EVENING
SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/14/2025 7:37 PM
My
Worship Time Focus: “The Fact of Enoch’s Ancient Prophecy”
Bible
Reading & Meditation
Reference: Jude
14a
Message of the verse: “It
was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam,
prophesied”
I want to quote
the last paragraph from last night’s SD in order to help us to better
understand this evening’s SD.
““Jude previously pointed out that the apostates ‘were long beforehand marked out for this
condemnation’ (v. 4); cf. vv. 6, 13). Verses
14-16 reaffirm that truth and the truth of all the other New Testament judgment
passages that precede it. The passage first underscores
the fact of an ancient prophecy by Enoch; then it suggests three certainties
regarding God’s final judgment. The Lord
will come, He will not come alone, and He will come to execute judgment on
deserving recipients.”
The first thing that I want to do is
talk about “these men” found in our
verse for this evening, and that refers to the apostates whom Jude pictured in
the previous section—the false visionaries, the flouters of spiritual
authority, the revilers, the brute beats who behave by carnal instinct, the
hidden reefs, the waterless clouds, the dead and uprooted trees, the wild sea
waves, and the wandering stars headed for eternal blackness. Yes I know that we have gone over these
things before, but they are important for us to continue what Jude is teaching
us about apostates. Now in our verse for
this evening Jude is writing about Enoch, and that means that this all happened
before the flood. Enoch (Gen. 5:21-24) is the one who prophesied that the Lord would come to judge such false
teachers. Jude sites Enoch in order to
underscore the motivation behind God’s judgment on apostasy while also he is
reinforcing the certainty of it.
John MacArthur writes, “Even though
this prophecy is not recorded in the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit inspired
Jude (cf. 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20-21) to use it because it was familiar,
historically valid, and supported his overall thesis, Jude extracted the quote
from the pseudepigraphal book of 1 Enoch,
with which his first-century readers were well acquainted. The book was part of the written history and
tradition of the Jewish people, and rabbinical allusions to it were not
uncommon.” All I can say that not this
entire book of 1 Enoch was accurate, but we can be sure that what Jude is
quoting is because it was the Holy Spirit of God who is the Author of the
entire Bible.
“Though he was not the author of the
book, Enoch’s message was passed down through oral tradition until it was
finally recorded in what was called 1
Enoch. That book, like other books
such as The Book of Jubilee, The
Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, and The
Assumption of Moses (from which Jude probably quoted in v. 9), was not part
of the Old Testament; yet, since it was accurate, it was acceptable for Jude to
use it to bolster his argument. None
other than the apostle Paul occasionally followed the same pattern (of citing
nonbiblical sources to make a legitimate spiritual point) in his teaching (cf.
Acts 17:28; 1 Cor. 15:33; Titus 1:12)…”
Now as we look at this part of our
verse for this evening we can see that Enoch stood in the seventh generation from Adam (Gen. 5:4-24). Enoch was a hero to the Jewish people and
the reason is that because, like the prophet Elijah water in 2 Kings 1:11-12
went to heaven without dying: “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for
God took Him (Gen. 5:24; cf. Heb 11:5). Now
although it was not included in the biblical record until the book of Jude,
Enoch’s prophecy is the earliest human prophecy found anywhere in
Scripture. God made an earlier prophecy
in Genesis 3:15 which states “And I will
put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He
shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.’” In fact, Enoch’s message predated the words
of Moses, Samuel, and the Hebrew prophets by many, many years.
8/15/2025 10:06 PM
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