A Lesson for Our Time
The experience of Enoch and of John the Baptist represents what
ours should be. Far more than we do, we need to study the lives of
these men,—he who was translated to heaven without seeing death;
and he who, before Christ’s first advent, was called to prepare the way
of the Lord, to make His paths straight.
The Experience of Enoch
Of Enoch it is written that he lived sixty-five years and begat a
son; after that he walked with God three hundred years. During those
earlier years, Enoch had loved and feared God, and had kept His
commandments. After the birth of his first son, he reached a higher
experience; he was drawn into closer relationship with God. As he
saw the child’s love for its father, its simple trust in his protection; as
he felt the deep yearning tenderness of his own heart for that first-born
son, he learned a precious lesson of the wonderful love of God to man
in the gift of His Son, and the confidence which the children of God
may repose in their heavenly Father. The infinite, unfathomable love
of God through Christ, became the subject of his meditations day and
night. With all the fervor of his soul he sought to reveal that love to
the people among whom he dwelt.
Enoch’s walk with God was not in a trance or a vision, but in all the
duties of his daily life. He did not become a hermit, shutting himself
entirely from the world; for he had, in the world, a work to do for God.
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In the family and in his intercourse with men, as a husband and father,
a friend, a citizen, he was the steadfast, unwavering servant of God.
In the midst of a life of active labor, Enoch steadfastly maintained
his communion with God. The greater and more pressing his labors,
the more constant and earnest were his prayers. He continued to
exclude himself at certain periods from all society. After remaining for
a time among the people, laboring to benefit them by instruction and
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