When Enoch was 65 years old, he became the father of Methuselah. After the birth of Methuselah, Enoch lived in close fellowship with God for another 300 years, and he had other sons and daughters. Enoch lived 365 years, walking in close fellowship with God. Then one day he disappeared, because God took him. (Genesis 5:21-24)It must have been a rough culture, the beginning of the world. How long was it before God started talking to people again. We are made in his image. That means that he reacts in many ways like we do. In this instance, he probably reacted with disappointment. It was a while before he wanted to be with them again.
He and humanity had such a great relationship before the fall. After all, he made people to be with him. Then those people turned on him. And it probably took a lot of the desire to be with them out of him.
Not only that, but now they were sinful. They had removed themselves from his plane and had moved to another place. Not until heaven would anyone ever see the face of God again.
But in every situation, there is someone different. Enoch was different.
Whatever it was he did, he did well. God got to the point that he was sick of the world and all its evil. He wished he had never made it. But here was this single point of light: Enoch.
And evidently Enoch had enough trouble in the world that God just reached down and took him. Maybe God was looking for another person like Adam to walk and talk with. Whatever the cause, Enoch was so good and so holy and walked in such close fellowship with God that God took him.
To be taken by God because you were so good. Only one other person you see like that and that person was Elijah. In 2 King 2, the prophet Elijah was taken up by God in a chariot of fire.
Two people out of the entire history of the world. of course, there could have been more and they were not recorded. But whatever the number, here was Enoch one day and gone the next.
What must the people around him thought? He would have been an odd person anyway, living holy in a corrupt world. Then one day people noticed that he was missing. He may even have been gone for a few days. “Where is that goofball?” someone asks.
Maybe he was beginning to make people angry. Maybe his life was in danger. Maybe a lot of things.
But whatever the reason, he was gone, taken up by God, a man too good to live in this world. as Don McLean said in his song Vincent, “This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.”
He will never take me. I have already messed up my life entire too much. I have too much baggage. I know he will save me and take me home to be with him when I die. I have no doubt of that. But I have to wait.
There are people I have met who are so good that I wonder why he doesn’t take them. But, as far as I know, he doesn’t.
Enoch was fortunate. I envy him. To be standing one day on this dirty earth and the next in the radiant presence of God.
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