Born 622 years after the creation, Enoch was the shortest-lived of all the pre-flood or antediluvian patriarchs. Enoch was a preacher. If we turn to the other end of the Bible, Jesus’ brother Jude records the contents of one of Enoch’s sermons:
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.” (Jude 14-15).
Was Enoch prophesying about the judgment of the Last Day, or about the Flood, which was till seven hundred years away? Perhaps, like so many of the Old Testament preachers, it was hard to tell the difference between the first coming of Christ (his birth and ministry) from the second (when he will come again to judge the living and the dead).
987 years after the Lord finished the creation and rested for a day and 57 years after the death of Adam, Enoch was suddenly no more to be found. He ‘walked with God, and was no more.’ Like Elijah, God took him bodily into heaven without an intervening death. Like Elijah, Enoch’s sins were purged away by the blood of Christ as God set aside the curse of death for these men who put their trust in the coming Messiah. It was that Messiah whose life fulfilled God’s requirement of perfection, and it was that Messiah whose death satisfied God’s condemnation of our sins. It was that Messiah whose name was and is Jesus Christ.
Methuselah’s son Lamech died a few years before his father, about five years before the Flood. Methuselah, whose name is now synonymous with a very long-lived individual, remained on earth an incredible 969 years. He lived and walked with the still-living Adam for 243 of those years, and when he finally closed his eyes in sleep, called home by his Lord, it was the 1656th year of the world—the very year in which his grandson Noah entered the ark and alone with seven others survived the wrath of God.
I have a mental picture of a 500-year old Noah with his nearly hundred-year-old sons patting the earth on the grave of Methuselah as the first drops of rain began to fall. The four men let their shovels drop as they turned back to the huge door of the 450-foot-long ship. Perhaps two of the shovels fell on top of one another, making a crude cross in the dust. It was on the lumber of the ark that God rescued the remnant of mankind then—the few who put their trust in him.
It would be on the lumber of the cross that God rescued us: all who put our trust in him.
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