Seth and Enoch
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continued for three hundred years. There are few Christians who
would not be far more earnest and devoted if they knew that they had
but a short time to live, or that the coming of Christ was about to take
place. But Enoch’s faith waxed the stronger, his love became more
ardent, with the lapse of centuries.
Enoch was a man of strong and highly cultivated mind and exten-
sive knowledge; he was honored with special revelations from God;
yet being in constant communion with Heaven, with a sense of the
divine greatness and perfection ever before him, he was one of the
humblest of men. The closer the connection with God, the deeper was
the sense of his own weakness and imperfection.
Distressed by the increasing wickedness of the ungodly, and fearing
that their infidelity might lessen his reverence for God, Enoch avoided
constant association with them, and spent much time in solitude, giving
himself to meditation and prayer. Thus he waited before the Lord,
seeking a clearer knowledge of His will, that he might perform it.
To him prayer was as the breath of the soul; he lived in the very
atmosphere of heaven.
Through holy angels God revealed to Enoch His purpose to destroy
the world by a flood, and He also opened more fully to him the plan of
redemption. By the spirit of prophecy He carried him down through
the generations that should live after the Flood, and showed him the
great events connected with the second coming of Christ and the end
of the world.
Enoch had been troubled in regard to the dead. It had seemed to
him that the righteous and the wicked would go to the dust together,
and that this would be their end. He could not see the life of the just
beyond the grave. In prophetic vision he was instructed concerning the
death of Christ, and was shown His coming in glory, attended by all
the holy angels, to ransom His people from the grave. He also saw the
corrupt state of the world when Christ should appear the second time—
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that there would be a boastful, presumptuous, self-willed generation,
denying the only God and the Lord Jesus Christ, trampling upon the
law, and despising the atonement. He saw the righteous crowned with
glory and honor, and the wicked banished from the presence of the
Lord, and destroyed by fire.
Enoch became a preacher of righteousness, making known to the
people what God had revealed to him. Those who feared the Lord