Enoch

The doctrine of imputation depends wholly upon Genesis 2:24 and Mark 10:8. The covenant of marriage represents God’s covenant with mankind that is sealed in the union of mankind with his son, Jesus, into one flesh. When God looks upon mankind, upon those who are united in Christ, then God sees not mankind but his only begotten son. 

Still, we must accept if God was willing to crush his only son, then he, too, is willing to crush us. If God is willing to pour out his wrath on his son, how much more shall he be willing to pour out his wrath upon us. And why? So that we might be glorified with the son and with the father. 

Christ says that we must take up our crosses and be crucified with him. If we join him in the covenant of marriage, becoming one in his flesh, then it is impossible for us to avoid oneness with his suffering. For if Christ suffered, then we will not escape suffering. To be united in Christ is to be crucified with Christ. If we do not share in his death, then how is it possible that we can share in his resurrection? What can be raised again that was not first cast down? 

Was Peter not crucified with his own bride? Did she not share in Peter’s sufferings in the same way that we must share in the sufferings of our only husband? How foolish we are to imagine that we, in joining ourselves with Christ, becoming one in his flesh, join, too, with his spirit. 

For if two become one, a man and a woman, do they not join together in the flesh and create a new flesh in their children? Likewise, if two spirits come together, a man and a woman, will they not unite to form a new spirit in their children? 

But what joins together in the flesh must die in the flesh, for never has one escaped the wrath of God upon the flesh, not even the only begotten of the father. But it pleased God to pour out his wrath upon the flesh of Jesus Christ to demonstrate once and for all, his judgment upon sin. 

Our sin, too, is judged if we unite with Christ. 

However, some will say, “I have united with Christ in the Spirit, but not in the flesh.”

How, then, do you suppose to deny the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the body? For do you not believe as it is written, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”

If Christ is risen in the body, then what was once corruptible has put on the incorruptible. What was once subject to death, has been born again into life. 

If you would deny that you will avoid the wrath to come, then you place all your hope upon a myth of men. You who wait to be caught up in the air, do you hope to escape the wrath of God upon the flesh? For God was pleased to pour out his wrath upon the flesh of his only begotten son. God was pleased to pour out his wrath upon Peter and his wife. God was pleased to pour out his wrath in stones that crushed the body of Stephen. God was pleased to run James through with the blade. God was pleased to sever the head of Paul. Do you, then, hope to escape the judgment of God upon your flesh? 

For you who have been united in Jesus Christ through marriage to him are united both in his suffering and his glory. For since the beginning of the world, none have been glorified who did not first suffer. What has put on death must die that it might be clothed with life everlasting. 

And do not forget, brothers, that Jesus himself has been exalted to judge for himself who his bride will be. He who tells us that he will separate man from man as a shepherd who separates the sheep from the goats, it is the same shepherd who selects for himself a bride and rejects those who do not know him. For he admonishes us to remember the five bridesmaids who did not keep their oil and were left in darkness. So, too, he leaves us with one injunction of despair:

“And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

For even Jesus Christ reminds us that a man who is joined to a wife who joins her flesh to that of another man, may separate himself from her for all eternity. For God, though he has chosen to be faithful, even God has declared that one who joins to a husband besides Christ has joined himself to death eternally. Though once married to Jesus, a bride who scorns to suffer in his flesh and hopes to instead enjoy the fruitless promise of another will suffer in death eternally. For there is no resurrection in the flesh outside the resurrection of the flesh of the eternal son, and only those who unite in him will be raised in him. 

For Christ has issued a certificate of divorce to Israel, saying, “I had sent her away with a decree of divorce” when Israel played itself the whore to unite with other gods. Still, even then in his judgment against her, Christ has said, “Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD.”

But Judah, seeing the harlotries of Israel has suffered an eternal judgment. For Jesus returned to Galilee to gather the lost sheep of the North, the faithless bride who repented and returned to him. But he has turned his back on Judah, who scorned his faithfulness and sought to end the covenant of marriage through the death of the covenant maker. For in the moment that Jesus Christ died in the death of the cross, the covenant of Moses ended, for who can keep a covenant with the dead, for it is written, “For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established.” For Christ at once died unto the Law and unto the flesh, and in his death was freed from his covenant with both Israel and Judah, and in his resurrected body made free to join himself to any who would share in him. 

As the prophet writes, there is no longer Israel; there is no longer Judah; there is no longer Gentile, nor slave not free. There is only Christ. If then, there is only Christ, then where are you? You are in Christ: One in his flesh. One in his death. One in his resurrection. One in his body eternal. One in his spirit. 

For Christ himself prophesied when he said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And what is a temple if it is not the house where God dwells? And if God dwelt in the body of Christ as a man, and that body was torn down, was it also not rebuilt? For the body that is destroyed in death is also rebuilt in life. For if even Jesus did not avoid the consequence of sin, himself being holy, then how do you hope to avoid the consequence of sin, though his holiness is imputed to you? You deceive yourselves, you who hope for the second coming preached by the false prophets, who teach you to hope to avoid the judgment of death. For who, since the beginning, has avoided death?

For it was right that Elijah, though carried away in a chariot of fire in the flesh, returned in the body of Elizabeth to suffer judgment in the flesh when he declared in power, “And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” For how does John bear witness, saying, “I have seen” if he has not seen the son with the father? And did Jesus not say, “If you are willing to accept it, he (speaking of John) is Elijah who is to come.”

