methuselah died, the Great Flood came. This shows God's great mercy, "not willing that any perish, but that all should come to repentance." (II Peter 3:9)

This is a wonderful picture of the rapture. Those that belong to the Lord, those that have been redeemed, who have had their sins washed in the blood of the Lamb, will escape a coming judgment. The Bible tells us of a terrible tribulation of the earth-of earthquakes and disease and pestilence and darkness, more than this earth has ever seen. Yet, those that are in Christ, those that have His Spirit within them, need not fear for themselves, for the Lord will change their bodies and catch them away- in a moment, in the "twinkling of an eye."



He tells us to be watching and waiting and praying.(I Cor. 15, II Thes.2, II Peter 3) Are you ready? Are you looking for that day?

"Maybe today my Lord will come for me;
Maybe today my Savior I shall see;
Maybe today from sin I shall be free;
Jesus will come, and I will go home,
Maybe today."
(by Frank Garlock)