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Fall Asleep to the Book of Enoch Explained _ Angels_ Giants _ the World Before the Flood · truthunedited

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Close your eyes. Let the weight of to day go,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: the conversation that replayed itself too many times, the worry
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: that settled in your chest before breakfast and never quite left,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: the tiredness that goes deeper than sleep can reach. Let
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: all of it go, just for to night, just for now,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: you do not have to carry it. Here. Tonight, we
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: are going somewhere. Few have ever gone further back than
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the oldest history you were taught, further up than the
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: highest place you have ever imagined. We are going to
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: walk beside a man who lived so close to God
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: that God simply could not let him die. And what
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: he saw, what he wrote down for us before he left,
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  Speaker 1: will stay with you long after you fall asleep. His
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  Speaker 1: name was Enoch, and his story is unlike anything you
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: have heard before. Breathe deeply. You are safe here and
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: tonight one of the oldest mysteries in all of Scripture
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: is going to open its doors. Let us begin Chapter one?
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Who was Enoch? The man God could not let die?
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: There is a verse in the Bible so short and
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  Speaker 1: so quietly placed that most people read past it without stopping.
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  Speaker 1: It sits in the middle of a long list of
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: names and ages. In Genesis chapter five, the list has
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: a pattern. Each person is born, lives a certain number
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: of years, has children, lives more years, and then dies
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the same rhythm, name after name. Adam died, Seth died,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Enosh died, Kennon died, Mahalalil died, Jared died. And then
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: we reach Enoch and the pattern breaks. Genesis chapter five,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: verse twenty four five words in the original Hebrew in English,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: just a few more. Enoch walked with God, and he
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: was not for God took him. He was not no grave,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: no final breath recorded, no burial, just a man who
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: was here and then was gone, carried out of the
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: world while he still breathed. In a chapter full of death,
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  Speaker 1: he is the one exception, and the Bible offers no explanation,
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  Speaker 1: no vision, no voice from heaven, no dramatic scene, just
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: those quiet words. And then the list continues that silence
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: is the invitation, that silence is where the Book of
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: Enoch begins. But before we follow Enoch into the heavens
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  Speaker 1: and through the mysteries, we need to understand who he was,
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  Speaker 1: not as a symbol or a theological concept, as a man,
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  Speaker 1: a real man born into a real world, making real
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  Speaker 1: choices in a time that most of us have never
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  Speaker 1: stopped to imagine. Enoch was born in the seventh generation
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  Speaker 1: from Adam. His great great great great grandfather was the
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  Speaker 1: first human being to draw breath. The memory of Eden
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  Speaker 1: was not ancient history to these people. It was something
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: their grandparents had heard from people who had actually lived it.
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  Speaker 1: The garden was real, the fall was real, The loss
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  Speaker 1: was recent enough to still sting. And the world Enoch
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: was born into was already changing, already drifting. Two lines
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  Speaker 1: of humanity had formed after the fall. The line of
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  Speaker 1: Cain moved toward cities, toward ambition, toward the accumulation of power.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Genesis records that violence entered through this line. A man
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: named Lamek boasted to his wives that he had killed
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  Speaker 1: a man for wounding him. The celebration of cruelty had
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: already begun. But in the line of Seth something else
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: was happening. Genesis chapter four, verse twenty six says this,
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  Speaker 1: At that time, people began to call upon the name
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  Speaker 1: of the Lord, a remnant, a small flame still burning
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  Speaker 1: in the growing darkness, people who had not forgotten the
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  Speaker 1: name of their creator. Enoch was born into that flame.
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  Speaker 1: But being born into a faithful family does not make
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  Speaker 1: a person faithful. Every generation must make its own choice,
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  Speaker 1: and the world around Enoch was not making it easy.
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  Speaker 1: The ancient Jewish writings that surround the Book of Enoch
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  Speaker 1: describe him as a child who would sit apart from
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  Speaker 1: the others. While other children played and chased and filled
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  Speaker 1: the evenings with noise. Enoch would climb the hills alone
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  Speaker 1: and look at the stars, not out of sadness, out
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  Speaker 1: of hunger, a hunger he could not name that pulled
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  Speaker 1: him upward, that made the ordinary world feel too small.
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  Speaker 1: He was not cold or distant. He loved his family deeply,
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  Speaker 1: as we will see later in this story. But there
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  Speaker 1: was something in him that the world around him could
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  Speaker 1: not satisfy, something that kept pulling him away from the
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  Speaker 1: noise and toward the quiet. He was hungry for God.
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  Speaker 1: And the extraordinary thing, the thing the Book of Enoch
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  Speaker 1: opens with and never lets go of, is that God
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  Speaker 1: was hungry for him too. Scripture says that Enoch walked
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  Speaker 1: with God for three hundred years, not three years, not
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  Speaker 1: three decades, three centuries of daily, intimate, unbroken closeness with
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  Speaker 1: the creator of the universe. The Hebrew word used here
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  Speaker 1: for walked with is the word hithalic. It is a reflexive,
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  Speaker 1: repeated form. It does not describe a single walk. It
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  Speaker 1: describes a continuous back and forth, ongoing movement together two
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  Speaker 1: people who travel the same road for so long that
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  Speaker 1: their footsteps begin to fall in rhythm. This is not
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  Speaker 1: the kind of relationship built in a moment of spiritual enthusiasm.
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  Speaker 1: This is not the emotional high of a single, powerful
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  Speaker 1: experience that fades when life becomes ordinary again. This is
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  Speaker 1: three hundred years of showing up, of choosing every morning
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  Speaker 1: to face the day in the presence of God, of
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  Speaker 1: bringing the questions, the griefs, the confusions, the joys, the
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  Speaker 1: perfectly ordinary afternoons, all of it into that conversation three
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  Speaker 1: hundred years. Most of us struggle to maintain any kind
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  Speaker 1: of faithful practice for three months. Enoch did it for
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  Speaker 1: three centuries, and in doing so, he became something the
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  Speaker 1: world had never quite seen before. He became a man
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  Speaker 1: so aligned with Heaven that Heaven began to open to him.
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  Speaker 1: Not because he was spectacular by birth, not because he
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  Speaker 1: was appointed in some dramatic way before his first breath,
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  Speaker 1: but because he walked, because he showed up, because three
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  Speaker 1: hundred years of faithful closeness created a transparency in him
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  Speaker 1: that allowed Heaven to shine through. This is the key
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  Speaker 1: that most retellings of the Book of Enoch miss entirely.
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  Speaker 1: This book is not primarily about fallen angels or giants
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  Speaker 1: or secret knowledge, as fascinating as all of those things are,
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  Speaker 1: It is primarily about what becomes possible when a human
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  Speaker 1: being refuses to let go of God. Enoch refused day
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  Speaker 1: after day, year after year, century after century, and the
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  Speaker 1: visions came not as a reward for his performance, but
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  Speaker 1: as the natural overflow of a life lived that close
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  Speaker 1: to the source of all light. The Book of Enoch
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  Speaker 1: opens with these words, the Words of the Blessing of Enoch,
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  Speaker 1: wherewith he blessed the elect and righteous, who will be
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  Speaker 1: living in the day of Tribulation, when all the wicked
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  Speaker 1: and godless are to be removed. He was writing for
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  Speaker 1: people who would live in difficult times, for people who
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  Speaker 1: would feel the weight of a world that had gone
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  Speaker 1: badly wrong, For people who would need to know that
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  Speaker 1: the darkness they were living in was not the whole story.
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  Speaker 1: He was writing for tonight now to understand what Enoch
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  Speaker 1: saw and why he was shown these things, we need
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  Speaker 1: to understand the world he was living inside of, because
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  Speaker 1: the visions he received were not abstract spiritual entertainment. They
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  Speaker 1: were a direct response to a crisis, a crisis that
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  Speaker 1: was growing around him every single day, a crisis that
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  Speaker 1: went far deeper than ordinary human failure and reached into
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  Speaker 1: dimensions of reality that most people in his time had
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  Speaker 1: no framework to understand. That crisis is where our story
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  Speaker 1: truly begins. Rest for a moment. Let your breathing slow.
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  Speaker 1: These words are not going anywhere. They have waited thousands
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  Speaker 1: of years to reach you. They can wait a little
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  Speaker 1: longer while you settle into the quiet. We are only
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  Speaker 1: at the beginning, and there is so much more ahead.
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  Speaker 1: Chapter two, The World before the Flood, Why everything went wrong.
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  Speaker 1: Before we can understand what he nsk saw, we have
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  Speaker 1: to stand where he stood. We have to look at
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  Speaker 1: the world through his eyes, not through the comfortable distance
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  Speaker 1: of history, but as someone living inside it, watching the
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  Speaker 1: people around him, and feeling the slow aching weight of
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  Speaker 1: a world moving in the wrong direction. Because the world
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  Speaker 1: before the flood was not simply a world of bad
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  Speaker 1: people doing bad things, It was something more complicated than that,
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  Speaker 1: and more heart breaking. It was a world that had
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  Speaker 1: forgotten what it was made for. To understand this, we
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  Speaker 1: have to go back even further than Enoch. We have
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  Speaker 1: to go back to the moment the fracture began. When
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  Speaker 1: Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden, they carried
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  Speaker 1: something with them that does not get talked about enough.
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  Speaker 1: They carried the memory, the memory of what it felt
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  Speaker 1: like to walk in the presence of God in the
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  Speaker 1: cool of the evening, to hear his voice without fear,
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  Speaker 1: to live in a world that was whole. That memory
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  Speaker 1: did not die with them. It passed down generation to generation.
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  Speaker 1: It became something like an ache in the human spirit,
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  Speaker 1: a longing for something that most people could not name,
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  Speaker 1: but every one could feel the sense that the world
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  Speaker 1: was not quite right, that something had been lost, that
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  Speaker 1: somewhere beyond the reach of daily life, there was a
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  Speaker 1: beauty and a wholeness that humanity had once known and
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  Speaker 1: thrown away. Some people responded to that ache by reaching upward,
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  Speaker 1: by crying out to God, as Genesis tells us happened
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  Speaker 1: in the days of Enosh. They called on the name
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  Speaker 1: of the Lord because the ache inside them would not
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  Speaker 1: let them settle for anything less. But most people responded differently.
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  Speaker 1: Most people responded by trying to fill the ache with
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  Speaker 1: something else. And this is where the world of Enoch
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  Speaker 1: begins to look uncomfortably familiar. The Line of Cain built cities.
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  Speaker 1: This is not inherently wrong, but the cities they built
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  Speaker 1: were built on the logic of self sufficiency. We do
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  Speaker 1: not need God. We have walls, we have weapons, we
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  Speaker 1: have systems that will keep us safe and satisfied. The
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  Speaker 1: city becomes a substitute for the garden. Human achievement becomes
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  Speaker 1: a replacement for divine presence, and it works for a while.
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  Speaker 1: The Line of Cain produced remarkable people. Genesis records that
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  Speaker 1: they invented musical instruments, that they worked with bronze and iron,
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  Speaker 1: that they developed culture and craft and the arts of civilization.
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  Speaker 1: They were not primitive in many ways, they were brilliant.
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  Speaker 1: But something was missing, and the absence of that something
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  Speaker 1: created a hunger that no amount of achievement could satisfy.
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  Speaker 1: And when people are hungry and cannot find the right food,
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  Speaker 1: they will eat anything. Violence entered through this door, not
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  Speaker 1: in a single dramatic moment, but gradually, the way darkness
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  Speaker 1: enters a room when the light begins to fade. First
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  Speaker 1: a small cruelty, then a justified revenge, then a boast
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  Speaker 1: about that revenge as Lammok boasted, and then a culture
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  Speaker 1: where cruelty became normal, where the strong took what they
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  Speaker 1: wanted and the weak had no protection. The line of
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  Speaker 1: Seth was not immune to this. Slowly, across the generations,
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  Speaker 1: the faithful Remnant began to intermarry with the line of Cain,
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  Speaker 1: began to adopt their values, began to trade the hunger
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  Speaker 1: for God for the satisfaction of things they could hold
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  Speaker 1: and measure and own. By the time Enoch reached adulthood,
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  Speaker 1: the boundary between the two lines was already blurring, and
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  Speaker 1: the world was growing darker in a way that went
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  Speaker 1: beyond ordinary human failure. Something was happening beneath the surface
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  Speaker 1: of daily life, something that Enoch could feel, but that
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  Speaker 1: most people around him could not see. In his three
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  Speaker 1: hundred years of walking with God, Enoch had developed a
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  Speaker 1: sensitivity to the spiritual atmosphere that most people do not possess.
