It may be of interest to consider the conditions under which Enoch walked with God. His day was one of measureless wickedness. The earth was filled with violence and lawlessness. In short, Enoch's day was not unlike our own. Murder was not a capital offence. It was not until God established a covenant with Noah on the cleansed earth that man's blood was to be required by man of the murderer. Whenever murder goes unchallenged and man fails in government God's government comes into evidence in a marked way. For a number of years before the great war, civilization was becoming squeamish on the question of execution. France had abolished the capital sentence, even as she disclaimed belief in the existence of God. Murder, however, became so frequent that the guillotine had to be re-instated. Belgium failed to bring to book the authors of the Congo atrocities. Swift judgment fell on Belgium and France. It was then no Paradise in which Enoch obtained the
witness that he was well-pleasing to God. Moreover, he did not drift with the current of the times. The Apostle Jude tells us that he warned his contemporaries that lawlessness was not always to go unpunished that the Lord was coming with myriads of His saints to execute judgment on the ungodly.

Evidently, then, this simple Mesopotamian pastoralist was no hermit. He faithfully discharged his responsibility in the scene with which he had no fellowship. As in the case of Elijah, his acquaintances did not believe that he had ascended to heaven, and they sought for him in vain. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that he was not found, and this may well imply that a search had been made.

Unlike Elijah, however, no details are given of the translation of Enoch. We may think of Enoch as typifying the man in Christ, and it would have been inconsistent with this character to enter into details about his translation. The Apostle Paul speaks of a man in Christ being caught up into the third heaven. He could not say whether he was in or out of the body. Indeed, such a qualification was of no consequence. Paul was not dealing with the responsible life down here which relates to the body, but to the new life in Christ Jesus, and hence ' being in the body, or out of the body was immaterial to the man in Christ. It is therefore only in the Christ-life we can walk with God. The flesh-life, even apart from sin, is hopelessly lame in that walk.

Though there was a physical discontinuity involved in Enoch's translation, there was no moral break. He continued to walk with God.

Dispensationally then, Enoch gives us a type of the man in Christ. In this era of God's super-abounding grace the Christian calling is heavenly. He is called to walk with God. The New Testament teaching is beautifully summed up in that sentence in the Epistle to the Philippians, "Our conversation is in heaven." The word politeuma, translated "conversation," literally means politics or citizenship. Our politics, the engrossing theme of our life, is there, so our translators very aptly rendered the word "conversation," because it is a man's politics, local or national, which absorb the major part of his conversation. A man's heart is where his treasure is.

Perhaps the most striking feature of Enoch's history is its brevity. It is summed up in that brief statement, "He walked with God, and he was not." That should not surprise anyone, for the man in Christ has his place and portion in the heavenlies, and the Christian who walks in the power of heavenly things will not be making history according to the standards of this world. Though one of those of whom the world is not worthy, he will be accounted as sheep for the slaughter-in fact, as one who is crucified as far as the world is concerned-but he, in the reckoning of faith, will account the world to be that in the power of the cross, and so be an overcomer while he is in it, walking with God, and soon not to be found, for he will be taken to his own country at the hour of translation. Blessed hope!

Till that hour comes, we are called to walk the path of . individual separation so admirably set forth in the case of Enoch, and to exhibit not the pride of life but the mind of Christ, both in the assembly and in the world through which we are passing as pilgrims and strangers.
T. Oliver (Galashiels)