Articles
Walk With Messiah & Choose to Refuse
Barbara L. Klika, MSW, Undershepherd, Life Coach
August 2016
Written for Wisconsin Christian Newspaper
But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.…
Matthew 24:37-38 KJV
As in Noah’s day, while we await Messiah, most people will continue to live normally, not seeing anything amiss. The Word, both the written and the Living Word, Yeshua, say that we should not be oblivious, but watch and pray, that there will come an end of the world as we have known it. The world system will be loud and the modern Pharaoh’s will continue to shout at us to make more bricks with no straw, another parallel to the end times, an “ensample” for us.(1 Cor. 10:11) Do we listen or act like David, wholeheartedly for our God?
I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Psalm 16:8 KJV
Not so familiar is Enoch, who lived in the days leading up to the Flood, another example for us. Scripture refers to Enoch yet doesn’t offer many details.
And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.
Genesis 5:24 KJV
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he did not see death. He could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.
Hebrews 11:5 KJV
Excerpts from Matthew Henry’s cogent observations:
Enoch was the seventh from Adam. Godliness is walking with God: which shows reconciliation to God, for two cannot walk together except they be agreed, (Amos 3:3.) …It is constantly to care, in all things to please God, and in nothing to offend him. … This was his constant care and work; while others lived to themselves and the world, he lived to God. It was the joy of his life. … As he did not live like the rest of mankind, so he did not leave the world by death as they did….. He had lived but 365 years, which, as men's ages were then, was but the midst of a man's days.
We know that Enoch was 65 years old when he had Methuselah. Though there is some controversy, one meaning of the name is: “when he is dead, it will come.” Methuselah died the year of the flood by most accounts. Apparently having been forewarned about the flood/judgment to come, for 300 years Enoch kept YHWH always before Him, as his right hand. In Hebrew, the fabric of our lives, the holidays and traditions we keep, and the choices we make are called “the way we walk” or Halachah. Before the flood Enoch not only believed, he walked out what he believed. Later, the Israelites had the physical picture of “walking after God” in the pillars of fire and cloud that they followed. 40 years of walking after God taught the children how to do it, an ensample for us today.
Many people are distressed over what they see as the “Old Testament” god of vengeance in the slaying of all the Canaanites. Scripture says that their abominable sins had finally reached to the heavens. (Israel couldn’t take the land any earlier because their iniquity was not yet complete.) Given long years to repent and turn away from their abominations, they refused. In the simple text of the Scriptures we may not see just how abominable those sins were: making children walk through fire, sacrificing them to guarantee the safety of their homes and city walls, placing the bodies within the walls. Ritualistic sexual sin abounded. They walked contrary to our God.
In Genesis 6 we are told that in the time leading up to the flood there were angels who left their place and came to earth, taking wives for themselves and causing them to bear their children. I have always thought of this as happening in the middle-east, but Native American ancient stories speak of “men from the stars” who raped the daughters of men, often causing them to die in childbirth due to the infant’s large size. Worldwide, there are ancient stories of such beings who were red-haired, aggressive and cannibalistic, sometimes giants. The offspring of these couplings are called Nephilim, or “fallen ones,” sometimes translated as “giants.” These angels were punished very severely and sent to Tartarus, the deepest places of hell until the final judgment.
Perhaps this clarifies the necessity of annihilating these people, but there is much more. Enoch I, highly regarded among the first century believers, was found among writings at Qumran, and was kept as a part of the canon of scripture by the Ethiopic church. (Enoch books 2 and 3 are far less credible.) The Western church fathers elected to remove it from Scripture, though Scripture refers to it often. It indicates that Enoch was highly regarded as a Preacher of Righteousness, spending long periods of time away from men, focused on our God. Enoch 1 indicates that there were 200 rebellious angels and that their rebellion was not only mating with human women but also teaching forbidden things to man. Most relevant is the mixing of human and animals, what we call hybrids today. Some believe that it was this mixing at the DNA level that had corrupted all of mankind, except the bloodline of Noah, also known as a Preacher of Righteousness.
Our headlines today are filled with references to the mixing of species, including human and animal chimeras, all in the name of science and perhaps even for medical “necessity.” It’s just one aspect of how our days are as in the days of Noah.
Please choose to refuse the ways of the world! Please choose to walk after our God as Enoch, David, and Messiah did. Messiah said that He never did anything except what our Father had commanded. The way to walk after our God has not changed because God says that HE doesn’t change! Teachings on righteousness remain in the Whole Word of God today.