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  Speaker 1: He could feel the difference between a place where God
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  Speaker 1: was honored and a place where God had been forgotten.
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  Speaker 1: He could sense the weight of what was happening, the
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  Speaker 1: way a physician senses the presence of something wrong before
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  Speaker 1: the symptoms become visible. And what he sensed in the
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  Speaker 1: world around him was not merely a decline in morality.
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  Speaker 1: It was an invasion. Something was entering the human world
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  Speaker 1: from outside, something that did not belong here, something that
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  Speaker 1: had crossed a boundary it was never supposed to cross.
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  Speaker 1: He had seen it, beginning in the hills near his home.
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  Speaker 1: He had heard the stories spreading among the people, stories
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  Speaker 1: too strange to be believed, and too consistent to dismiss.
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  Speaker 1: Stories about the Watchers. Here is something that the Book
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  Speaker 1: of Enoch insists on that a quick reading of Genesis
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  Speaker 1: alone might miss the catastrophe that made the flood necessary.
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  Speaker 1: Mary was not caused solely by the ordinary drift of
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  Speaker 1: human sinfulness. According to this ancient text, it was caused
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  Speaker 1: by a collision between two worlds that were never meant
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  Speaker 1: to collide, and that collision did not happen by accident.
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  Speaker 1: It happened because two hundred beings of enormous power and
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  Speaker 1: intelligence made a deliberate choice, a choice they sealed with
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  Speaker 1: an oath, a choice that would alter the course of
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  Speaker 1: human history and produce consequences so severe that only the
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  Speaker 1: most extraordinary intervention could address them. Think about the world.
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  Speaker 1: Enoch is watching, cities filling with violence, the faithful growing, fewer,
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  Speaker 1: children raised without any memory of the creator, and underneath
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  Speaker 1: all of it, something older and stranger and more dangerous
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  Speaker 1: than any ordinary human failure. Something that Enoch is about
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  Speaker 1: to be shown in precise, unsparing detail, something that will
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  Speaker 1: explain not just why the flood came, but why, according
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: to this ancient testimony, it had to come. Breathe slowly,
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  Speaker 1: Let your body rest. The weight of this story is real,
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  Speaker 1: but it does not fall on you. You are only listening,
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  Speaker 1: watching from a safe distance, as the ancient world opens
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  Speaker 1: its secrets, and what comes next is the heart of it.
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  Speaker 1: Chapter three, The Watchers Angels who chose to fall In
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  Speaker 1: the beginning, before the first human being drew breath, before
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  Speaker 1: the oceans were filled and the mountains raised, God created
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  Speaker 1: the angels, not one or two, not a handful. Scripture
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  Speaker 1: speaks of tens of thousands of them, innumerable hosts, beings
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  Speaker 1: of light and intelligence and power, each one crafted for
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  Speaker 1: a purpose, each one reflecting a different facet of the
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  Speaker 1: glory of their creator. Some stood before the throne and
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  Speaker 1: worshiped without ceasing. Some were sent as message. Some governed
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  Speaker 1: the movements of stars and winds and seasons, maintaining the
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  Speaker 1: order that holds the universe together. And some were given
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  Speaker 1: the most intimate assignment of all. They were sent to
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  Speaker 1: watch over humanity. They were called the watchers. The Book
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: of Enoch describes them as holy angels, chosen from the
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  Speaker 1: higher ranks of heaven. Their assignment, as this ancient text
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  Speaker 1: presents it, was to observe the children of men, to
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  Speaker 1: stand as witnesses to human history, to care from a
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  Speaker 1: distance for the fragile and beloved creatures God had placed
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  Speaker 1: on the earth. The key phrase is from a distance.
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  Speaker 1: They were not sent to live among humanity. They were
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  Speaker 1: not sent to become part of the human story. They
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  Speaker 1: were watchers, observers, guardians who operated at the boundary between
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  Speaker 1: the divine and the human, close enough to see, far
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  Speaker 1: enough to remain what they were. But watching is a
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  Speaker 1: day dangerous assignment when it leads to longing. The Book
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  Speaker 1: of Enoch tells us that the watchers began to notice
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  Speaker 1: the daughters of men, and something stirred in them that
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  Speaker 1: their assignment had never prepared them. For two hundred of
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  Speaker 1: them gathered. The text names Their meeting places the summit
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  Speaker 1: of a mountain recorded as Mount Hermon, a peak in
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  Speaker 1: what is now the border region between modern Syria and Lebanon,
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  Speaker 1: standing at approximately nine thousand feet above the valley below,
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  Speaker 1: a place where heaven and Earth feel very close to
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  Speaker 1: each other. And there on that summit they made an oath.
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  Speaker 1: Their leader was named Semyaza, and he understood exactly what
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  Speaker 1: they were contemplating. Before a single step was taken, he
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  Speaker 1: said to the others, according to this text, I fear
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  Speaker 1: you will not agree to do this thing, and I
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  Speaker 1: alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.
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  Speaker 1: This is one of the most remarkable moments in the
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  Speaker 1: entire book of Enoch, and it deserves a pause. Semyaza
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  Speaker 1: knew before they moved, before they crossed the line, he
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  Speaker 1: knew they were doing wrong. He was not deceived, he
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  Speaker 1: was not confused. He understood the boundary and the consequence,
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  Speaker 1: and his concern was not that the action was wrong.
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  Speaker 1: His concern was that he might be left alone to
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  Speaker 1: bear the punishment. And the others answered by swearing a
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  Speaker 1: mutual oath, all two hundred of them, binding themselves together
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  Speaker 1: so that if punishment came, it would come to all equally,
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  Speaker 1: making certain that none of them could turn back. This
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  Speaker 1: is not the behavior of beings who were confused about
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  Speaker 1: what they were doing. This is the behavior of beings
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  Speaker 1: who knew exactly what they were doing and chose it anyway.
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  Speaker 1: Together with full awareness, they descended to the earth. Now,
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  Speaker 1: the text that follows is where careful reading matters most.
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  Speaker 1: The Book of Enoch presents what happened next as history.
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  Speaker 1: Many Christian scholars across many centuries have read it the
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: same way, finding support in Genesis chapter six, in the
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Letter of Jude, and in the Second Letter of Peter. Others,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: including many serious theologians to day, read Genesis six differently,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: understanding the sons of God as the line of Seth,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: or as earthly rulers rather than heavenly beings. These are
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: real and ongoing conversations among people of genuine faith. What
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: the Book of Enoch offers is one ancient tradition's account
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: of these events, and as we walk through it, we
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: are walking through a text that shaped how many of
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: the earliest followers of Jesus understood the world they lived in.
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  Speaker 1: With that in mind, let us continue. The Book of
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: Enoch gives the names of twenty chief leaders among the
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  Speaker 1: two hundred, and These names are not decoration, Semyaza, whose
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: name connects to the idea of seeing the name the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: one who looked at what God had made and wanted
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  Speaker 1: it for himself. And Azazel, a figure whose nes Sime
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: scholars have connected to the concept of removal and the wilderness,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: the one who had become associated in Israelite religious practice
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: with the scapegoat ritual of Leviticus, a detail suggesting that
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: memory of this figure persisted long after the events this
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  Speaker 1: text describes. Azazel is presented in the Book of Enoch
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  Speaker 1: as distinct from Semyaza, with a different and in some
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  Speaker 1: ways more far reaching kind of transgression. Semyaza's sin, according
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: to this account, was the crossing of a physical boundary,
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  Speaker 1: the taking of human wives, the union between heaven and
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  Speaker 1: earth that was never intended. Azazel's sin was something different,
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  Speaker 1: something the text argues, was in certain ways even more destructive.
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  Speaker 1: Azazel taught. He taught men to make swords and shields
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  Speaker 1: and instruments of war. He showed them how to extract
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  Speaker 1: metals from the earth and shape them into weapons. He
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  Speaker 1: taught the arts of ornamentation and the techniques of seduction.
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  Speaker 1: He revealed what the text calls the secrets of sorcery
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and the reading of signs. He introduced knowledge that humanity
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: was not yet equipped to hold rightly. And the Book
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: of Enoch makes a claim about this that is worth
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: sitting with. It says that the great corruption of the
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: pre flood world was not simply violence. It was premature knowledge,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: power handed to beings who lacked the wisdom and the
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: relationship with God that would have made that power safe.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: Knowledge that separated from conscience becomes a tool for destruction
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: on a scale that ordinary human sinfulness alone could never
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: have reached. When Raphael, one of the four archangels, is
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: later instructed by God regarding Azazel, the words used in
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: this text are striking. The whole earth, God says has
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Now Here is what most retellings miss. Every single thing
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: the Book of Enoch says Azazel taught was a distortion
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: of something real and good. Metal work is not evil,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: The study of signs is not evil. Knowledge itself is
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: not evil. What this text describes is not the introduction
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: of something alien and foreign. It is the premature offering
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: of something real, given before humanity was ready, outside of
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: the relationship that would have made it safe. It is
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: the oldest pattern of temptation, not the creation of something foreign,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: but the offering of something true at the wrong time
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: and in the wrong way, And the earth began to
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: fill with the consequences. Rest for a moment, let these
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: images settle gently into the quiet. You are not inside
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: the darkness of this story. You are watching it from
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: the place of those who are known and held. And
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: the response of Heaven to what was happening below is
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: where the story begins. Chapter four, The Nephelim Giants Born
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: of Two Worlds. There is a moment in every disaster
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: when the point of no return is crossed. Not the
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: moment the decision is made, not even the moment the
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: first consequence appears, but the moment when the consequences take
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: on a life of their own, when what has been
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: set in motion can no longer be stopped by the
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: people who started it. For the world before the flood,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: According to the Book of Enoch, that moment came with
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: the birth of the Nephelim. The word itself appears in
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: your Bible, Genesis, chapter six, verse four. The Nephelim were
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: the sons of God came in to the daughters of man,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: and they bore children to them. These were the mighty
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: men who were of old. The men of renown four
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: words in Hebrew Nephelim, and centuries of debate about what
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: they were. The word comes from a route carrying the
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: idea of falling, some translated as the fallen ones, others
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: as those who cause others to fall. The oldest Greek
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: translation of the Hebrew Bible, the version most of the
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: New Testament writers used when they quoted scripture, renders it
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: as giants. The Book of Enoch does not leave the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: question open. According to this ancient text, the Nephelim were
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: the offspring of the union between the watchers and the
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: daughters of men, hybrid beings who belonged completely to neither
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: world and were constrained by neither world's limitations. Now it
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: is worth pausing here to say what honest reading requires
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: the identity and nature of the Nephelim has been interpreted
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: very differently across Christian and Jewish traditions, and that diversity
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: of interpretation is real and significant. Some read the language
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: of this text as describing literal beings of exc straordinary
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: physical scale. Others understand it as communicating moral and spiritual
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: enormity rather than physical size. The Book of Enoch presents
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: the most vivid and specific account. As we walk through it,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: we are entering the interpretive world of one ancient tradition
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: among several, and that is worth holding with some care.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: With that in mind, the picture this ancient text paints
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: is this. The beings described in the Book of Enoch
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: as Nephelim, had a need that the earth could not satisfy.
