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  • “He Had Pleased God Well”
    The Watchtower (Public)—2017 | No. 1
    • ENOCH “PROPHESIED ABOUT THEM”

      Enoch may have felt lonely as a man of faith in such a faithless world. But did his God, Jehovah, take notice of him? He did. The day came when Jehovah communicated with this faithful servant of his. God gave Enoch a message to deliver to the people of his day. He thus made Enoch a prophet, the first one whose message is revealed in the Bible. We know of this because Jude, a half brother of Jesus, was inspired to write down Enoch’s prophetic words many centuries later.a

      What was Enoch’s prophecy? It went as follows: “Look! Jehovah came with his holy myriads to execute judgment against all, and to convict all the ungodly concerning all their ungodly deeds that they did in an ungodly way, and concerning all the shocking things that ungodly sinners spoke against him.” (Jude 14, 15) Now, the first thing you may notice is that Enoch spoke in the past tense, as if God had already done what the prophecy describes. That is a pattern that many prophecies thereafter followed. The idea is this: The prophet is speaking of something that is so certain to occur that it may be described as if it has already happened!​—Isaiah 46:10.

      Enoch preaches to ungodly people

      Enoch fearlessly proclaimed God’s message to a hostile world

      What was it like for Enoch to deliver that pronouncement, perhaps by preaching it to all who would hear? Notice how forceful the warning was​—four times it used the word “ungodly” to denounce the people, their deeds, and the way they carried out those deeds. The prophecy thus warned all humans that the world they had built up since the expulsion from Eden was corrupt through and through. That world would face a cataclysmic end when Jehovah would come with his “holy myriads”​—legions of mighty angels in battle array—​to bring destruction. Enoch fearlessly shared that divine warning, and he did it alone! Perhaps young Lamech watched, in awe of his grandfather’s courage. If so, we can well understand why.

      Enoch’s faith may move us to ask ourselves whether we see the world in which we live as God sees it. The judgment that Enoch bravely proclaimed still stands; it applies to today’s world just as it did to the world of Enoch’s day. In harmony with Enoch’s warning, Jehovah brought the great Deluge against that ungodly world in Noah’s day. But that destruction set the pattern for a greater destruction yet to come. (Matthew 24:38, 39; 2 Peter 2:4-6) Today, as then, God stands poised with his holy myriads to bring a righteous judgment against an ungodly world. Each of us needs to take Enoch’s warning to heart and share it with others. Our family and friends might stand apart from us. We may feel alone at times. But Jehovah never abandoned Enoch; neither will he abandon his faithful servants today!

  • “He Had Pleased God Well”
    The Watchtower (Public)—2017 | No. 1
    • a Some Bible scholars assert that Jude quoted an apocryphal work called the Book of Enoch, but that book is a fanciful work of uncertain origin, falsely attributed to Enoch. It contains an accurate mention of Enoch’s prophecy, but that may have been drawn from an ancient source now lost to us​—whether a written document or an oral tradition. Jude may have used the same ancient source, or he may have learned about Enoch from Jesus, who witnessed Enoch’s life course from heaven.

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