Page 67 - Maranatha (1976)

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Through Heaven’s Gates, February 26
By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; ... for
before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
Hebrews 11:5
.
We are living in an evil age.... Because iniquity abounds, the love of
many waxes cold. Enoch walked with God three hundred years. Now the
shortness of time seems to be urged as a motive to seek righteousness.
Should it be necessary that the terrors of the day of God be held before us in
order to compel us to right action? Enoch’s case is before us. Hundreds of
years he walked with God. He lived in a corrupt age, when moral pollution
was teeming all around him; yet he trained his mind to devotion, to love
purity. His conversation was upon heavenly things. He educated his mind
to run in this channel, and he bore the impress of the divine....
Enoch had temptations as well as we. He was surrounded with society
no more friendly to righteousness than is that which surrounds us. The
atmosphere he breathed was tainted with sin and corruption, the same as
ours; yet he lived a life of holiness. He was unsullied with the prevailing sins
of the age in which he lived. So may we remain pure and uncorrupted. He
was a representative of the saints who live amid the perils and corruptions
of the last days. For his faithful obedience to God he was translated. So,
also, the faithful, who are alive and remain, will be translated.
“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” For three hundred
years Enoch had been seeking purity of heart, that he might be in harmony
with heaven. For three centuries he had walked with God. Day by day he
had longed for a closer union; nearer and nearer had grown the communion,
until God took him to Himself. He had stood at the threshold of the eternal
world, only a step between him and the land of the blest; and now the portals
opened, the walk with God, so long pursued on earth, continued, and he
passed through the gates of the holy city, the first from among men to enter
there....
To such communion God is calling us. As was Enoch’s must be their
holiness of character who shall be redeemed from among men at the Lord’s
second coming.
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