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: They consumed everything that humans had produced. When that was gone,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: they turned to the animals. When the animals were exhausted,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: they turned on the humans. And then, in the detail
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: this text records, without flinching, they turned on each other.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: The earth became a place of unceasing violence, not the
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: ordinary violence of human conflict, terrible as that is, but
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: something of a different order, systematic insatiable consumption that left
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: nothing untouched. And alongside this physical devastation, something else was
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: spreading through the human world. The forbidden knowledge that Azazel
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: and the other watchers had introduced was being absorbed and normalized.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Each element of it was, as we heard in the
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: last chapter, a distortion of something good. Weapons made killing
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: efficient on a scale that individual cruelty could never reach.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: The use of beauty as manipulation transformed something given for
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: joy into a tool of power. The reaching into spiritual
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: forces through sorcery opened doors that were closed for good reasons.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: A world drowning in power without wisdom, in knowledge without conscience,
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: in strength without restraint. The Book of Enoch also records
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: something about the aftermath of the Nephelim that most retellings
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: pass over entirely. According to this text, when the net
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: eefel imperished, evil spirits proceeded from their bodies, spirits that
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: would continue to trouble the children of men. The text
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: presents this as part of its account of why spiritual
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: oppression did not simply end when the physical crisis ended.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: This is a claim that goes beyond what most other
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: ancient texts describe in similar detail, and it is one
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: that theologians have held very differently across the centuries. Some
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: receive it as a literal account of how certain spiritual
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: forces entered the world. Others understand it as a framework
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: for thinking about the persistence of corruption across generations. What
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: the Book of Enoch itself insists on is that the
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: consequences of what the Watchers set in motion could not
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: be entirely contained even by the flood that was coming.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: The earth was crying out the souls of those who
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: had suffered, the voices of the innocent, rising past, the
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: corruption of a world that had gone badly wrong, rising
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: towards something that the corruption could not reach, the threshold
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: of heaven. And here is what connects all of this
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: to the night you are in right now. You did
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: not cause the brokenness of the world you woke up
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: in this morning, the systems that grind people down, the
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: inherited patterns that shape us before we are old enough
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: to choose, the weight of things that corrupt and diminish.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: You arrived into all of that the way Enoch arrived
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: into his world, already in motion, already extensive, already reaching
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: into every corner of the culture around you. And yet
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Enoch walked with God through it, not by fixing it,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: not by escaping it. But by refusing to let the
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: darkness of the world around him become the determining reality
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: of his own life. That refusal is available to you. Breathe,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: let your body go heavy and still. The darkness of
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: what we have heard is real, and it is not
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: the end of the story. The crying reached the throne,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: and the throne responded. Chapter five, Heaven hears the cries
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: that reached the throne. There is something the human soul knows,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: even when the mind is not certain. It knows that
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: crying out matters. It knows that suffering witnessed is not
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: the same as suffering unseen. It knows there is a difference,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: sometimes a desperate and life sustaining difference, between pain endured
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: in complete silence and pain that has been heard by
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: someone with the power to respond. Every person who has
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: ever prayed in the dark knows this instinctively. The prayer
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: goes up, and you wait, and the waiting is its
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: own kind of suffering, And the question underneath the waiting
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: is the oldest question there is. Is anyone there? And
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: if they are there, do they hear? And if they hear,
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: will they receive bond? The Book of Enoch answers that question,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: not with philosophy, not with argument, with a scene. The
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: cries of the earth rose upward. The souls of those
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: who had suffered at the hands of what the watchers
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: had set in motion, sent their petition through whatever distance
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: separates the world of the living from the presence of
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: the eternal, and the Book of Enuch says without hesitation
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: that they arrived. They arrived before four beings of extraordinary
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: power and clarity. Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, the four archangels
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: named in this ancient tradition, and they appear here not
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: as decorative figures or as the soft winged creatures of
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: popular imagination, but as fully realized personalities, with distinct characters,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: distinct roles, and distinct responses to what they are witnessing.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Let us meet each one, because understanding who they are
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: changes how you hear what they do. Michael, his name
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: in Hebrew is itself a question and a declaration. Who
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: is like God? He is the commander associated throughout scripture
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: with righteous confrontation and the protection of God's people. In
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: the Book of Daniel, he appears as the great Prince
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: who stands guard over Israel. In the Letter of Jude,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: he disputes with the adversary. In Revelation, he leads the
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: armies of Heaven. In the tradition of the Book of Enoch,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Michael is the archangel of standing firm when the ground
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: is contested. Gabriel, his name means something close to God
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: is my strength. He is the messenger, the communicator. In Daniel,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: he comes to explain visions. In the Gospel of Luke,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: he announces to Mary that she will carry the Son
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: of God. Gabriel stands at the intersection between the divine
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: plan and human understanding. He is the one who translates
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: what heaven in tends into words that human ears can receive. Raphael,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: his name means God heals. He is the archangel of restoration,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: of the mending of what has been broken. He appears
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: in the Book of Tobit guiding a young man through danger,
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: healing a father's blindness, driving away a tormenting spirit. Raphael
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: moves through the world with the specific intention of making
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: broken things whole again. Uriell his name means God is
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: my Light, associated in this text with illumination and with
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: the revealing of what is hidden. In the Book of Enoch,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: he becomes Enoch's guide through the astronomical visions, showing him
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: the paths of the stars and the structure of time itself.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Uriel is the one who helps you see what is
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: actually there when darkness has obscured it. Four personalities, four functions,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: and now four witnesses standing at the boundary between heaven
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and Earth, watching the catastrophe below, and carrying what they
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: have seen to the highest place. The Book of Enoch
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: records what they said to God, and it deserves to
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: be heard slowly. They said, you know all things before
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: they come to existence, and you see these things, and
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: you suffer them, and you do not tell us what
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: we ought to do regarding them. Read that again. They
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: are not simply filing a report. They are doing something
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: far more intimate. They are bringing their confusion, their distress,
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: their sense of urgent helplessness, directly to the Creator. They
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: are asking why he has allowed this without telling them
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: what to do. And God does not rebuke them for asking.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: He answers. This is where the theology of the Book
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: of Enoch becomes most profound, because God's response reveals something
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: essential about the nature of divine patience and divine action,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: something that touches the oldest human question about why suffering
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: is allowed before intervention comes. God knew, he always knew.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: He knew what the watchers had chosen before they swore
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: their oath on Mount Hermon. He knew the suffering of
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: every soul that cried out from the earth below. The
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Book of Enoch stands with all of Scripture in insisting
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: on this with absolute clarity. God is not surprised by evil.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: He is not watching the chaos below and wondering what
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: to do. He is waiting for the moment that is
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: precisely right, and when that moment comes, he responds with precision.
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: He gave four specific instructions to four specific archangels, and
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: each instruction corresponds exactly to the nature and ability of
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: the one who receives it. To Raphael, the healer, he said,
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: bind a Zazel hand and foot, and cast him into
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: the darkness. Cover him with rough and jagged rocks, let
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: him remain until the day of judgment. Why Raphael, Because
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: the wound as Zazel had inflicted on the earth was
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: one that required a healer. The corruption of knowledge, the
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: weaponization of beauty, the opening of spiritual doors that were
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: closed for good reasons. These were injuries to the fabric
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: of creation that needed a healer's attention. Raphael was sent
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: to begin the long work of restoration by first removing
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: the source of contamination. To Gabriel the Communicator, he said,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: go to the offspring of the watchers, and let them
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: go against one another. Gabriel did not raise a sword.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: He spoke in a way that turned the destructive energy
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: of these beings inward. The gift of communication became in
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: this instance the most precise possible response to beings who
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: understood only force. To Michael the Commander, he said, bind
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Semyaza and those who are with him. Bind them for
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: seventy generations under the hills of the earth, until the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: day of judgment. Why Michael, Because this was confrontation with
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: beings who had rebelled with full knowledge and deliberate intent.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: They required the archangel, whose entire nature is the righteous
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: confrontation of unrighteous power. And to all of them together
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: he spoke words that stand as some of the most
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: quietly extraordinary in the entire text. He said that all
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the children of men shall not perish through all that
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: the watchers have done. He said that the whole earth
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: will be cleansed from all defilement and from all sin.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: And he said that a time is coming of peace
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: and righteousness that will last forever, A time of peace
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: and righteousness that will last forever. In the middle of
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: the worst crisis, this ancient text describes, at the very
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: moment the archangels are being sent to address fallen angels
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: and the destruction they caused. God announces the ending, not
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: the middle, the ending penal destination of the whole story,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: because from where he stands, the ending is as certain
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: as the beginning. Now let us sit with what this
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: means for tonight. The crying reached heaven. That is the
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: first thing, the suffering of the most helpless people on
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: the surface of a corrupted earth. Their cries did not
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: dissolve into the sky. They arrived, they were received. They
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: were heard by beings of immense power, who brought them
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: immediately before the throne of the Creator. God responded with
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: complete precision, that is the second thing, not with panic,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: not with an improvised solution. He sent the right being
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: to address the right dimension of the problem, the healer
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: for the wound, the communicator for the chaos, the commander
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: for the rebellion, and God announced the ending before the
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: middle was resolved. That is the third thing. He did
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: not wait until everything was fixed to speak of peace
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: and righteousness. He spoke of it from inside the crisis,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: because the ending was never in doubt. You are lying
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: in your own particular darkness to night. Whatever it is,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the fear that will not leave, the grief with no name,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: the sense that the world has gone badly wrong and
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: no one in authority is paying attention. The Book of
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: Enoch says, the crying reaches Heaven always without exception, no
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: matter how thick the silence feels, no matter how buried
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: under the noise of the world, the small voice of
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: a struggling soul might seem. It arrives. Yours, arrives tonight. Breathe,
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Let that settle into the quiet place in you that
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: is still awake, the place that listens even when the
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: rest of you is drifting towards sleep. Heaven hears, Heaven responds,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: and the ending of your story, like the ending of
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Enoch's world, is already spoken, already certain, already held in
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: hands that have never dropped anything they were given to keep.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Rest now, because in the chapter ahead, we are going
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: to follow Enoch himself as he is lifted out of
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: the world and taken somewhere no human being had ever
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: been taken before. He is going to walk through Heaven,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: and what he sees there will change the way you
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: understand everything. Chapter six, Enoch's first journey walking through Heaven.
