"Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.” (Gen 5:24)
In the third generation from Adam people began to call upon the name of the Lord (Gen 4:26), and in the seventh generation we see a man walk faithfully with God. It is through Enoch we see the first foreshadow of the rapture of the saints. As far as we know, Enoch was the first to prophesy the coming of the Lord (Jude 14).
God shares a special detail with us in the holy scriptures regarding Enoch: he walked faithfully with God. God shows us in Genesis 5 that the generation that preludes the coming of the Lord has an extraordinary opportunity to walk faithfully with God. The Apostle John wrote that "this is the last hour” (1 John 2:18). It is our generation that preludes the coming of the Lord. The church age is the last age before the coming of the Lord.
A brother in a small village in Nicaragua shared with me how he left many former sins behind after coming to the Lord. In 1999, radio stations from bordering countries were broadcasting the potential technical Y2K catastrophe. Some Christian radio programs erroneously took advantage of the pending technical doom to preach that the Lord was coming on new year day in 2000! This created a dilemma for my friend. He, like so many other men in that village, drank for days around the new year season. A habit he could not break. This particular year though he considered the imminent return of Jesus. What an unbearable shame it would be if his Lord returned and found him drunk in the streets. With this revelation that the Lord could come back that very night, even that very hour, he resisted temptation and to this day has not drank alcohol. He walks faithfully with God and has been an immense encouragement in my life. In like manner, we each need a fresh revelation of Christ every day in our life.
"And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming” (1 John 2:28). Though the world darkens, the light in us shines ever brighter until the full light of day.
JDF