Latest / Tabernacle Talk - A Bible Study Podcast with Pastor Bryon Self / Ask Anything Episode: What's Up With the Book of Enoch?

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Ask Anything Episode: What's Up With the Book of Enoch? · Tabernacle Talk - A Bible Study Podcast with Pastor Bryon Self

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  Welcome to Tabernacle Talk. Tabernacle Talk is a Bible study
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  podcast brought from Tabernacle Baptist Church in Essex, MD.
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  I'm your host, Brian Self. We hope this podcast encourages
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  you to know Christ, grow in his word, and show his love to
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  others. Let's dive right in.
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  Welcome back to Tabernacle Talk. Today we have an Ask Anything
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  episode. And so today's episode and
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  tomorrow's episode are based on some questions that I'd received
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  and I'm looking forward to diving into these.
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  The first of these was questions about the Book of Enoch.
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  Questions about the Book of Enoch.
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  And if you go I, I've been a Christian a long time.
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  I don't remember hearing about a book of Enoch.
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  You are entirely correct in our scriptures, unless you are
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  perhaps an individual listening and you are part of the
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  Ethiopian Orthodox Church or the, I think I'm pronouncing
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  these correctly, the Eritrean Orthodox Church.
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  You do not have a book of Enoch in your copy of God's Word.
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  So what we're going to talk about today is the book of
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  Enoch, what it is, what it contains, where you can find it,
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  and why it is not included in almost every Christian Bible,
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  and why it does show up in one collection of Christian
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  Scripture. So I want to, on the onset of
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  this, define one quick term by looking at first Peter chapter,
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  sorry, not first Peter, second Peter chapter 1.
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  And this is what we read in verse #20 Above all, you know
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  this. No prophecy of Scripture comes
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  from the prophet's own interpretation, because no
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  prophecy ever came by the will of man.
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  Instead, men spoke from God as they were carried along by the
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  Holy Spirit, or as we would read in Second Timothy chapter 3,
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  verses 16 and 17. All Scripture is inspired by
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  God. It's breathed out by God, is
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  profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for
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  training in righteousness so that the man of God may be
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  complete, equipped for every good work.
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  So when we talk about what is in Scripture versus what is not in
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  Scripture, it's not a question of necessarily what is true or
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  not true. So gravity, wonderful truth of
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  our world that allows us to be able to make things like planes
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  and, you know, drop pennies from the top of tall buildings and
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  whatnot. Gravity is a great thing.
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  Scripture doesn't detail anything about gravity for us.
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  That does not mean that because gravity is not talked about in
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  the Bible that gravity is not true.
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  All truth is God's truth. So there are things that are
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  true that are not contained within Scripture, but everything
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  in Scripture is emphatically true.
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  We would believe in the inherent infallible Word of God that
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  everything Scripture speaks to it is correct in the way that it
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  speaks. And as I've mentioned before as
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  well, God in Scripture all would use this phrase.
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  I don't know if acquiesces is the best word.
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  I don't even know if I have that grammatically correct.
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  Scripture acquiesces. It is sensitive to our
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  understanding. So there are some things that
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  are talked about in Scripture. The greatest example in my mind
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  is in Joshua chapter 10, where Joshua and the children of
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  Israel, they're in a battle and Joshua prays that the sun would
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  stand still, that it wouldn't go down, that they would still be
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  able to defeat the opposing army.
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  Actually was 5 armies before nightfall came.
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  Because if the night came, then the other armies would be able
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  to disperse and Israel would have to do, you know, kind of
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  guerrilla warfare for a long time yet.
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  So he was hoping for them to be able to finish the battle in
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  that day. And what we're told in Scripture
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  is that God had the Son stand still.
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  The only problem is we know the earth circles around the sun.
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  So even if the sun, if you will, stood still, that would not do
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  anything to the day or night cycle of the earth.
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  So here you have God in Scripture acquiescing to human
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  language or understanding of the time, if you will.