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: There are moments that divide everything into before and after,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: not because they are loud or dramatic, but because they
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: are so complete, so far beyond the ordinary range of experience,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: that the person who passes through them cannot go back
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: to being who they were before. The ground shifts, the
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: categories change, the world looks different on the other side.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: For Enoch, that moment came on an ordinary night. He
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: was at home. The Book of Enoch gives us this
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: detail with quiet simplicity. Not on a mountain top, not
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: in the wilderness. After weeks of fasting. He was in
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: his house, and he was weeping, weeping and praying on
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: behalf of the watchers who had asked him to carry
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: their petition to God, because they were too ashamed to
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: lift their own voices toward the one they had betrayed.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: Even this detail is remarkable. These beings of enormous power,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: who had shaken the world with their choices, could not
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: pray for themselves. Their shame had silenced them before the
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: Holy and so they came to a human being, to
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the one man on earth whose closeness to God made
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: him the only conceivable intermediary. Enoch agreed to carry their petition,
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: not because he approved of what they had done, but
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: because mercy was in his nature, learned from three hundred
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: years of walking beside the most merciful being in a
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: egad existence. He fell asleep praying, and the heavens opened.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: What the Book of Enoch describes next has no real
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: parallel in ancient literature. Enoch is not simply given a
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: dream in the ordinary sense. According to this text, he
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: is taken, lifted, transported in a way that he himself
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: struggles to find language for, because the experience exceeded every
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: category his earthly mind possessed. He describes winds that carried him,
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: clouds that lifted him, and then a place at the
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: outer edge of everything he had known, where he saw
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: first a structure of crystal surrounded by tongues of fire,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: and beyond it a greater structure, still a house with
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: a floor like white marble, and a ceiling of living
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: fire and stars woven into it. He entered, and what
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: he encountered inside was cold. This detail has puzzled readers
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: for centuries. Why would the approach to the divine presence
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: be preceded by a cold so complete it reminded Enoch
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: of snow and ice. The ancient interpreters understood it as
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: the cold of absolute holiness, of a purity so complete
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: and so far beyond human experience that the human soul
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: encountering it feels something like the shock of contact with
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: something entirely other. Not hostile, not cruel, simply so far
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: beyond the warm familiarity of the earthly that the contrast
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: registers as something between cold and ore, and beyond that
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: a second and greater house. Its floor was fire, its
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: ceiling was fire, its walls were fire, and at its
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: center on a throne that the Book of Enoch says,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: exceeded every possible conception that human language was designed to
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: hold sat what the text calls the great glory. Enoch
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: does not say he saw a face. He does not
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: describe features the way one describes another person. What he
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: describes is the emanation the surrounding reality of a presence
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: so immense that approaching it directly is not possible even
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: in vision. He sees the robe that surrounds the throne.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: He sees the rivers of fire flowing from it. He
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: sees the highest orders of angelic beings surrounding it, covering
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: their own faces before what they serve, and Enoch falls
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: on his face. This is not a performed gesture. This
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: is the only possible physical response of a human being
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: in the presence of absolute holiness. Every account in scripture
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: of a human encountering the divine at close range produces
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: the same response. Isaiah cried out that he was undone.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: Ezekiel fell on his face. John on the island of
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Patmos fell as though dead. The body knows what the
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: mind cannot fully process, and respects the only way it can.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Enoch us and lies there, trembling, And then something happens
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: that is, in its own way, more astonishing than everything
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: he has already seen. The Great Glory speaks, not through
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: an angel, not through an intermediary, directly to Enoch, to
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: this trembling human being lying face down on the floor
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: of Heaven, unable to look up. And what does the
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: voice that spoke the universe into existence, Say to the
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: one man who walked with him for three hundred years,
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: come near, Enoch. Hear my word, come near. Two words
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: that undo all the distance, Two words that transform the
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: overwhelming terror of holiness into something else entirely, because the
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: God whose presence makes even the highest angels cover their
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: faces is also the God who says, come near to
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: the trembling human on the floor. An angel raises Enoch
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: to his feet and brings him closer, and then God
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: speaks to him at length. He tells Enoch that the
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: petition of the watchers will not be granted, that those
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: who have stood before the Holy and walked in the
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: eternal light cannot receive mercy in the way that finite, mortal,
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: incomplete human beings receive it, because they chose with a
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: clarity of understanding that human beings, limited by their nature,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: do not fully possess, and the weight of a choice
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: must be proportional to the clarity of the knowledge behind it.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: He tells Enoch to write down everything he has seen
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: and everything he is about to see, not for the watchers,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: for the generations to come, for people who will live
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: in times that neither Enoch nor any one around him
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: can imagine for you. Now, Enoch's journey through heaven does
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: not end with this first encounter. The Book of Enoch
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: records multiple journeys, multiple layers of revelation, each one adding
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: to the picture of a reality far more structured and
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: far more governed than the surface of earthly life suggests.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: He is taken to see what this text describes as
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: the treasuries of the winds, the places where the winds
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: of the earth are held and released according to the
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: governing of seasons and weather. Whether one reads this as
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: literal geography or as visionary imagery communicating a theological truth,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: the point that the text is making is unmistakable. What
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: we experience as wind and weather and the turning of
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: seasons is not random. According to this ancient vision, it
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: is administered. The natural world is not an accident running
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: on its own momentum. It is a governed reality. He
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: sees the treasuries of snow and frost, the chambers from
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: which hail and lightning come, and at each location he
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: sees beings whose function is to release these forces according
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: to instructions they have been given. He is taken to
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: see the ends of the earth, to places where the
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: mountains of metal and fire stand, to valleys so deep
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: their bottoms cannot be perceived. And in these valleys, separated
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: from each other by rock and distance, he sees four
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: hollow places in the earth. These are the dwelling places
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: of the dead, as this text describes them, and this
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: is one of the most striking passages in the entire
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: Book of Enoch, because what Enoch is shown suggests that
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: the dead are not simply gone. According to this vision,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: they are kept held in these separate places according to
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: the nature of their lives and the circumstances of their deaths,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: waiting the righteous in light their petition, heard their vindication
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: coming others in varying degrees of darkness, each according to
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: what justice requires. Enoch asks why the righteous must wait,
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: If their life lives were faithful and their cause is just,
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: why are they not already in the fullness of their reward.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: The Angel answers they must wait until the day of judgment,
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: until the full reckoning takes place, until the entire arc
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: of the story arrives at its intended end. Because God
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: is not running a series of disconnected transactions, he is
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: telling one story, and the final restoration of all things
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: requires the fullness of time to unfold before it can
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: be enacted completely. This answer reaches into the oldest human
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: question about why God does not simply fix everything Now,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: the Book of Enoch says, because the fixing is not partial,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: it is total, and total restoration requires the moment when
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: the whole story is complete. What looks like delay from
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: inside the story is from outside it the careful unfolding
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: of something that will not be rushed because it cannot
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: afford to be incomplete. Justice is not delayed. It is
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: held in hands that have never lost anything they were
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: given to keep. He is taken further still, to the
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: Tree of Life, to the Mountain of God, to the
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: corners of the earth, and the places where the visible
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: and the invisible meet at the boundary of what human
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: senses can reach. Each vision layering on the last building
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: a picture of a creation that is not the cold,
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: mechanical universe of modern materialism, not a random explosion of
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: matter moving through purposeless time, but a living, governed, watched,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: cared for reality in which every detail is held and
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: every soul is known, and through all of it Enoch
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: is writing the scribe of Heaven, recording what no human
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: eye had seen, not for pride or fame, but because
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: the God who showed him these things told him that
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: future generations would need to know that the suffering of
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: the earth is scene, that creation is governed, that justice
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: is certain and coming, that the crying reaches the throne,
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: and the throne responds, that the presence at the center
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: of everything says, come near to the trembling human on
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: the floor. Now Here is what I want you to
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: hold as you move towards sleep to night. Enoch was
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: not a theologian who reasoned his way to these visions.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: He was a man who walked with God long enough
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: that God could show him. Three hundred years of faithful
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: ordinary closeness created the transparency that Heaven needed to pour
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: this revelation through, and the revelation he carried back answers
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: the question that every human being who has ever suffered
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: in the dark eventually asks, Does anyone see this? Does
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: anyone know what I am carrying? Is the universe aware
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: of me at all? Enoch walked through Heaven and came
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: back with the answer written on every page. Yes, the
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: universe is governed, The suffering is seen. The dead are kept,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: the righteous are held, and at the center of it all,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: on a throne of fire that no human language can
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: fully describe, is a presence that says, come near, to
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: the trembling human on the floor, Come near. Let that
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: be the last thing your waking mind rests on tonight.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: Not the darkness of what we have heard about the
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: world before the flood, not the rebellion or the corruption,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: or the groaning of the earth. But this the throne,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: the fire, the voice that crosses every distance and says
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: to the trembling human, wherever you are, whatever you are carrying,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: however far you feel from everything good, come near. Chapter seven,
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: the Judgment of the Watchers. No one escapes. There is
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: a deep and quiet place in the human soul that
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: needs to know that wrong things will not go unanswered forever.
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: Not out of bitterness, not out of a desire to
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: watch others suffer, but out of something older and more
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: fundamental than either of those things, a need woven into
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: the fabric of how we were made, the need to
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: know that the universe is not morally indifferent, that the
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: scales are not permanently broken, that what was done in
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: darkness will not remain forever hidden. That power does not
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: have the final word. Every person who has ever watched
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: cruelty go unpunished has felt this need. Every person who
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: has carried the weight of an injustice that was never
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: acknowledged has felt it. Every parent who has seen a
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: child harmed and found no recourse has felt it in
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: the deepest part of themselves. The Book of Enoch speaks
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: directly to this place in you. One of its central purposes,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: stated plainly in its opening words, is to show the
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: elect and righteous that the judgments of God are real,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: that they are coming, that no act of rebellion against
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: the order of creation, no matter how powerful the one
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: who commits it, escapes the accounting that is built into
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: the structure of reality itself. The judgment of the watchers
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: is presented in this ancient text as history, and it
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: is recorded with a precision that the text clearly intends
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: as testimony. Look at what happened to those who cross
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: the line, look at where they are now, and understand
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: that the same God who acted then is the same
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: God who sees what is happening to night. Let us
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: walk through it carefully. The archangels moved with the precision
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: of beings who receive their instructions from a source that
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: does not make mistakes. Raphael went to Azazel first. There
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: is no great battle described, no dramatic clash of powers.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: The Book of Enoch records this confrontation with almost clinical simplicity.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: Rafael binds Azazel hand and foot and casts him into
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: darkness in a desert place. He covers him with rough
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: and jagged rocks. He covers his face so that he
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: cannot see the light, and he declares over him that
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: the whole earth has been corrupted through his teachings, and
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: that he will remain in this darkness until the great
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: day of judgment, when he will be cast into fire.
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: Now Here is the detail that most people pass over entirely,
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: and it is one of the most theologically significant in
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: the entire text. The desert place where Azazel is bound
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: is connected by ancient Jewish interpreters to the scapegoat ritual
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: of Leviticus chapter sixteen, one of the most solemn ceremonies
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: of the Day of Atonement. On that holy day, two
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: goats were chosen. One was sacrificed, the other had the
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: sins of the people symbolically laid upon it by the
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: High Priest, and it was sent into the wilderness to
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: a place the Hebrew text calls Azazel. The the name
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: of the figure in the Book of Enoch and the
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: name of the wilderness destination in Leviticus are the same word.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: What this tells us is that the memory of Azazl,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: of this being who corrupted the earth with premature and
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: weaponized knowledge, appears to have been preserved. In the most
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: solemn religious ceremony of ancient Israel. Every year, on the
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: holiest day of the calendar, the high Priest enacted a
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: ritual pointing back toward this ancient tradition. The sins of
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: the people were sent away into the wilderness to the
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: place associated with the one who had introduced them. This
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: is one of the most fascinating connections in all of
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Biblical studies. Scholars have debated its full meaning for centuries,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: but the connection itself between the name in the Book
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: of Enoch and the destination in Leviticus is there in
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: the text for anyone to see. Rest for a moment, breathe,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: let that settle. What we have just heard is ancient
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: and strange and significant. And there is more. Meanwhile, Gabriel
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: moved among those the text calls the offspring of the watchers.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: As God had instructed, Gabriel did not destroy them by
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: direct force. He turned their own nature against them. He
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: incited them against each other, and beings who had operated
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: by the principle that strength needs no justification began to
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: consume each other by that same principle. There is a
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: deep and uncomfortable justice in this. The Nephelim, as this
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: text describes them, had lived by the logic that the
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: powerful take what they want from the weak. Gabriel simply
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: allowed that logic to complete its own conclusion. When everything
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: operates by the rule of strength alone, the result is inevitable.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: Everything turns inward and devours itself. The Book of Enoch
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: is making a philosophical argument embedded in a narrative. A
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: world built on unchecked power and an appetite does not stabilize,
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: It consumes itself. The destruction does not come from an
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: external force imposing order on chaos. It comes from the
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: chaos itself, following its own logic to its own end.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: The wages of that way of living is its own undoing.
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: Michael was given the most complex assignment because Semiaza and
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: the Chief Watchers were not simply powerful. They were intelligent.
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: They had entered their rebellion deliberately, after swearing a mutual oath,
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: with full awareness of what they were doing. Their judgment
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: had to reflect both the deliberateness of their choice and
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: the scope of what that choice had caused. Michael bound
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: them for seventy generations under the hills of the Earth.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: The number seventy in ancient Hebrew thought communicates fullness and completeness,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: rather than a precise count, seventy elders of Israel, seventy
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: years of Babylonian captivity, the seventy weeks of death annual's prophecy.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: When the Book of Enoch says seventy generations, it is
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: saying for the full appointed time, until the moment that
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: God has determined is precisely right for the final accounting.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: They are bound, they are sealed, but they are not
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: yet finally judged, and this distinction matters enormously. The judgment
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: of the Watchers in this text is a two stage event.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: The binding is the first stage, the removal from active influence,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: the sealing under the earth so that they cannot directly
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: corrupt the world as they did before the flood. The
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: second stage is still coming, and this structure is reflected
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: in the New Testament in a way that is worth pausing.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: On the letter of Jude, which directly quotes the Book
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: of Enoch by name, says that God kept the angels
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: who did not stay within their own position of authority
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: the Great Day. The second letter of Peter says that
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: them into chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: the judgment. Both passages use present tents. From the perspective
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: of their writers, they are currently bound. The judgment is
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: still coming. The two stages are real and still unfolding. Now.
