The Lord comes

Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also, saying, "Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment on all, to convict all who are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have committed in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." – Jude 1v14-15

I find it interesting that although the pseudepigraphic Book of Enoch never has had widespread acceptance as scripture God chose to preserve the part of it that He was wanted preserved for us. The book as over one hundred chapters as later divided, but we only have Enoch 1v9 preserved for us as scripture.

Enoch was indeed the ‘seventh for Adam’ and Noah’s great grandfather. Considering the longevity of these men we are talking vast amounts of time. Enoch has always been something of an enigma because we read that after living 365 years he simple ‘was not’ because God took him.

Despite all the mystery and secrets surrounding it we do have this one truth. Enoch prophecied that one day the Lord would come with a vast number of His saints to execute His divine judgement. There is a lot we could talk about here including the truth that we are going to be with Him even then, but the focus here is that though God is love He is also just and one day justice will prevail. The day will come when Christ will come back to convict all the ungodly of their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly committed in an ungodly way and for all the harsh things they have said in an ungodly manner.

God would not be just if evil went unpunished. Love would not really be love without justice. We could sit back in exult in the fact that one day all the bad guys are going to have to pay and take satisfaction in that, but I suspect that is not the response that this verse is meant to engender.

God’s love means that He does not want any of them to perish. He wants all to come to Him. When we see that one day His wrath is going to be poured out it should motivate us to share his message with them so that they can avoid His judgement.

Judgement is coming. Only by the grace of God have we avoided it. Our task now is to show other how to avoid it as well.