To get a good picture of the end-times scenario one must go back to the beginning. Today I am taking you back to Enoch, seventh from Adam, and the one who had the testimony that he pleased God, just before he was raptured (caught up) into Heaven.

In Genesis, Chapter 5, we find Enoch in the genealogy from Adam to Noah and get a taste of what it must have been like to be living in those days. Enoch was the father of Methuselah, the man who lived longer than any other man in the history of men, 969 years to be exact. He was still living when grandson Noah became a father at the age of 500, and all the time Noah was building the Ark. In fact, Noah was 600 years old when the flood came (Gen. 7:6) and Methuselah died that same year, just prior to the flood.

Lamech, son of Methuselah and father of Noah, gave the Ark builder his name, saying, "This same shall comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord has cursed." It was a prophecy of hope. Lamech died five years before the flood, when Noah was 115 years into the building of the Ark.

Noah preached through all of the 120 years it required to build the Ark and never won a single convert. And Noah was a powerful preacher as was Enoch. This gives us an idea of what it must have been like on the earth in those days. In Genesis 6:11 the Word tells us that, "The earth also was corrupt before God and the earth was filled with violence."

It all began with the fall of man, the original sin of Adam and the slaying of Abel, Adam's righteous son who was murdered by his brother, Cain. The Spiritual Seed line had been broken with this murder so God gave Adam and Eve another son, Seth, who re-established the Seed line and from whom the genealogy of Jesus Christ would be traced. Through Seth's line of descendants, Enoch and Noah  would make their marks in the early history of man's recorded journeys with God.

The Enoch that was the descendant of Seth is not to be confused with the Enoch that was the son of Cain. These are two different Enochs so be careful when you study these accounts. The Enoch of the Seed line that we are celebrating today was 65 years old when Methuselah was born, "and Enoch walked with God after the birth of Methuselah 300 years and fathered additional sons and daughters: and all the days of Enoch were 365 years: and Enoch walked with God and he was not (found) for God took him." Enoch had been caught up and translated.

Enoch's rapture was the first of seven raptures to come as recorded in the Scriptures. This is important for it will happen to many of us as well. You see, Enoch's rapture was a forerunner of the future rapture of the church.

It will not be Enoch who will return as one of the two witnesses in Jerusalem during the tribulation. These two witnesses will be Moses and Elijah for, you see, Moses and Elijah represent the law and the prophets of Israel. Therefore they will stand in Jerusalem at the temple mount as the law-giver and the prophet to testify and prophesy during earth's most trying hour. They have been waiting in reserve all these millennia to return to earth to finish their assignment at the appointed time. Afterwards they will be killed and resurrected three days later.

Enoch's rapture on the other hand represents the rapture of the saints. In Hebrews 11:4, the Bible's hall of fame chapter, we read where, "By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death." Moses and Elijah will see death when they return but we who walk by faith today have the blessed promise of a rapture as it happened with Enoch. We who are caught up in the rapture of the church shall never see death.

We are also reminded that without faith it is impossible to please God. Faith is believing that God is, and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him. (Heb. 11:6.) Enoch and the raptured church will have the same testimony, that we pleased God, for it is by Grace we are saved through faith and faith pleases God.  Enoch believed, Enoch walked, and Enoch was a powerful preacher/prophet who, according to Jude vs. 14-15, prophesied of the end-time saints, saying:

"Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints: (the second coming of Christ with his Old Testament Saints and the New Testament Bride) to execute judgement upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him."

What a picture of the end times. Note that he repeatedly referred to the end-time followers of the beast and their deeds as ungodly and three times he uses this description. They are (1) spiritually ungodly, (2) they have committted ungodly deeds and (3) they have spoken ungodly things against the Most High God. At no other time in the history of man since prior to the flood has this trend become more prevalent than today. Enoch had been privileged to see our day in the spirit and had prophesied clearly concerning it.

He went on to say in Verse 16: "these are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaking great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage." (They seek the acceptance and pleasure of men rather than God.)

This is a prophetic picture of today's politicians, our world leaders, organized groups who seek to undermine our traditional values, and those who seek to take God out of our homes, our schools, our country and indeed out of the world. This is a picture of the NEA, our educators, of the ACLU, the pro-abortionists and those who forget that in the beginning God made them male and female and told them to be fruitful and multiply.

God did not make two men or two women. He made one of each. This was God's plan of blessing for marriage and procreation. It was God who sanctified marriage between a man and a woman and declared it sacred. It was God who declared that conception was with His approval for God opens the womb and God closes the womb and it will be God who judges those who ignore and pervert His laws as well as those who endorse or approve those that do so.