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: Alongside the specific judgments of specific perpetrators, God gave the
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: archangels another instruction that is easy to overlook but theologically essential.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: He told them to announce to the earth that the
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: healing is coming, that all who dwell on it will
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: know that the time of cleansing is near. And then
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: he spoke of what lies beyond the cleansing, a time
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: when righteousness will be planted in the earth like a seed,
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: when it will grow, when the generations who come after
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: the flood will have access to something the pre flood
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: world had lost, a path back to the light. He
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: said that all the righteous shall escape, that they shall
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: live in peace, that the whole earth shall be washed
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: from all defilement and from all sin, and that a
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: time is coming of peace that will last forever. Now
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Here is the analysis that most retellings of this story miss,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: and it is the heart of what makes the Judgment
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: of the Watchers more than a story about punishment. Every
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: element of this judgment is oriented toward healing. Azazel is
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: bound so that the source of corrupted knowledge stops flowing,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: not because God cannot tolerate his existence, but because the
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: earth cannot survive the continued introduction of power without wisdom.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: The binding is protective, the removal of a toxin from
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: a system that was being poisoned. The offspring of the
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: Watchers are turned against each other, not out of indifference,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: but because their continued presence made the survival of any
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: human life impossible. The judgment is preservative. It makes space
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: for humanity to continue. Semyaza and the Chief Watchers are bound,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: not simply to punish them, but to prevent the repetition
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: of what they did. The imprisonment is a containment, a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: limiting of the damage to what has already occurred. The
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: judgment of the Watchers is not primarily about the Watchers.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: It is primarily about protecting humanity, preserving the possibility of
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: the story continuing, keeping the door open for the restoration
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: that God had already announced. And this is where the
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: ancient judgment becomes personally relevant to you tonight, because the
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: same God who issued these precise and purposeful judgments is
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: the same God who is aware of every injustice in
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: your world, every wrong that has not been acknowledged, every
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: cruelty that has not been answered, every power that has
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: operated without accountability and left damage in its wake. The
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Book of Enoch is not offering you false comfort. It
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: is not saying that everything is fine. It is saying
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: the exact opposite. It is saying that everything matters, that
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: every act of corruption is recorded. That the God who
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: sent Raphael to bind as Zazel and Michael to seal
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: the Watchers under the hills is the same God who
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: sees what is happening in your life right now, and
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: he is not sleeping. The judgments of God are not hasty,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: They are not reactive in the way that human anger
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: is reactive. They are precise, They are purposeful. They are
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: oriented toward healing and restoration, even as they are oriented
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: toward justice, and they are absolutely certain. No one escapes,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: not because God is merciless, but because God is just,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: and justice, in the end is one of the most
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: merciful things there is. Because justice means that the suffering
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: of the innocent is not the last word. That the
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: crying reaches the throne, and the throne responds with something real,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: that the bound ones stay bound, that the appointed time
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: is coming. Let that truth be the weight your body
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: rests on to night, not the weight of anxiety or
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: unanswered questions, but the weight of a justice that is
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: older and stronger and more certain than any darkness you
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: can name. The watchers chose. They swore their oath with
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: full knowledge, and they are bound. Whatever was done to you,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: whatever you are still carrying to night, was seen, is recorded,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: will be answered. You can put it down. You do
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: not have to hold it while you sleep. The one
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: on the throne is holding it, and what comes next
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: will show you exactly why that is the safest place
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: in all of creation for it to be. Chapter eight
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: The Astronomical Book God Written in the Stars. There is
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: a moment, if you have ever stood outside on a
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: truly clear night, far from the lights of any city,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: when the sky does something to you that nothing else
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: can do. It stops you completely mid thought, mid breath,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: mid whatever you were carrying from the day, and for
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: a moment that is somehow both very short and very long,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: you are simply standing there, looking up at something so
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: vast and so ordered, and so quietly magnificent, that the
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: noise inside you goes still. Most of us live our
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: entire lives without stopping to ask what that stillness is.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: Enoch stopped, and he asked, and what he received in
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: answer to that question is one of the most overlooked
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: and most beautiful sections of the entire Book of Enoch.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: It is called the Astronomical Book, and it begins with
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: a single angel and a single invitation. The angel's name
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: was Uriel, the Fire of God, the Light of Heaven.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: And he came to Enoch, not with visions of fallen
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: angels or a tour of the chambers of the dead,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: but with something that must have felt in comparison, almost gentle.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: He came to show Enoch how the sky works. Follow me,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: Uriel said, and I will show you everything that governs
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: the lights of heaven. What followed was a revelation covering
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: the movements of the Sun and the moon, the ordering
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: of the seasons, the paths of the winds, the structure
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: of the year, and the relationship between the visible heavens
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: and the invisible order that lies behind them. Enoch recorded
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: all of it, chapter after chapter of detail that scholars
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: of ancient astronomy have spent generations studying. But before we
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: walk through what he saw, let us ask the question
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: that most people do not think to ask. Why would
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: God teach astronomy to a prophet. Why, in the middle
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: of visions of fallen angels and heavenly thrones and the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: chambers of the dead, does the Book of Enoch give
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: an entire section to the movements of the sun and moon.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: What does the ordering of the sky have to do
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: with the spiritual crisis of the pre flood world? What
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: does a calender have to do with salvation? It turns
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: out everything, because the world before the flood had not
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: only been corrupted morally and spiritually. According to the Book
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: of Enoch, it had been corrupted in its relationship to
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: time itself. Among the many things the watchers introduced was
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: a distorted use of the heavens. The sorcery and the
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: reading of omens that Azazel and the others taught were
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: connected to a corrupted relationship with the sky. The stars
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: were no longer read as testimony to the faithfulness of God.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: They were used as instruments of prediction and manipulation. The heavens,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: which were made to declare the glory of their creator,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: had been turned into a system of power. Uriel came
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: to restore the original meaning. He showed Enoch the sun
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: first rising and setting through twelve gates on the eastern
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: and western horizons, six in the north and six in
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: the south, moving through them in a precise pattern across
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: the year, spending longer in the northern gates in summer
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: and the southern gates in winter, the length of day
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: and night changing accordingly. Everything governed, everything measured, everything exact.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: The precision with which the Book of Enoch tracks the
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: movement of the Sun across the seasons corresponds to actual
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: astronomical observation. Whoever recorded. This was watching the sky carefully
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: over a long period, with the kind of attention that
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: does not come from curiosity alone. It comes from reverence.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: The moon follows a similarly precise course. The Book of
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: Enoch traces the lunar cycle in careful detail, tracking the
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: waxing and waning across its twenty nine and a half
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: day rhythm, the way it rises and sets through different gates,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: the way its light increases and decreases by exact fractions
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: each night. And from these two governing lights, Enoch derives
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: a calendar, a calendar of three hundred and sixty four days,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: divided into four seasons, with an additional day at each
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: seasonal boundary. Now this calendar is one of the most
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: historically significant details in the entire Book of Enoch, because
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 1: it was not simply a theoretical exercise, it was actually used.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: When the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered in the caves
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: of Kumran in nineteen forty seven, among the most significant
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: findings was evidence that the community living there was using
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: a specific and carefully maintained calendar, and that calendar was
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: the calendar of the Book of Enoch. They rejected the
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: lunar calendar used in the Jerusalem Temple, considering it a
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: later development that had displaced the original ordering of time,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: and they organized their entire communal life around the solar
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: calendar that Enoch had recorded. These were not credulous people.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: These were the scholars and scribes who produced some of
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: the most careful copies of scripture ever found. They took
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: the calendar of the Book of Enoch seriously enough to
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: build their entire religious rhythm around it because they understood
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: something that is easy to miss from the distance of
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: two thousand years. The calendar is not administrative. The calendar
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: is theological. The ordering of time, the structuring of the
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: year into seasons and feast days and days of rest,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: was not designed to help ancient people keep appointments. It
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: was designed to keep them oriented, to prevent the drift,
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: to give them a framework within which the story of
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: God and humanity could be remembered and inhabited and handed down.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: Every feast day was a memory, Every Sabbath was a declaration.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: Every new moon was a witness. When that ordering is lost,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: when time becomes merely functional, something essential goes with it.
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: Days become units to be spent rather than gifts. To
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: be received. The year becomes a cycle of obligation rather
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: than a journey with God. Uriel was showing Enoch how
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: to read time the way it was always meant to
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: be read. And as Enoch looked at the sky through
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: Uriel's teaching, he understood something that the corrupted world around
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: him had completely forgotten. The heavens were not speaking a
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: language of power and manipulation. They were speaking a language
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: of faithfulness. Psalm nineteen, written centuries after Enoch by a
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 1: king who clearly knew the same God says it this way.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: above proclaims his handiwork day to day pours out speech,
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: and night to night reveals knowledge. The sky is always
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: speaking in every language and in no language, continuously without pause.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: And what it is saying in the precise movement of
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: the sun through its twelve gates, and the careful cycling
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: of the moon through its twenty nine and a half
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: day rhythm, and the exact turning of the seasons through
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: their appointed boundaries, is this. I am faithful. I keep
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: my word. What I have set in motion. I maintain
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: the sun will rise to morrow, not because it has
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: no choice, but because I have said that it will.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: The seasons will turn, not because they are mechanically compelled,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: but because I govern them, and I am not a
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: god who forgets what he has promised. The astronomical book
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: of Enoch is ultimately not about stars. It is about
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: the character of God, as revealed in the structure of
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: what he made. And here is the insight that belongs
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: to the night you are in right now. Enoch received
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: this revelation in the middle of the worst spiritual crisis
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: in human history. The watchers had fallen, corruption was absolute,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: the flood was coming, the world was ending in the
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: most literal possible sense. And in the middle of all
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: of that, God took Enoch outside and showed him the stars,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: not as a distraction, not as a change of subject,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: as the deepest possible comfort. Look up, Enoch, See how
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: the sun moves through its gates. See how the moon
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: keeps its cycle. See that the chaos below is real,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: and see that the order above is realer. See that
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: the corruption of the earth has not reached the heavens.
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: See that MY faithfulness is written in light across the
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: entire sky, And that every morning, when the sun rises
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: through its appointed gait. It is saying the same thing
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: it said the morning before, and the morning before that,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: and every morning since the first light fell on the
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: first day. I have not changed. I will not change
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: what I have promised I will do to night. Wherever
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: you are, the same sky that Enoch looked at is
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: above you Ectava. The same sun that moved through the
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: ancient gates will rise tomorrow through yours. The same moon
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: that Uriel showed Enoch is moving through its cycle right
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: now in the darkness above whatever roof is over your head,
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: the faithfulness is still speaking. It has not stopped, It
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: has not taken a day off, It has not been
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: interrupted by any darkness in the world below. Let the
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: sky speak to you tonight, even if you cannot see
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: it from where you are lying. It is there, moving, cycling,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: keeping the rhythm that has not changed since Uriel showed
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: it to Enoch and long before that. And the God
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: behind that rhythm is the same God who says, come
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: near to the trembling human on the floor. He has
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: not changed by a single degree. Rest now, because Enoch's
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: journey is about to reach its most extraordinary moment, the
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: vision that gathers all the threads of everything we have
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: heard and brings them to a single blazing point, A
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: figure seated at the right hand of the Ancient of Days,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: waiting to be revealed. Chapter nine, The Parables of Enoch
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: the Sun of Man. There are moments in ancient literature
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: that stop time, not because they are loud, not because
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: they announce themselves with warnings about what is coming, but
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: because when you finally understand what you are reading, the
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: ground shifts beneath you. You go back and read it again,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: and each time the weight of it increases. This is
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: one of those moments. We are now in the section
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: of the Book of Enoch known as the Parables, sometimes
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: called the Similitudes. It is the second major section of
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: the book, and it is the one that has generated
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: more scholarly debate, more theological reflection, and more quiet midnight
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: wondering than almost any other passage in ancient literature outside
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: of scripture itself. Because in the Parables of Enoch, written
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, possibly centuries before,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: there is a figure, a figure who sits at the
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: right hand of the Ancient of Days, a figure described
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: as chosen before the creation of the world, a figure
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: who will sit on a throne of glory and judge
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: the living and the dead. A figure whose name given
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: in the presence of the Lord of spirits, before the
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: sun and the moon and the stars were made, is
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: recorded in this ancient text as the Son of Man.