But Enoch, of whom it is written, “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. And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.” But Peter, James, and John bore witness to the voice of God when Jesus the King was transfigured in his earthly body, without surrendering to death, to stand with Moses and Elijah, their bodies also transfigured, and heard the voice of God declare, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” If God were pleased with Enoch, who escaped death once, then for what purpose would God crush his only begotten son in death though he had pleased him “well” when Enoch had pleased him in less abundance? For if Jesus, who was to come in the flesh was less pleasing to God than Enoch, then why has Enoch escaped death when the son has not? And if Elijah escaped not death, but was sent again to proclaim the coming of the promised Messiah, then how has Enoch avoided judgment in the flesh? And is it not written that Moses’ body was hid by God so that it was not found, though Michael and the Devil disputed over it? But indeed the body was found and was glorified with Christ and Elijah in the presence of God and the disciples. Is it that Moses and Elijah and Jesus are all three glorified in transfigured bodies, but Enoch remains in corruption, having pleased God more than the Holy One of Israel? 

For if Enoch, having lived one year, has escaped death, then the cross is no cross at all, but only a clever trick. For I assure you that Enoch, too, has tasted death in the death of Christ and has not avoided judgment. As it is written, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith.” Scripture does not read, all but Enoch have sinned.

For Enoch, too, having believed in Christ by Faith, received a covering for sin, just as the shame of Adam was covered in the skin of an animal, and as the ark of the testimony was covered in mercy sprinkled with blood, and we being covered in righteousness by the blood of Jesus Christ, there is none, not even Enoch, who has escaped the judgment of death and blood and drawn near to the father by pleasing him by faith in a manner to avoid death. For it is by faithfulness that God subjects us through death, for Christ himself, being "the way" to the father has established that way through death. For even in faith death must come, for it is by faith that Christ descended into hell and death so that by faith he might ascend, once and for all, in glory to the father. How then does Enoch escape death, once and for all? Is he a better Christ, having pleased God more to avoid being cursed in death? For the blood of Jesus is of no use to Enoch, having been justified by faith in God alone, avoiding the judgment of sin in his flesh meted out upon the only begotten. 

So I declare to you, as the spirit testifies, that Enoch, if you are able to accept it, has returned already in the faith and death of Moses, having learned how to please God by faith, and having been the only man to behold the face of God and live, having already beheld it in glory. Just as the Baptist in righteousness declares his testimony (and his testimony is true) that he hath witnessed that Jesus is the Son of God. And Peter, James, and John, having three witnesses to the three witness, Peter, James, and John in corruptible flesh, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus in the incorruptible, bear witness to the glory of God, giving testimony unto men concerning the glory of God, having witnessed it themselves. For Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus are the only ones to have borne witness to God's glory in the heavens. So, too, are Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus glorified by a better faith, having confidence not in an invisible testimony, but a visible one. For it is written, in the Law of Moses and the Law of Christ that a thing is established by the testimony of two or three witnesses, and so God, in his glory, called forth two or three witnesses unto himself to bear witness to his glory and the glory of the son: Enoch, Elijah, and himself. For he testifies about himself when he testifies about his son, but himself being the third witness, though his testimony more true because he cannot lie, brought forth two more witnesses to confirm what he had already spoken and declared to be true. Therefore, Enoch and Elijah, having borne witness to the father are declared by God's word to be "the greatest." For Jesus declared that he who wishes to be the greatest must be the most humble, and it is written of Moses that he was more humble than any man on earth. And Jesus declares of John that there was no man born of woman who was greater than he. But no man is humble in himself but only becomes humble, indeed, most humble, by witnessing the glory of eternal God. 

And these three witnesses to the glory of God, being transfigured in the body in glory, were witnessed by Peter, James, and John, receiving the testimony of God and becoming the first human witnesses to behold on earth the glory of eternal salvation in the glorified bodies of the first three witnesses.

With this testimony, being true, I declare to you with power and authority by the holy spirit of God which dwells within me, having testified to these things, too, knowing the depths of the secrets of God, that there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed, and that God’s holy decrees are eternal and true. 

How is it, some may ask, that you know that Enoch has returned already? I tell you the truth. There are some alive who wait the return of Enoch, having reasoned by the Scriptures, “It is appointed for man to die once.” And Scripture, being true, testifies that Enoch, too, was a man, just as Jesus was a man, even Luke bearing witness to the genealogy of Jesus unto Adam, by whose loins came also Enoch. If Enoch is a man, as Jesus, too, is a man, then how should Enoch avoid the testimony of judgment poured out not only upon all men, but also the only begotten? For God hath sworn by himself (and God cannot lie), that it is appointed unto man once to die, then either Enoch was not a man or Enoch has not died, for all who die, die in Christ or apart from Christ, and if Enoch has not died, then Christ, too, has not died. 

For as Paul writes, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”

Enoch, then--if he has not died--having pleased God, is not an heir through the Son, but rather, though himself. And if Elijah has returned to experience death, as testified by Jesus before the death of Jesus, then Enoch, too, must have returned, to experience death. And if Christ has come already, at the “fullness of time,” then either Scripture lies in that it is appointed for man once to die, that the fullness of time had come, or even Jesus Christ himself is a liar when he prophesies, “It is finished.” For it could not be finished if Enoch remains unglorified in the flesh, the only man of flesh who walks in Heaven glorified without dying in the flesh and into Christ. For there are three alone who have ascended unto God in the body, Enoch, Elijah, and Jesus, and there are three who stand upon the holy mountain, Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. Therefore Enoch, having ascended first also descended first. Elijah, having ascended second, descended also second, and Jesus, having ascended last, descended also last, once and for all, that all who descend in death might now also ascend in life eternal, having died with Jesus Christ, unified in the flesh of matrimony unto the son, also being glorified in death, do become much more glorified in God.