September 25 – Genesis 5:21-24; “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.”

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The lesson for today is to study things in context.  The question is this; how does one obey the gospel?  The gospel is not a ‘law’ that must be obeyed.  The gospel means the good news!  The good news is this:  Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law!  Yes, the prophets and godly men and women of the Old Testament had heard of the Messiah, but as the writer of Hebrews declares, they lived by faith in spite of the fact they did not receive the promise that was to come.

Additionally, when the Bible says God knew someone or something before the foundation of the world, it doesn’t mean that person or event existed before creation.  It simply means God knew of it or them before He created it.  Remember God is omnipotent and eternal, not man.

Give God His proper respect and stop trying to pull Him down into what man’s finite mind can handle or absorb.

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“Enoch had knowledge of life and immortality, or else he would not have had faith to have been translated; for could he have faith about a thing of which he never heard? And Paul says that this knowledge came to light by the gospel. If so, Enoch had knowledge of the gospel, and if he had knowledge of the gospel, he knew that men must be in Christ Jesus, or else they could not be blessed; and he must have known that men were put in Christ by baptism, or else there was another gospel, for this was the one which Paul preached, and which he said was before the foundation of the world, and by which we had grace in Christ, before the world was, and it was through this gospel that life and immortality came to light, and Enoch must have been put into Christ, according to the law of this gospel, or else he would not have walked with God three hundred years; for no man can walk with God unless he has obeyed the gospel.”

(Gospel. No. V., Times and Seasons, vol. 2 (November 1840-October 1841), Vol. 2 No. 9 March 1, 1841 334.)