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: Those of you who know the Gospels know those words.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: You have heard them in the mouth of Jesus. The
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. The
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: You will see the Son of Man seated at the
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: right hand of Power, coming on the clouds of heaven.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: Eighty times in the four Gospels, Jesus refers to himself
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: as the Son of Man. It is his most frequently
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: used self designation, more frequent than Messiah, more frequent than
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: Son of God. The title he reaches for again and
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: again when he wants to say something true about who
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: he is and what he came to do. Scholars have
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: long debated where this title comes from and what Jesus
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: meant by it. The phrase appears in the Book of
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: Daniel in a vision where Daniel sees one like a
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven, presented
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: before the Ancient of days, and given dominion and glory
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: and a kingdom that will not end. That passage is important,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: but it is a single vision, a brief glimpse. The
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: parables of Enoch are something else entirely. They do not
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: gli de EMPs this figure. They dwell with him. They
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: describe him across multiple extended visions in language that runs
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: remarkably close to the language Jesus uses about himself in
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: the Gospels. Let us hear some of what the Book
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: of Enuch says about this figure, and then consider what
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: that connection might mean. The Book of Enuch says of
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: the Son of Man, before the sun and the signs
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: were created, before the stars of heaven were made. His
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: name was named before the lord of spirits. In the
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: Gospel of John, Jesus says, before Abraham was I am,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: And in his prayer recorded in John chapter seventeen, he says, Father,
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: glorify me in your own presence, with the glory that
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: I had with you before the world existed. The Book
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: of Enuch says he will be a staff to the righteous,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: that they may lean on him and not fall. He
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: will be the light of the nations and the hope
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: of those who are troubled in heart. In the Gospel
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: of Matthew, Jesus says, come to me, all who are
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. In
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: the Gospel of John, I am the Light of the world.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness. The Book
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: of Enoch says that on the day of his revealing,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: the kings and the mighty, who have built their kingdoms
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: on the crushing of others, will fall on their faces
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: before him and find no place to stand. In the
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: Letter to the Philippians, Paul writes that at the name
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: Jesus Christ is Lord. These overlaps are specific. They are
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: not the kind of general similarities that emerge when any
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: two texts draw from common religious language. They use the
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: same images, the same framework, the same theological structure, and
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: they demand an explanation. Now Here is what honest scholarship
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: requires us to say about that explanation. The relation between
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: the Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch and
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: the Son of Man in the Gospels is a subject
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: of genuine and ongoing scholarly debate. Some scholars, including George
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: Nicholsburg and James Vandercam, two of the most respected voices
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: in Enoch's scholarship, argue that the parables are pre Christian
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: and that the connections to the Gospels reflect a shared
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: tradition that Jesus knew and drew from deliberately. Others have
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: argued that the parables may have been composed closer to
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: or even after the time of Jesus, which would change
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: how we understand the direction of influence. The honest position
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: is that we do not have certainty about the precise
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: dating of the parables. What we do have is a
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: remarkable body of shared imagery and shared theological conviction that
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: points whichever direction the influence ran to a deeply rooted
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: ancient tradition about a figure hidden before the world was
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: made and revealed at the end of all things. And
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: what we know from the Gospels themselves is that Jesus
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: chose this title deliberately, repeatedly in contexts where he was
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: clearly making a claim that his audience would have recognized.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: When Jesus stood before the high priest at his trial,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: and they asked if he was the Messiah. He answered
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: with these words, you will see the Son of Man
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: seated at the right hand of power and coming with
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: the clouds of heaven. His accusers recognized immediately that he
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: was making an extraordinary claim, a claim not just about identity,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: but about cosmic authority, a claim that echoed not only Daniel,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: but the entire tradition of the hidden and revealed figure
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: that texts like the Parables of Enoch describe whether Jesus
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: was drawing directly from the Book of Enoch, from Daniel,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: from a shared oral tradition, or from all of these simultaneously.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: What he was claiming was unmistakable. I am the one
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: who was hidden before the world was made. I am
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: the one who will sit on the throne of glory.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: I am the one this ancient tradition pointed toward, and
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: the time of my revealing is now. For those who
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: hold the Christian faith, this connection between the Book of
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: Enoch and the Gospels is not merely interesting. It is
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: staggering because it means that the coming of Jesus into
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: the world was not an improvisation. It was something that
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: a faithful man on a hilltop in the ancient world,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: had been shown in vision before the language of the
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: Gospel existed. Enoch saw him. He did not know his
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: name as we know it. He did not know the stable,
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: or the carpenter's shop, or the roads of Galilee. But
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: he saw the throne. He saw the figure at the
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: right hand of the ancient of days. He saw the
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: hidden one who would be revealed. And he wrote it
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: down so that when the revealing came, there would be
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: a witness who had seen it coming. Now let us
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: stay with what this means for you to night. You
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: are lying in the dark. The world around you is
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: complicated and often painful, and full of things that have
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: not been resolved and questions that have not been answered.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: The powerful still seem untouchable, the righteous still seem to suffer.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: The gap between how things are and how they should
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: be is as wide as it has ever been. Enoch
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: looked at a world in even greater crisis, and was
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: lifted up and shown a throne. And beside that throne
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: stood a figure hidden before the world was made, carrying
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: a name that would one day be spoken over. A
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: child born in Bethlehem under a sky full of stars,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: that Uriel had already taught Enoch how to read, and
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: that figure. The parables of Enoch insist across every page.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: Is not absent from the world you live in. He
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: is not unaware of what is happening in your life
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: or in the lives of those you love. He was
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: chosen before the world was made for exactly this, for
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: the most moment, when the hidden becomes revealed, For the
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: day when every wrong is answered, and every faithful soul
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: is welcomed, and every tear is understood, and the full
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: justice of God is enacted, not in part, but completely
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: and permanently. Enoch saw him from a hill top in
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: the ancient world, carried up through the heavens, shown things
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: no human eye had seen. He wrote it down so
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: that you would know, so that on the night when
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: the world feels most broken, when the powerful seem most untouchable,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: when the gap between how things are and how they
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: should be feels most unbearable, you would have this a
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: testimony from one of the oldest voices in the Biblical tradition, saying,
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: I saw him. He is real, He was hidden before
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: the world began. He is coming, and those who have
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: trusted in him when he was hidden, will see him
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: when he is revealed. Breathe, Let your body go completely still.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: Let the weight of this chapter settle into the quiet
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: place in you that has been waiting for exactly this,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: the son of man seen by Enoch before the stars
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: were made. He is coming, and you are already known
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: to him. Sleep well. Chapter ten, The Great Flood, when
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: Heaven intervened. There is a moment before a storm, when
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: everything goes quiet. The birds stop, the wind drops, the
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: air changes in a way the body recognizes before the
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: mind does. And in that stillness, anyone paying attention knows
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: that something is coming, something large, something that cannot be
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: avoided by looking away. Noah felt that stillness. He had
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: been feeling it for years. Growing up as the grandson
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: of Methuselah, the son of Lamek, a man born into
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: the line that still carried the memory of Enoch, Noah
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: had access to something that most of the world around
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: him had long abandoned. He had the scrolls, He had
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: the testimony. He had the words that Enoch had written
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: down at God's command and intrusted to his son before
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: the light took him. Noah read those words, and he
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: understood what they meant for the world he was waking
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: up in every morning. But understanding something and being able
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: to do anything about it are two very different things.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: And for most of his life Noah did what faithful
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: people in impossible situations have always done. He kept his household,
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: He raised his sons in the knowledge of the Creator.
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: He tended what was in his care, and he watched
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: the world around him move further and further from everything.
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: The scrolls described Genesis tells us that by the time
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: the flood came, the thoughts of every human heart were
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: only evil. Continually, the Book of Enoch fills in the
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: texture of what that actually looked like from the inside.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: The violence that the Nephelim had introduced post had remade
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: the culture of the world. The forbidden knowledge had been
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: absorbed and normalized. The gap between what humanity was created
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: to be and what humanity had become was no longer
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: a gap. It was a chasm that ordinary repair could
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: not bridge. And something else had happened, something the Book
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: of Enoch is specific about in a way that deserves
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: careful attention. The corruption was not only moral and cultural.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: According to this ancient text, it was physical. The ground
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: itself had been changed by what had been done on
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: it and in it, the soil soaked in the suffering
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: of the innocent, the created order consumed and distorted beyond
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: any sustainable pattern, the fabric of the natural world, altered
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: by the accumulated weight of everything the watchers had set
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: in motion. This is why the flood, in the understanding
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: of the Book of Enoch, is not primarily punishment. It
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: is surgery. There is a profound difference between those two things.
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: Punishment is oriented toward the past, toward what was done
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: and what is owed. Surgery is oriented toward the future,
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: toward removing what cannot be healed in place, so that
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: what remains can live. A surgeon does not cut because
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: the patient deserves pain. A surgeon cuts because the alternative
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: is that the patient dies. God looked at the earth
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: in the days before the flood and saw a patient
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: who could not be healed from the outside. The contamination
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: had gone too deep, too far, and so he came
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: to Noah, not through an angel, not through a vision
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: in the night, directly in the most intimate form of
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: divine communication, and he told Noah what was coming and
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: what Noah needed to do. Now Here is what the
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: Book of Enoch adds to the Genesis account that most
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: people never encounter. Before God spoke to Noah, he had
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: already been at one. The judgments against the watchers were
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: already in motion. Raphael had bound a zaesil, Michael had
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: sealed the chief watchers under the hills. Gabriel had turned
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: the destructive energy of the Nephelim inward. Heaven had been
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: systematically addressing every dimension of the crisis, so that when
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: the flood came, what it washed away would stay washed away.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: The flood was not the first intervention. It was the
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: completing intervention. God said to Noah, the earth is filled
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: with violence through them, and I will bring a flood
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: of waters over the earth to destroy all flesh. Make
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: yourself an arc. The instructions that follow in Genesis are
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: precise dimensions. Materials, adore a window, the provision of every
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: kind of creature, the ceiling of the ark against the
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: waters that were coming. And Noah obeyed, which seems like
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: a simple thing to say until you consider what obedience
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: actually required of him. Think of what it cost him
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: to build something that had no precedent. There had never
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: been a flood of this scale. There had never been
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: an ark. There was no community of people who understood
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: or supported what he was doing. The world around him
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: was not simply indifferent to what he was building. It
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: was hostile, because the existence of the ark was a
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: standing accusation against the direction the world had chosen. Picture
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: him on an ordinary morning, the sun coming up over
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: the hills, the sound of hammering in the silence before
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: the rest of the world woke. A neighbor walking past
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: on his way to the market, glancing at the rising
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: frame of this enormous wooden structure and shaking his head
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: without a word. His sons working beside him, asking questions
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: he could only partially answer. The wood slow under his hands,
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: the days long, the years longer. Every very plank he
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: laid was an act of faithfulness that no one around
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: him could see the point of. Every morning he chose
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: to go back to the work was a morning he
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: chose God's word over the evidence of his own circumstances.
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: He kept building, one ordinary day at a time, one
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: act of obedience at a time, for years, carrying the
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: weight of what he knew, while the world around him
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: carried on as though nothing was coming. This is what
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: faithfulness looks like from the inside. Not dramatic, not glamorous,
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: not immediately vindicated, just a man in the morning light,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: going back to the thing God told him to do,
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: Even when it cost him more than he expected, and
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: took longer than he imagined, and left him more alone
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: than he was prepared for. He kept building, and the
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: ark rose. When the flood came, it came from two directions, simultaneously.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: The windows of Heaven opened, the fountains of the great
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: deep burst forth, water from above and water from below,
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 1: meeting in the middle, covering first the valleys, and then
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: the hills, and then the mountains, until there was nothing
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: visible in any direction but water. The world that had
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: been was gone. Now Here is the question that the
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: Book of Enoch raises about the flood, that most versions
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: of this story never get to. What happened to the
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: people who drowned, Not the Nephelim, not the watchers, the
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: ordinary human beings, the men and women and children born
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: into this corrupted world, who had grown up in it,
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: who had been shaped by it. What happened to them
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: when the waters came. The chambers of the dead that
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: Enoch had been shown those four hollow places in the earth,
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: where the spirits of the deceased are kept according to
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: the nature of their lives and their deaths were filling.
