Hebrews 11:5 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Hebrews 11:5

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Here is Enoch the seventh from Adam. His best-known son was Methuselah who lived for 969 years, and Enoch himself lived for 365 years. Adam and Enoch actually overlapped for 300 years. For three centuries they were both alive together on earth. Of course before the flood, they were great ages and Enoch died, you might say, aged 365 as a young man, because pretty well everybody else seems to have lived nearly 3 times as long. Jude says that he was also a faithful prophet, and spoke of the final judgement and how thousands will be bodily with Christ at his coming. The significant thing was that he believed this and preached it fearlessly. Enoch was translated and transferred, body and soul straight into heaven. God had transported him bodily directly into glory, bypassing the normal experience of death. Moses says that he walked with God and Hebrews explains it was because Enoch pleased God: ‘For before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.’ His life was a life of careful obedience to God. He was not without sin, as Christ was, of whom the Father testified, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3:17), but he strove to obey God sincerely. He also had fellowship with God and longed to be closer to the Lord. He no doubt separated himself from the evil of this world and his eyes were constantly on heaven. Even in a fallen world there is no limit to how closely we can walk with God, and those who love him, God desires to be with him, and so Enoch was taken ahead of time. It was a secret act, a private act, ‘he was not found.’ They were not used to death; Enoch may have been only the second person to leave the earth, certainly only the second one recorded in Genesis 5. So they searched for him, but it was quite clear he could not be found: he had been taken home bodily by the Lord, a secret, private transfer.

Application

Why did this happen? It was God’s way of teaching that there is eternal life and it includes the body. Death is ordained for everyone with the exception of Enoch and Elijah. Death is the way every one of us leaves this present life. But Enoch, right at the beginning, the seventh from Adam, was taken bodily to heaven, to teach that you will eternally exist with a body, your spirit and body re-joined, your body wonderfully glorified. They did not have the details but they were taught that believers would be saved body and soul. We will not just be disembodied spirits. That will only be the case during the period until Christ returns, before the resurrection. Then the redeemed received their glorified bodies for their eternal habitation.

It has been suggested by the old writers, that there is probably a second purpose for the transporting or translation of Enoch, and that is to show man what would have been his lot had he never fallen. He would have been taken bodily in the course of time. Maybe there would have been generations, but the tree of life and tree of the knowledge of good and evil left alone there would have been direct translation to glory. Maybe that is one of the purposes of Enoch's translation: to show what good God would have done had they never been a fall. But that's only earnest speculation.

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Hebrews 11:5 Commentary and Bible Study