Indeed, the long-dead citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah will rise up in the day of judgement before the throne of God and point their bony fingers at these mockers of today and accuse them openly of the same decadence for which they were destroyed. There will be no advocate or witness for their defense. The verdict and the punishment have already been declared and written and except they repent and turn away from their abominations, their lot will be the same as those of Sodom and Gomorrah. Our job is to tell them the truth whether they hear or whether they forbear...

Today, they are trying to stop us from even telling them the truth. They complain that it is discriminatory and offensive. Well, my fellow earth-dwellers, your argument is not with people like me, it is with the One who wrote the book and declared the laws that are in it.

If we speak against you with lies then you have a legitimate complaint, but if we speak the truth, why do you resist? I say to you that your resistance is not against the followers of Christ, your resistance is against God Himself and that alone causes us to tremble for you.

We are aware of your bondage or we wouldn't bother. However, if you persist in resisting the truth we offer,  there is nothing more we can do except to stop you from defiling our children.

The United States Supreme Court would also do well to respect God's laws. It is their blatant rejection of His laws that prompts the decisions that can turn this nation from Godliness to Godlessness. They too will one day stand before a Supreme Judge who is far more powerful than they, and give an accounting for such decisions.

Today we live and walk in a world that is fast progressing to the world Enoch foresaw as paralleling his own. His was a world of ungodly wickedness, ungodly deeds and speeches, a world filled with violence. Sound familiar?

The world in Enoch's day was a picture of where we are headed today. Yet in the midst of all that ungodliness and corruption, Enoch walked with God, unfaltering in his faith, unswerving in his commitment to the Most High God of Heaven and earth, preaching, prophesying to the masses that did not have ears to hear or eyes to see. His great-grandson, Noah, would do the same.

Imagine if you can that you preach to an unbelieving world for 300 years as Enoch did, or even 120 years as Noah did, pleading with them to hear you, and not winning a single convert. Then remember that all of Noah's brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins would perish in the flood because they would not listen.

Noah walked with God and obeyed him right through entering the Ark with his wife, his three sons and his sons' wives. Those family members outside his immediate posterity were not allowed under Noah's umbrella of divine deliverance. Imagine the weight of knowing that they all perished rather than believe God, and that your sons were responsible to replenish the earth with Godly children of their own. Then recall that the cycle of wickedness would begin again with Canaan, son of Ham, grandson of Noah, and that this is the arrogance and lawlessness that continues to this day.

This is the power of the sin nature that wars against the spirit of man, both fighting for his soul. There is only one that is greater than our sin nature (our flesh) and that is Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can deliver us from our rebellion and our ultimate spiritual death.

We do have two additional blessings that Enoch and Noah did not have: Today the world has more than one man or one family that walks with God.  Indeed there are multiplied billions of believers in the world today but in short time these billions will be caught up as Enoch was, delivered from the judgement of earth as Noah was, and then the world will plunge into chaotic violence such as it has never seen before. The second added blessing we have is Jesus Christ, the sin-slayer...

God could have raptured Noah as he had Enoch and let the earth be destroyed for all time. He had repented of creating man before he found a new hope in Noah, but for the sake of the billions yet to be born, and for his own sake, he gave man and earth a second chance. Had it not been for the mercy of God who rewarded Noah's faithfulness with a new beginning, you and I would not be here discussing these things.

Jesus Himself warned us that the end times would be like it was in the days of Noah. The tribulation to come will be such a time and it will follow quickly on the heels of the rapture of the church. The world is moving in that direction with rapid speed. The world stage is set, the players are all in place, and prophecy is being fulfilled on a daily basis.

Many in the church are drawing away from the written truth, some denying the deity of Christ and others denying the absolute sovereignty of Almighty God. Apostasy is upon us. Mockers revel in their blasphemies, children curse their parents and the indifferent move along in their own me-and-my worlds, content to be ignorant of the deceptions of earth's movers and shakers. These are not my words alone, they are part of prophecy as spoken by our Lord and they are happening today.

Concurrent with these things, there is still revival as 80,000 souls a day worldwide come to Christ. This is reason enough for the delay of the rapture and for the shouts of victory that Enoch and Noah will one day join us in...

Enoch was God's partner in the earth, his faithful partner who enjoyed the intimacy of fellowship and a trusting relationship with Almighty God, and he was a type of the evangelizing New Testament Church. His rapture was a promise of the rapture to come, a covenant in the beginning for the end, acknowledged and confirmed by all the prophets that followed, including our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is the truth, and if you know and follow the truth, it shall make you free. What is truth? Truth is the Word of God. It will expose your sin nature, lead you to Christ and bring you to salvation where you too can walk with God in the world that is and in the world to come. If truth is what you seek, you will find it written by holy men of God who were inspired by the Holy Ghost who is the author of the Word that is God's only and everlasting truth...

Then couple these blessings with the written promise that one glad morning, like Enoch, we are going to fly away...

Shalom and God Bless,