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: In the days of the flood. The souls of those
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: who perished were being gathered and held, not destroyed, not extinguished,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: kept in the careful, accountable custody of the God who
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: had always known their names. And the New Testament adds
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: something to this that is as mysterious as anything in
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: the Book of Enoch itself. The first Letter of Peter,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: chapter three says that after his death and before his resurrection,
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: Christ went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison who
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: formerly did not obey when God's patience waited in the
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: days of Noah. The spirits in prison those who did
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: not obey in the days of Noah. According to this passage,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: Jesus went to them. What this proclamation was, what it accomplished,
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: and what it means for those who received it. Has
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: been one of the most debated passages in all of
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: New Testament scholarship for centuries. Serious theologians across many traditions
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: have held very different views on its meaning, and the
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: honest position is that we do not have certainty. But
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: the fact of it is there written by an apostle
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: preserved in the New Testament, suggesting that the god of
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: the flood was not finished with the people the flood took,
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: that the story of those souls did not end when
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: the water covered the mountains. What we can say with
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: confidence is this, the flood accomplished what it was sent
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: to accomplish. The earth was cleansed, the Nephelim were gone,
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: the watchers were sealed, and a man and his family
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: and the creatures in their care stepped off a wooden
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: vessel on to ground that was, for the first time
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: in generations washed clean. Noah stood on that ground and
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: built an altar, and God spoke to him with the
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: words of a new beginning. He made a covenant with
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: Noah and with his sons, and with every living creature
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: on the earth. He promised that the waters would never
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: again cover the earth in this way, And as the
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: sign of that promise, he placed something in the sky,
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 1: a rainbow. Most of us have seen so many rainbows
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: that the weight of them has faded into familiarity. But Enoch,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: who had been taught by Uriel how to read the
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: language of the sky, who knew that every movement of
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: the sun and moon was a declaration of faithfulness, would
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: have understood the rainbow differently. God said, when I see
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: the bow in the cloud, I will remember my covenant.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: I will remember God who forgets nothing, choosing the language
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: of remembering, because the covenant was not for God's benefit,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: it was for ours. The rainbow was not because God
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: needed a reminder. It was because we do. Because we
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: are the kind of creatures who need visible things to
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: hold invisible truths, who need something in the sky to
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: anchor something in the heart. And every rainbow since that day,
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: every ark of light that appears after rain carries the
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: same testimony that Noah saw, the same promise, the the
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: same faithfulness of the same God who sent the flood
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 1: and stopped the flood and stood on the other side
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: of it with a new beginning in his hands. The
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: new world that emerged from the waters was not paradise.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: Human sinfulness remained. The story was not over. The need
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: for the Son of Man that Enoch had seen in
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: the parables was not removed by the flood. It was
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: confirmed by it. Because the flood proved what the pre
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: flood world had already demonstrated that the deepest problem with
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: humanity is not environmental. It is not primarily about external corruption,
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: though that made things catastrophically worse. The problem runs deeper
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: than any flood can reach. What is needed is what
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: the Son of Man came to give, a cleansing not
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: of ground and water and air, but of the human soul,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: an atonement that accomplishes in the innermost part of a person,
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: what the flood waters accomplished in the earth, complete, sufficient,
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: once and for all. The flood was real, the mercy
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: behind it was real, and it was always pointing forward,
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: always gesturing towards something greater, always saying that this is
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 1: not the final solution, only the preparation of the world.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: For the one who is Noah stepped off the ark
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: on to washed ground, and somewhere in the future he
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: could not see, the one whom Enoch had seen on
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 1: the throne of Glory would step into that same washed world,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: would walk its roads, would go to a cross, and
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: would accomplish in his own body the final, complete, irreversible
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: cleansing that no flood and no fresh start could ever achieve.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: Let that be where your mind rests as you move
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: towards sleep to night. The flood was real, the judgment
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: was real, the cleansing was real, and it was not
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 1: the end of the story. It was the turning of
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: a page, the opening of the chapter that leads to
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: the one enuchsor The rainbow is still there above every storm,
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: waiting for the light to find it, and the promise
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: it carries has not changed by a single word. Chapter eleven,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: Why the Church set it aside? The History of a
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: Lost Book. In the spring of nineteen forty seven, a
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: Bedouin shepherd boy named Mohammad d a Dieb was searching
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: for a lost goat in the Limestone hills near the
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: Dead Sea. To startle any animals that might be sheltering
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: inside a cave, he threw a stone into the opening.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: He heard not the sound of movement, but the sound
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: of breaking pottery. He had stumbled on to one of
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: the most significant archaeological discoveries in human history. Over the
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: next decade, eleven caves near the ancient site of Kumran
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: yielded thousands of fragments of ancient manuscripts. Some of them
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: were the oldest surviving copies of Biblical texts ever found,
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: and among them in multiple caves. Carefully wrapped and preserved
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: were fragments of the Book of Enoch written in Aramaic,
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: the language Jesus spoke in daily life, dated by paleographic
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: analysis to the last two centuries before the birth of Christ,
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: and matching in every detail that could be verified the
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: manuscripts that had been preserved in Ethiopian monasteries for fifteen centuries.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: For those who had argued that the Book of Enoch
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: was a medieval invention, the discoveries at Kumran settled the
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: question of age. The book was ancient, genuinely documentably, verifiably ancient.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: But to understand what that discovery meant, we need to
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: understand the long journey the Book of Enoch had taken
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: to reach that hillside, and why for most of the
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: Western world it had been missing for over a thousand years.
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: Let us begin not with its disappearance, but with its presence.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: In the centuries surrounding the birth of Jesus. The Book
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: of Enoch was widely read and widely circulated among Jewish
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: communities throughout the ancient world. The Kumran community, whose scrolls
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: were found in those eleven caves, had more copies of
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: the Book of Enoch than of almost any other text
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: outside the Psalms and the Five Books of Moses. These
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: were not credulous people. They were the most serious scripture
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: scholars of their day, and they considered this book essential.
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: The early followers of Jesus knew it too. The letter
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: of Jude, near the very end of your New Testament
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: does something extraordinary. It quotes the Book of Enoch directly,
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: not vaguely, not as a passing illusion. It says, giving
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: you the sense rather than the exact words that Enoch
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: the seventh from Adam prophesied, declaring that the Lord would
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: come with ten thousands of his Holy ones to execute
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly. That
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: passage appears in the Book of Enoch. Jude read it,
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: recognized it as prophetic, and quoted it in a letter
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: eventually included in the New Testament canon. The second Letter
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: of Peter references the angels who sinned and were cast
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: into chains of gloomy darkness, language that echoes the Book
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: of Enoch's account of the binding of the watchers so
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: closely that most scholars consider the connection deliberate. Several early
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: Church fathers engaged with it seriously. Tertullian writing in the
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: late second century argued that the Book of Enoch should
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: be accepted as scripture, maintaining that its preservation was itself
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: a testimony to its authenticity. So what changed? The honest
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: answer requires honesty about a complicated process. As the Church
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: grew and spread across the first three centuries, the question
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: of which texts were authoritative became increasingly urgent. Different communities
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: had different texts they valued. The need to define clearly
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: and consistently what constituted the Christian scriptures was genuine and pressing.
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: The process of canonization was not a single event or
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: a single decision. It was a long, contested, community wide
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: discernment that unfolded across centuries, and the criteria that emerged
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: for inclusion were rigorous. Was the text connected to an
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: apostle or an eye witness of Jesus. Was it consistent
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: with the core convictions of the faith? Was it recognized
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: across the major communities of the Church. The Book of
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: Enoch did not meet these criteria cleanly. Its origin could
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: not be verified in the way that Apostolic texts could
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: be verified. Its elaborate cosmology, raised questions about its relationship
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: to other accepted texts. Its reception was uneven. Some communities
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: valued it deeply, others had never encountered it, And so gradually,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: and without any single dramatic moment of condemnation, the Book
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: of Enoch was set aside, not formally banned in most cases,
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: not burned, or explicitly suppressed by any central authority in
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: the early period, simply not included, allowed to fade from
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: the regular reading and teaching of the Church in the West.
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: This is a human process made by people doing their
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: best with real criteria, trying to protect something precious. There
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: is no villain in this story. There is only the
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: limitation of any institution that has to make boundaries, and
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: the reality that boundaries sometimes leave valuable things on the outside.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: But not everywhere. In Ethiopia, something different happened. The Ethiopian Church,
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, tracing
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 1: its origins to the conversion of the Ethiopian official described
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: in the Book of Acts, developed its own canon of scripture,
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: and in that canon, the Book of Enoch was included,
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: not as supplementary reading, not as a historical curiosity, as
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: Scripture for roughly fifteen centuries. While the Western Church had
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 1: largely lost access to the complete text, Ethiopian Christians were
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: reading it, copying it by hand in the ancient Gie's language,
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: passing it from generation to generation in monasteries built into
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: the sides of mountains, in communities so remote that they
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: were effectively beyond the reach of the pressures that had
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: caused the book to fade elsewhere. They were keeping something
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: alive that the rest of the world had let go of.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: In seventeen seventy three, a Scottish explorer named James Bruce
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: traveled through Ethiopia and returned to Europe with three complete
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: manuscripts of the Book of Enoch. It was the first
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: time most European scholars had encountered the complete texts. A
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: full English translation was published by Richard Lawrence in eighteen
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: twenty one. Scholars began to study it seriously, and the
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: conversation about its age, its relationship to the New Testament,
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: and its theological significance began. That conversation was transformed by
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: the discoveries at Cumran. The fragments found in those eleven
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: caves were copied in the language of daily life in
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: first century Judea, preserved alongside the most sacred texts of
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: the most scripture serious community of the ancient Jewish world,
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: old enough to have been known to the writers of
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: the New Testament, old enough to have been quoted by Jude,
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: old enough, on the evidence of the Aramaic manuscripts, to
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: have been part of the living religious world into which
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: Jesus was born. What does all of this mean for
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: how we hold the Book of Enoch to day? Here
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: is the honest position that this ancient text deserves. The
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: Book of Enoch is not the Bible. The decision to
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: leave it outside the cannon was made by people who
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: were doing their best, applying criteria that were reasonable given
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: what they knew and what they were trying to protect.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: That decision is worth respecting, even by those who find
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: great value in the text. At the same time, the
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: Book of Enoch is not nothing. It was known to
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: and quoted by New Testament writers. It illuminates passages in Genesis, Daniel, Jude, Peter,
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: and Revelation that remained genuinely difficult without the background it provides.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: It was preserved against every pressure of geography and institutional neglect,
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: and the slow erosion of time by a community of
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: faithful people who simply refuse to let it disappear. The
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: Ethiopian monks, who copied it by hand in their mountain
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: monasteries did not know about the Dead Sea scrolls. They
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: did not know that their manuscripts would one day be
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: compared with Aramaic fragments and found to match. They were
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: simply preserving what they had been given because it seemed
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: worth preserving. And it reached us not through any single
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: dramatic intervention, but through the ordinary faithfulness of people across
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: fifteen centuries who kept copying what they had received because
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: the words seemed true and the truth seemed worth keeping.
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 1: There is something in that which mirrors the very message
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: the book contains, The faithful work that seems small, the
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: ordinary act of copying and preserving and handing down persisting
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: across generations without any guarantee that it will matter. That
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: faithfulness is precisely the kind that the Book of Enoch celebrates.
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: In the life of Enoch himself, he walked with God
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: for three hundred years, one ordinary day at a time,
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: without knowing that his walking would result in visions preserved
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: for millennia, recovered in caves near the Dead Sea, and
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: heard by someone lying in the dark on them. This
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: particular night he just walked, and what he wrote has
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 1: waited a very long time. Now we are almost at
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: the end of this journey together, and there is one
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: more thing to say, the most personal thing, the thing
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 1: that all of this ancient testimony has been building toward.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: What does Enoch mean for you to night in the
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: dark in your actual life. That is where we go
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: next chapter twelve. What Enoch means for you tonight. We
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: have traveled a long way together, from a hilltop in
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: the ancient world where a man sat alone watching the stars,
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 1: through the sworn oath of two hundred angels on a
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: mountain top, through the birth of beings the earth could
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: not contain, and the spread of knowledge that power without
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: wisdom cannot hold safely, through the throne room of heaven
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 1: and the chambers of the dead, and the movements of
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: the Sun through its appointed gates, through the face of
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: a figure hidden before the world was made, seen by
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: a shepherd's scribe before Bethlehem existed, Through the flood and
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: the rainbow, and an Ethiopian monastery, and a broken clay
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: jar in a cave near the Dead Sea. We have
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: heard all of it, and now we are here in
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: the quiet, in the dark, in the particular circumstances of
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: your particular life, which are nothing like the pre flood world,
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: and also in the ways that matter most not entirely
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: different from it either. So let us sit together before
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: the prayer comes. Let us ask the question that all
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: of this has been building toward. What does Enoch mean
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: for you tonight? Not for scholars, not for theologians, not
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: for the Ethiopian Church, or the Cumran community, or the
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: historians of the ancient world, For you, the person lying
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: in the dark right now, carrying whatever you are carrying,
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: hoping for whatever you are hoping for, quietly afraid of
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: whatever you are quietly afraid of. What does a man
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: who walked with God three hundred years ago have to
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: say to you in this moment? The first thing he
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: says is the most obvious, So let us name it
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: and then go deeper. Enoch lived in a world that
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: was broken in ways he had not caused and could
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: not fix. The corruption around him was not his fault.
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: The watchers had made their choice before he was born.
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: The Nephelin were not his doing. The spread of forbidden
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: knowledge and the violence that saturated the culture of his
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: time were the accumulated consequences of decisions made by beings
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: far more powerful than himself. He woke up every morning
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: in a world that was, by any reasonable measure, catastrophically wrong,
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: and he walked with God anyway. Not because the walking
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: fixed the world. The world got worse during Enoch's lifetime,
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: not better. Not because the walking was easy or comfortable
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: or rewarded by the people around him. It made him strange.
