IMITATE THEIR FAITH/ENOCH - "ENOCH KEPT WALKING WIT THE TRUE GOD"

Mankind was in a bad way when Enoch came along. It was the seventh generation in the line of Adam. Granted, humans were much closer to the physical  perfection that Adam and Eve had once possessed and lost. That is why people still lived so long. Yet, they were in a terrible condition morally and spiritually. Violence was prevalent. That trend had started  in the second generation, when Cain murdered his brother Abel. One of Cain's descendants seems to have been  quite  proud of being even more violent and vengeful than Cain!  In the third generation, a new evil arose. People began  calling on the name of Jehovah, but not as a reverent act of worship. They were evidently using God's name in a blasphemous disrespectful way. - GENESIS 4:8, 23-26.

That kind of corrupt  religion was likely in full sway during Enoch's time. As Enoch grew up, then, he faced a choice. Would he fit in with the crowd of his day? Or would he search for the true God, Jehovah, who had made the heavens and the earth? He must have been deeply moved to learn about Abel, who had died as a martyr because he worshipped Jehovah in a way that pleased Him. Enoch decided to take a similar stand.  GENESIS 5:22 tells us: "Enoch continued to walk  with the true God."  That  remarkable expression  singles out Enoch as a godly man in a godless world. He is the first human the Bible describes in that way.

The same Bible verse says that Enoch continued to walk with Jehovah after he fathered his son Methuselah. So we see Enoch as a family man when he was about 55 years old. He had a wife, unnamed in the Scripture, and an unspecified number of "sons and daughters ." If a father is to walk with God while raising and providing for  family, he must try to take care for his family in God's way.  Enoch understood that Jehovah expected him to stick faithfully to his wife. (Genesis 2:24) And he surely did his best to instruct his children about Jehovah God. With what result?

Next time: IMITATE THEIR FAITH/ENOCH - Conclusion of "ENOCH KEPT WALKING WITH THE TRUE GOD"

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