I first saw this topic in an article written by the erudite and prolific writer, Gary Stearman. It struck me like a thunderbolt because I never imagined there were many Rapture in the Bible. Exploring the topic further, I discovered that not only was God pointing attention to the reality of Rapture, He was also telling us to learn from the person that went in the 7 Rapture.
Enoch, the First Rapture
The beginning was fine, why wouldn’t it. It had God as the Architect and the Builder. Of course, everything was perfectly made and mankind was created within the perfect environment of holiness and glory associated with His presence. But that notwithstanding he fell to the wiles of the Devil. In the very presence of God, in a perfect climate, and with abundance on every hand, man was unable to resist temptation: Adam and Evil fell to the wiles of The “Old Serpent”.
From that point, Scripture divides mankind into two genetic lineages. Cain became the father of the ungodly, and Seth became a replacement for Abel to father the godly lineage we see in Gen. 5.
“And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD” (Gen. 4:26).
Ancient Jewish commentary has long held that in the days of Enos, idolatry began in earnest and was fully developed by the sixth generation after Seth, when Enoch was born into a world that had adopted various forms of idol worship. If we are to believe ancient reports, the heavenly bodies were only a small part of the false worship that had so quickly taken hold on the antediluvian culture. The Bible described his birth in the following context.
And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two years, and he begat Enoch: And Jared lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died. And Enoch lived sixty and five years, and begat Methuselah: 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. (Gen. 5: 18-24).
Enoch has long been thought of as perhaps the most godly man (other than Christ) ever to walk upon the face of the Earth. This fact is made most remarkable in the face of his environment. He lived in a world of open sin, among demonic forces.
According to various extra-biblical sources, Enoch’s world was dominated by fallen angels, who intermarried with human women to produce monstrous offsprings. Flavius Josephus attributes the corruption of the early world and the Flood of Noah to their evil activities. Gen. 6:1-3 speaks along the same line.
Peter’s second epistle throws some light into this:
“For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly; For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;” (2 Peter 2:4,5).
The sin of these heavenly intruders was so great that God placed them into a special place of confinement — as we would say today, solitary confinement in a maximum security prison.
It seems that God took Enoch to spare him from the coming judgment of the then world. His name, pronounced Chanokh in Hebrew, means “initiated,” or “dedicated,” to fellowship (walk) with God. The same word Chanokh is the root for Chanukkah, the feast of dedication, that celebrates yearly the time when the Israelites defended the glory of God with their blood and defeated the Syrians to start again Temple worship. Being set apart as an example of a man of great faith – complete dedication – Enoch was a living example of the word.
God took Enoch to heaven prior to the judgment of his own era, just as we will be taken out before the future judgment mentioned in Enoch’s own prophecy documented by Jude 14-16 “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, To execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed, and of all their hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him. These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaketh great swelling words, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage.”