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 1: A man who prayed in a generation that had largely
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: stopped praying, a man who watched the stars while his
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: neighbors were building cities. He walked because the alternative was
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: to become part of the drift, and something in him,
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: that hunger that had been there since childhood, refused to
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 1: settle for the drift. Now Here is what I want
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: you to hear. You did not cause the brokenness of
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: the world you woke up in this morning, either the
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: systems that grind people down, the inherited patterns that shape
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 1: us before we are old enough to choose, the spread
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: of things that corrupt and diminish, the weight of powers
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 1: that operate without accountability. You arrived into all of that
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: the way Enoch arrived into his world, already in motion,
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: already extensive, already reaching into every corner of the culture
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: around you. And the question that the life of Enoch
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: poses to you is the same aime one his life
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: pose to his own generation. What will you do with
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: the world you woke up in? Not what will you
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: do about it? As if you could single handedly dismantle
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: what took centuries to build, But what will you do
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: with it? How will you inhabit it? What will you
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: choose to be inside of it? Enoch chose to walk,
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: to keep showing up in that daily, back and forth,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: continuous movement that the Hebrew word describes, to bring himself,
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: all of himself, the questions and the confusions and the
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: griefs and the ordinary tired afternoons, into the presence of
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: the God who made him. And that choice, made consistently
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 1: over three hundred years, made him transparent to Heaven, made
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: him the vessel through whom the most comprehensive ancient vision
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: of the divine was given, made him the scribe of
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: a revelation that traveled through Ethiopian monasteries and Dead Sea
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 1: caves and a broken pot jar to reach you in
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 1: the dark to night. His faithfulness became a vessel, and
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: God filled it. That is not a formula. It is
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: not a guarantee that your life will look like Enoch's
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: life looked. His life ended with being taken off the
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: earth entirely, which is not a typical outcome, and the
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: three hundred years between his first prayer and his last
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: morning on the hillside included everything The Book of Enoch
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 1: does not record, the ordinary days, the doubts, the mornings
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: when the world felt too heavy and the silence of
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: heaven felt too long. The ordinary days were the foundation
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: of the visions. You cannot have the throne room without
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: the three hundred years of walking toward it, one unremarkable
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: morning at a time. And that walking is what is
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: available to you to night. Not the visions, necessarily, not
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: the journey through the heavens, or the audience before the
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: Great Glory, or the face of the sun of Man
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 1: on his throne, but the walking itself, the daily choice
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: to show up in the presence of the One who
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 1: made you, with whatever you have, in whatever condition you
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: are in, carrying whatever you are carrying. That choice is
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: available to you right now, in this moment. Now, let
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: me go deeper, because there is something else that Enoch's
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: life teaches that is more intimate than the call to
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: walk with God, something that has to do not with
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: what you do, but with what you believe about yourself,
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: about your worth, about whether you are the kind of
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: person God would bother with. Enoch was nobody remarkable in
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: the world's terms. He was not a king, not a
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: military commander, not a builder of cities or an inventor
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: of instruments, or a man of impressive worldly achievement. He
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: was a man who sat on hillsides and watched the
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: stars and prayed. In the culture of the pre flood world,
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: which celebrated power and ambition and the accumulation of strength,
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: Enoch was quiet, marginal, easily overlooked, and God chose him specifically,
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: not despite his ordinariness but through it. Not because he
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: was spectacular, but because he was transparent. Because what God
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: needed was not a powerful person. What God needed was
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: a faithful one, a person whose attachment to the world's
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: definitions of importance was loose enough that Heaven could move
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 1: through them without obstruction. You may feel tonight that you
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 1: are not the kind of person through whom anything of
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: lasting value flows. That the weight of your history, or
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: your failures, or your confusion puts you outside the category
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: of people God would choose for anything significant. The Book
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: of Enoch says otherwise. The man through whom the most
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: comprehensive pre Christian vision of the Son of Man was
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: given to the world was a man whose entire greatness
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: consisted of this. He walked with God. He refused to
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: let God oh. He showed up year after year and
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: decade after decade, not because it was glamorous or immediately
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 1: fruitful or socially rewarded, but because the hunger in him
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: would not settle for anything less. That hunger is in
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: you too. It is why you are listening to this
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: in the dark instead of sleeping easily. It is why
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: the story of a man who walked with God three
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: hundred years ago still reaches something inside you after all
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: these centuries. It is the same hunger that was in Enoch,
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: the hunger for something real, the hunger for the presence
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: of the one who made you. That hunger is not
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: a weakness. It is a compass, and it is pointing
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: towards something realer than anything the world around you is
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: offering to night. And here is the third thing, the
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: deepest thing, the thing that requires the most courage to receive.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: You are already known. Not by the world, which may
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: or may not see you clearly, not by the people
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: around you, who know only the version of you that
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: you show them, but by the one who sat on
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: the throne of fire that Enoch could not look at directly,
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: the one whose presence made even the highest angels cover
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: their faces. That one knows you not in the general
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 1: sense that a creator knows a creation, in the specific, named,
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: fully apprehended sense that a father knows a child, the
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: sense in which every detail of your history and your
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 1: hope and your fear and your longing is held in
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 1: a consciousness that never forgets, never dismisses, and never grows
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: tired of holding it. The souls in the chambers of
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: the dead, the ones Enoch saw in the hollow places
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: of the earth, were being held in exactly that knowing,
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: known and named, and kept against the day when the
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: full justice and full mercy of God would be enacted completely.
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: If God held those souls through the judgment of the
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: watchers and the destruction of the Nephelim and the cleansing
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: of the flood. He is holding you now in whatever
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 1: you are in the middle of, whatever the crisis is,
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: whatever the darkness feels like. Tonight, you are being held
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 1: in the same knowing that held those ancient souls, and
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: you are not waiting for the final judgment to experience
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 1: the warmth of that holding. You are in it now,
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: you have always been in it. Enoch walked with God
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: for three hundred years, and at the end of them,
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: God simply could not let him die. Not because Enoch
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: had accumulated enough spiritual merit to earn immortality, but because
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: the relationship had become, over three centuries of faithful nearness,
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: something that death itself was not adequate to interrupt. Walk
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: with God tonight, tomorrow morning, the morning after that. Not
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: because the walking fixes the world, though it changes what
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: the world does to you. You, not because the walking
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: makes you important, though it makes you transparent to something
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: more important than anything the world can offer. Not because
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: you have to, but because the hunger in you is
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: real and it is pointing towards something realer. Still, walk
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 1: the way Enoch walked, one ordinary day at a time
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: one morning of showing up at a time, one moment
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: of choosing presence overdrift at a time, And do not
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: worry about the three hundred years. Do not worry about
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 1: the visions, or the throne room, or the title of
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: scribe of heaven. That is God's part of the arrangement.
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: Your part is simpler than you think and more important
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 1: than you know. Show up, He will do the rest.
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: The night is quiet now your body is heavy with
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: the good weight of a long journey honestly taken. You
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: have heard things to night that were written for you
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 1: by a man who saw the throne of God and
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: came back to tell us what it looked like. And
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 1: the most most important thing he came back to tell
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: us is not about fallen angels, or the structure of
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: the heavens, or the movements of the stars. As extraordinary
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: as all of those things are, the most important thing
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 1: is this. The God on the throne of Fire said,
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: come near to the trembling human on the floor. Come near.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: That invitation has not been withdrawn, not during the worst
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: crisis in the history of the world, before the flood,
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: not during fifteen centuries when the book that recorded it
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 1: was known. Only in Ethiopian monasteries. Not during all the
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: years between Enuch's last morning on the hillside and this
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: moment right now, it has not been withdrawn tonight. Come
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: near and walk, and do not stop. Let us pray.
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 2: Father. We come to you at the end of a
• 1:59:53
  Speaker 2: long night and a long journey. We have walked together
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: through corridors of fire and ice. We have I've heard
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 2: the oath of fallen angels on a mountaintop, and the
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: crying of a broken earth rising toward Heaven. We have
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 2: stood at the edge of the throne room and looked
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: from a careful and trembling distance at the presence that
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 2: Enoch could not look at directly. We have heard the
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 2: name of the one who was hidden before the sun
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 2: was made, the name given to a child in Bethlehem
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 2: centuries after Enoch wrote it down. We have heard the
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 2: flood come and go. We have watched a rainbow appear
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 2: in a washed sky. We have followed a book through
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: Ethiopian monasteries, and a shepherd boy's lost goat, and a
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 2: broken pottery jar in a limestone cave, all the way
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 2: to this room, to this quiet, to this moment, And
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 2: now we are still Father, the things we have heard
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: tonight are larger than any of us can fully hold.
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: We know that we are not trying to hold all
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: of them. We are only trying to hold you, the
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 2: one who was behind all of it, the one who
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 2: sent the archangels and kept the souls, and preserved the scrolls,
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 2: and set the stars in their courses, and said, come
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: near to the trembling human on the floor. We are trembling,
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: some of us more than others, but all of us
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 2: a little, because the world we live in is complicated,
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: and the things we carry are not light, and the
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 2: distance between how things are and how they should be
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 2: is not nothing. But you heard the crying of the
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 2: earth before the flood. You heard the souls in the
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 2: hollow places of the rock. You heard Enoch weeping in
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 2: his house on behalf of angels who had no right
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: to ask for mercy. You hear us to night Lord.
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 2: We ask for the thing that Enoch had, not the visions,
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 2: not the journey through the heavens, not the cosmic revelation,
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 2: or the title of scribe of Heaven. Just the thing
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 2: underneath all of it, the walk, the daily, faithful back
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 2: and forth walk with you that does not depend on
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 2: how we feel, or what the world is doing, or
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: whether the circumstances around us are favorable. The walk that
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 2: Enoch kept for three hundred years in a world that
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: was falling apart, the walk that made him transparent to Heaven,
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 2: give us that we are asking for that. Give us
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 2: the hunger that will not settle for the drift. Give
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 2: us the faithfulness that shows up one unremarkable morning at
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 2: a time. Give us the quiet clarity that looks at
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: a broken world and still chooses to walk toward You
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: instead of a way. And when we lose the thread, Father,
• 2:02:42
  Speaker 2: when we miss the morning and find ourselves further from
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: You than we meant to get, remind us of what
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: Enoch said to his son on the hillside before the
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 2: light took him. Walk with him as I have walked
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 2: with him, And you will never be alone. We are
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 2: not alone. We know that to night, in a way
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 2: we perhaps did not know it when this day began.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 2: We have heard the testimony of a man who saw
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 2: your throne and came back and wrote it all down
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 2: and trusted that one day, through all the improbable hands
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 2: of history, it would reach the people who needed it.
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 2: It reached us. Thank you, Thank you for the Book
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 2: of Enoch, for the man who wrote it in faithfulness,
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 2: for the monks who copied it in obscurity, for the
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 2: caves that held it in darkness, for the shepherd boy
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 2: who threw a stone and heard something break. Thank you
• 2:03:36
  Speaker 2: that the crying reaches the throne, that the souls are kept,
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 2: That the Son of Man is real and seated and coming.
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 2: That the rainbow is still in the sky above every storm.
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 2: Thank you that you say, come near, guard our sleep
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 2: to night. Father, Let these words do in us what
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: words cannot do alone. Only you can do this, the
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: quiet work of your spirit in the sleeping soul, settling
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 2: truth into places too deep for the waking mind to
• 2:04:07
  Speaker 2: reach on its own. Let us wake tomorrow a little
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 2: more like Enoch than we were to day, a little
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: more willing to walk, a little less attached to the drift,
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 2: a little more awake to the faithfulness that is written
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 2: in the movement of the stars above our roofs right now,
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 2: a little more certain that the throne behind the sky
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 2: is hearing the crying of the earth to night the
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 2: way it heard it. Then a little more at rest
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: in the name that was spoken before the sun was
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 2: made and given to a child in Bethlehem, and spoken
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 2: over every soul who has ever chosen to come near.
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 2: That name is our peace to night and every night,
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 2: now and forever and beyond all the ages that Enoch's
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 2: astronomical visions could calculate. Through Jesus Christ, the Son of Man,
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 2: the one Enoch saw, the one who came, the one
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 2: who is coming to him Be all glory, Amen, Sleep well, beloved.
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 2: You have walked along road tonight, through the oldest mystery
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: in scripture, through the visions of a man who refused
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: to let go of God, and whom God refused to
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 2: let go of, Through heaven and earth and flood and
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 2: rainbow and cave and this quiet room where you are
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 2: resting now. The words that Enoch left behind have waited
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: thousands of years to reach every generation that needed them.
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 2: They have crossed mountains and oceans and centuries and the
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 2: silence of institutions and the darkness of limestone caves. They
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 2: reached you tonight because you were always going to need
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 2: to know that the crying reaches Heaven, that the Son
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 2: of Man was seen before the world was made, that
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 2: the faithfulness of God is written in the stars, above
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: your roof, right now, moving through their gates, keeping their cycles,
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 2: speaking the same word they have spoken since the first
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 2: light fell on the first morning. I am here, I
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 2: am faithful. I have not forgotten you. Come near. Go
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 2: to sleep now with those words in the deepest part
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: of you. The night has been long, the morning is coming,
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 2: and when it comes, it will come through the same
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 2: gates that Uriel showed Enoch, in the same faithfulness that
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 2: has governed every sunrise since before the flood. You are
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 2: not forgotten, You are not alone. You are held in
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 2: the knowledge of the one who made you, the love
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 2: of the one who came for you, and the keeping
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 2: of the one who will never let you go. This
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 2: is night psalms, and we will walk with you again soon. Amen.