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  God answered the request that Joshua actually had.
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  He did not, He did not answer the request in the way that
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  Joshua prayed for it. What a joy would have thought
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  for us that sometimes we pray for something that may be
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  impossible. We may be praying for something
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  that would not actually help us and God does something better
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  than what we prayed for. So that was spinning off of
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  everything that we read in Scripture is true.
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  It is right. It goes together.
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  Scripture is authored ultimately by the Holy Spirit as he moved
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  and and breathed in the various prophets and writers and authors
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  and scribes and editors, so that what they produced was exactly
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  what God wanted us to have in the very words that he wanted us
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  to have them in. So let me read first a verse
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  from Jude, which quotes from this person, Enoch, verse number
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  14. So I went over the book of Jude.
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  It was like 4 or five Tabernacle talk episodes.
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  You can look at tbces.sex.com/jude if you want
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  to hear more about this particular book.
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  He says it was about these these ungodly people that Enoch in the
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  7th generation from Adam prophesied.
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  Look, the Lord comes with 10s of thousands of His holy ones to
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  execute judgement on all and to convict all the ungodly
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  concerning all the ungodly acts that they have done in an
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  ungodly way, and concerning all the harsh things ungodly sinners
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  have said against him. So here Jude says Enoch the 7th
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  from Adam prophesied about the Lord returning and conquering
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  evil with 10s of thousands of his holy one.
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  But as Jude mentions this prophecy from Enoch, we don't
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  actually read this prophecy within the Old Testament.
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  Instead, as we would read about Enoch's life, it only takes
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  place over 3 verses in Genesis chapter 5.
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  Enoch or sorry Genesis 521 says Enoch was 65 years old when he
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  fathered Methuselah. After he fathered Methuselah,
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  Enoch walked with God 300 years and fathered other sons and
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  daughters. So Enoch's life lasted 365
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  years. Enoch walked with God, then he
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  was not there because God took him.
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  So that's all we read about in Scripture, in the Old Testament
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  about about Enoch. However, as God's people, the
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  Jewish people, as they received the Old Testament from the
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  prophets, with Moses writing much of what we have today as
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  the Torah and then as you have the various prophets and scribes
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  and editors in the thousand 1200 years after Moses as they put
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  together the Old Testament, the Jewish people between when the
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  Old Testament was completed and when Jesus came on the scene.
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  You had people then as now that had questions about the Old
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  Testament. They had questions about the
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  Bible and as they even, but we're reading through the story
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  of Enoch, as they read through Daniel, as they read through
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  things and Numbers and Deuteronomy about the Nephilim
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  and those sons of God and daughters of women offspring
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  that we would read about in Genesis chapter 6.
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  I'm going to read this verse really quickly.
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  Genesis 61, when mankind began to multiply on the earth and
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  daughters were born to them, the sons of God.
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  That's in a phrase exclusively used of angelic or spiritual
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  beings in the Old Testament. The sons of God saw that the
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  daughters of mankind were beautiful, and they took any
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  they chose as wives for themselves.
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  And you always said, my spirit will not remain with mankind
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  forever because they are corrupt.
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  Their days will be 120 years. It's uncertain here whether God
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  is declaring like, here's kind of the normal cap on people's
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  lifespan now or if it's 120 years from right now.
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  The flood will come. Verse #4 The Nephilim, the
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  fallen ones, were on the earth both in those days and after
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  work when the sons of God came to the daughters of mankind who
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  bore children to them. They were the powerful men of
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  old, the famous men. So God's people today as well as
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  2000 years ago had questions about this particular portion of
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  Scripture. And So what some of those people
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  did was they wrote, I'm going to call it glorified fan fiction.
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  It was in the style of the Old Testament.
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  They wrote filling in details that Scripture did not give.
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  But they said, here's what I think based on other things that
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  I've read in Scripture, here's what I think happened.
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  Here's who I think these sons of God were.
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  And so the book of Enoch, what we most often refer to as that
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  is First Enoch is a collection of five different books.
