We read about Enoch in Genesis 5: 22-24: “And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years: And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.”
Enoch is an interesting and mysterious Biblical individual, of whom we know very little. However, according to our text, we do know that he lived a life of faith; that he walked with God and not with the world; that he sought to walk righteously and in harmony with the Divine will.
Enoch’s Translation
The Apostle writes, “Enoch was translated that he should not see death [that is, that he should not experience death (Psalm 89: 48) (Luke 2: 26) (John 8: 51, 52)]; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” The words translated and translation express the thought of transferred, carried across – that Enoch was still living on this side of the Flood. Furthermore, there is good reason for believing that Enoch and Melchizedek (Genesis 14: 18-20) (Hebrews 7: 1-8) are one and the same person.
What is the evidence? St. Paul says of Melchizedek that “it is witnessed that he liveth” (Hebrews 7: 8). It is nowhere witnessed in the Old Testament that Melchizedek lived on without dying; but Enoch, according to St. Paul’s explanation, is the only human being of whom the Old Testament “witnessed that he liveth” (compare Genesis 5: 24 with Hebrews 11: 5). These passages therefore identify Enoch and Melchizedek as evidently being the same person.
Builder of the Great Pyramid
Melchizedek, “King of righteousness” (Hebrews 7: 2), seems to have been the one who engineered the construction of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Marvelous indeed is that structure in its geographical, mathematical, astronomical and other scientific truths; but its most fascinating feature is its delineation of the history of mankind and the unfolding of God’s great Plan of Salvation for the Church and the world, chronologically and otherwise. Many who have reverently studied this subject have come to the conclusion that it contains more than human wisdom; and that its structure, chambers, passages and measurements all testify that it is indeed God’s Stone Witness (Isaiah 19: 19, 20).
Jude 14 reads, “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,” yet we have no written record of Enoch’s prophecy. If Enoch was translated so that he would not experience death in order to do a great work for God on this side of the Flood in building the Great Pyramid, then his prophecy could have been given through certain of its measurements.
From Genesis 5: 22, we learned that Enoch walked with God for three hundred years before his translation, it was another 669 years until the Flood, and it was many more centuries after the Flood before the Great Pyramid was built. Just as Moses needed Divine instruction on how to build the Tabernacle (Exodus 25: 9) (Exodus 25: 40) (Exodus 26: 30), and in view of its much greater intricacy, doubtless much more instruction, stretching over a much longer period of time, was needed preparatory to building the Great Pyramid.
Enoch still under Death Penalty
While Enoch was translated that he should not experience death, he was nevertheless under the death sentence that passed upon Adam and all of his race (Romans 5: 12). Whether he has by this time entered into the tomb or not (which the Scriptures are silent on), he is still under the sentence of death, and will be until the “curse” is lifted at the establishment of Christ’s Kingdom on earth. Nowhere is it indicated that Enoch was taken to heaven. Genesis 5: 24 merely states that “Enoch walked with God: and he was not [he disappeared from among men]; for God took him [translated him].” We do not know where God took him; but we know that he was not taken to the heaven where God dwells, for Jesus said: “No man hath ascended up to heaven” (John 3: 13).