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  And this was written after the Old Testament was compiled and
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  completed. And we can see that even in
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  First Enoch that it is heavily reliant on other portions of
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  Scripture that it takes kind of the worldview or some of the
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  puzzle pieces from and it makes its own unique different thing.
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  Now let me be really clear on the onset of this.
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  The Book of Enoch, by both the Jewish people and by the
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  majority of the vast majority of Christians over the last 2000
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  years has never been considered to be a part of the Canon, part
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  of the inspired and errant infallible Word of God.
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  If for no other reason, then in first Enoch, one of the angels
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  tells Enoch that he is the Son of Man, that he is the Messiah,
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  which certainly would go against what we would read in the New
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  Testament, that Jesus is the Messiah.
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  Jesus is the Son of Man spoken about in Daniel 7.
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  The book of Enoch is. It's very sensationalist.
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  It has 400 foot tall giants that eat all of the food on earth
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  before the flood. And because they ate up all the
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  food and they're still hungry, they start eating the people and
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  just 1000 different curiosities. What happened, if you will, even
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  as I was reading through first Enoch, if you want to look at a
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  copy, by the way, the church, I'll say this.
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  The church has never outlawed Enoch.
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  It is not a quote UN quote like forbidden book.
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  You can read it today. I have a copy of it right here
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  in my Lexum English Septuagint, which is a collection into
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  English of the writings of the Jews, mainly including the Old
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  Testament translated into Greek from Hebrew, as well as some
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  extra books that were not actually within that Greek Old
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  Testament, but some other Greek works that were circulating
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  around that time. So you can read through the book
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  of First Enoch. I'd actually encourage you to
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  it's, I'll use this phrase, it's kind of silly.
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  It is not something that as you read through it, it does not
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  read the same as actual Scripture.
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  You go, oh, this is the kind of outlandish things, these are the
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  kinds of outlandish things that atheists perhaps think that the
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  Bible has within it. It is rambling.
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  It is not it. It just does not meet the
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  standard of scripture that any of the rest of God's word has
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  it. It's unique.
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  It can be enlightening to see what did Jewish people 200 years
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  before Jesus, What were they thinking about Genesis.
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  But it is a flawed book. It is a human book.
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  And so you could, you know, read it alongside any other, you
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  know, kind of fictional book. You can think about Ben Hur or
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  what was the one, the Golden Bow or something like that was a
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  children's book placed in like the time of Jesus that I read
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  when I was in school and these books.
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  It is enlightening to see what people thought.
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  It is not enlightening to see what God thinks.
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  I've attached 2 links into the show notes or the description
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  for this. Episode 1 is a 50 minute podcast
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  episode that Wesley Hough, who's a phenomenal apologetics guy, an
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  episode that he did with Logos Bible Study and that will really
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  show you well, what from a a deep, deep dive into this book
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  that I don't want to take you guys on the full dive today.
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  I've also included the Got Questions article that's from
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  Dallas Theological Seminary and has a great like one page
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  summary of what Enoch is, why it's not included in the Canon.
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  But I hope that even just this little preview here on
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  Tabernacle Talk would be able to give you a little bit of an idea
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  about that. When you read through what's
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  called like apocryphal pseudographical works, you are
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  able to see God's Word is way better than anything that
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  mankind could come up with. And so I want to encourage you
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  spend time in God's Word. The one caution I'll give you
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  is, as you read through, like apocryphal works, the temptation
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  can be to fall into what Paul warned Timothy about there in
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  the church at Ephesus of getting bogged down into genealogies,
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  myths, and fables. Don't do that, but allow
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  whatever you read to point you to Jesus and to the reality of
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  godliness and of adopting the characteristics of our Lord.
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  Thanks for tuning in and see you.
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  Next episode we're going to be talking about Jesus and his
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  incarnation, a little bit about the Trinity, and so really
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  looking forward to that next Ask Anything episode with you guys.